by Ruchi Koval
This past
Sunday at Sunday school, we hosted a panel of women who had grown up in
large families, and/or are raising large families today.
One
of our panelists runs a large-scale, completely self-started and
organized non-profit furniture and clothing distribution center for
needy Jewish families out of her home. She cooks three nutritious meals
a day for her 11 children, wakes up at 5:30 am to "be organized" and
pray before the kids wake up, sings while driving carpool, and
personally shops for clothing with her teenagers because "they'd rather
go with me than with their friends."
Is this woman for real?
Three reactions are common upon meeting the legendary Bina Drazin:
1. Thanks, so I think I'll crawl back under my rock now.
2. This woman really inspires me to be a better person in a small way.
3. Can she move in and be my mother?
In a mussar
class on Thursday, we were discussing the idea of glimpsing greatness.
Have you ever met someone that exuded spirituality? Holiness? That
you couldn't describe it in words, but there was just... something
emanating from this person that told you: here is greatness?
Even
if that experience leaves you feeling small and speechless, the Torah
teaches that it's extremely valuable. It's tempting to feel good by
association and compare ourselves to our peers. When we stand in the
presence of greatness, we may feel small, but we emerge with much larger
souls for having glimpsed it. Yes, people like that really do walk the
earth... and that's good news for all of us.
