THIS BLOG HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN MOVED TO ADROPOFTORAH.WORDPRESS.COM

פרשת תולדוס

פרשת תולדוס

'And Yitzchok said about his wife, "She is my sister"' (*Bereishis 26.7)

               There are two types of love between two people. The first is that which one has for someone from whom he receives some enjoyment or other favor. The love comes because this person is of good character and acts towards him based on that. The love that he has is based on this good character.  This is the love that a man normally has for his wife because he has enjoyment from her.  In order for there to be this type of love there has to be a secession of this enjoyment, for if it was continual, he would have no enjoyment from it. (As *Chazal say, an enjoyment that is continual is not really enjoyment.)

               There is another type of love, which is that of a brother for a sister. He loves her for herself and not because any type of enjoyment she gives him. In this love there is no secession. If she would also have good *midos, he would have enjoyment from these midos also [but they are secondary to his love of her.] From this we see that his love is greater then the enjoyment he has from her since from his love comes his enjoyment [and not vis versa].

               In the first type of love, however, this is not the case. The enjoyment is greater then the love since the love comes from the enjoyment that she brings him. And this is why Yitzchok said about his wife 'She is my sister', since that was the level his love for her was on. (p. 108 Toras HaMaggid teachings of the *Rebbe Reb Ber, the *Maggid of Mizretch)

Have an Awesome Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

פרשת חיי שרה

פרשת חיי שרה

ואשאל אתה ואמר בת מי את ותאמר בת בתואל בן נחור אשר ילדה לו מלכה ואשם הנזם על אפה והצמידים על אפה ידיה:

“And I asked her and said: ‘who is your father?’ and she said, ‘I am the daughter of Bisuel…’ and I placed a bracelet on her hands.

                In this week’s parsha, Eliezer, Avraham’s faithful servant was sent on a very important mission. He was sent away to find a wife for Avraham’s son, Yitzchak. Before he left on this journey Avraham stressed that when he goes he needs to find a girl from his family, from his father’s house. Eliezer, a little overwhelmed asked Hashem for a sign to help him make the right choice. He asked that Hashem should send a girl that offers him and his camels something to drink from the well. That would be the sign that the girl is the one Hashem chose for Yitchak.

                No sooner did he say those words Rivka appeared and “passed the test”. Eliezer was so sure that she was the right girl that he gave her the symbolic bracelets that engaged her to Yitzchak. He then asked who she was, and found out that indeed she was from the house of Avraham.

                When Eliezer went to meet Lavan and Bisuel (her father and brother), something interesting happens. He tells the story almost exactly how it happened, he just mixes a few things up, he changed the order of how it happened. He said, “first I asked her name and then I gave her the bracelets”.

                Rashi explains that this was because he was afraid that Lavan would never believe it if he said the way it really happened. He would assume that Eliezer was lying. Therefore he changed the order.

                Well this is really strange, because moments before Eliezer was telling Lavan how God had shortened the way for him in order to get to Charan faster. Obviously Lavan didn’t have a hard time believing in miracles, so why over here was Eliezer afraid. It must have been that Lavan had a problem in the idea of trust itself.

                We see throughout the next few weeks that Lavan lived a very selfish and untrustworthy life. He believed that since nobody could trust him, that he could not trust anyone. He assumed he was too smart to trust, anyone with a brain would not be stupid enough to trust. Therefore he could never accept that someone would let his guard down and actually trust. Therefore Eliezer was afraid to mention his complete trust in Hashem, he knew Lavan wouldn’t believe him and assume he was lying.

                This is a very important message for our personal relationships and our relationship with God. Lavan looked at life as always trying to outdo the other person, and making sure that whatever they can do to me I do to them first. He never “believed in people”. Even the nicest actions of a person would be translated into a hidden agenda. When we deal with other people, we need not to think like that. We need to realize that there are good people who are interested just in helping and doing the right thing. We need to know that even though we don’t know why things happen, God knows what he is doing. Simply we need to trust…

Have an Awesome Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

Adapted From the Shmuz

סכות

סכות

                We just finished the most important part of the Jewish year, Elul. We have now entered זמן שמחתנו, the time of happiness. The question is why is סכות such a happy time? We leave the comfort of our houses to go live in a hut, why is that such a שמכה?

                We all know that a סוכה needs to be a temporary dwelling. When we move into a community and decide that we want to stay and build a life there what is the first thing we do? The first thing that most people do is search for a house to live in so that they can establish themselves in that community. When you buy a house you ROOT yourself into the community. On סכות we are showing that we as a people, no matter where we live are not a people who are rooted in the community that we live, we are rooted in our heritage and in עולם הבא. Our real connection is up above.

This is also the שמכה that we have. We are showing that we are not a people who are rooted in the physical world. Yes, we are allowed to have a good life, work hard, make money, etc… But at the end of the day we are a spiritual people, connected to ה' and because of this we know that we have limitless potential.

