Grape Jelly Kiddush

[music] >> My in-laws have a family friend in Atlanta who's a traveling neurologist. He has a fascinating job. He travels from town to town going to places that don't have a neurologist and he fills in treating patients who [music] otherwise wouldn't have access to that kind of care. And one week he's in some small town staying in a hotel and Shabbos is coming and he assumes that he'll just run to a local store and pick up some kosher grape juice for Kiddush. But he searches and searches and nothing. There's no kosher grape juice, there's no wine, nothing. And suddenly it hits him. He has no way to make Kiddush. Now for most people, that's where the story would end. Okay, there's no grape juice, what do you want me to do? But not for him. He wants to make Kiddush. Not because he has to, but because he wants that connection. So he goes down to the hotel lobby and he starts looking around. And [music] then he sees it. Those little Smucker's grape jelly packets and he grabs one and he goes back upstairs and he mixes it with some water and he tries to reconstitute it into something resembling grape juice. And he pours it into a cup, closes his eyes and he makes Kiddush. Now let me ask you something. Was he Yotzei? Probably not. Halachically it's a stretch, maybe even more than a stretch. But maybe that's not the point. Because there's a concept in Judaism that's almost hard to understand. The Gemara in Kiddushin says, "Kishuv Lasos Mitzvah V'en Lo Asah V'en Lo Asah Maleh Libo K'ilu Asah." If a person tries to do a Mitzvah and something out of his control stops him, it's considered as if he did it. And that begs a question. What do you mean it's as if he did it? Mitzvahs are physical actions. Either you put on Tefillin or you didn't. Either you made Kiddush or you didn't. Either your house has a Mezuzah on it or it doesn't. How can you not do the action and still get credit like you did? The answer changes everything. Because Mitzvahs are not about the physical action. They're about what the action creates inside of you. Hashem wants your heart. Rachmana Liba Ba'i. The action is just the vehicle. The real Mitzvah is the longing, the effort, the ratzon. The part of you that says, "I want this. I'm trying." That man in a hotel room mixing jelly with water, that's not someone failing to do a Mitzvah, that's someone revealing what a Mitzvah actually is. [music] Because the greatest tragedy isn't when someone doesn't do a Mitzvah, it's when someone does the Mitzvah and there's no heart behind it. Perfect action but zero connection. And the greatest success, someone who wants it so badly that even when he can't do it properly, he's still trying, he's still reaching, he's still showing Hashem, "This matters to me." Because at the end of the day, Hashem isn't looking at what you did. He's looking [music] at who you became while trying to do it.