SHABBOS TABLE TALK - Parshas Bo 5770
I hope the ideas contained below, will provide you with some topics for discussion, at your Shabbos table.
A friend of mine, Rabbi Baruch Dunner, who is probably well known to many Stenecourt members, told me the following story. He visited Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky when the Rav was over ninety years old. Rabbi Dunner put to him, the words put to a number of elderly sages, in the Talmud,-“Bameh He-erachto Yomim” To what do you attribute your length of days.
In reply, Rabbi Kaminetsky related how all the young men of his generation were called up for service in the Russian army. They tried all kinds of methods to get out of it. Although the official conscription age was eighteen, Rabbi Kaminetsky was summoned when he was only seventeen. The officer asked him how old are you? He answered seventeen. The officer pointed his finger at him and said you are telling a lie. Rabbi Kaminetsky said to him Ihave never told a lie in my life. His sincerity must have communicated itself to the Russian, because he let him go. Rabbi Kaminetsky told this story to Rabbi Dunner, and added (this, when he was over ninety) I think this is still the case, meaning that he had still never told a lie in his life, and this was why he had merited such longevity.
This honesty and integrity was one of the hallmarks of Rabbi Kaminetsky`s life. I know of many other examples of it. It ought to be the hall mark of every Jew`s life.
The Jewish people were saved from Egypt because of four merits. One of them was the fact that they did not betray one another. The Medrash (Yalkut Shimoni Emor 657) brings as a proof of this, the verse from this week`s Sedra, “Please speak in the ears of the Jewish people, and they should borrow from their neighbours, gold and silver”. Rabbi Matisyihu Salamon explains; the Jewish people had actually been told a year earlier, that when they would come out of Egypt, they would borrow gold and silver. The whole Jewish nation knew about this for a year, but not one of them revealed it to anybody else. Honesty, trustworthiness, and confidentiality, go together. By demonstrating these qualities, they merited to be saved.
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Question on the Parshah;
Why do we wrap the Afikoman in a cloth on Seder night? The reason is based on a Posuk in this week`s Sedra.
Answer;
We do this to remind us, that when the Jewish people left Egypt, they wrapped the leftovers of their of their matza and maror in a cloth , and took them with them. This is described in Chapter 12 Verse 34.
SOURCES; Shulchan Aruch.
