| Shlach 5761 - June 15, 2001 |
Life on the Witness Stand
So is that what life is about, making announcements? Indeed it is. Because
when brute matter starts making announcements -- when it begins to convey
something, express something divine -- it ceases to be brute matter. It becomes
spirit.
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Shlach
Numbers 13:1-15:41
Torah Reading for Week of June 9-16, 2001
Spiritual spies, weeping Jews, Quixotic mountain scalers, consecrated dough, wrongly gathered sticks and rightly knotted strings. There's also a cluster of grapes, a pomegranate and a fig, and various quantities of meal, wine and oil--plus what it all means according to mystics and sages from Moses' time to today.
The Parsha in a Nutshell
Full Parshah Summary with Commentary
More on the Parshah from the Chassidic Masters
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Crossroads Puzzle
One Friday, Chassidic master Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Horowitz (the famed "Seer of Lublin") was traveling with some of his
disciples when they arrived at a crossroads. The wagon driver asked which way to turn. Surprisingly, the Seer didn't seem to know what to answer. Shrugging, he said, "Loosen the reins. Let the horses go in whichever direction they will."
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Belief in Moshiach
HANDELMAN: You say that to bring Moshiach we need to increase in the observance of Torah and mitzvot, and to get others to do the same. But perhaps we could accomplish this more effectively without talking about Moshiach -- since the topic creates so much controversy?
FRIEDMAN: We need to be ready for Moshiach's coming. Being ready means that if he shows up today, you will not be shocked. You won't be speechless. Moshiach does not want to overwhelm us, because
if he were going to overwhelm us, he could have come 100 years ago.
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The Feel of Water
Does this sound familiar? This "world of separation", being cut off from the
life force symbolized by the ocean, seems to plague many of those seemingly
"landlocked" individuals, yet they appear to be oblivious to this
mystical world the surfer takes for granted.
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A Mother Who Stayed Home
In the parallel universe in my mind, I was there with them, looking at
pictures on the wall, talking about acceptance and tolerance of all people, and
why the world would change with their generation. I anxiously awaited the end of
the day, for my son's class to return home. Would he be a changed boy? I
imagined him looking older, somewhat like Moses after his Mount Sinai visit. I
pictured him a little worse for the wear and tear, a somber expression on his
young face.
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