A Soulful Journey

He who takes vengeance or bears a grudge acts like one who, having cut one hand while handling a knife, avenges himself by stabbing the other hand.  - Jerusalem Talmud

 Rav Kamenetzky told, “Rabbi Salanter was traveling by train from Salant to Vilna and was sitting in a smoking car holding a lit cigar. A young man accosted him by yelling about the putrid odor of the smoke. Other passengers were appalled. After all, they were in the smoking car. Despite that, Rabbi Salanter extinguished the cigar and opened the train’s window to dissipate the fumes. It was only a few seconds before the young man slammed the window down, while screaming at the elderly sage for opening it. Rabbi Salanter apologized profusely to the man young enough to be his child, and buried himself in a Jewish book of law. Upon arriving in Vilna, the young man was horrified to see throngs of people gathered to receive one of Europe’s most prominent Rabbis. The man immediately ran to the home where Rabbi Salanter was staying. He began to beg forgiveness. “Don’t worry,” explained Reb Yisrael, “a trip can make one edgy. I bear no ill will. Tell me,” continued the mussar master, ...

Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Spektor (1817-1896) was a great rabbinic authority and chief of the Jewish community of Kovno, Lithuania.  When Simon J. Finkelstein was a boy of twelve, on his way to hear Rabbi Isaac (his grandfather) speak, his leg was fractured by a log that fell from a construction site. On the day before Yom Kippur, the venerable Rabbi came to the hospital to visit the sick; hearing about the accident, he placed his hands on Simon’s head and said, “You will live a long life and become a great rabbi in Israel.” In Kovno there was a Reform shul, known as the “Choir Shul.”  Being progressive and patriotic, they decided one year that the shul should fly the Russian flag. When Rabbi Isaac Elhanan heard of this, he was aghast at the sacrilege, and he let the members of the shul no the flag didn’t come down, he would leave Kovno. So the Choir Shul had a meeting.  The general feeling was that they could not possibly be the cause of Rabbi Isaac Elhana...

Lo ha-middot HaKadosh Baruch Hu, middot basar v’dam The attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, are not those of humanity. -Talmud, Yoma God is much more forgiving than people.   What is the lesson learned here?