Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need — a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.
— Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat
In this post, I described a person’s involvement in things “permissible but not necessary” (i.e., things which are neither muttar nor ossur) as “addictions”. I.e., if a person has to wear nice clothes to feel like a mentch, it’s similar to the Rebbetzin Rivka having to eat in the morning in order to daven. So, this person has to wear the nice clothes to function as a person, and therefore, as a Jew. But, I asked, wouldn’t it be nice if the person did not have such addictions?
In his fourth shiur on Tanya (in the Leap Year series), Rabbi Paltiel describes this differently. He does not use the concept of addiction. Instead, he looks straight at the purpose for which something in the realm of klipas nogah is used for. If a person dresses up nicely to feel more together in order to daven (or learn Torah, perform other mitzvos, etc.) better, then he elevated those clothes into the realm of kedusha. Clothes, nice house, nice food, entertainment, lots of money — if these things directly augment one’s service of Hashem, they are made holy!
If, on the other hand, they are used for their own sake, for indulgence, they are made into a sin; their spiritual status is lowered to that of sholosh klipos tmeios.
I cut out the particular part where he describes this. I found the language and the examples used rather interesting.
And yet, we find Alter Rebbe objecting to his grandson (not Tzemach Tzedek) wearing clothes in the latest Parisian fashion.
In other news, the value for the speed of light was (more or less) confirmed using chocolate; French President’s einekel had a bris al pi Halacha, while a famous Italian cooking show host was fired for using cat meat in one of his dishes.
9 comments:
Did those "in other news" news items have any connection to each other?
I think they did.
Is this a prophetic revelation or merely a speculation on your part?
In any event, you are right. I found all three of them amusing.
Now, you could ask whether this is a subjective or an objective similarity. Or not.
I was merely going to point out that the fact that a Jew, with a chelek Elokah M'mal mamash posted them together showed that they had an intrinsic HP'dik connection. Or something like that.
And if, lehavdil, a goy posted them?
Aderabe! Why do you think I watch sports? Because in sports I can watch HP play out to perfection!
Since you ask, I think you watch sports for the same reason I listen to classical music.
Entertainment.
Well, yes, that too.
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