The challenge: infusing these days with joy!
O h those endless winter days! As the weather cools and the days grow dark we may grow weary of juggling our hectic and exhausting routine of home obligations jobs school meetings and community functions. The challenge: infusing these days with joy!
Rav Shlomo Wolbe in his Alei Shur invests an extensive amount of thought and prose in what he deems his “last and most dear chapter”: simchah! The beginning and end of all Divine service Rav Wolbe says is simchah. As we proceed to evaluate simchah we will better understand the import of his words.
In a recent article on Aish.com writer Shelly Fenig focuses on the prefix that is often attached to Cheshvan: “mar ” bitter. The message of Marcheshvan? Take the mar and become ram — elevated. But how to do this? How to find the extraordinary in the ordinary?
Let’s turn our culinary curiosity to a gemara in Beitzah (25b) which mentions a fascinating legume called the turmus. The turmus Rashi explains was a very bitter bean that needed to be cooked seven times to get rid of its sharp taste. After all those cooking cycles though it became “matok vatov” — sweet and good! It was a delicacy to enjoy as a dessert. Today we know the turmus as the lupine bean a food that must be repeatedly cleaned boiled and refrigerated for at least five days until its brine is no longer bitter.
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