SEEING VIRTUE

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well and had a meaningful Rosh Hashanah.

Mazal Tov to Joy on your birthday this coming week. Wishing you a healthy and happy year Joy, together with Claude. We hope all is well in SA!

We are now in the 10 day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur called aseres yemei teshuvah – The 10 days of teshuvah, and 2 interesting related items came to my attention, which I wanted to share.

The first was an excerpt from a sicha of the Rebbe (Sefer Hasichot 5705, p92) discussing how to deal with faults.

We are naturally disposed to overlook our own faults.

Or, if we do acknowledge them, we usually try to rationalize and justify them to ourselves.

So we see in this week’s Sedra Vayelech, that in order to show us our own faults, Hashem shows them to us in other people.

This is seen in V31:17 – (Hashem tells Moshe that the Jews wil say, during their misfortunes) “Is it not because our G-d is no longer amongst us that these evils have befallen us?”

And explained as follows – Because I am not spiritually mature enough to be sensitive to my own short-comings (“Because my G-d is not within me”), “this evil has befallen me” ie I have been forced to see my own vices reflected in my fellow Jew.

Therefore rather than focusing on other’s faults, we should try to focus on their virtues, and we should excuse their short-comings.

Not only should we focus on their virtues in our mind but we should also praise them, and praise them to other people.

This love of our fellow Jew leads us to love of G-d (and fosters mutual love and respect)

The second was a slogan going around as a forward, which really is a joke, but when one thinks about it deeper, it very much reflects the above concept, ie are we prepared to learn.

The slogan said “Real Men Marry Teachers” 😊

Wishing everyone a meaningful continuation from Rosh Hashanah and a Gut Shabbos.