By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend, Purim in Thailand was AMAZING thank G-d! For me personally, the grand finale was the WhatsApp messages that kept coming all night. I don’t mean the thank-you’s for the party and that kind of stuff. The community Purim party at the Rembrandt Hotel was fantastic! Hundreds of people may G-d bless us all, joyous atmosphere, fantastic food (see below notice about new café/bakery/kosher-shop opening in Sukhumvit) and inspiring Torah thoughts. Indeed, there were plenty of gratitude notes, and I send a special thank you to those who said thank you. The flurry of messages was in reaction to a selfie I had sent out. At the end of our community Purim party I saw one of the young men who was helping with the security arrangements. Wanting to give the young man’s father some nachas, I took a selfie and sent it to him. And what I discovered the next morning, is that I had also sent it to 256 other people. Apparently without realizing it, I sent it to a WhatsApp list I had compiled some time back when we were doing a crowdfund ‘giving day’. Two hundred and fifty-six people got this random picture from me. Each of them sure that I had sent it personally to them. Most responded with ‘am I supposed to know the guy?’. Some were sure they knew the guy and had just forgotten who he was. They wrote ‘please remind me who that is standing next to you’. Some even tried guessing the name, they were that sure that they had the person before. Others just sent a question mark (or two or three ???,s). My favorite response was from one of my friends. He wrote, ‘Send regards! And please don't tell him I have no idea who he is’. An interesting social experiment. But it wasn’t at all planned from my side as an experiment. It could have been a major mess-up. I thanked G-d from the depth of my soul that the message I had inadvertently sent out was simply a selfie. It was not some private correspondence that went unintentionally public. It gave me a very clear message though. How absolutely careful we have to be during this exciting information age. In the olden days it was a bit simpler. We had to watch what we said with our mouths. Our Sages taught that our mouths are formed in a way that reminds us to be cautious about what we say. The teeth and lips can be viewed as two gates that control one’s speech. The Torah places much emphasis on what comes out of our mouth. Words are very powerful. They can build and they can demolish. I am going to digress here. Take it as a Purim meandering… Parents, must pay particular attention to the power of their words. It is so sad to see when a parent verbally pushes down their child. ‘You are such a klotz’ may seem like a statement made in exasperation. It slipped out of your mouth without you even noticing. You didn’t mean it to be a clinical assessment of your child’s motor skills. But too often this kind of speech turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy and shapes the kind of adult our children turn into. On the other hand, you wouldn’t want to lie to your child and tell him he is a Yehudi Menuhin if he is really an amateur beginner violin player. You should though, find uplifting and empowering things to say to your child. Find something that you can give your child a compliment about. It will make a world of difference. It is a major factor in whether a person will grow up with low self-esteem or healthy self-esteem. I cringe and cry when someone confides to me that their parents said they were ‘a mistake’. What kind of emotional strength are you giving a child by essentially telling them that they were unwanted. One of the most critical parts of my work is to tell people how absolutely essential they are. How much they are irreplaceable. As humans. G-d doesn’t create ‘spare parts’. It’s not like there are just a couple of extra billion people kicking around. If G-d put a soul down here on this world, it is for a reason. Whether your parents consciously thought about the reason for bringing another child into this world or not, is immaterial. If you are here, it means that Hashem wants you and ‘needs’ you here. You need to have patience though. Sometimes it takes time till one gets to see what their contribution to the community is. This is one of the powerful lessons of the Megillah which we just read. Esther was in the court of Achashverosh for five years. Long painful years. For a virtuous Jewish maiden who was forced to be the Queen to a Persian king of dubious character it must have been excruciating. Five years later, Mordechai asks Esther to intervene on behalf of her people. She sends back a message that Achashverosh may be her husband but he is unpredictable and she would be endangering her very life by trying to approach him without being invited. Mordechai told her the fateful words that ring so loud till today (Esther 4, 14) For if you will remain silent at this time, relief and salvation will come to the Jews from another source, and you and the house of your father will be lost. And who knows if it is not for just such a time that you reached this royal position." One of the sometimes overlooked details of this story is the fact that