Read Before You Dis-Card!
With the Cleveland Indians in the World Series and with the month of holidays fresh in our minds I was reminded by a thought I had a number of years back that I believe is timely.
About ten years ago, when I was a rabbi in a shul in Canton, Ohio, I overheard a conversation between two of my older congregants.
The two septuagenarians were bemoaning the fact they had entire collections of baseball cards when they were growing up that their mothers eventually threw away (a gripe that thousands of men have made over the years). They were reminiscing which player’s cards that they had and speculating how much money they could have made in the present times when baseball cards, once just a simple and fun childhood pastime, has turned into a mega-million dollar industry. “Had our mothers not thrown those cards away we could be rich today!” they lamented.
Ever the opportunist, I decided to join the conversation with a chance to make a point.
Sharing my own disappointment over my lost cards I told them that the reason the cards were discarded by our mothers many years ago was because they (understandably) did not appreciate or have knowledge of how valuable these things would eventually be. In their eyes it was nothing more than some useless junk that their children left lying around, adding to the clutter of a house that she was trying to keep in order.
Furthermore, it was not only our mothers who had no appreciation for the cards’ potential future worth, we boys did not either. After all, had we known how much those cards would eventually be worth we would have treasured them, preserved them and protected them at all cost! We would have done whatever we could to try and obtain more of them, not only for that lousy piece of gum that came in the pack but because one day they would bring us a lot of money!
Alas, neither we children nor our mothers understood the value of those cards so today we are left with only the memories and perhaps a handful of cards that have somehow survived.
I continued by drawing an analogy.
There is something else that exists that has tremendous value but most people are not aware of its value. I am referring to “mitzvos” – commandments that the Torah has given us. One day we will leave this temporal world and arrive at a world that uses a completely different currency than the almighty dollar. All the millions of dollars, the 401ks, the gold, the jewelry – it will all be worthless in the world in which our souls live on for eternity! There is only one thing that has value in that world – that currency is mitzvos.
Sadly however, we do not appreciate the value of mitzvos so we don’t try and gather as many as we can. Instead, we treat them the way our dear mothers treated our collection of baseball cards – as useless clutter that has no place in our lives and homes. Opportunities to accumulate mitzvos surround us yet we squander the chance to seize them because in our physical world, with our short-sightedness as to the importance of spirituality, we don’t recognize that one day they will be worth far more than we can presently imagine.
The Jewish month of Tishrei comes to a conclusion in a few days. More so than any other month, Tishrei has an abundance of mitzvos. There is shofar, fasting, sukka, lulav and esrog, dancing with the Torah – just to name a few. No wonder the holiday of Sukkos is known in the Torah as “the time of our happiness”! With the chance to accumulate so much “wealth” who would not be happy?
We now are moving into the winter months and Tishrei is fading into history. It is sad that we will have to wait another year for that infusion of mitzvos. Fortunately for us however, there are opportunities aplenty for us to accumulate this precious currency. Wherever we look, at every moment of our day, there are chances to do mitzvos. From what we eat, what we wear, what we say and hear, what we think, how we act- mitzvos abound. The more we accumulate, the more currency we stockpile for eternity.
If we take advantage we can collect more and more mitzvos, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
As we watch the Indians try and win the World Series and we reflect on the month that was, it behooves us to look towards the future and resolve to collect as many “baseball cards” as we can. Because the disappointment with the loss of some cards that our mothers threw away pales in comparison to arriving at the Heavenly Gates with the disappointment of having let a veritable fortune slip through our hands and be thrown into the trash just because they were viewed as useless clutter. That would indeed be a reason to cry.
Shabbat Shalom, (and go Tribe!)
Rabbi Yosef Koval
