How Pious Should You Be?
The firstborn animal retains its sacred status, and it is forbidden to eat it or make use of it in any way. In the shtetel, where raising a few head of cattle or a small herd of goats was common practice, these animals would run loose, getting into everything and wreaking general havoc. And since they could not be shorn or groomed, their stench was quite unbareable.
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The Audience
His Chassidim assumed that the many visitors of the past few days had tired the Rebbe and that he had taken a short break to recoup his strength. But after half an hour the Rebbe's secretary, Reb Zalman, emerged from the Rebbe's room extremely distressed, his eyes red from weeping, and whispered a few words into the ears of the leading Chassidim who had accompanied the Rebbe on his journey. These Chassidim became greatly alarmed, their faces turning red and white and red again, and a wave of horror spread through the crowd.
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The Development
The human can descend, with difficulty, into animal existence, by acting with no more than raw animal instinct. By failing to use to proper advantage his intelligence capacities, he can become part of the animal world.
He can descend (with much greater difficulty, and then only periodically) into vegetable existence. Through sickness or deep sleep, a human can reach a state where his only life signals are his internal movement.
At death, the body descends to the level of mineral existence.
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Vayeitzei
Torah Portion for week of November 14-20, 1999
Genesis 28:10–32:3
"And Jacob went out from Be'er-Sheva, and he went toward Charan." So opens the Parshah of Vayeitzei ("and he went
out"), which describes the 20 years Jacob spent on the outside—outside of the Holy Land, and outside of the "tents of
learning" within which he had been sheltered for the first half of his life.
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Grace After Meals
After breakfast we search for the portion of the week in my big Torah and in Miriam's brightly colored Children's Bible. Today it is Beshalach, and I tell Miriam of the miracle of the manna. She is delighted but slightly puzzled that G-d has not sent some manna here for the hungry children of India. I go on reading, and the problem of hunger and bread follows me even here.