Archive for month: November, 2026

Shabbat Shalom Weekly

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Torah Portion:  Vayera

Worst Things First
by Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Schiffman

Do you ever have a task that you must do but really don’t want to? Do you procrastinate, pushing it off until the last possible minute? This usually leads to missed deadlines and lost opportunities. Yet, even if you successfully completed the task, did the dread of working on it and the guilt of not working on it hover over you like a gloomy haze and tempestuous cloud throughout the process?

In order to avoid the anxiety of procrastination, social psychologist Dr. Ian Newby-Clark suggests that we put the “worst things first.” By prioritizing what we don’t want to do and getting it done at the beginning of the day we do a better job of taking advantage of our morning willpower (which will deplete over the course of the day), avoid that looming, negative feeling, and generate more positive momentum for later tasks.

Abraham is a paradigm of alacrity and productivity. Being a pillar of kindness, we are awed but not shocked at how swiftly he tends to the needs of his guests. Despite the fact that he was healing from his brit mila, his circumcision, the verses reiterate how he “ran” and “quickly” cared for them. The Sages also learn from this scene that the righteous say little but do much (Talmud, Bava Metzia 87a).

Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz (Daat Torah, pp. 117-118) suggests that the Sages aren’t simply just commending those who follow through on their word. Rather, they are emphasizing the importance of not spending time talking about accomplishing. Discussing, deliberating, and debating about action is essentially procrastination. The righteous don’t talk about what they are going to do, they just do. They “talk” through their actions.

It is one thing to be prompt, proactive, and productive when you are doing what you love. It is an entirely different challenge when the required task is one that you dread. After seeing Yishmael behave inappropriately, Sarah tells Abraham that she does not want Yishmael to be associated with Isaac. Abraham is terribly pained by the fact that Sarah wanted him to send away Yishmael (see Bereishit 21:11 and Rashi). Yet, despite his reservations, God tells him to listen to Sarah.

Abraham loved Yishmael deeply, and while Abraham was always going to follow through on God’s command, it was still a very difficult test for him. Yet, we are told “Va-yashkem Avraham ba-boker” – Avraham woke up early in the morning to follow through on sending Yishmael away. Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan highlights that despite the difficulty, Abraham acted with alacrity to complete his task (Chofetz Chaim al HaTorah, p. 62). He didn’t wait until after breakfast or until the end of the day. He did the worst thing first.

We can learn from Abraham not to spend too much time talking about doing, but being proactively productive, especially for things that we value and enjoy. But he also serves as a model for how to accomplish and follow through when the task is important but distressing.

By doing the worst things first we ensure that we don’t fall into the enticing trap of procrastination.

Accepting Rebuke
by Rabbi Yehoshua Berman

The people of Sodom where wicked to the core. One of the many expressions of their evil lifestyle was the way they treated “guests” of their city. Basically, they would torture them and make it clear that they were not welcome visitors. As such, they were not exactly thrilled to find out that Lot, the nephew of the world’s champion of kindness, had brought guests into his home and was showering the kindness of hospitality upon them.

They unanimously decided that they must put an immediate stop to this heinous breach of their city’s long-standing custom. So, they all gathered together and surrounded the house of Lot, demanding “Where are the men that came to you tonight? Bring them out to us and we shall know them (Gen. 19:5).”

Of course, Lot’s guests were in fact malachim (angels) who were sent by Hashem to destroy the city of Sodom and save Lot. When the people of Sodom surrounded Lot’s house and tried to force their way in, the malachim smote them all with blindness. Despite this blow, however, (and probably because of it) the Torah states “…and they tried to find the opening [to Lot’s house] in vain (Gen. 19:11).”

The Sforno (one of the great, medieval commentators on the Torah) comments, “Even though they were smitten by blindness, they toiled to find the opening in order to break the door. This is in accordance with the saying of the Sages that even when the wicked are standing at the opening of Gehinom (Hell) they do not repent.” The evil nature of Sodom was so ingrained in their being that nothing would keep them from attempting to achieve their wicked desires.

This point may serve as a clarification for the following difficulty. In last week’s parsha, we find a seemingly peculiar discrepancy of conduct on the part of Avraham Avinu: on the one hand he accepts gifts from Pharaoh (which greatly add to his wealth), yet he adamantly refuses to accept any of the bounty of the king of Sodom. Furthermore, in the case of Pharaoh the gifts were given as a result of Pharaoh needing to pacify Avraham and Sarah, whereas in the case of Sodom, Avraham had a right to take the spoils because he was the victor in war.

