GRATITUDE

Dear Family,

Hope everyone is well.

Mazal Tov for Hirshy's acceptance into Nursing School where there was much competition. Amazing effort! And good luck for the year which starts this month Hirshy. - Exciting BH.

A Rashi caught my attention at the end of last week's Parsha, Beshalach.

It was talking about the battle with Amalek, and Amalek's destruction is connected to Purim, and it already feels like Purim is in the air with people starting to talk about, and trying on costumes, and the seasons starting to change!

And so I thought it would be nice to share an interesting Rashi about Amalek., which went as follows:

It says that Amalek came to make war with Israel in Refidim. And the very verse before this says 'Is Hashem amongst us or not?'

So Rashi states that the reason these 2 verses are adjacent to each other is to convey the message, 'I (G-d) am always amongst you and ready to fulfil all your needs, and yet you say, 'is Hashem amongst us or not?' I will therefore set the dog (Amalek) to bite you, and you will cry out to me, and then you will know where I am.'

He then explains this with a parable of a father carrying his son on his shoulders, and they go out on a journey. Whenever the son saw a desirable object he would request it from his father, and the father would give it. This repeated itself many times.

After a while, another person passed them by on the way, and the son said to this person 'Have you seen my father?'

Whereupon the father said to the son ' Do you not know where I am?!!'

And the father took him down from his shoulders, and a dog came and bit the son.

The message for us is to realise with GRATITUDE how close Hashem is to us, providing all of our needs, and even if there is a need chas veshalom, for Hashem to put us down from his shoulders, this is not a punishment, because, as a loving Father, the parsha ends off 'ki machoh emcheh es Zecher Amalek mitachas hashamayim.' - 'for I (Hashem) will totally obliterate the memory of Amalek from under the Heavens.'

This should be speedily in our days even before Purim.

Gut Shabbos to all.