Rainy Days

You know what rain does to the iPod Touch? Not good things. Here's a pre-made maamar instead, originally published on November 12, 2007, entitled Here's your religion. Enjoy.

All righty then, here's your daily religious dose. It's from a Maamar that was said by the Rebbe Rashab in 1898. Basically, the Yetzer Hora is not essentially bad. The reason we know this is because before the first sin (the one with the tree) man was created with two drives, one towards Chessed, kindness, and one towards Gevurah, strictness. Neither of these is necessarily bad. What happened with the sin was that Adam used too much Gevurah when he prohibited his wife Chavah from even touching the tree, therefore causing Gevurah to fall down much farther than Chessed. So the drive towards Gevurah became the drive towards sin. But even this is not a constant; after all, it is possible that a surfeit of love can cause bad. We can see this from the case of a child who cries for a knife. A person who gives it is doing it out of love, after all, the child is crying for it! Nevertheless, obviously it's a bad thing. So we can see that Gevurah is not necessarily bad, nor Chessed necessarily good. Just that normally from Gevurah comes bad. When Moshiach comes the truth will be revealed, that Gevurah is really good. Because remember, strictness is not bad.

Anyway, for a little humor, there was once a haberdasher who had a minister walk into his business. The clothes-seller was so honored that a minister should come to his store that he gave the guy a free suit. A week later the minister sent a bible as a thank you. A month later a priest came in, and the same thing, except that the priest sent a beautiful gold cross. A month later a Rabbi walks in, and the same thing happens. And the gift? A week after the Rabbi gets his suit, another Rabbi walks in.

OK, so it's cute. Deal with it.