Motzei Shabbos

This motzei shabbos our shul had a learning seder as a zchus for a refuah shelaimah of the father of one of the members. I strongly feel that beginning your motzei shabbos with learning is the way to go. It starts the entire week off on the right foot. Beginnings lay the foundation for what is to come and the decisions you make at the beginning of the week determine how that week will look come next shabbos. Hopefully we will have more sedarim at that time in the future, but then it should be just lishma and not for a dire situation.

Privilege

I was reminded this week of something that I feel most people forget. Often we have trouble concentration during davening and maybe even getting ready to daven. It might even be considered a burden that we must get through at points during the day. But in reality, davening is not something that we have to get done, but something that we get the opportunity to do. It is truly a privilege to get the opportunity to talk to the King and request what we need. Few people get an audience with a king, we get 3 chance every single day to talk to the highest King. It should be something we relish, not try to do as quickly as possible.

Privacy

Just something that came to mind the other day, nothing really prompted it. I've felt for a while that there are certain things that don't require publicizing and it should probably even be avoided. Specifically I think anything that has to do with your own personal avodas HaShem is something worth keeping private. It's noone's business but your own. Unless you feel that they can help in some way, or you need to get something off of your chest to a close confidant (which I would consider helping in many circumstances), keep it private.

Spirituality

We were talking to friends of ours recently who had to move to a neighborhood that they deemed "spiritually vampid". It's not that the people there don't learn or are uninterested in torah, they just aren't interested in the spirutality and the emotional aspects of Judaism. They go to shiurim and learn, but it is intellectual at its core.

I think they are right on target in their stance that the intellectual side of learning and Judaism isn't enough. You need that feeling and that emotion otherwise it's dry and it can get boring. Your need that fire that pushes you to keep coming back and move on to the next level.

Marching Bands

I've recently been into watching the Trojan Marching Band. I find it fascinating how they all keep in perfect formation and synchronized despite the complication involved in what they do. It reminds me a lot of what I heard from Rabbi Akiva Tatz shlit"a. He says that you have to be mevatel yourself as an individual and give over your talents for the betterment of the klal. That is the only true way to maximize your abilities. If someone in the TMB would step out of place during a performance, he would be asserting his individuality, but the entire performance would be ruined, including his part in it. His individuality would be more noticeable, but the perfection of his individual performance would suffer along with the klal. The only way to be perfect as an individual is if he stays in line with the performance of the entire band and does not assert his individuality beyond what the entire performance calls for.