DYNAMICS OF OUR JOURNEYS

Dear Family,

I hope that everyone is well and enjoying the summer (and winter) vacations.

Wishing a refuah shleimah for Yechezkiel ben Ester.

Mazal Tov to Penina on receiving her Certification as a Personal Trainer! A lot of hard work and learning has gone into this achievement. Well done Penina and wishing you many more continued successes.

I am very happy to welcome Darryl Milner into our Family Group! Darryl is Janine's son from the Stein side of our Family and we were in contact this week after decades BH. Darryl is living in SA. I am attaching again the Family Tree which has been put together by Kevin Marks to refresh our memories of the Family connections and to introduce Darryl to everyone on the Group - the names marked in red are those on this email list. It would be great if you could be in touch with Kevin, Darryl, and update him with your details. I also noticed many people are missing on the Stein tag of the spreadsheet. Maybe you or your Mom or any Stein members could help with the updating. So happy to be in touch again.

Sedra Balak is so rich with lessons and drama, and I chose an insight from Rabbi Steinsaltz ah , plus a beautiful connected incident that I saw today.

Rabbi Steinsaltz (summarised)

Pirkei Avot compares the disciples of Bilam with the disciples of Avraham (5:19)

Bilam the evil one's disciples have "an envious eye, arrogant spirit and a wide soul "

Avraham's disciples have " a generous eye, an even spirit and a humble soul"

Torah, in our Sedra establishes Bilam as an extraordinary figure, whose prophecy and greatness compare to Mosheh Rabeinu himself (his prophecy contains profound visions reaching to the end of days), and he reached these heights through his own contemplations, similar to Job and Yitro.

So how did he get to be such a flawed character focused on self-centredness, wealth, honour and immorality?!

Rabbi Steinsaltz answers, that the difference between Bilam and Avraham lies in their approach to their journeys:

Bilam starts with looking at the world and asking "How could there be a G-d?"

Avraham starts with G-d and asks "How could there be a world?"

When faced with difficulties and situations which don't seem to make sense, Avraham demonstrates complete trust and willingness to be obedient, and even to sacrifice his worldview, emotions etc.

While Bilam remains focused only on his own interests.

Story

I think we can be proud of, and learn from the new generation of children which is emerging from our very chaotic world.

BH we often have grandchildren visiting us after school, and today Shneur Zalman came ringing at the door.

He loves sweets and snacks and knows exactly where all the goodies are kept. In particular he likes the milky ice creams in the freezer.

Bear in mind that he is 9 years old and cant wait to get to his ice cream.

The first thing he asked me when he enters the house was "Is 4 hours enough to wait for eating milky after meat. We had meat for lunch at 12 and it is now 4?"

I wasn't sure what to answer him, because we as adults wait 6 hours, and I was thinking that maybe one can be lenient for a child.

And because we have a guest staying with us who is a Rabbi, I sent Shneur Zalman to ask him.

The decision he made was to wait 6 hours.

And Shneur Zalman, a 9 year old child, complied, and was obedient to the Law of Torah and Hashem, contrary to his own interest, without even a protest!

Maybe this is what Bilam saw when he said "Hen am kelavi yakum -Here is a people that rises like a lion. See Rashi's interpretation 23:24 connecting this to Mitzvos, but the verse of course also refers to our amazing IDF (Onkelos)

Gut Shabbos to all!