Have an Awesome Chag

Yoni Spigelman

יום כיפור

יום כיפור

                On ראש השנה we are written and on יום כיפור we are sealed. יום כיפור is the ULTIMATE TIME of תשובה for the Jewish people. The רמב''ם says it is the זמן תשובה for every יחיד and the רבים (every single Jew personally as well as the Jews as a whole). He goes further and says that since it is the Jews last chance for תשובה we have a חיוב to beg and ask for סליכה and מחילה.

                Why is that? Why is it our חיוב to do תשובה? We should be able to decide whether we are sorry for our actions or not! The reason for this חיוב is as follows, during the rest of the year it is up to every person to make their own relationship with ה', in their own special and unique way. However, on יום כיפור, ה' is coming down to us. ה' forces us to realize that we are all connected to Him.

                Rav Aharon Kutler brings an example; you are sitting down by yourself and notice that there is a man walking towards you with his hand outstretched to shake yours, he is coming to greet you. This isn’t just a regular man however, it is the king! What would you do? Yes you have the ability to ignore him and go about your business, most of us though appreciate the fact that we have our lives and would like to continue living it. If you chose to ignore the king it would be a terrible insult and you would pay for it accordingly. It’s the same thing here. ה' is coming down TO US and showing us that we have a relationship with Him, whether we like or not, whether we believe it or deny it. The only thing we need to do for forgiveness is say, yes ה', אנחנו חטאנו, we have sinned, and acknowledge that fact. Yes we have sinned terribly and we may feel like we don’t deserve it but ה' is coming with His hand outstretched to show us that we don’t have to try that hard for us to have this relationship.

Have an Easy and Truly Meaningful Fast

Yoni Spigelman 
With Help From Rav Moshe Beigelman

ראש השנה

ראש השנה

                 ראש השנהone of the most intense, scariest, and happiest times of the Jewish year.  It is during this time of the year where we are all judged, based on the things we have and done over the past year. As we all know if we are found to be a צדיק we are immediately written and sealed in the Book of Life. If we are found to be רשאים we are immediately written and sealed in the Book of Death. What about those of us who don’t really fit into either of those categories? Not all of us are great sages, and not all of us are evil people.  What happens to us?

                The גמרא in ראש השנה (ד' טז:, ע' ב) says that there is a third book which is left open until יום כיפור. This is called the Book of בינונים. When a person is written in ספר בינונים, they have ten days, the אשרת ימי תשובה to prove to ה' which Book they belong to. The גמרא says "זכו נכתבין לחיים לא זכו נכתבין למיתה" “If they merit life they are written for life, if they do not merit they are written for death. The רמב''ם translates the word זכו (Merits) to mean does “תשובה”. What does he mean by this? Wouldn’t it be just as good for the person to do a whole bunch of מצות in order to tip the scale in his favor?

                The answer to this question is a very meaningful one. What is the definition of a צדיק? Usually when we think of צדיקים as people with long white beards who sit and learn תורה all day, and we think, I can never be like that… We are being taught something different here. Yes, those people are definitely צדיקים, but it isn’t just because they sit and learn תורה all day, they are צדיקים because they define themselves as צדיקים. A צדיק is a person who defines himself by doing good in the eyes of ה', yes he may do עבירות sometimes, but those are accidents. They don’t make him who he is, therefore he is able to do תשובה for the wrong things that he may have done. A real רשה is the opposite. It is a person who is completely controlled by his want to do bad. He is so caught up in his evil ways that תשובה doesn’t even cross his mind. He doesn’t care. A בינוני is the middle ground. He is a person without a specific definition of himself. He does good things, and he does bad things, he doesn’t define himself as anything.

                זכו here means that we have the opportunity in the אשרת ימי תשובה to do תשובה and re-define ourselves for the next year. We get to make changes in ourselves, whether for the good or for the bad and make the choice whether we are going to be like צדיקים or רשאים.

                It is my ברכה that we all choose to make the good choices so that we can all live a happy, healthy, wealthy new year.

Have a כתיבה וכתימא טובה

Yoni Spigelman

                

פרשת נצבים וילך

פרשת נצבים וילך

...לא אוכל לצאת ולבוא...

… I am no longer able to go out and come in…

                This phrase at the beginning of the second portion of this week’s תורה reading is a very strange and interesting one. משה רבינו, the Jewish leader, tells בני ישראל that he is no longer going to be leading them, and that he will not be bringing them into ארץ ישראל. He says, “I am no longer ABLE…” The big question here is, what do you mean he was not able? The מפורשים say that משה was actually in great health, physically and mentally. He still had the ability to lead! If משה really wanted to, all he had to do was just walk in! What does he mean he is not ABLE to go in?

