1 Iyar 5759 / April 17, 1999 Parshat Tazria - Metzorah

Give me one word in English for the French word "chic." Chic is something so quintessentially French that to translate it into English would require a truckload of adjectives.

The characteristics of a nation are evidenced in its language. In every language there are words which cannot be directly translated into any other tongue.

There's a word in Yiddish (and Modern Hebrew) - to fargin. To fargin means to feel pleasure at someone else's success without the slightest twinge of jealousy.

Happiness depends on the way we look at life. We can see our glass as half empty or half full. It all depends on how you use your eyes.

In this week's parsha, there is a lengthy description of a spiritual disease called tzara'as. One of the shortcomings which brought on this affliction was the failure to fargin, a narrowness of the eye, a constriction of the vision.

When a person focuses on reality in the correct fashion, he realizes that there is nothing in this world which is mere coincidence.

For example, let's say my next door neighbor and I both buy lottery tickets. He buys No. 17756233 and I buy No. 17756234. Two weeks later, I wake up and hear him shouting at the top of his voice "I won ten million dollars! I won ten million dollars!"

If my eyes are focused on reality correctly, immediately I should feel tremendous happiness for him, because I had no chance of winning the lottery at all. Even though I had the next ticket, it could have been ticket number 00001 for all the difference it would have made.

Happiness is understanding that what G-d decrees for someone is that person's and always was his. There's no "coming close" to getting what is allotted for someone else. To think otherwise is self-delusion. Realizing this is one of the secrets of happiness in this world.

Interestingly, the words in Hebrew for both the "affliction of tzara'as" and the word for "pleasure" are spelled with exactly the same letters: nun, gimmel, ayin. The affliction of tzara'as is called nega. Pleasure in Hebrew is oneg. The only difference between these two words is where you put the letter ayin.

Ayin in Hebrew means "eye." If you put the ayin in the wrong place, you end up with a spiritual disease - a nega. If you put the ayin in the right place - if you put your eye in the right place - you have pleasure - oneg. The pleasure that comes from farginning -from looking at the world through the lens of reality.

Selections from classical Torah sources which express the special relationship between the People of Israel and Eretz Yisrael Beit Shemesh This large development town which has become, for many religious Jews, a virtual suburb of Jerusalem was historically tied to the capital of Israel in another way. When the Philistines took the Holy Ark from the Israelites they were so frightened by the havoc which Heaven visited upon them that they sent the Ark back to Israel on a wagon drawn by animals going their way without a human driver. The wagon headed for Beit Shemesh where it was received with great rejoicing. From Beit Shemesh the Ark was eventually carried to Kiryat Yearim, and then to Jerusalem under the direction of King David.

Plant your garden with patience and it will sprout understanding, because...

Every Friday I prepare a list of the jobs that need to be done in preparation for Shabbat and divide them up among my children. The list is then posted on the refrigerator with the child's initials next to each of his or her jobs. It is a pretty good system and works fairly well, but there are always the last minute jobs I forget about. Then my husband or I grab the nearest child and ask him to do that particular task.

Sometimes, though, there are misunderstandings. Last spring, for example, my husband asked my eleven year old to put away the gardening hoe that had been left out. She cheerfully agreed. A half an hour later when he was ready to leave for shul and he saw the hoe still out, he hit the roof. "Didn't you tell me you had put the hoe away!"

My daughter came running to the front door insisting that she had put the hoe away and pointed to the garden hose neatly coiled around the garden faucet. And so we learned in our household, where English is not the first language for all of our children, there are many situations where we need to judge their deeds with the benefit of the doubt.