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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