Re-eh: I'm Coming - Up Or Down - Be A Superstar - Talking Goats - Rav Kook's Yahrtzeit

From an email.....

Shaaalooommmm swwweeeeetesttttt friends!!!:-):-)

This Dvar Torah is dedicated to the birth of Ayla Tova/Jordanna Slomnicki who was born this week to my beloved friends R' Yaakov Dov and Jessica. May they get limitless nachas from all of their holy Kohanic children!:-)

A special mazel tov to my beloved friends Mr. and Mrs. David Slomnicki and Mr. and Mrs. Barry Weiss. May they always enjoy their grandchildren in good health and prosperity.

An additional mazel tov to the Weisses on the birth a ben bechor to their daughter and son in law, R' DJ and Ariella Aarf minutes before their granddaughter was born. WHAATTAAA DAYYY!!! A doubleheader to remember for the generations. Two sisters giving birth minutes apart a few rooms away from each other. Only in Staten Island!

 

 Their simcha is my simcha and the simcha of all of the Jewish people!    

Before I begin the Dvar Torah, I wanted to share the information that G-d willing [if everything works out], I will be coming to New York on August 25th. as I explained here - http://mevakeshlev.blogspot.co.il/2015/08/a-milestone-exciting-news-hope-to-see.html. Hope to see you:-).

In Parshas Re-eh the Torah opens ראה אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה - Hashem says [see the Sforno] to every individual - "LOOK! I place before you either a blessing or a curse. Don't live your life as a mediocre Jew. Be a star. There is no middle of the road. The middle of the road is for horses [as least it used to be until the horses realized that it is in their best interests to get out of the way of speeding automobiles. You every think of how a horse "realizes". We think in terms of  words and ideas. A horse doesn't have that capacity. Be that as it may - they used to be in the middle of the road. Even today, that is where you can find them at times in Central Park. And for only three dollars you can go almost nowhere on a horse for 15 minutes].

As King Solomon put it: אֹרַח חַיִּים לְמַעְלָה לְמַשְׂכִּיל, לְמַעַן סוּר מִשְּׁאוֹל מָטָּה

The path of life is up for the wise one [otherwise] he is going down deep. [In the parks they say "The bigger they are the harder they fall". We Jews are BIG!]

This is best expressed by a gemara in Ksubos [66]:

Our Rabbis taught: It once happened that R. Yochanan b. Zakkai left Jerusalem riding upon a donkey, while his disciples followed him, and he saw a girl picking barley grains in the dung of Arab cattle. As soon as she saw him she wrapped herself with her hair and stood before him.

‘Master’, she said to him, ‘feed me’.

‘My daughter’, he asked her, ‘who are you?’

‘I am’, she replied, ‘the daughter of Nakdimon b. Gorion [Big Dave's niece]’.

‘My daughter’, he said to her, ‘what has become of the wealth of your father's house?’

‘Master’, she answered him, ‘is there not a proverb current in Jerusalem: "The salt of money is diminution?"’ (Others read: Benevolence).

‘And where [the Master asked] is the wealth of your father-in-law's house?’

‘The one’, she replied, ‘came and destroyed the other’.

‘Do you remember, Master’, she said to him, ‘when you signed my ketubah?’

‘I remember’, he said to his disciples, ‘that when I signed the ketubah of this [unfortunate woman], I read therein "A million gold denarii from her father's house" besides [the amount] from her father-in-law's house’.

Thereupon R. Yochanan b. Zakkai wept and said: ‘How happy are Israel; when they do the will of the Omnipresent no nation nor any language-speaking group has any power over them; but when they do not do the will of the Omnipresent he delivers them into the hands of a low people, and not only in the hands of a low people but into the power of the beasts of a low people’.

Why did R. Yochanan say "How happy" about the fact that Jews can sink so low that they have to pick their food from the dung of Arab cattle. What is so joyful about that? Imagine the ad: Come to our Pesach program in the Bermuda Triangle. Glatt gourmet meals made from the dung of Arab donkeys. Hmmmmmm - DE-LICIOUSSSS!!!!!:-):-) 

Explained the Maharal that R. Yochanan was expressing the greatness of the Jewish people. It is like a big investment - you can either win big time or lose big time but nothing in the middle. We are a people with tremendous potency. When we are great - we are the BEST! When we are bad - we are the WORST. We say in Selichot [our lucky Sefardic brothers get to start Selichos this Motzei Shabbos already:-)] -  אשמנו מכל עם,  we can be worse than any other people. But when we are "at the top of our game" - nobody can compare to us. There is no middle ground.

Rav Hirsch explained in this vein the idea of the two goats on Yom Kippur. We have a lottery and one goes to Hashem [as a korban] and the other to the Satan - לעזאזל. The "losing" goat can say [if he could talk which in itself would be quite a shocker] "Alright, you win some you lose some - next year I will try again and hopefully I will get chosen as the goat that is brought to Hashem. In the meantime, I will go back to my pen and wait things out, each lots of grass [as opposed to those weird humans who smoke it] and just chill". We say to him "No way, sorrrry Charlie Goatie - off to Azazel Mr. Goat. No middle of the road. Either you made it or you goin' dowwwwwn [please say with accent popular in most areas in the Bronx]!! "

That is the reality of a Jew in this world. We can climb so high and we can also sink so low. In my lifetime I have seen countless examples of both - sometimes in the SAME PERSON. Wonder of wonders.

ראה אנכי נותם לפניכם ברכה וקללה - We get to choose

This coming week is the yahrtzeit of Gaon Yisrael Vi-kdosho Maran HaRav Kook ztzl - [see here http://viewpure.com/s7iHIRwpU2o?ref=search]. He personified one who lived the bracha and never settled for mediocrity. He understood the sublimity of the Jewish soul and never let his students forget how holy we are. He was a person who started his day with quick run through of 50 plus pages of gemara [just to keep things fresh in his mind:-)], who has dozens of published sefarim and over 200,000 [!!!] pages in manuscript form that strangely enough have not been published. He testified about himself that he never refused to do a favor [despite being asked thousands upon thousands of times] for a Jew [!!!]. This after so many people [sometimes the asker himself] made his life miserable. He also found time to be a world Jewish leader, to gain a complete mastery of all of Jewish [and much secular as well] literature, pasken shylos, daven at length with fire etc. etc. Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer said that he wishes that he would daven neilah on Yom Kippur like Rav Kook davened a regular mincha on a Tuesday afternoon. He was a true fanatic. A fanatic of ahavas Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, Toras Yisrael and first and foremost - Hakadosh Baruch Hu.

He would not have understood the term "Modern Orthodoxy" as many people use it. How can somebody be moderate and relaxed about serving Hashem? Keep some halachos and not others? Wasn't in his lexicon. He found a way to love everybody regardless of their level of observance but of course he taught the ideal of complete passionate observance filled with a fire of love and enthusiasm for Hashem and His Torah.    

This Elul, I urge everyone, men women and children to learn Rav Kook's Oros Hatshuva, the "Bible" of returning to Hashem and His mitzvos with simcha.

A sweet shabbos, a gut chodesh and all of the brachos to all of my beloved friends. This shabbos is more special than special for me as I hope to be in Yerushalyim Ir Hakodesh - hope you can make it there soon as well.

BI-AHAVA RABBA,
Me