לזכות אבי מורי ואמי מורתי שיחיו!
Regarding this post about how everything today has to go with a picture.
In the Aseres Hadibros we read לא תעשה לך פסל וכל תמונה אשר בשמים ממעל ואשר בארץ מתחת- we are not allowed to make a statue or any picture of what is in the heavens and earth. Simply speaking, this refers to making statues for Avoda Zara purposes.
But there is also another lesson here. Why should it matter if we serve an idol? Let us say that one believes that Hashem is in the idol. He believes that Hashem enclothed Himself in this idol and he bows down to it?? What is so bad?
The answer is that Hashem is not physical and it is forbidden to attribute any physical characteristics to Hashem. Hashem is [כביכול] abstract, without any physical form. If one wants any connection with spirituality, then he has to understand this.
When everything needs a picture, we lose the perception of what is abstract. Abstractions are not only important for perceiving Hashem but really everything that is really important in life.
Take a marriage partner. What is going to make a man happy is a woman's spiritual and emotional qualities. You can't take a picture of "compassion", "love", "emotional stability", "generosity" etc. etc. Yet, what does a boy look at before he is willing to date a girl? Her picture.
Ahhhhhhh.
So I hear people saying - "Should we marry girls we think are ugly??"
No. But this excessive focus on external, on things a camera [today called "smartphone"] can capture, distracts us from what REALLY matters in the long term.
If anyone has any doubts, look at all of the famous movie stars and models [actually - don't look] and see how all of their personal lives and love lives are in disarray. There is actually research that shows that exceptionally beautiful women have the most trouble maintaining stable relationships.
Another example: We eat food that looks good and tastes good but is poison. We can't "see" or "taste" nutrition so we aren't as interested.
Last example: Eternal reward. People are generally faaaaar more interested in things that money can buy [and money itself] that they are in eternal pleasures. Why? Because eternity, olam haba, is an abstraction. A vacation in the Bahamas is real. Look - you can even take pictures of it!!:-)
This notion of needing to satisfy the five senses and losing focus on what is internal and abstract has many ramifications in our lives.
ישמע חכם ויוסף לקח!