Mordechai went every single day to the palace gates to enquire about Esther and see to her welfare. Mordechai’s persistent support gave Esther the needed strength. Can you fathom the depth of that commitment? Mordechai came every single day for 5 years to check up on Esther, an orphan who was taken against her will to the palace. By doing this, Mordechai showed that there is someone who cares for her, loves her, and that she is never alone This is what a true Jewish leader does. A true leader imbues and inspires those around them with the knowledge that they are essentially good and that they have a unique contribution to make. Albeit it may not always be obvious. It may take many years. But G-d does not create anything redundant. Not even a blade of grass. Certainly not a human being. The Rebbe, in our generation, reinforced this critical message and made it central to the mission of the Shluchim he sent around the world. Tell every Jew that G-d is waiting for their mitzvah. The community is not complete without their unique persona. No Jew is too ‘small’ to be a critical member of Am Yisrael. For the Jewish nation in its entirety, is like a Torah scroll. Every Jew is like one letter in that one Sefer Torah. If even one letter is missing from the Torah, it renders it invalid. My dear friend, take the opportunity to be one of those who builds people and strengthens them. You don’t to have a degree, no money needed either. All you need is a sincere desire to help someone else. Your uplifting words can make a person. Just as negative words can G-d forbid break a person. You can do it! Your words can make a difference! End of digression. Back to my WhatsApp mistake…. The mouth used to be the main thing we had to look out for. To use it for good. not for negativity. Today it’s our index finders as well. With the flick of a finger a lot of emotional damage can be wreaked. By the same token, self-esteem can be built by that same smart phone. ‘Likes’, empowering emoticons, inspiring pictures and videos all of these are amazing tools to build people up. You really have to be careful with this. I learned this lesson. Thank G-d not the ‘hard way’. Rather the ‘fun way’. My apologies for the infringement on the time and attention of those two hundred and fifty six recipients. Most of them were in Purim mode and more open to being laid back and ‘chilled out’. Actually, part of me is happy that it happened. It gave me a chance to touch base with a few hundred people I wouldn’t have made contact with. Okay, I am going to go clean here and be unabashedly honest. Probably this unintentional message was sent because I was operating my smartphone ‘under the influence’. I was under the joyous influence of Purim. Enhanced by the lechayim’s I had toasted at the Purim party & farbrengen. That is probably what made this mistake much more prone to happening. I haven’t searched for studies on this topic, but I think it would be common sense that one should be extra careful about operating their smart phone when ‘under the influence’. When one’s judgement is impaired, it is easy to post pictures and write texts that may prove embarrassing afterwards. I thought it was amazing that one day before Purim when we drink wine and spirits this very significant breakthrough was announced. Do you think Volvo executives timed the announcement for Purim? The saying ‘don’t drink and drive’ has become an ironclad rule in society. It is clear beyond clear, that when one drinks one is forbidden to drive. There used to be a huge billboard on a building in Bangkok that read DRINK DON’T DRIVE. I don’t care much for that messaging as it is clearly promoting drinking alcohol which is not a positive message. However, on Purim that saying makes some sense. The Talmud says one should celebrate with ‘drink’ on Purim. Click here for some important clarifications about this. The Torah strict instructions about protecting one’s life, automatically leads to the next part of the statement. ‘Don’t drive’! Technically, the smartphones could implement such a feature as well. There could be a feature where the phone would shut down its broadcasting if the operator was under the influence of a mood altering substance. It could probably also figure out if you are angry based on certain criteria and limit some functionality on your phone if you so desired. (Is this an idea for a new app? Or is it perhaps out there already?). For the meantime though, till those features are added, we gotta rely on the ‘old-fashioned’ way. Which is to think before we speak. And before we tweet. And before we post pictures or send WhatsApp’s. This ‘mishap’ also reminded me of another very exciting possibility that technology provides. The Chasidic Masters said that when Mashiach will come, it will be broadcast in the newspapers. Today, our virtual newspapers and transmission of news is yet swifter and further reaching than the newspapers of yore. May we merit to get tweets, WhatsApp’s. Facebook posts and Instagram’s (and all the other platforms I haven’t mentioned) that MASHIACH IS HERE!!! AMEN Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Yosef Kantor
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