It is ליל ערב ראש השנה, and I would love to be in touch and say ‘Thank you’ to all my good friends, who have taken the time to read and perhaps be inspired, with my [sometimes jumbled] thoughts in ‘Food for thought’.
‘Dip the apple in the Honey’ are the lyrics that easily roll off our lips. But what more food for thought is there in this ‘sweet’ minhag that can perhaps inspire us to greater heights? Years ago I heard a beautiful thought from R’ Yehuda Leib Lewis shlita, presently of Manchester. [1]Chazal teach us that any [2]derivative of a non-kosher species, is as triefe as the source it comes from. Therefore the milk of a lioness, or colouring made from the eye of a whale is also unfit for our consumption. Bees are as treife as they come, so why is their honey something that we are permitted to enjoy all your round, and on Rosh Hashonah itself we are even encouraged to do so? Chazal explain, that a Bee doe not produce honey in the same way as a Cow produces milk. Honey is not a derivative of a bee, it is manufactured by them through a system of regurgitation, but does not come from their bodies.
We stand and feel totally inadequate in front of Hashem Yisborach, what hope have I to speak to Hashem during these Awesome days, and have my Tefillos answered ? Like Yeshaya Hanovi said[3] ‘Ki ish tmay sefosayim onoichi’ .
But then we take some Honey – as if to say ‘Ribono shel Oilam, You created the sweetness of Honey and permitted us to partake of it although it produced by a non-kosher tamei creature, for the reason as stated above – it is not their derivative , it has only been refined by the bee. So to, although my being maybe ‘non-kosher and even tamey’, please accept my heartfelt tefillos and let them not be deemed as defective and despised, despite coming from one as imperfect as me’…
Whilst writing this, a further thought occurred to me about the possible connection of honey with Tefillah.
A Honey bee visits 50-100 flowers during one collection trip. Two million flowers have to be visited to produce around 450g of honey. A single Honey Bee produces about one twelfth of a tea spoon of Honey, during its life time of 6 weeks! A hive of bees have to fly over 55,000 miles to produce under a Kilogram of Honey!
OK ‘Moh rabu maseichoh Hashem’, where does this leave me?
To produce a fine product like Honey in the physical world, requires this herculean effort on behalf of so many tiny creatures. What is required of me, to produce one good heartfelt tefillah fitting to be presented to be oileh al shulchan malochim - Melech Malchei Hamalochim on the anniversary of His Coronation day?
No comments:
Post a Comment