                רשי answers that, משה said this because he was unable to bring himself to go into the land against the will of ה'. משה could not bring himself to enter without ה'’s permission, even though he really could have. There is a strange thing that happens to us humans. Have you ever gotten so angry at someone all you wanted to do was slap them in the face? Now imagine that the person you want to hit is your father or mother. As angry as you may get, most of us realize that there is a line that we can’t cross. As much as we may want to hit them, as hurt, angry, or sad they have made us feel, we can’t physically bring ourselves to lift up our hands and hit them (which is a good thing by the way).

                משה realized this too. He knew that if he went into א"י it would be a major slap in the face to ה' his Father. For whatever reason ה' decided the משה was not allowed to go in to the land and for that reason משה physically could not make himself enter. He could not bring himself to “slap his father” in the face like that.

                This is a huge message that we should all keep in mind as we enter ראש השנה and יום כיפור. We need to learn from the strength of משה רבינו. There are so many times in our lives where we are tempted to go against the word of ה' and sin. We need to always remember that whenever we do this, it is a slap in the face of our creator. He created us to do good, and we are deliberately going the other way to do wrong by Him. When this happens, and these temptations come we need to say no, we need to lower that hand from His face and turn the other way.

Have Awesome Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

פרשת כי תבוא

פרשת כי תבוא

ולקחת מראשית כל-פרי...

That you shall take the first of every fruit…

                The first מצוה that is talked about in this week’s פרשה is the מצוה of ביקורים (the bringing of the first fruits to the כהן as a tax to ה'). רשי points out that when a Jew brings the ביקורים, the need to do it בשמחה. We need to be happy when we are giving away the first of out fruits. 

                Now, this is an interesting idea. Not only do we need to give our hard work away but we need to be happy about it. It seems kind of strange. Why do we NEED to be happy? Another question is, why is this פרשה of being בשמחה during one of the scariest parts of the Jewish year? This is the time of year where the Jewish people as a whole and each individual is judged and written in either the Book of Life or the Book of Death. This period should be (and hopefully is) full of תשובה and fear. So why is there a פרשה talking about being happy?

                I believe that these two questions are connected. We need to realize that whenever we are judged by ה', it is His ULTIMATE KINDNESS.ה' created us, we are His servants. When a slave does something wrong the master doesn’t need to forgive him, he can punish him any way he wants. However when the master does forgive, and doesn’t punish the slave, that slave is eternally grateful. ה' is our master, not only that, He is the only master who knows everything that we do, everything we think, even everything we may do in the future. ה' could easily say, “well he is behaving badly, you know what, his time is up”, and guess what… Game over, that’s it. However, He doesn’t do this. Not only does He not do that, but ה' doesn’t even judge us with everything He knows about us. He judges only with what the מלחים bring against us. I would say that is pretty kind. Therefore as afraid as we are during this period we are also very happy.

                There is a similar situation when it comes to ביקורים. ה' controls our farming. He could very easily watch us do all of our hard work and toil away for nothing. We may pour our blood sweat and tears into our farms, and not grow any produce. However, ה' doesn’t do this. The only way we CAN bring ביקורים is if our produce grows. When it grows, we are בשמחה because we know that at least this year we have a way of making our money, and we have food to survive on. What do we have to pay for that? Basically nothing, all we need to do is bring the first fruits to the כהן.  We need to and even choose to do this because it is the small price that we need to pay for our success.

                אי''ה all of us will be able to be successful in our lives and be able to happily pay our small debt to ה' no matter what we do.

Have an Amazing Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

פרשת כי תצה

In this week’s פרשה we are introduced to the מצוה of שלוח הקן, sending away the mother bird.  This is מצוה of shooing away the mother bird before taking away the eggs from the nest. What is the reason behind this מצוה? Why do we need to send the mother away?

The answer to this question is a מחלוקת between רמב"ם and the רמב"ן. The רמב"ם says, the reason for this מצוה is because, just like humans animals have feelings towards their children. Within every animal there is a certain amount of love that they have for their offspring. Therefore in order to not cause pain and suffering to the mother bird we send her away so that she does not have to see the eggs being taken. The רמב"ן gives a different answer. He says that it is all about psychology, if you are cruel to animals it may lead you to become cruel in regards to human beings.

We see this example very often (at least on CSI) by serial killers. What is one of the first questions they ask about the killer? They ask about his childhood. Did he ever have a traumatic experience etc… They also ask whether he ever used to experiment on animals and kill them. They ask this because they are trying to understand his psychology. When you hurt an animal it is only a step away from hurting humans.

