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In which direction does your life move?

To wherever you have placed its arrow.

When your arrow points forever backward, always blaming the present on the past and scripting the future accordingly, then there is nothing but accumulated pain. What makes the story worth its struggle?

But if your arrow points forward to an unfolding destiny, a grand story of an eternal people and a world approaching its perfection, then every pain becomes the cracking of a shell, every struggle the shedding of a cocoon, as an olive releasing its oil to the press, a seedling breaking its path through rock and soil to reach the sun.

What is the pain relative to the promise it holds?

In this Torah portion it states: “The life of Sarah was one hundred years and twenty years and seven years, the years of the life of Sarah." (Genesis 23:1) and Rashi comments “All of them were equally good.” How so? Sara had some really tough times?

Yet Sarah looked back after 127 years, and all her days, even the darkest, the weariest, even those when she was held a prisoner in the depths of evil of Pharaoh's palace—all were good and filled with beauty.

All the pain was worthwhile, truly pleasureful, to become who she was, the mother of us all.

- The Rebbe, adapted by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman

Wishing you an uplifting Shabbat,

Rabbi Mendy & Mussy

p.s. As always, we would love to chat with you over coffee or drinks, about Judaism, or just life - reply to this email.

Of Interest

Friday Night in the Psych Ward

First Moon Colony - rereading Genesis as a physicist

Dark Humor

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