ETERNAL BOND - YESHAYEH

Dear Family,

Hope everyone is well and had a nice Shavuos.

Mazal Tov to Esther Miriam on her upcoming birthday next week. You should continue giving much nachas to your parents and us BH

We wish Mommy long life for the Yohrtzeit of Meme next week, and a safe trip to Tunisia. Her neshamah should have an aliyah.

Mazal Tov to Avi and Penina for the upcoming pidyan haben for Pesach Yeshayeh. This is a big celebration and our thoughts will be with you.

In fact I was thinking about Yeshayeh this week, when the Prophet Yeshayeh came up in a sicha I was learning on this week's Parsha - Nasso!

And so I was excited to share this with the Family in the upcoming week of his pidyan haben.

The sicha compares the marriage between husband and wife, and the marriage between Hashem and the Jewish People, in discussing the theme of the sotah, which appears in this week's Sedra.

A sotah is a wife who is suspected by her husband as 'having turned aside' from him.

This is one meaning of the root of the word sotah. Another meaning is derived from the Gemara where it connects the meaning to the word shtus - foolishness. Ie a person will only perform a sin, and 'turn aside' when he is overcome by a 'spirit of foolishness'.

It is also interesting that Lubavitch have a minhag to learn Gemorra Sotah between Pesach and Shavuos, because there are 49 pages in this Gemorra and 49 days between Pesach and Shavuos (ie 1 page per day).

The Gemara links the Laws of the sotah to ourselves, in that the sotah had to temporarily separate from her husband.

In the same way when we do sins through a spirit of foolishness, this causes us to be temporarily separated from Hashem. And then the person may despair that Hashem has abandoned him because of his poor behaviour.

However YISHAYEH states that Hashem tells the Jewish People 'With what divorce document have I sent your mother away?' ie Hashem reassures us that no such divorce has occurred , and never will. Ie OUR MARRIAGE TO HASHEM IS ETERNAL.

That is why the Gemara links even our minor acts of foolishness to the sotah, (which is potentially a severe transgression) because even these minor acts which we may think are unimportant, will tend to tear us away from Hashem, and an isha kesheirah - suitable wife - does the will of her husband.

And so the Gemara comes to teach us to remember the pasuk about the sotah, to try and always fulfil the will of Hashem, (even the minor acts), and if a spirit of foolishness overcomes us, not to despair, because our connection to Hashem can never be permanently severed.

And once we overcome our foolishness we will in addition receive Hashem's brochos, just like the sotah received when she was proved to be innocent.

And each of our individual redemptions will serve as a preparation for the greater geulah of Klal Yisrael.

Gut Shabbos to all and Mazal Tov for Yeshayeh