A Sign of Life | Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer

Someone from our Shul sadly had a heart attack and was rushed to the ICU. I ran to the ICU to visit this person and the ICU is not an easy place to be in. It’s difficult. There are people hooked up to tubes and machines and lots of different sounds and beeping. But I particularly was transfixed by the monitor. I saw the cardiac rhythm. I saw the ups and downs and ups and downs. I was getting a little dizzy from the movement, the ups and downs and ups and downs, when suddenly, those ups and downs turned into a flat line and I said, Ah. I was relieved. How beautiful, how serene, how tranquil, how peaceful. When all of a sudden, there was a whole commotion and a tumult, and the doctors and nurses are running and you hear: Code blue! Code blue! And shortly after that, I learned that as long as you have the movements, ups and downs, it meant the person was alive. The heart was beating. And the flat line represented the fact that the person was... no heart. Could have been dead. And that's us. You see, as long as we're alive, we have the ups and downs, we have the highs and lows. It's not easy. Because an animal, in the holy tongue, is called Beheima. Says the Maharal: בהמה is a contraction of בה מה. What is in it, it is. It is genetically pre-programmed. An animal is not going to change. An animal doesn't have the challenges, the temptations. An animal doesn't have the struggles. But a human being, in the holy tongue, is Adam. Says the Arizal, א-דם. Dam is the blood. Blood is the impulse. Blood is the temptations. It’s those struggles. It's the highs and lows and ups and downs. But we have the Alef on top of the Dam. The Alef is Elokus. We have divinity. We have holiness. And it's up to us to be able to persevere through that struggle, to be able to get through, and we could get through. We have the strength. Hashem loves us. Hashem believes in us. We could do it. The pasuk says in the end of Parshas Emor, The literal meaning is a person that strikes an animal, that attacks an animal, you have to pay restitution for whatever you did to the animal. Says the Or Yesharim, ומכה נפש בהמה The person that strikes down that Nefesh Beheima inside, because we're all a composite of the Adam is a composite of the Beheima and the Elokus, the Dam, when you strike it down, ישלמנה, you achieve, you are working to Shleimus, to perfection. And that's what Vayimaen is about. It's about the ups and downs, the highs and lows. You may have had a low yesterday, you may have had a low today, but that is a sign of life. If you don't have that low and everything stops, that's death. It's the objective of understanding that highs and lows, you're going to get through it. You're going to persevere. You're going to master this. Because as long as we got that moving, we're alive.