“May Your mercies come upon me so that I shall live, for Your Torah is my preoccupation” (Tehillim 119:77).
In the ancient city of Tzipori, the great tanna Rabbi Shimon Chalafta was one among a handful of revered guests attending the bris of a boy born to a respected community member. Following the ceremony,R. Shimon and the others extended a blessing to the parents of the child – that they would merit playing a significant role in guiding their son to Torah, chuppah (wedding canopy), and ma’asim tovim (good deeds).
On his way home that night, R. Shimon encountered the Angel of Death and asked it about its doleful demeanor. The Malach HaMaves replied that the infant that had just been circumcised had been decreed to leave the world in a month’s time but that the tanna’s blessing may well nullify the decree.
When R. Shimon appealed to the angel to reveal to him his own designated time of death, the Malach HaMaves merely shrugged, conceding that it had no jurisdiction over those immersed in Torah study and acts of loving kindness, as their Creator was constantly adjusting their life span in extending their years of life on earth.
Such is our lofty mission, as conveyed to us at Har Sinai – to hone the fine line between our physical needs and our soul’s yearning for purity. With all its inherent virtuosity and unerring servitude to its Creator, no angel could ever dream of achieving the dexterity of a human being. Nonetheless, achieving that perfect blend which elevates our every earthly act to the status of kedushah is not a given; it can be realized only with an acute awareness that one has undertaken to adhere to the precepts contained in the treasure presented us on that glorious day in Sivan.
A man once had a disturbing dream wherein he would repeatedly recite the aleph-beis, stumbling and skipping over letters and never managing to complete it in whole. The Ben Ish Chai (Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad) in interpreting the dream utilized a teaching of the Ari HaKadosh that links the twenty-two letters of the aleph-beis to the one hundred blessings a Jew is to recite each day. Since every berachah is linked to a letter of the aleph-beis, one’s negligence in reciting a berachah obliterates the letter associated with it. Being unmindful in making the blessing properly renders the letter connected with it indistinct. The man’s dream was deciphered as a message from Heaven for him to be more heedful in making berachos appropriately.
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“Praiseworthy are those whose way is wholesome, who walk with the Torah of Hashem” (Tehillim 119:1).
Reb Avigdor was a well-to-do timber merchant who lived with his family near the city of Dzikov. His lucrative trade allowed him to transport shiploads of marketable lumber to the Baltic seaport of Danzig.
R. Avigdor put his affluence to good use – his home was known as a guesthouse where the poor were treated to the finest in edibles that money could buy. Perhaps even more notable was the fact that he and his wife and children were unpretentious to the point where one would be hard pressed to discern between them and their domestic help.
Once, as R. Avigdor left for Dzikov to spend the Shavuos holiday with the illustrious Rebbe Eliezer Horowitz (of the Rhopshitz dynasty), a pouring rain deluged the countryside and continued to fall unabated. The thought of his massive cargo of wood, dispatched just prior to his leave, sustaining ruin beyond repair was enough to dispirit the good man.
