Parshas Vayeitzai 5786
- Torah Tavlin
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
ויחמו הצאן אל המקלות ותלדן הצאן עקדים נקדים וטלאים (ל-לט)
MASHAL: It once occurred in a bustling synagogue that a devout Yid, fully immersed in the silent Shemona Esrei was startled by his friend’s utterly inexplicable behavior. This prayer is considered a deeply personal, solemn conversation with Hashem, yet in the midst of this profound stillness, the friend suddenly broke the concentration of everyone nearby. He reached into his coat, pulled out a cigarette and match, lit the tobacco and took a single puff. Then he quickly extinguished the cigarette and tucked the remains back into his pocket.
As soon as he took his three steps back marking the prayer’s conclusion, the bewildered friend rushed over. “My dear friend, what in the world was that spectacle?” he exclaimed, his voice a mixture of shock and suppressed laughter. “We all know that talking is forbidden during Shemona Esrei, but to light up a cigarette? That’s a new one!”
Embarrassed yet completely transparent, the friend confided the truth. “Tonight, I’m flying to the Holy Land. All through the prayer my mind kept drifting to the mundane details of the trip. I vividly imagined myself standing at the El Al counter. The clerk looked up and asked me the standard question: ‘Sir, do you prefer a smoking or non-smoking seat?’ I was in the middle of Shemona Esrei and since I could not utter a word, I was forced to show her by taking a puff that I preferred a smoking seat ...”
NIMSHAL: Just as Yaakov understood that the visual impressions of the “peeled sticks” would determine the nature of his flock, this man’s intense mental image of the airport check-in became his reality, dictating his physical actions even in the midst of prayer. The Baal Shem Tov zt”l is quoted as saying, “Where a person’s thoughts are, there he is entirely.”