Dear Friends,
I’m taking a few weeks off for R&R. While I’m away this month I thought I might share some of my favorite stories and teachings from the Talmud and the early Hasidic masters . . . .
A rabbi passing through a village stopped when he saw a young peasant bending over some object in deep concentration. Wondering
what could SO enthrall the youngster, the rabbi got down from the cart he was riding and walked over to the child. When he got close he noticed that the small girl was sitting with an injured rabbit and slowly binding its broken leg with strips torn from her shirt. The rabbi could not help but be moved by the loving attention the child was giving to the wounded creature.
The next morning, when the rabbi was wrapping his tefillin around his arm he was transported back to the incident he had witnessed the day before. He smiled and thought, “May the winding of these tefillin around my arm be as acceptable to God as the binding up of that rabbit’s leg.”
The author of this story understood that rituals such as wrapping tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles or fasting on Yom Kippur are powerful but they are not an end unto themselves. Instead, ritual points us toward a deeper reality and truth. In this case, I suspect that, that morning, the rabbi was more mindful of this as he wrapped his tefillin. And perhaps, I imagine, as he did he recalled a teaching from the Talmud which states, “The beginning and the end [of Torah] is the performance of lovingkindness.
TALMUD: SOTAH 142
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Daniel Cohen