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Torah lesson or party, which is more attractive? The answer will surprise you too - Walla! The digital gemara

2020-12-09T14:04:09.298Z


Social recreation or Torah lesson? The answer to this question indicates social influences, and the way to balance them


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Torah lesson or party, which is more attractive?

The answer will surprise you too

Social recreation or Torah lesson?

The answer to this question indicates social influences, and the way to balance them

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  • The digital gemara

  • Rabbi Chaim David Kowalski

  • party

  • The daily page

In collaboration with the Digital Gemara

Wednesday, 09 December 2020, 07:00

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Pesach Tractate Page 17 (Photography and Editing: Walla! NEWS)

Human beings live in society, are influenced by it and also influence it.

How do you best balance these two directions of influence?

The Talmud in Tractate Pesachim, page 17, tells of an examination made by the Prophet Hagai to the priests in the Temple, at the beginning of the Second Temple period, during which he asked them two questions. 



The first, a person who holds on the wing a garment of a sacred piece of sacrificial meat and touches it with ordinary foods - will they also be sanctified and be like her?

The answer of the priests was: no.

It is impossible to transfer holiness to other foods in this way.

The second question: An unclean person who touches those foods, will they be defiled?

The answer of the priests was: Yes.



What do we learn from this?

It is easier to transfer impurity than to transfer holiness.

An impurity that touches foods, affects them and defiles them, while sacred flesh that touches them, does not sanctify them.

Rabbi Chaim David Kowalski, presenter of the

digital gemara

, Explained that this is a significant point for our relationship with the company.

One should know that it is easier to convey negative effects than positive ones.

After all, what attracts more people - listening to a Torah lesson, or watching a movie with jokes or attending a party? 

There is a need to focus more on positive effects.

Children study Torah (Photo: Reuven Castro)

Which person is more popular - the one who encourages people to improve their behavior and work on the virtues, or the one who invites them to parties and do nonsense?

It is easier to get down than to get up.

This is how gravity works.

It is therefore easier to be pulled down after a negative effect, than to rise up following a positive effect.



When you understand this, you realize how important it is to beware of negative company.

No one can say she will not influence him.

Also for us and especially for our children, it is important to grow up in a positive, value-based, moral society, and not in a society that will cause us to deteriorate and adopt its forms of behavior, speech and thinking.

And if we are already in such an environment - be very careful, be aware of its power to influence us and resist it.



On the other hand, a positive effect is also possible - even if it is more severe.

The best way to protect yourself from a negative impact is to radiate a positive impact.

He who constantly works to make his environment better and more valuable, distributes Torah study, teaches others important things, sets a personal example for them - such a person is so immersed in good influence, that evil can not penetrate him.



The way to defend against negative influences, then, is to empower the positive, to be ourselves influencers of good, of holiness and spirituality, and thus we will be privileged to change society and not be changed by it.

Rabbi Chaim David Kowalski, presenter of the digital gemara (Photo: Walla! NEWS)

The daily video clip based on the daily page in Tractate Pesachim is part of a daily project known as the "Digital Gemara", an initiative led by Rabbi Kowalski, founder and head of the Daily Daf Maorot organization, in which each person can be part of a circle of hundreds of thousands around the world. One gemara a day, by watching a short daily video.

Want to join?

Enter the site.

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Source: walla

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