Tuesday, Tishrei 27, 5778 / October 17, 2017
SHALOM. I hope you had a wonderful Sukkot & Simchat Torah holiday. We were away from Montreal since before Rosh Hashana, spending the holidays with our children and grandchildren. Rosh Hashana & Yom Kippur, we were in Valencia, California, and Sukkot in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Now that the holidays are over, I am looking forward to another great year of Torah Fax.
Did I say the holidays are over? Well, they are over in the physical sense. We won’t be blowing the Shofar, nor will we be sitting in the Sukah and shaking the Lulav and Etrog, however, the spiritual effects of the holidays continue.
Our sages compare the special holidays of this month, Tishrei, to a merchant who travels to the fair in the big city, to stock up on his merchandise for the winter. At the fair he buys whatever he needs for himself and for his store, until the next fair in six months. He returns home loaded with all he purchased, and over the next half a year, unpacks whatever he needs at that time.
The same is with the holidays we just celebrated. The greatest span between the holidays mentioned in the Torah, is from Sukkot until Pesach, which will be, G-d willing, in six months. The dose of spirituality which we absorbed during the holidays, should last us until Pesach. While we may be working hard at losing the physical weight we gained from the holiday meals, we must at the same time continue to be energized from the spiritual power we gained during the holidays.
Last Shabbat, we began the new Torah reading cycle for the year, 5778, with the reading of Parshat Breishis. In Parshat Breishis the Torah tells the story of creation. This week’s Parsha will be Parshat Noach (Noah), which is about the story of the Great Flood, when only Noach and his immediate family were saved.
The time span from the beginning of the Torah (creation) until Noach (the Great Flood) is around 1500 years. Although, when G-d created the world, the Torah tells us, “And G-d saw that everything He created was good,” yet, it didn’t take long until every living being became corrupt.
How did a perfect world, which G-d created, become so corrupt?
The answer is, that part of perfection is the ability for imperfection. It is called “freedom of choice.” In order to have a perfect world, which means that mankind should get credit for their achievements,
G-d gave us the ability to sin, so that we should have the freedom of choice. This way, when we do a good deed, it is to our credit and not something we would do robotically. Thus, the ability for imperfection was embedded in perfection. Unfortunately, many misinterpret the gift of freedom of choice, which was intended that we choose right from wrong, into chosing wrong from right…
HAVE A VERY GOOD, HAPPY, HEALTHY & SUCCESSFUL DAY