In addition, neither Egypt and Sodom were exactly the pinnacle of perfection. The Torah explicitly states that the reason Avraham posed his wife Sarah (when they entered Egypt) as his sister is out of fear that “… they will say ‘this is his wife’ and they will kill me and they will keep you alive (Gen. 12:12).” Clearly, ancient Egyptian society was not exactly a bastion of morality. As such, the question must be asked: what made Sodom so much worse that “Avraham said to the king of Sodom, ‘I have lifted my hand (in oath) to Hashem the Supreme Power, the Creator of heaven and earth. If from thread and until shoelace and if I will take from all that is yours and you shall not say ‘I made Avram wealthy’ (Gen. 14:22-23)”? Another obvious difference between these two societies is their outcome: Sodom was utterly destroyed, whereas Egypt was not. Why?

The most basic approach to answer this question is very simply that the degree of wickedness that Sodom had reached obviously far surpassed any other society. Another component of the equation is that Sodom was located in what was destined to become Eretz Yisrael, which is the Land in which Hashem chose to rest His Divine Presence. As such, any wrongdoing there is considered far more severe. Yet another point to include is that our Sages describe to us (as cited by Rashi 18:21) the horrifically intense degree of evil that Sodom demonstrated in regard to their fellow human beings; and when one sins in a manner that also involves causing damage to other people it compounds the wickedness that much more.

All of these points certainly help us to understand that Sodom’s evil was more severe than that of Egypt’s.

However, based on the above description of Sodom’s reaction to being smitten with blindness and the Sforno’s comment thereupon, we can perhaps suggest another, more fundamental difference between Sodom and Egypt.

When Hashem smote Pharaoh and his household in response to abducting Sarah, Pharaoh’s response was, “…and now here is your wife – take [her] and go (12:19).” Although not exactly the height of altruism, this response is a clear expression of Pharaoh’s recognition that he cannot, under any circumstances, continue along this path of conduct. To a certain degree, he had a positive response to the potch that was sent to him from Heaven.

The people of Sodom, on the other hand, responded in a manner that was in stark contrast; they pressed on in their attempt to achieve their evil plans. They paid not the slightest bit of attention to the Heavenly wrath that they were experiencing; to them, it was as if nothing happened! This is an expression of evil to the core. The whole nature of Sodom was evil; without a trace of goodness left in them. Evil had permeated their being through and through. Therefore, Avraham could not allow himself to benefit from them even one iota, and that is why that society had to be utterly destroyed.

Our Sages teach us that one of the virtues by which one can acquire Torah is by loving rebuke. Throughout life, we often put in our best effort to do things right (whether regarding health, livelihood, family, etc.) only to be faced with difficulties, frustrations, hardships, etc. It is imperative that we realize that all such setbacks and difficulties that we experience in life are sent to us from Above in order to send us a message that we need to try to examine and improve our ways. By approaching life with this outlook we will be doing a great deal to achieve the purpose for which we were created. And, at the same time we will feel a much deeper and more profound sense of purpose in our lives as we recognize that even the annoyances and hardships of life have been sent to us for a specific purpose – that being to awaken us to improve and constantly climb the ladder towards achieving good.

Based on the insight of Reb Avraham Hoschander

A Good Laugh
by Nesanel Yoel Safran

From this week’s Torah Portion

Everyone enjoys a good laugh — but not every laugh is necessarily good. While humor can be used in a positive way to make people feel good, there is also a negative kind of humor that makes fun of people and puts others down.

This week’s Torah portion alludes to both kinds of laughter, as we learn about the birth of our ancestor, Isaac (21:3), whose Hebrew name, Yitzchak, means laughter. His name refers to the laughing joy people felt when his mother, Sarah, already an old woman, gave birth to him after so many years of childlessness. On the other hand, we learn about Ishmael (21:9), who was so involved with mocking, hurtful, and dangerous ‘jokes’ that he had to leave his father’s home.

In our story, a boy learns that everything that gets a laugh isn’t necessarily funny.

“This isn’t funny, Jon,” said Gary with a frown, pointing to the piece of paper stuck on his gym locker for all the guys to see. It was a funny looking caricature of Gary.

“No? So why did everyone laugh?” Jon retorted.

Gary was at a loss for words, and ripped the unflattering picture off the locker and stormed out of the locker room.

“The kid’s got a problem if he can’t take a joke,” Jon said with a shrug. So maybe he had drawn him a little shorter and fatter than he really was, but that was what a caricature artist does! Besides, the picture was definitely funny.

Jon Sherman had liked to draw ever since he could remember, and he was good at it. Lately he had discovered that by making a few simple changes in a drawing, he could make hilarious caricatures of people and get everyone to laugh … everyone except the person his drawings made fun of.

