A low-class guy (israeli slang for it is ars) invites the Rabbi to come to his home and check his mezuzuot. After checking the whole house the Rabbi says "All the mezuzot are fine except for one that I found pasul. Shall I fix it for you?" The ars responds with astonishment and says "...fix this mezuza, are you crazy?! I swear by this mezuza everyday to my wife that I don't cheat on her!!"
Funny joke but upon reflection the insight in it is powerful: When it comes down to it, everyone wants atleast one מזוזה פסולה in the house to swear and live their lives by. No one wants to (or arguably can) live their lives against a standard of absolute honest Truth, a מזוזה כשרה. A world which would be entirely expressive of Truth would be a disaster for the generation undergoing the transition... just look at the backlash that came from the Wikileaks-US Cables debacle.
Imagine what it would mean to live in a world where people are brutally honest in their relationships, be they political, commercial, romantic, or any other... Our society's social structure is simply not built to handle it...
And so we pray everyday for a world that will be expressive of existential true reality while knowing that if it doesn't develop and sprout forth gradually the sudden abruptness of the correction could destroy everything entirely - מצמיח קרן ישועה
So in the meantime we live with the one pasul mezuza in our personal, communal, and global lives. "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies" (or big ones, as the case may be).
מלאכי ג' יט כי-הנה היום בא, בער כתנור; והיו כל-זדים וכל-עשה רשעה, קש, ולהט אתם היום הבא אמר יהוה צבאות, אשר לא-יעזב להם שרש וענף.כ וזרחה לכם יראי שמי, שמש צדקה, ומרפא, בכנפיה; ויצאתם ופשתם, כעגלי מרבק. כא ועסותם רשעים--כי-יהיו אפר, תחת כפות רגליכם: ביום אשר אני עשה, אמר יהוה צבאות.
See further "In My Secret Life"
No comments:
Post a Comment