Approaching the Week - A Post Shabbos Post

It's 8:45 PM, Shabbos has just gone (why she had to go i don't know, she did not say). I cooked a lot and had company today. Shabbos was restful.  Thank you G-d. 

I'm still processing Pesach. Counting the Omer helps keep Pesach in mind and memory, I think that's part of the point of it.

Time is moving on as it always does and I'm continuing to think and to post.

I just thought of a Dvar Torah I like that I'm goig to post as a stand alone right now.

I have lots of left over food and I'm tempted to eat it - choent made with two packs of meat, bean salad, regular salad, poached salmon, sliced fresh real white meat turkey, sweet potatoes and squash, roasted veggies, chumus, madbucha, quinoa salad, corn salad, and and and...

For years I was confused as to who I had read or heard the following vort in the name of: The reason why it says that the command to be holy was said to all of the Jewish People together is because the way to be holy is by being part of a community, not by isolating oneself as many think.  Yesterday a dear colleague (and dear former student) shared with me in print this idea from a sefer of the Chasom Sofer.  he says that while we are told to be holy, which means to separate from some pleasures of this world we are also told to stick together with good people. I got caught up with how i got the Chazon Ish into this. I figured it out.  I first read this idea in Love Your Neighbor, where Rabbi Zelig Pliskin cites the idea from the Chasam Sofer.  He then cites an anecdote about a student who came to the Chazon Ish and asked if he could separate into seclusion in order to make himself holier.  The Chazon Ish told him that the road to holiness is community.

The night is moving forward.  I am feeling rested and happy.  I am looking forward to a shiur that is starting tomorrow morning online for teachers in my school.

G-d, as approach sleep I think and write and pray and post: Help me to be kind and to draw the right lines.  G-d be help me to find you in this maze called life. Always.  Help me and help all of us.  Bless us with faith and truth and strength and balance.  Balance.