Tzvi Freeman

 

We were not placed here to do the possible. Let the heavenly beings bring cause into effect, potential into actual. He did not breathe from His innermost depths into flesh and blood to achieve the facile and the ordinary.

We are here to achieve the impossible. To teach the world tricks it feigns it cannot do. To fill it with light it does not know. To make the blind see, the deaf hear, the bitter sweet, the darkness shine. To make everyday business into mystic union. To rip away the façade of the world and to bring it to confess its secret oneness with the Divine.

When they tell you, “You can’t go on that path, it’s beyond you!”—grab that path as your destiny.

 

We Can Do It!

By Yehoshua B. Gordon

The portion of Shelach tells the story of the 12 spies Moses sent to scout the Land of Canaan. It is one of the most riveting episodes in the entire Torah.

“Go up … and see what [kind of] land it is,” Moses instructed the spies. “ … and the people who inhabit it: Are they strong or weak? Are there few or many?

The story of the spies takes a bad turn when they come back with a negative report about the land. We cannot conquer it, they say. It’s never going to happen. We’re all going to die.

This was a transformative event; it changed what would have been a one-year stay in the desert—due to the sin of the Golden Calf—to a 40-year sojourn.

Mirroring the 40 days that the spies spent crisscrossing the land accumulating their discouraging intel, G‑d’s punishment was an additional year in the desert for each of the 40 days of spying. Thus, the Jewish people remained in the desert for a total of 40 years (…)

To read the full article:

https://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/6479699/jewish/We-Can-Do-It.htm

 

Man and Woman

Tzvi Freeman

 

It is a mistake to consider man and woman two separate beings. They are no more than two halves of a single form, two converse hemispheres that fit tightly together to make a perfect whole. They are heaven and earth encapsulated in flesh and blood.

It is only that on its way to enter this world, this sphere was shattered apart. What was once the infinity of a perfect globe became two finite surfaces. What was once a duet of sublime harmony became two incongruous solos of unfinished motions, of unresolved discord.

So much so, that each one hears in itself only half a melody, and so too it hears in the other. Each sees the other and says, “That is broken.” Feigning wholeness, the two halves wander aimlessly in space alone.

Until each fragment allows itself to surrender, to admit that it too is broken. Only then can it search for the warmth it is missing, for the depth of its own self that was ripped away. For the harmony that will make sense of its song.

And in perfect union, two finite beings find in one another infinite beauty.

Fuente:

chabad.org/library/jewish/Man-and-Woman