Baby With the Bath Water?

The purpose of this blog is for the Shabbat table to improve with age....please print and share...

This week's 7-minute podcast is below....you 

This is a sequel to last week's "What if you knew of the day of your death?"

Do you remember Bến Tre?

That's the Vietnamese village on the Mekong River nearly wiped out by American bombing in February, 1968, after which a USAF Major Chester Brown told AP reporter Peter Arnett: 

"It became necessary to destroy the town to save it."

(The people of Bến Tre seem to harbor neither appreciation for the favor nor malice as they don't even mention the event on their website.)

It sounds absurd, and maybe it is . . . . but sometimes it could be true, right?

Sometimes don't you have to destroy the old in order to build the new?

In order for a plant to sprout, doesn't a seed need to disintegrate?

In order for redemption to occur, doesn't bondage need to precede it?

How about people? Does the next generation need - even long for - the passing of the old?

Think of the poor Prince of Wales.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty the youth of old age. - Victor Hugo
You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old. - George Burns
Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter. - Mark Twain
Youth is wasted on the young. - George Bernard Shaw
 

Question for your table:

True, most things fall apart; but does anything actually improve with age?

The Talmud notes two: wine and olive oil. 

Wine symbolizes wisdom and olive oil symbolizes the spirit.

Even if the elders tell you to destroy, and the youngsters tell you to build, you should destroy and not build, for the ‘destruction’ of older people is really building, and the ‘building’ of young people is really destruction. - Talmud

Yesterday someone young (or is he old?) told me that he isn't very motivated by long-term benefits of healthy daily living: "If it doesn't make me feel better right now, then I'm not too motivated to worry about it."

Is he praiseworthy for living in the moment? Or is he unwise for not planning for the future?


Shabbat Shalom



PS - This week's podcast is "Do You Guys Have Heaven?"
There are ten ways to hear it:

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