Sailing Through Life - Kedoshim

Recently, I've thought about what my life would look like if I were comfortable with where I am. If I just cruised versus being challenged at every step. While not being challenged and cruising sounds tempting, this would not get me to grow. If I were to sail through life, I wouldn't achieve goals or better myself. Being challenged is hard, so when I was younger, I always used to think that the people who were wiser than me were cruising while I had to struggle. I recently changed my perspective after learning a sicha from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe says that even If a person has reached the highest level, there is always room to go higher.

This week's Parsha is Kedoshim. The translation of Kadosh from the word Kedoshim means to make holy. It is the idea of taking a mundane aspect and using it to become closer to Hashem. There are many mundane aspects in our day-to-day life that we can use to make the world a better place. These activities include learning from a sefer (a book with teachings of torah), wrapping tefillin (cow hid which we put parchment into or ahavas Yisrael (doing mundane activities towards another person to show them love)

The Maggid of Mezrich (the teacher of the Alter Rebbe who started Chabad Chassidus) explains that the words וחי בהן can mean "put life into them." We have to bring life into the objects we use by doing good deeds and elevating them. In our daily life, with the challenges that one faces, it's not easy to always think about other people and how we can benefit the world. As I said earlier, it's easy to cruise through life without challenge, but it doesn't get us anywhere. Let's do an action by taking on an uncomfortable mitzvah, something mundane like ahavas Yisrael, and make it comfortable by increasing our use of it. All these acts of good deeds and activities geared to elevate those around us will make this world a better place and bring about the most drastic transformation of Moshiach!

Good Shabbos

All the best

Avroham Y Ross