Choose life

Hashem gives us good and life, and evil and death. And He asks of us; 'Please choose life'.

Everything in our world has life and death. The life is the positive and good in that thing. The death is the physical and material of it. Food, for example, has the physical pleasure and it also gives life. When we eat we're healthy. We can study Torah, pray to Hashem and do many wonderful and good things. That is the life and good of the food.

Why is the good called life?

The good in everything is the G-dly in it. Studying Torah is G-dly. Praying is G-dly. And doing good is G-dly. And G-d is the One who gives life to everything. What would happen if you remove G-d and the life He gives from something? That thing would die or cease to exist. Just like a soul leaving a body.

When we think about this we start looking at everything differently. We stop wanting death or the death in anything. We stop being gluttons. We stop being materialistic. And everything in life takes on a purpose. Not to kill anything by separating it from it's life. And to choose and give life to everything. And it all becomes G-dly.

We eat to do good things. We do business to do good things. And we keep away from cheating while doing business or eating non-kosher. We don't want to separate the bad from the good.

PRESENTATION

Here is the problem, I was taught to appreciate ideas for their essence, not for the way they are presented. Most of my teachers were not brilliant communicators, there confidence came from the force of their ideas not from the drama of their presentation. They expected their students to be intellectually mature, to see beyond the weakness of the package and to appreciate the wisdom for its true value.

I understand why they disregarded the presentation aspect of teaching. Presentation can be misleading. A beautiful delivery does not insure the merit of the argument.

Now in my own capacity as teacher I find myself following the same path, focusing on the content of the subject, giving no taught to the style of the delivery.

I have to change. for the ideas that impress me most are the ones that were presented in a moving way intellectually or emotionally.

To illustrate this point look at the end of one of Rabbi Yehuda Halevies poems, the message would be dull and dry without his brilliant choice and arrangement of words.

“… Easily, I could leave behind
This Spain and all her luxuries
As easy to leave as dear the sight
Of the temple’s rubble would be to me.”