Monday, May 25, 2009

Sparks are Flying!

Thanks to everyone for your comments and encouragement. The response so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

Great news: an editor from the Arutz Sheva Israel National News website saw the blog and wants to host it on their website. I will still be posting here, but please check it out there starting later this week: www.israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/

Michael Kaye left a very interesting comment on the blog last week:

…Fire can also allow stiff things to bend and become moldable. And it can destroy. Without help, the Torah's fire can burn, wound and even scar a person or family.

Michael’s comment reminded me of a story. Dena and I were catching a ride home (OK, we were hitchhiking from Jerusalem, but it’s very common here!) and got a lift from a middle-aged man with long pe’os, a beard, and a large white kipah driving a beat-up white truck.

He was griping about something for a few minutes; my response was, “I hear.”

“I hear,” he yelled suddenly. “What do you mean, ‘I hear!?’” He then berated me for five minutes how the facility of sight was superior to that of hearing, bringing a few weak proofs from the Torah. I sat there praying to myself that we would get home soon.

He asked us where we wanted to get off; I told him to drop us off at the intersection and then we would walk the rest. He started screaming that Jews are from the seed of Avraham, who embodied kindness, and insisted that he would take us all the way home.

This was a holy Jew with too much fire. We need a burning desire for God and Torah to fuel our religious lives, but I agree with Michael that the fire needs to be properly contained.

2 comments:

  1. Yonatan, I like your story about the bad tremp you and Dena got. It reminds us of something that is very hard to teach preschoolers (and the rest of us sometimes need a reminder: It is only a chesed if the receiver also likes it.

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