Later that day, Jon was daydreaming in chemistry class. The teacher, Mr. Kenney, tried hard to keep the kids interested, and he was very entertaining, going as far as speaking in funny imitation voices to get his points across. But today Jon just couldn’t get into it.

He tried to pretend he was interested and take notes like the rest of the class, but soon enough his notes began to transform into doodles, and he found himself sketching the teacher. ‘Gee, I never noticed his buck teeth before,’ he thought as he sketched in an enormous pair of front teeth that could make Bugs Bunny jealous. ‘And look at all those wrinkles…‘

By the time he finished, he had Mr. Kenney looking like some strange sort of cross between a walrus and a walnut!

“Hey, let me see!” whispered his buddy, Daniel, who had caught a glance at the ‘masterpiece’ from the next desk over. Jon signed it with a flourish and quickly slipped him the page under the desk when the teacher wasn’t looking. The drawing got passed around to a few other kids before it got back to Jon, giving the guys a good smile.

As the class was about to end, Mr. Kenney asked everybody to turn in their homework sheets from the night before. Jon turned in his paper and, like the rest of the kids, started packing up his things to make a quick bolt to the lunchroom when the bell would ring. But as he put away his notebook, he was puzzled to see that his homework was still there. Didn’t he just hand his homework in?

Suddenly Jon felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach as he frantically searched through his papers for the cartoon he had drawn of the teacher that was suddenly nowhere to be found.

‘Oh, no!’ He had mistakenly passed it in to the teacher instead of his homework!! Jon started sweating as he saw Mr. Kenney casually leafing through the papers, and his heart nearly stopped when the teacher paused, looked strangely at one of the sheets, and then looked straight at him!

“Jon, please see me after class” he whispered.

‘That’s it. I’m thrown out of school, maybe for life!’ he thought in a panic. ‘Why did I ever draw that stupid picture? It really wasn’t funny at all.’ He promised himself that he would never make an insulting caricature again, if only he could somehow survive this nightmare.

The bell rang way too quickly, and Jon made his way, like a condemned man, to the front of the classroom. The teacher, looked him in the eye, and said, “Jon, I think you made a mistake and handed in the wrong paper, didn’t you?”

The boy, too scared to speak, weakly nodded his head.

The teacher held up the drawing, looked it over, and asked, “Do you think this is funny?” Jon squirmed, and shook his head. But the teacher surprised him. “No, that’s not true, it’s very funny, I wanted to laugh myself when I saw it. It’s funny, but it’s wrong.”

Jon, all confused but happy that he hadn’t been kicked out of school yet, perked up his ears. “I know all about humor.” Mr. Kenney went said. “You know those imitations I do? I didn’t learn them over night. I’ve been doing them since I was your age. I used to do the funniest imitations of the nerdy kids and teachers in school. Boy could I make my friends howl!”

Jon started to smile, but then Mr. Kenney got this real serious look in his eye and banged his fist down on the desk to make a point.

“But I stopped! Because I realized that not everything that made people laugh was right to do, and that my jokes weren’t really jokes at all, but put-downs in disguise.”

There were a long few seconds of silence. “As you see, I still do funny imitations, but to teach people, not to hurt them.” He leaned forward toward the boy. “Jon, I’m going to make a deal with you. I’m not going to have you suspended, though I could. But you have to promise me that from now on, you only use your talent to help people, and not hurt them. And to get you off to the right start, I want you to stay after school and come up with an absolutely hilarious caricature of ‘Mr. Molecule,’ the topic of tomorrow’s class, and if it’s good, there will be more. Is it a deal?”

Jon’s head was spinning. Not only wasn’t he getting thrown out, but the teacher was going to let him draw! He agreed, and apologized for his hurtful drawing, and was looking forward to beginning his new career as ‘no more put-down’ artist.

Joke of the Week

Leah gives 25 cents to her daughter Sarah. The little girl goes outside and returns ten minutes later without the coin. Wondering what she has done with the money, Leah asks, “Where is the quarter I gave you, my darling?”

“I gave it to an old lady,” says Sarah.

“Oh, I’m so proud of you Sarah. That’s a very important mitzvah you did. Tomorrow I am going to give you a dollar.”

Sure enough, the next day, Leah gives Sarah a whole dollar and she returns a little while later without the bill.

“What did you do with the dollar today Sarah?”

“Today I saw the same old lady,” begins Sarah as her mother beams at her, “and I gave her a whole dollar for an even bigger ice cream. I love performing the mitzvah of eating ice cream.”