Miller's Musings Parshas Vayero: A Little 'Me Time'

בס''ד
As fire and brimstone rained down upon Sodom, one solitary man and his family were protected from this devastation. One man was deemed worthy of being shielded from the desolation and that man was Lot. What did he do to deserve this? What great virtuous act afforded him the merit to survive whilst all others perished? The Medrash says that the deed that earned his rescue was keeping quiet when Avrohom claimed that Soroh was his sister. Avrohom did this to protect himself from those who would kill him in order to take his wife and Lot never revealed the secret to those around them. Reb Shimshon Pinkus zt’l asks what it was about keeping secrets that made it so highly regarded, so that due to it alone, Lot was saved? 

Why do people not keep secrets? In essence the compulsion to divulge information that has been entrusted to you, comes from a need for the approval of others. It stems from a desire to tell others what they would want to hear so as to gain some form of acclaim for being the one who has managed to acquire such confidential knowledge. Yet as part of our role as Jews, we are instructed to as much as possible go in the ways of Hashem.  We must try and resemble G-d as much as we as humans are able. Just as He is merciful, so too we must show compassion, just as He is entirely holy, so too we must endeavour to live lives of holiness. Being that one of the fundamental truths of Hashem is His oneness, that there is ultimately only Hashem and nothing at all in the whole of creation that is in any way comparable to Him, we must try and emulate that to the degree that we are able, and be independent of those around us. Someone who is able to do that, will not be effected by the pressures of those around them and will be one who can maintain secrecy when called upon to do so. This was the reason that this particular virtue was considered so valued by Hashem.

A Torah life is not one lived in a vacuum. We have those around us that depend upon us, those around us whose lives we can influence for the good and the bad and those who we need in order to help us achieve our life’s purpose. But we must all to a degree have a life that includes a space where there is only us. A space that is free of external pressures, where we can determine what it is that we truly want and where we can decide how we want our life to be. We must have those moments where we can look only inwards to examine whether we are being true to ourselves in all we do, rather than living an existence determined and manipulated by others. Without that space we can never truly know our inner self, with it we can ensure that no one controls our future, except for ourselves. 

*May the peace of Shabbos allow us to seek clarity in our self-discovery*

This week’s Miller’s Musings is sponsored by           Tracey and Bernard Yardley to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary  

and is  לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם    

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Miller's Musings Parshas Noach: Arise From The Depths

בס''ד

This week’s Miller’s Musings is sponsored:

 יחיאל בן אלעזר יוסף  לעילוי נשמת

There are those that see religion as the root of all evil and conflict in the world, when in truth it has less to do with religion and more to do with the pursuit of power.  The downfall of the generation before the flood was due to their obsession with material gain leading to violence, robbery and a general state of anarchy.  The devastation began with the waters pouring forth from “the springs of the great depths”.  Rashi tells us that this was a case of Middoh Keneged Middoh, the punishment paralleling the sin that it resulted from.  The people sinned ‘greatly’ so the flood began in the ‘great’ depths. Reb Yeruchom Levovitz asks what the exact parallel in fact was?  The greatness of the depths was qualitative, whereas the greatness of their sinning was surely in quantity, the vast amount of wrongs they had committed?

As is often the case, the answer lies in understanding that the question is based on a false premise, in this case that a multitude of sins only produces a quantitative increase, when actually this is not the case.  Reb Yeruchom explains that the difference between a person transgressing once and multiple times, is not just the additional transgressions, it also changes the very nature of that sin.  When a person falls once, the wrongdoing has a particular negative quality to it, but as a person falls prey to his Yetzer Horah and repeats this failing, the nature of the sin changes and becomes more than just the sum of its repeated misdeeds.  The very fact that the offence has been perpetrated a number of times changes the kind of sin that it is, giving it a new status as a ‘sin committed many times’, rather than a one-off lapse in standards.  The terrible qualitative ‘great’ damage caused by the buildup of sin after sin of this immoral generation, was punished by the waters that sprung forth from the ‘greatest’ depths.

In essence none of us like to sin.  We would all prefer to live our lives in a way that would bring pride to ourselves, our families and of course Hashem.  But when we slip up we sometimes lose focus and lose faith in ourselves.  We feel that it makes no difference if we sin a bit more once we have already started doing that which is wrong.  This is a tragic mistake however, because each additional lapse of our character does not just add on to our tally of sins, it creates a new and more potent version of those sins and damages our true essence in ways that are much more than the cumulative sum of those transgressions.  Never let yourself slide down in this way due to an apathy created by feelings of failure.  Rather move on from your mistakes, embrace the possibility of redemption and strive higher to a new beginning far away from the depths that could otherwise have awaited us.  

*May the holiness of Shabbos illuminate our path to greatness*

לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם   

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Miller's Musings Parshas Bereishis: The Very Beis-t Place To Start

בס''ד

And so it begins again.  Another year as we travel along the eternal chain of the Torah, once again renewing our connection to its timeless teachings.  We are all probably well acquainted with the Chazal that says the reason the Torah begins with a “ב” is because that is the first letter of the word “ברכה” meaning “blessing”, a most suitable place to start.  This is opposed to what one would perhaps expect, starting with the first Hebrew letter “א”.  The basis for not using this letter is because it is the first letter of the word “ארור”, meaning cursed, not something we would want to commence the Torah with.  The obvious question that arises from this is that there are many positive words that also begin with the letter “א”, and many negative words that begin with a “ב”. So why base a decision on only two specific examples, when there are many more that do not fit in with this pattern?

                       

There are certain words that typically have negative connotations and others that classically portray more positive images.  Light and dark are two such examples.  Darkness in general suggests lack of clarity, confusion or perhaps something untoward.  Light, on the other hand, seems to evoke more pleasant impressions in our mind and is used to depict concepts that are beneficial, definite and virtuous.  But if we think carefully, in fact these are great generalisations when darkness can on many occasions be used to one’s benefit, such as to hide from a threat, and light could be potentially detrimental, if concealment is necessary.  In summation, what we are saying is that there is very little that is absolutely positive or absolutely negative, it just depends on the context.  Reb Yisroel Salanter however explains that a blessing is something that by definition is totally and entirely good for the beneficiary, without exception, and a curse is something that is delineated as being something unequivocally and wholly bad for the recipient.  What better opening for the Torah therefore than something that, like the Torah itself, is so uniquely, unquestionably good.

When we look at our life and all it contains, it is all too easy to pigeonhole the different and disparate elements into being either good or bad.  Illness, loss, hurt…bad. Health, plenty, happiness…good.  Yet in truth nothing is unconditionally either advantageous or unfavourable. We cannot define anything indiscriminately as being in either category but rather must see the potential benefit and the potential harm in all that comes our way.  Money and power certainly have their noble uses, but equally contain their own perilous pitfalls.  Pain is to be avoided wherever possible, but may give opportunities to connect and experience gratitude that may otherwise not be possible.  Our task is to make active choices with what we have so that they are only used for the positive and never for the negative.  We must periodically look at all we are given and think of ways in which we can give them real value.  In doing so we are not just providing ourselves with a more optimistic outlook, but are ensuring that are whole lives are full of only that which is utilised for the good.  

                                                                                       

* May Shabbos bring light into what otherwise seemed dark*

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