EmunahSpeak:
Who Do You Put in the Center of Your Picture? spoke of the three
possibilities of how one can focus his davening. It can be about Me, Hashem and Me, or (for
the rare few) exclusively about Hashem.
And people not?
With a slight switch in the cast of characters we
can readily see that the same formula also applies to one’s view of the rest of
humanity. Everything that touches our
lives is either about us, us and others, or (for the rare few) the focus is on
others.
The first two categories we know about.
If you have ever cut a line or eaten in a restaurant
that both you and your wife like, you have tasted of both of them. In
EmunahSpeak: Others the bottom line was about seeing the value of others.
But for those who focus is on others it’s not necessary to see anything because it’s enough that there
exists something outside themselves.
Rabbi Yigal Haimoff opens a window for us to experience
the essence of thinking past oneself:
There was a small shul in Yerushalayim, one of
the many where men would come to learn early in the morning before davening. It seems that the shammes of that small shul served cups of tea to the attendees, but
with a twist. Much to the consternation
of those who came to learn, the cups were always only half full, their constant
and vociferous protestations notwithstanding.
And this went on for years.
One day the shammes
didn’t feel well so he asked his son to get up early in the morning so as to
prepare the tea for the participants in the learning. He also adjured him to make sure that the
cups were only half filled.
When the regulars heard from the son that the shammes wasn’t coming that day they pressured
him to give them full cups of tea. The son,
who could never make any sense out of his father’s penchant for only filling up
the cups half way, finally gave way after much coaxing and prepared a tray of
cups of tea filled to the brim. As he
was about to leave this small shul’s excuse of a kitchen his father walked in,
grabbed the tray, and proceeded to pour the contents of the cups into the sink.
The shammes
told his son that he feared that he might contravene his instructions so he schlepped
himself out of bed to make sure that the cups were only half full. He then asked his son to promise that he would
never do such a thing again.
The son promised on the condition his father tell him
why he only filled the cups half way.
After getting his son’s agreement never to divulge
the reason to anyone, the shammes
told him that there were two elderly members of the early morning group whose
hands shook considerably. Half the cup would spill if he gave
them full cups of tea and if he gave half cups only to those two they would be even more embarrassed.
And what of the woman who was an inmate in one of
the hospitality camps in which the
Germans interred Jews during WWII. She
had committed some petty infraction of the camp rules and the Germans, at their
diabolical best, put her on trial in which all the participants were Jews: Judge,
court officers, guards, and the court stenographer.
And the trial
was held on Shabbos.
Amazingly, this woman actually had a defense that
could possibly have been recognized by the camp administration, but when asked
if she had anything to say in her defense she kept silent because anything she
said would have been recorded by the Jewish court
stenographer on Shabbos.
And then there is Mrs. Rochel Frenkel.
When the body of her son Naftoli was found (along
with the bodies of his two comrades) after an eighteen day search, she was
asked her reaction to the fact that Naftoli was killed on the first day of his
captivity.
She said that for eighteen days she cried her eyes
out, but when she heard that that her son had been killed on the first day she remembered
that Naftoli’s favorite mitzvah was putting on tefillin. Rochel Frenkel knew that had her son been
killed on any day subsequent to day one he would have missed putting on tefillin for as
many days as he was being held captive and that the fact that he was not
performing the mitzvah would have distressed him greatly.
She was somehow able to transcend the nightmare of
the eighteen days of uncertainty that culminated in the discovery that Naftoli
had been brutally murdered to think past her grief laden self so as to take
comfort in the fact that her martyred son was spared the emotional pain of not
being able to perform the mitzvah of tefillin.
Such is the essence of thinking past oneself.
