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Your seventy-something aunt saves wrapping paper, glass jars, and plastic shopping bags. She reuses them, as well as the cotton that comes stuffed into the top of medicine and vitamin bottles. She never has more than one light on in the house, and she is known to mumble something like "We don't need to make the electric company rich." Everyone in the family rolls their eyes. The best of you call her "thrifty," others call her "frugal," and a few shake their heads about "depression mentality" even though the depression was over more than half a century ago.
Your next-door neighbor spent her junior year abroad in Europe. She was inspired by the tremendous respect Europeans have for the environment. The streets are immaculately clean, nobody uses "disposable" dishes, and everyone recycles.
Now that your neighbor has returned home, she is trying to continue to be ecologically minded. She travels almost exclusively on public transportation, saves junk mail to use as scrap paper, and when she's washing her dishes (of course, she doesn't use throwaway) she first soaps all of the dishes and then turns on the faucet and rinses them so as to conserve water. She reuses wrapping paper, glass jars, and plastic shopping bags, as well as the cotton that comes stuffed into the top of medicine and vitamin bottles.
You marvel at your neighbor's devotion to the environment and resolve to emulate some of her earth-friendly behavior.
Is there a difference between the actions of your aunt and that of your neighbor? Not really. What separates them is their perception and motivation.
A similar scenario can be used to illustrate attitudes to the observance of mitzvot (or our attitudes towards those who observe them).
One person views Torah and mitzvot as restrictive. "How can you limit yourself by doing a, b or c (or not doing x, y, or z)?" he asks. "Shabbat, for example," he continues. "You can't watch t.v., you can't talk on the telephone, you can't surf the net."
But another person perceives Shabbat differently. "Prohibitive?" he responds. "On Shabbat I have permission to do so many things! I can actually relax and enjoy a meal without being disturbed by the telephone. I have permission to read a book without caring if my stocks went up or down. My fingers don't itch and twitch to flip the switch on my computer this one day a week. What a pleasure!"
Yes, with the right attitude Torah and Mitzvot can carry us to unimaginable heights and distances.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Shalom M. Paltiel
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