Izzya became an insurance agent and persuaded a client to insure:
- If, for example, you break an arm, you get two hundred. Break a leg - three hundred. And if you are lucky enough to break the back ... well, then you are a rich man!
Time does pass! Just recently we celebrated Purim and on the horizon the new month Nisan could be seen which brings the Passover preparation.
The first reminder on this will come on Saturday when a passage of the Torah about the red cow will be read. The Temple times saw an unusual ritual which was fulfilled to ritually clense the people who touched dead men. A red cow was burnt than the ash was diluted with water and sprinkled on a man restoring his ritual purity.
What kind of attitude for Passover has it all, you ask. The fact is that on the Passover every Jew was obliged to bring to the Temple special Passover sacrifice and for this it was necessary to be ritually pure. And though in our time there are no sacrifices and the laws of ritual purity have almost no effect we believe that with the coming of Moshiach everything will be as before. And yet we read passages from the Torah on these laws helping us bring them into our lives at some level. That is why the passage for the cleansing of ritual uncleanness is read on the eve of Passover.
Mitzva of the red cow is unique in its own way. Referring to it the Torah says: "This is the law of the Torah!". Although we have, thank G-d, the 613 commandments, and all of them are the law of the Torah, but the Torah itself calls it a law. Why? That's what we try to find out.
Law on the red cow is so complex that even King Solomon, the wisest of people could not get to its meaning. One of the "ambiguities" of the law is in a kind of paradox: it was prepared to purify impure but the mixture made impure those who prepared it. Preparing the mixture was associated with two opposite elements: fire and water.
Chassidism explains that water and fire are the two different aspirations in life. Water - striving for peace, tranquility, earthiness. This attraction leads man to the desire to get more satisfaction out of this world, to be attached to the place where you are.
The fire, in contrast, - restless, seeking upwards, trying to break away from the wick. Therefore, the quality of the fire is a constant struggle, dissatisfaction with the present situation, the desire to escape, to get higher. This property makes us feel a constant desire to escape the bounds of this world, closer to G-d, to spirituality which lack here.
The Torah requires the Jew to combine both these qualities: on the one hand a Jew can not be satisfied only with the material world. He must constantly strive towards spirituality and closeness to G-d. But on the other hand, even in such an effort can not completely break away from this world to get away from it. We must remember that our mission is to live here and make this world a better place.
Every Jew has to live combining the two contradictory aspirations - fire and water. Therefore, the Torah says about the Mitzva of the red cow: "This is the law of the Torah!". This is what the Torah wants from you, learn to combine the conflicting aspects like this the cow. That ability to combine opposites has helped us keep a sense of humor among the all those massacres and stay rich even in poverty. We are given force to do that as the Jews, being a part of the infinite G-d, are beyond all limits.
rav. Shlomo Wilhelm
Shabat shalom!