From: Aish.com <newsletterserver@aish.com>
Date: 21 July 2015 at 03:07
Subject: Aish.com Daily - 5 Av
To: tohmanderson12345@gmail.com
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 #413 Master your Desires Print Version » The pleasure one has from mastery over desires is greater than the pleasure of one who seeks to gratify all his desires. The latter will only attain one in a thousand of what he seeks and will be constantly frustrated. But a person who is master over his desires experiences great joy. Such a person has a double advantage over the hedonist. The hedonist will feel he is lacking a lot and suffers because of this. Moreover, he does not enjoy what he already has. His suffering due to what he is lacking does not allow him to feel joy with what he has. On the other hand, the person who has mastered the art of not desiring what he is missing feels happy even though he might lack many things. Such a person is surrounded on all sides with happiness. He is happy with what he has already obtained in the past and he feels good about the future. Since he does not worry about the future, he constantly feels good. (Chochmah Umussar, vol.2, pp.99; Gateway to Happiness, pp.354-5) Av 5 Print Version »
The 5th of Av is also the yahrtzeit of Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzensky (1863-1940), talmudic scholar and leader of eastern European Jewry. His father was a student of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the founder of the Mussar ethics movement. Rabbi Grodzensky was gifted with an infallible memory (he could recite complex texts word-for-word), and he testified that he never experienced "forgetting." In the years between the World Wars, he was the central rabbinic figure in Lithuania, at that time the world center of Torah scholarship. He authored a book of responsa, entitled Achi'ezer, drawn from the thousands of questions sent to him from all parts of the world.  Av 5 Print Version » A song of gratitude ... Serve God with joy (Psalms 100:1-2). People who have sustained adversity often feel very grateful for having been personally spared. When they walk away unscathed from a severe automobile accident, they may be thankful that they did not suffer serious injury. This gratitude may be so overwhelming that it utterly obscures the financial loss of the ruined car. One might think that victims of automobile accidents or burnt houses would be bitter and defiant, expressing anger at God for the grave loss they had sustained. Instead, it appears to be within human nature to react differently. If we are alive and whole, and our children are safe, our gratitude may be so dominant that anger does not even appear. Strangely, when lesser reversals occur, anger and bitterness do appear. The reason must be that we are not aware of any great danger from which we were spared. The Talmud states that the verse, He does great works alone (Psalms 136:4), means that God alone is aware of the wondrous acts that occur, and that humans who benefit from them are unaware of them. A person would be wise to always be grateful, even when adversities occur, and apply the same attitude as when one walks away without a scratch from a serious automobile accident saying, "Thank God, I'm safe." Today I shall ... make it a point to be grateful to God under all circumstances. See more books by Rabbi Abraham Twerski at Artscroll.com  Av 5 Print Version » Irrational Anti-Semitism I recently saw that a full-page advertisement honoring four Israeli women (Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, and some others) was rejected by the editors at Ms. magazine. Why the double-standard of hatred against the Jews? The Aish Rabbi Replies:For a publication that fancies itself at the forefront of women's rights, the rules are apparently different when the women are Israeli. It never fails to amaze me. Israel is a bastion of pro-Western liberal democratic values, in a region dominated by dictators and fundamentalists. So why is the world constantly attacking Israel? It seems to me so irrational, and just another in the long line of historical anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is definitely unique in its universality, intensity, longevity and irrationality - falling outside of normal sociological bounds. Maybe the following will help explain. In 1987, President Chaim Herzog of Israel commissioned a colloquium on anti-Semitism. Professor Michael Curtis of Rutgers University spoke there about the reasons for anti-Semitism: "The uniqueness of anti-Semitism lies in the fact that no other people in the world have ever been charged simultaneously with alienation from society and with cosmopolitanism, with being capitalistic exploiters and also revolutionary communist advocators. The Jews were accused of having an imperious mentality, at the same time they're a people of the book. They're accused of being militant aggressors, at the same time as being cowardly pacifists. With being a chosen people, and also having an inferior human nature. With both arrogance and timidity. With both extreme individualism and community adherence. With being guilty of the crucifixion of Jesus and at the same time held to account for the invention of Christianity." And there you have the total irrationality of anti-Semitism!  Av 5    Av 5  Itamar Hassan's magnificent photo of the Land of Israel in full bloom. |
Yahrtzeit of Rabbi Yitzhak Luria Ashkenazi (1534-1572), the father of modern Kabbalah, known popularly by the acronym, Arizal. He was born in Jerusalem, and later moved to Egypt where he studied under the great sages, Radvaz and Shita Mekubetzet. At age 22, he became engrossed in the study of the Zohar, and spent the next seven years in near-total seclusion and meditation. At age 36, he moved to Tzfat in northern Israel, where his colleagues included rabbis Yosef Karo (author of the Code of Jewish Law), the kabbalist Moshe Cordovero (Ramak), Shlomo Alkabetz and Moshe Alshich. Arizal taught extensively about reincarnation and transmigration of souls. His primary student, Chaim Vital, collected Arizal's lectures into a six-volume work entitled, Aitz Chaim (Tree of Life). Arizal died at age 38, and till today his tomb in Tzfat is a place of pilgrimage and prayer.
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