The world is a
test. Everything is a test. Even for a frum young man or woman. And our sole business in this life is to
withstand them.
That the
tests of life are without end was one the main themes to which Rav Avigdor
Miller z”l consistently returned over the course of the many decades in which
he set the standard for the spreading of Torah in the United States of America.
He taught us
never to think about a vacation from the Yetzer Hora because the Yetzer doesn’t
do weekends. It also doesn’t do
breakfast, lunch, supper, or coffee breaks.
Or put a different way, a Jew should never sit with his back to the door
of life unless he enjoys getting blindsided.
He was also wont
to remind us that the temptation of Apikorsis was forever in the air. And although he articulated this warning many
years before the Internet, our wireless connections testify to how prescient his
warning was.
But the tests of
life to which Rav Miller z”l referred were neither limited to dangerous
philosophical abstractions nor to more grounded dangers such as Marxism, which
he considered to be the biggest enemy that Klal Yisroel ever faced. He saw them in every facet of life with no circumstance
being so benign as to pass unchallenged under his penetrating gaze.
You had a piece
of toast for breakfast this morning?
If you are a
cookie cutter example of what usually passes for a frum Jew these days, you
first washed your hands according to the Halacha before diving in and you
concluded your repast with a recital of Birkas HaMazon.
But did you see
the nes (miracle)?!
Yes, even the
piece of bread on your table is a test to see if you can eat it while being
oblivious to the nes that is inherent within.
And by the nes
of bread, Rav Miller z”l meant the literal nes that should be widening your eyes,
and nothing less. Suffice it to say that
while the many steps in the bread making process from the planting up until the grinding of the grain into flour and
from the flour onward are plausible in that over time mankind could have either
figured them out or could have simply stumbled across them, the actual grinding
of the grain into flour is a divine gift beyond the collective imagination of all
humanity. But that’s a story for another
day.
So how far does this
testing go anyway? Rav Miller z”l took
it even a step past the bread to the table.
How does one
approach a Jewish table?
Do you gruffly
plant yourself down to stuff yourself as you would at an outdoor picnic table
or do you approach it with great Derech Eretz as befitting something that is Kodesh.
Do you sit on it
or are you zoche to understand that the Jewish table is a mizbeach (an alter)?
Testing….Testing.
