The Key To Youth – V’zot Ha’brachah
וּמשֶׁ֗ה בֶּן־מֵאָ֧ה וְעֶשְׂרִ֛ים שָׁנָ֖ה בְּמֹת֑וֹ לֹא־כָֽהֲתָ֥ה עֵינ֖וֹ וְלֹא־נָ֥ס לֵחֹֽה: (דברים לד:ז)
Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were undimmed and his natural force unabated. (Deuteronomy 34:7)
My personal motto is to “find your passion, whatever it may be, and don’t lose it, even for one second. You never know whose life you could have changed during that time”. Passion drives every major change in society, and is a must have for any leader. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks about the above pasuk, “What then was the secret of the undiminished energy of his last years?… I used to think that “his eyes were undimmed” and “his natural force unabated” were simply two descriptions, until it dawned on me that the first was an explanation of the second. Why was his energy unabated? Because his eyes were undimmed. He never lost the vision and high ideals of his youth. He was as passionate at the end as he was at the beginning… The moral is clear: If you want to stay young, never compromise your ideals.” In the last year, what ideals have you given up on or compromised? What dreams have you abandoned? This new year, commit to renewing those old passions and embrace your inner youth.
You can read the entire drash by Rav Sacks here.
Tefillah: Aleinu – The Final Call
Just as V’zot Ha’brachah ends the cycle of the Torah, so too does Aleinu end our daily tefillot. And just as V’zot Ha’brachah caps a climatic and moving recap of the journey of the Israelites, reiterating the importance of worshiping the one and only Almighty, so too does Aleinu remind us of the majesty of the Crown. Rabbi Yoel Sirkes (1561-1640) in his book Bayit Chadash, a commentary on the Tur, explains: “The reason [for reciting Aleinu at the end of the service] is to ingrain in our hearts, before we leave for our houses, the unity of the kingdom of God. Thus, our faith will be strengthened, in order that we ‘remove the foreign gods from the land.’’ How many ‘foreign gods’ do we still have today? Power, money, success, acclaim, lust, and all the desires of the ego to dominate the other are still very strong temptations in our society. Aleinu gives us one last moment to refocus before going out into the world. It allows us to get our priorities in order, and helps us cultivate a sense of awe and wonder of the miraculousness of the world and life itself. So before you rush off to fold up your tallit, take a deep breath and focus one more moment on the grandeur of the Divine.
