In Sefer Koheles, Shlomo HaMelech, the wisest of all men, underscores for us that life is filled with challenges and opportunities — sometimes even conflicting ones. One of his examples is that there is a time to cry and a time to rejoice.
Finding the way to balance the two is probably the greatest challenge that one faces in his or her life.
Every once in a while, I am blessed with the opportunity to meet an individual, a giant in spirit, whose neshamah is pure enough to effectually balance these two conflicting emotions with a depth of understanding way beyond the rest of us. At times this depth of understanding comes from someone who we thought we knew for decades, but in reality we really did not.
A prime example of such a giant in spirit came to my attention when I went to pay a shivah call to the Krigsman/Follman family, who were sitting shivah for their daughter, wife, mother. and grandmother, the unforgettable Mrs. Sorala Krigsman a”h, who succumbed to a terrible machalah (illness) in the prime of her life and left her family and community bereft.
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