The Exalted

We keep doing it.

I never figured it out. Why do we keep exalting him, telling how awesome and removed he is from us, all while trying to connect to him in Prayer.

To me, it always felt strange; I felt that the more exalted he is, the harder it is for me to connect to him.

This Morning the Alter Rebbe explained it: Hashem is exalted, therfire the entire creation is insignificant before him. As soon as I'll realize this truth the world will not be able to interfere with my connection to Hashem; after all it's insignificant.

(Lek"t Masey)

Vows

The Torah summarizes the laws of vows, in the beginning of Matos, by saying “these are the statutes which the Lord commanded Moses concerning a man and his wife, a father and his daughter, in her youth, while in her father's house”; omitting from the summary, what seems like the main point of the portion, the commandment that “If a man makes a vow to the Lord or makes an oath to prohibit himself, he shall not violate his word; according to whatever came out of his mouth, he shall do”.

This leads the Rebbe to conclude that the main point of the portion is not, the self understood idea, that one must keep a vow. Rather, here, the Torah's point is the contrary, the laws of nullifying a vow.

For until that point, while the Jews were in the desert they were permitted to make vows and separate themselves from the mundane. Now, however, when the Jews were about to enter the Land of Israel, and were given the responsibility of bringing G-dliness to this physical world, they don;t have the luxury to separate themselves form a physical item, rather they are empowered to refine and elevate it.

(Leku”s Matos 13 1)