The רמב''ן is telling us that this מצוה is for our wellbeing. It is for our protection. It is protecting us from ח''ו becoming desensitized to ה'’s creatures, and rationalizing the bad treatment of them. There is more than just that however. What the רמב''ן is really saying is even more than becoming desensitized, this מצוה is making us “sensitized” to all of ה'’s creations. Just like with the מצות of צדקה and חסד, we are not doing it because we want to. We don’t give צדקה because we feel bad for the poor guy. We aren’t doing חסד because we like the person we are doing it for. ה' is actually teaching us to act in His image. ה' is the ultimate definition of רחמנות, in all of these מצות we are being trained to be a person of רחם. ה' doesn’t need our help to take care of His children.

This is why we do the מצוה of שלוח הקן, when we learn how to treat even some of the smallest of ה'’s creatures with compassion, we will learn how to become a person of mercy.

Have an Awesome Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

With Help From- Rav Moshe Beigelman and Rav Shaya Greenberg

פרשת שופטים

In this week’s פרשה the תורה tells us about the command ה' gave to בני''י of choosing a king over the nation. In פסוק טו it says "שום תשים עליך מלך...", “place upon yourself a king…”. The next פסוק warns that the king should not take too many of the worldly things; horses, wives, silver, etc…

                The Da’as Zikainim comes and explains that the reason that each one of these specific excesses is mentioned is because we want to be careful that the king will not even have the chance to become arrogant.

                This Da’as Zikainim is difficult to understand. The Jewish people were OBLIGATED to treat the king with great honor. In order for a king to be effective in leading his nation, he needs to be respected and honored. It doesn’t matter what your status in the nation is, from peasant to the richest man, from simpleton to the biggest Talmud Chacham, EVERYONE needed to treat the king, well, like a king. They needed to bow down to the full extent when he was near; whenever they entered his chambers they needed to stand for the entire duration of their meeting. The king wasn’t even allowed to stand up for anyone in public. If someone disobeys they king’s wishes, even if he asks them to leave the room, the king could have them killed.

                However, our king, the Jewish king is expected to be a humble person, and to remain humble. The Torah does not worry about him becoming arrogant because of all the situations I stated before. So, why is the Torah afraid that here, when it comes to wealth he will become arrogant. It seems to be saying that honor; the king is able to handle, but wealth? Forget it. Why?

                One possible answer comes from the understanding of the human being. When someone is honored because of a position they hold above someone it is natural for them to feel different and above others.  When someone feels that they are above the rest of the world they may begin to feel self-important, and may forget that everything they have is from ה'. However, all of that is something that man can fight by working on themselves. They can work on being humble and realizing that the only reason they have all that is honor is because ה'.

                Wealth on the other hand is very different.  Wealth brings a person to a much more dangerous sense of himself. It gives the person a sense of independence that he doesn’t need anyone else anymore. My wife, she didn’t do anything for me, I don’t need her. I don’t need my children; all they want is my money. I don’t even need ה', I have enough money to do whatever I want.

                This seems to answer the question of the Da’as Zikainim. Because of the sense of independence is a natural outgrowth of wealth and power, the Torah warns a king of Israel not to amass to much of it. However great of a man he is, however he is able to keep his ego in check when it comes to honor, with wealth it is different. Even a man as great as the king of Israel is, wealth can destroy him.

                This is a great lesson to all of us. Whether we are considered wealthy or not, we are blessed with living in the 21^st century. We have wealth nowadays that cannot even compare with the wealthiest people in previous generations. We need to remember that everything we have comes from ה', and that ה' has a reason for giving us what we have. WE COULD NOT DO IT WITHOUT HIM. We need to be humble and remember where we come from.

Have an Amazing Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman

Adapted From: The Shmuz on The Parsha- Rav Ben Tzion Shafier 

פרשת מטות

פרשת מטות

            In this week's Parsha the Children of Reuven and of Gad wanted to stay in the land outside of Eretz Yisroel. The reason for this was because the land that was outside was better for them to feed their cattle on. They approached Moshe and said “pens for our flock shall we build here for our flocks and for our small children”. A few pasukim later Moshe agrees to let them live there and says to them “The land will be for your small children and for your cattle”. Rashi says that when the children of Reuven and Gad originally came to Moshe to ask about the land they were wrong about the order.

            This looks pretty bad on their part. Can it be that they cared more about the money than they did of their children?

            Honestly I don’t believe that. Let's try to look at this in a positive way. The parents who went to talk to Moshe were not just worried about the money. Of course they care about their families, but in order to be able to take care of them, they needed to be able to make the money for them. However, over here, that was a mistake. They wanted this land in order to set up a living for themselves so that they could provide for their families.

By Moshe flipping around the order, he was telling them “even though you may have your priorities correct, right now, you need to be more concerned for your family. You need to build up the land for your families first and then, when you are finished with that, you can set up your business.

            We should all keep this in mind during this period of the three weeks. As much as we need to work in order to make money and provide for our families. We also need to work on caring for our families as a nation. Hopefully with our work we will be able to bring the geula soon!

Have an Amazing Shabbos

Yoni Spigelman