Choose Life
Here’s the scene:
It’s the very final day in the life of our beloved teacher Moses. He gathers the Jewish People together one last time and (amidst other messages) tells us:
“See, I have set before you today life and good … choose life, so that you and your children will live”
Really?
We need Moses to tell us to choose life? This is the profound message Moses imparted to us on his very last day on earth? What’s the other option? To choose death?
I had a wonderful teacher in yeshiva who would regularly tell us in jest “there are some people who are alive simply because a bus hasn’t run them over yet”.
Indeed, dear friends, life is not merely the absence of death. Taking up space and time on this earth doesn’t mean we’re alive. Breathing, eating, and amassing ‘stuff’may define ‘existence’, but not ‘life’. In fact, in order to live we actually need to sacrifice some of our ‘existence’.
Think about it. Before you were married you may have had a bigger ‘existence’ with fewer limitations or responsibilities. Then you got married. You lost some independence and ‘existence’ but you gained a ‘life’.
Then you had children. You gave up lots of existence (sleep, money, time, and energy) but you’ve gained ‘life’. And so it is in every area of life. Every time we give charity or make a sacrifice we trade ‘existence’ for ‘life’.
No wonder our Sages insightfully taught us that “the wicked, even during their lifetime are referred to as ‘dead’, whereas the righteous, even after their passing, are ‘alive’”.
As we head on into 5779 let us heed the final call of Moses and make this coming year one guided by his eternal words: “Choose Life”!
Fruma and our children – Malka, Yankele, Shimi, Mendel, Mushka, Riva & Rachmiel –join me in wishing you a Shabbat Shalom. May you and your entire family be inscribed and sealed in the book of life for a Shana Tova!
