Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
Jan 10-11, 2025 • 11 Teves 5785 • Vayechi (Gen 47-51).
Your dream is to have a fabulous home. On the beach. Where you can watch a beautiful sunset every day of the year.
You work hard for that dream. Then you achieve it.
Then what? What are you going to do with the next fifty years of your life?
We don't wish suffering or loss on ANYONE (with perhaps a few exceptions...).
When it's someone else's suffering, our only response is sympathy and lending a hand.
But when it's our own suffering, we're allowed to ask this question - what is this tragedy or catastrophe teaching me? What lesson can I learn about life or about myself from this?
Christopher Reeve did it. He was at the top of the American dream - Hollywood, wealth, fame, honor, great health.
And then one misstep while competitive horseback riding, in one second he became a paraplegic.
He spent two years feeling sorry for himself.
Then he decided to stop moping and to try to do something meaningful with his life.
Life as a paraplegic was extremely challenging. Just getting dressed in the morning was a laborious, time-intensive chore.
Even speaking was a struggle, and he had ot pause after every few words to catch his breath.
And what's the most important thing he wanted audiences to know about his life?
How he landed the role of Superman?
How beautiful was his house in Malibu? (OK, it wasn't Malibu, but was indeed beautiful).
Nope.... he wanted the audience to know this: "I've never been happier than I've been since my accident."
Every member of the audience was thinking, "Did I hear him right?"
He continued: "I've never been happier, because my accident taught me something that I might have never learned. Before my accident, I thought that I was my body. Everything was about my body. But since my accident, I barely have a body. Yet I'm still able to live! I'm able to make my wife happy, I'm able to speak to children and cheer them up. My accident taught me that I am not my body."
There is something about us that transcends our bodies and our homes, and everything physical. But we're so busy feeding our bodies, seeking pleasures for our bodies, taking care of our bodies and homes and other things, we're sometimes so enveloped by the physical part of living that the spiritual part is fast asleep.
Every loss is a loss. After the pain subsides, it's also an opportunity, a wake-up call.
Shabbat Shalom
You work hard for that dream. Then you achieve it.
Then what? What are you going to do with the next fifty years of your life?
We don't wish suffering or loss on ANYONE (with perhaps a few exceptions...).
When it's someone else's suffering, our only response is sympathy and lending a hand.
But when it's our own suffering, we're allowed to ask this question - what is this tragedy or catastrophe teaching me? What lesson can I learn about life or about myself from this?
Christopher Reeve did it. He was at the top of the American dream - Hollywood, wealth, fame, honor, great health.
And then one misstep while competitive horseback riding, in one second he became a paraplegic.
He spent two years feeling sorry for himself.
Then he decided to stop moping and to try to do something meaningful with his life.
Life as a paraplegic was extremely challenging. Just getting dressed in the morning was a laborious, time-intensive chore.
Even speaking was a struggle, and he had ot pause after every few words to catch his breath.
And what's the most important thing he wanted audiences to know about his life?
How he landed the role of Superman?
How beautiful was his house in Malibu? (OK, it wasn't Malibu, but was indeed beautiful).
Nope.... he wanted the audience to know this: "I've never been happier than I've been since my accident."
Every member of the audience was thinking, "Did I hear him right?"
He continued: "I've never been happier, because my accident taught me something that I might have never learned. Before my accident, I thought that I was my body. Everything was about my body. But since my accident, I barely have a body. Yet I'm still able to live! I'm able to make my wife happy, I'm able to speak to children and cheer them up. My accident taught me that I am not my body."
There is something about us that transcends our bodies and our homes, and everything physical. But we're so busy feeding our bodies, seeking pleasures for our bodies, taking care of our bodies and homes and other things, we're sometimes so enveloped by the physical part of living that the spiritual part is fast asleep.
Every loss is a loss. After the pain subsides, it's also an opportunity, a wake-up call.
This is my own "Superman" meditation, about me and my own sufferings.
(For anyone else, only sympathy, empathy, and a helping hand.)
Question for your table: What's your superman vision - when push comes to shove, what makes life worth living for you?
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