Sukkat Shalom Reform Synagogue

Given the current weather it is perhaps not surprising that my thoughts have turned to snow.

When snow first falls it covers the earth with a smooth blanket of white. All seems pristine and clean. Those who view it (at least from the warmth of a heated house) smile at its beauty and purity. But as time passes and life imprints the snow with daily life, what began as a coating of white becomes a jumble of dirty slush and mud. One can no longer take pleasure in the snow. It becomes instead ice on which we slip and fall. The longer it lasts the more obstructive it becomes and the dirt is added to by the grit and salt necessary to make our lives passable.

In many ways this is like our own view of ourselves as good and righteous people. In our own eyes we appear pristine and we cover over our failings with a mantle of white. But to maintain this covering we must remain cold, for the warmth of human interaction reveals the dirt that lies beneath. For as snow itself cannot sustain human life, neither can unadulterated ideals. As we thaw to others the image melts and our all too human nature reveals itself.

We are greedy, selfish, quick to anger and slow to forgive. We become mired in the daily business of life. We measure out kindness and calculate what is in our best interest. We shed blood both through our actions and through our inaction. Perhaps the most difficult thing to understand is how this swirling miasma of the Yetzer HaRah can lead anywhere but to misery.

Just as snow, in giving way to warmth creates a mass of mud so the lifting of the mask of our own self righteousness can lead us to be mired in self reproach.

If we give way to this despair we become as incapable of human life as we would be should we isolate ourselves from our fellow creatures in the attempt to be pure. Rather as the warmth of the Holy One warms our live like the Sun we need to strive to plant the seeds of the Yetzer Tov in the dust that is our lives.

It is this that allows us to grow and sustain ourselves. As we cannot sustain ourselves in the snow neither can we sustain ourselves in the mud. As covering over our nature with a false cloak of false perfection destroys us so to does the unremitting focus on our failings and fears. It is through study, through the love of God and most importantly though deed of loving kindness we can lift our selves towards heaven.

As we spend the next few days trampling through the mud of winter let us remember the words of Yitzchak Meir of Ger:

“He who talks about and reflects on the evil he did, is thinking evil, and what one thinks, therein is one caught ... Stir filth this way or that, and it is still filth ... In the time I brood, I could be stringing pearls for the joy of heaven.

This is what is written: "Depart from evil, and do good" (Psalms 34:15) - turn wholly from evil, do not brood over it, but do good. You have done wrong? Then balance it by doing right. “

Rabbi Yitzchak Meir was born in Magnuszew, Poland, in late 1798.

He came from a very distinguished family of rabbis, among the most prominent in Germany and Poland. He was a descendant of Rashi and of the Tosafist, Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg. He married Feigele Lipszyc, daughter of Moshe 'Halfon' Lipszyc, in 1811, and settled in Warsaw. They had fourteen children (according to most published sources), most of whom died in infancy.