Striving Higher

PARSHAS NOACH 5781

 

 “RABBI’S MUSINGS (& AMUSINGS)”

Erev Shabbos Kodesh parshas Noach 5781

5 MarCheshvan 5781/October 23, 2020

 

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BALD BEAUTY

            A
friend used to have a sign that his mother hung on their fridge, which read:
“You have two choices for supper- take it or leave it.”

            Our lives are composed, colored, and
in many ways determined by the choices we make. Rav Shimshon Pincus noted that
the gemara (Sotah 2a) relates that a person’s home, job, and spouse are
predetermined. If so, where is our free will?

            Contrary to what people might like
to believe, the sky isn’t the limit and we generally can’t accomplish anything
we want to, even if we really want it badly and are willing to work hard to
attain it. The real choice of life is what we do with “the cards we are dealt
with”.

            Dr. Edith Eva Eger has a very active
clinical practice in California. She also serves as a consultant for the US
Army and Navy in resiliency treatment and treatment of PTSD. What’s most
remarkable is that Dr. Eger is well over ninety years old. In 2017 she
published her memoir entitled “The Choice: Embrace the possible”, which has become
a New York Times Bestseller.

            In her powerful book, she relates
her experiences during the Holocaust, her suffering, survival, building a
family and moving on, all the while, still haunted by her traumatic
experiences.

            Dr. Eger describes how she was
introduced to the work of Viktor Frankel, a fellow survivor, and the founder of
logotherapy, and the profound impact his work had upon her. Frankel’s main
premise is that although everything else could be taken from a person, his
thoughts and inner world are eternally his. The Nazis could never take away
from him his ability to picture himself in a different time and place,
utilizing his talents and abilities to be of service to others, and to find
meaning in his suffering. Frankel writes that that realization was the key to
his survival.

            Dr. Eger relates that as a teenager
she and her sister arrived in Auschwitz, where their parents were immediately
sent to the gas chambers. They were sent to the showers, after which their hair
was shaved off. Her sister Magda was holding her shorn hair in her hand, when
she looked at her and said, “How do I look?” In Eger’s words: “The truth? She
looks like a mangy dog… I can’t tell her this of course, but any lie would
hurt too much and so I must find an impossible answer, a truth that doesn’t
wound… she is asking me to help her find and face herself. And so I tell her
the one true thing that’s mine to say:

            “Your eyes”, I tell my sister,
“they’re so beautiful. I never noticed them when they were covered up by all
that hair.” It’s the first time I see that we have a choice: to pay attention
to what we’ve lost or to pay attention to what we still have.”

            The pasuk in Shir Hashirim (4:1) states:
“Behold you are beautiful my beloved, behold you are beautiful; your eyes are
like doves.”

            Rashi writes that doves always
remain loyal to their mates. The eyes of Klal Yisroel are always on their
nests.

            Even when a Jew strays and wanders
spiritually from where he should be, his soul yearns to return and reconnect.
The holy spark within is never tainted and remains pure and holy. That
greatness is reflected in the pure eyes of every Jew. His eyes are always
beautiful – like doves yearning to return. Do we see the beauty in the eyes, or
do we see the glaring baldness?

            The question is always what we focus
on.

            The multi-billion-dollar advertising
industry focuses all its energy on reminding us and focusing us on the things
we lack. It seeks to make us feel that our lives are incomplete without those
commodities. The Torah, however, wants us to focus on what we do have, the
blessings and beauty we have been gifted with, and to recognize that we can
attain happiness in the now.

            There is a fascinating Medrash (Tana
d’vei Eliyahu Rabbah 1) which states that Hashem is happy with His lot,
referring to Klal Yisroel.

            The Jewish people are far from
perfect. Yet, with all our flaws, Hashem rejoices that we are His chosen
people. We would be wise to view ourselves with the positive perspective of the
divine.

            There will always be baldness in our
lives and there will always be beauty. It’s up to us to decide what we choose
to focus on.

 

Shabbat Shalom & Good Shabbos,

            R’ Dani and Chani Staum       

 

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