My very own chabad.org'ing

So a mashpia was telling me how he doesn't like being a mashpia, because whenever he goes to a farbrengen all he thinks is, "Hey, what he's saying is really good! I could say that next time I farbreng!" The poor guy never gets to enjoy a farbrengen because he is constantly thinking about his own future performance. The same thing is, I'm sure, a problem of many professional athletes. They can't enjoy a sporting event because they're constantly focusing on how they can improve their own performance.
The reason I'm locquasing so much on this particular problem is because I have a similar one. Tonight I was learning a maamar which dealt with mesiras nefesh. The whole time, instead of enjoying the maamar, I was trying to figure out how I could tie it into Mumbai and the recent events there. In the end, this particular maamar wasn't conducive to being blogged, and I was left to detail the process instead of the maamar itself. So I suppose it's a bit of a let down, but I'm sure we'll all get over this disappointment relatively quickly.

Meanwhile, in other news, there was recently an argument here in Morristown regarding our peula for the shloshim of the kedoshim. One person said that we should arrange for all the Rebbe's Torah to be learned, while another maintained that we should instead all learn the same thing. It's an old argument, reminiscent of the controversy re: Rambam and Daf Yomi. I wouldn't presume to offer an opinion here, because I don't have one, but I would say that it's really impressive when people take a tragic event to heart and try to do something to mitigate the suffering, however small their efforts may be.
And, amazingly enough, I'm now able to tie in the maamar! Mesiras Nefesh, when a Jew gives his life for G-d, reveals G-d's name down here in the most powerful way possible. This is because it causes people to realize that there is a G-d in the world, and he is sanctified by this. Listen, I'm not offeing excuses here. What G-d did here was absolutely inexcusible. But at the end of the day, it would be even worse to think that just because a death was senseless it means that it was also meaningless. Because that would be the biggest insult to those who gave their lives, to say that they died for naught. I don't know why this happened; I don't ever want to be able to justify it. However, I do want to be able to say that something positive came out of it.

And you know what? That's what the kedoshim would have wanted also. You can bet that had this chas v'shalom happened to other shluchim, they would have also tried their hardest to make sure that it was not in vain.