Dear Friend,
It is often that we are blessed with many wonderful things, we are surrounded by great things that enrich our lives.
Often we overlook those wonderful things for one reason or another.
In the Torah we learn about a Mitzvah where a farmer who is blessed with great produce, brings the first of the produce to the temple to share with Kohen.
A significant part of the Mitzvah is that the farmer takes fruits and place them in a basket. Most importantly the lesson to us from this detail of placing the fruits in a basket is the importance to take our blessings and place them in a basket, meaning to own them.
The ability is to not only enjoy blessings, but not to feel guilty that we are blessed and to recognize those blessings which in turn gives us the ability to appreciate them and thank G-d and those around us.
Good Shabbos!
Sincerely,
Rabbi Mendel & Elke Zaltzman
Looking forward to a wonderful evening with friends and community, making traditional round challahs for Rosh Hashana!
Hebrew School is off to a great start!
Children are so excited to be back and had an awesome first day filled with Hebrew prayers, Alef Bet warm ups, Rosh Hashanah foods, Shofar blasts and High Holiday activities!
The Jteens Opening Night was rocking as 40 teens joined to make honey cakes to distribute to senior homes. Thank you to all the teens that came to help out and make a difference! See the line up of Jteen events coming up and be a part of it!
The rabbi was an avid golfer and played at every opportunity. He was so addicted to the game that if he didn't play he would get withdrawal symptoms. One Yom Kippur the rabbi thought to himself, "What's it going to hurt if I go out during the break and play a few rounds. Nobody will be the wiser, and I'll be back in time for services."
Sure enough, at the conclusion of the morning service, the rabbi snuck out of the synagogue and headed straight for the golf course. Looking down upon the scene were Moses and G-d.
Moses said, "Look how terrible—a Jew on Yom Kippur. And a rabbi besides!"
G-d replied, "Watch. I'm going to teach him a lesson."
Out on the course, the rabbi stepped up to the first tee. When he hit the ball, it careened off a tree, struck a rock, skipped across a pond and landed in the hole for a HOLE IN ONE!
Seeing all this, Moses protested: "G-d, this is how you're going to teach him a lesson? He got a hole in one!"
"Sure," said G-d, "but who's he going to tell?"
WEEKLY eTORAH
We all have the same problem. It just shows itself in different forms. On the one hand we want freedom: healthy, pure, wholesome joys, the just rewards and fruits of our efforts. On the other hand, this quest is beset by problems, which we can group under the heading "limitations."
One kind of limitation is the fact that the joyous moment cannot go on for ever, and eventually we have to return to humdrum daily life. Another is that it may seem to take quite a bit of coaxing and prodding of that daily life in order to squeeze out a little bit of joy. Another kind of limitation is that in our looking for human joy and comfort there are also some unhealthy and destructive appetites which have to be controlled. So there are many kinds of limitation, as indeed there are many kinds of goodness, liberation and happiness. So the simple dualism is there, seemingly ever present: limitations and freedom.
There it is, the paradox of life: a combination of wholesome, succulent fruit and — well, let's say, a simple wicker basket in which the fruit is kept. The fruit and the vessel which confines it. Our freedom, and the limitations of different kinds which give a border to our freedom, enclosing it.
Now, this perspective relates to the opening passage of this week's Torah reading. The Torah describes an activity which takes place in the times of the Temple in Jerusalem, in which each farmer expresses gratitude to G‑d for the material blessings he and his family have been granted. The instruction in the Torah is to take the "first fruits" (bikkurim) which grow among one's produce, the dates and figs and grapes, to put them in a basket and bring them to the Temple. There the fruit is given to the Priest.
It is a way of thanking G‑d, and there are beautiful descriptions by our Sages about the way the farmers would make their way together to Jerusalem, led by flute players. However, every passage in the Torah has eternal significance and, further, a tiny detail can be a clue to an entirely new perspective.
In this case the tiny detail is the fact that, according to the Sages, when the farmer brings the fruit in a simple wicker basket, the basket too is considered part of the sacred offering.
Why the basket? The succulent fruit is obviously the offering to the kohen (priest) in the Temple. Why should the wicker basket be anything more than a casual throw-away item?
Because, says the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the whole procedure is telling us something about life, about the interaction between delicious fruit and the simple wicker basket which holds the fruit. The Torah's image of the farmer and the Temple in ancient Jerusalem is also a teaching about our own lives. It is telling us that the limitation is also part of the offering. The limiting factor is also potentially sacred.
We might read the fruit as the soul and the basket as the body; or the fruit as our "religious" activity and the basket is the daily world. The point is that the power of the Torah is to make everything holy, through the practical precepts. The simple practicalities, and even the struggles of life: are holy. They too, together with the radiant joys, are part of our connection with G‑d in the Temple
