Rabbi Minkowicz Weekly Torah Lesson Parsha Chaya (Chayei) Sarah October 13 2013

it's time for rabbi minkowitz weekly tour lesson a place where life's most difficult questions are answered here with his spiritual perspective and insight rabbi minkowitz welcome to our weekly torah portion this week's parasite is practical today's question we're going to be discussing is how to combat darkness challenges and struggles so in this week's torah portion takes place the first shidduch that's recorded in the torah where avraham sends out his servant eliezer to find a shidduchi yitzhak yitzhak as you can tell you can imagine was waiting for eliezer to come back with his potential bride and the torah tells us something very interesting about yitzhak the torah tells us that went out to pray in the field and the torah specific and it says when did he go out the torah says he went out lyfnos eric before it became dark and then the torah tells us yitzhak picks up his eyes but yar and he sees and there were camels that were coming so why is it that he noticed the camels versus noticing the person on the camel so the rebbe explains a fascinating concept and he says as follows there is morning there is afternoon in other words towards evening and then there's the evening and the rebbe explains like this morning it's light it's bright what does that resemble kindness you can see everything evening it's already dark that's more judgment in other words in more in the morning you have the attribute of khasid of kindness which is paramount and the evening is when you have the attribute of justice when it's ed when it's kindness we all enjoy life when you have the evening when it's judgment then you know you have to do in a moment of judgment but the rebbe says the hardest moment and the most challenging moment is when you have the switch from khasa to gura when day is leaving and night is coming yitzchak realizes that lyft noise aerith it's coming now the transition between day and evening between khasid and guru so now youtube says now is the time to pray because that's where all the challenges take place in that transitional moment so yitzhak goes out to pray what does he pray he prays obviously he's waiting and he's nervous to make sure he gets a good sadaq and he sees camels are coming why doesn't he look and see that there's a bride on there so the rebbe explains with the fascinating piece of talmud the talmud in tractate tells us that if somebody is sleeping and in his dream he dreams of camels so he should know that a serious judgment was against him and the judgment was overcome and he was saved from the judgment so the rebbe tells us that yitzhak saw in this challenging moment here lies the future of the jewish people who he's going to marry who is going to build a family and claudius role will come from so yitzhak was nervous because it was most challenging of times and therefore he goes out and he prays he prayed so strong what happened god blessed him that he was able to see camels even though he was looking for his bride but by seeing the camels first he knew that all the obstacles and all the challenges and all the dangers was taken out of the way and now he could enjoy a wife with true peace and true happiness so to respond to the initial question how do you combat darkness struggles and challenges learn from yitzhak in the most challenging times go out for a few minutes and pray to god and if you go and pray to god just like gitzhak was answered same thing each and every one of us when we turn to god in prayer god will take away all our challenges and we'll be blessed with a good life thank you so much for joining our weekly torah thought we have classes here at khabad thursday morning at 11 o'clock muhammad gives a beautiful posture class thursday evening at 7 30 there's a class in kabbalah based on the teachings of the arizaw saturday morning we have a kabbalah class at nine o'clock based on the teachings of the rebbe followed by davening and followed by a kiddish we look forward to seeing you at one of the classes and we definitely look forward to seeing you next week on our weekly torah thought shabbat shalom it's steinomite