FIXED TIMES

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

Welcome back home to Pesach and Shmuly plus Families from EY and America

This coming Shabbos is 18th Elul, which is the birthdays of The Baal Shem Tov and The Alte Rebbe, 2 Great Chassidic Masters.

It also means that there will now be 12 days to Rosh Hashana, and it is a custom to look back at the last 12 months of the present year, over this period, and make new resolutions with which to improve.

In relation to this, one point in particular was dominant this week, which I would like to share.

For those who don’t know the meaning of a cliché, it means a phrase which is very commonly used, and through this it kind of loses its meaning. It is like it goes ‘in one ear and out of the other.’

One of these commonly used expressions is that we should SET FIXED TIMES TO STUDY TORAH.

This week for some reason, I suddenly understood it in a new light.

It came up in a Maamer that I was learning from the Frierdike Rebbe, and was then strengthened by a Rashi from this week’s Sedra, Ki Savo, and this was strengthened further by putting it into practice.

The beauty of Setting a Fixed Time for Torah Study, is that it does not affect ones normal current daily activities.

It just says that one or more parts of one’s day are going to now be set aside and given a DISTINGUISHED RECOGNITION.

This could be as little as 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes before going to sleep, but these times become DEDICATED to Hashem.

And the emphasis now becomes learning Torah for Hashem, and not just learning it as any other subject. And the rest of the day carries on as normal.

But there is now a subtle and real difference to the day.

In this week’s Sedra, Rashi explains the word heemiricha in the following beautiful sentence. ‘Today Hashem has distinguished you (heemiricha) to be for Him a treasured People, as He said to you, and to guard all His Commandments.’

Rashi sites 2 interpretations of this word heemiricha:

1. ‘Setting aside and distinguishing’ ie we have distinguished Him and set him aside from alien gods, and He has set us aside for Himself to be His treasured People.
2. ‘Glorifying’. This is the possible negative connotation whereby we can get the balance wrong, and glorify ourselves, as in ‘All sinners glorify themselves (yitamru)’

Wishing Gut Shabbos to all and a Kesiva Vechasima Tova for a Good New Year.