Domino Affect - Vayeitzei

This week I was showing my younger sister a video about this huge project that some people had done with dominoes. The project was put together by hand with the utmost care and precision to avoid collapse. If even one piece would have fallen, the entire tower and everything around it, would fall as well. This is known as the domino effect.

After the video, my sister taught me a lesson. Life is like a tower of dominoes. One bad thing, once said or done, can cause someone's domino to shake or fall. This could make their entire tower, ie: their entire life, come tumbling down as well. This got me thinking about this week's parsha.

In Parshas Vayeitzei we continue to follow the story of Yaakov as he moves further away from his father's house. The Torah wants to emphasize that when a Jew is on the road, where he is not in the presence of his birth father, he is always in the presence of his Father in Heaven.

Now that we know who accompanied Yaakov on his journeys, we have to look at why Yaakov had to physically move away from his father's house. In last week's parsha we saw that it wasn't safe anymore for Yaakov to stay because of the intentions that Eisav had set in motion. We see from this that any given day we can set a positive, or negative, “domino,” effect into motion that will affect our entire lives.

As my sister pointed out, every day we have the ability to gently put dominoes into place with true light and bracha. Rather than having the dominoes come disastrously crashing down, the tower is built higher with careful precision.

Let's take my sister’s words of chizuk and use them to our fullest advantage. Let's work on doing and saying good things, and in doing so, rebuild the Beis Hamikdash with the coming of Moshiach now!

Good Shabbos! All the Best Moshiach Now Avroham Y Ross