Envy is one of the traits listed by the Mishna that will remove a person from the world. One reason for this is because there can be no fulfillment to his envy , therefore the envy just boils within him causing pain. There is a semingly contradicory mishna which says the jealous of scholars wisdom increases wisdom, this means someone is gaining from jealousy. We are to learn from this that one can truly gain from envy when appropriately applied, when it will better yourself , not when it involves insufficient meaningless things.

A Mishna in Avos says “if a person tells you, I have worked but not succeded, dont believe him , if he tells you he has succeded and not worked, dont believe him, but if he tells you I have worked and I have succedded then believe him.”  When something comes to you without any effort, its not true succes and wont stay with you. On the other hand those things which you do work hard for, even if you have yet to succeded you will, and that will be true success that stays with you.

Reb Simcha Zissel explains a technique of the Yetzer Harah (evil inclination) ,  he cautions saying although sometimes doing mitzvos and keeping away from avarot may be difficult, its good not to say to yourself oh this is so hard, by doing that you’re already weakining your stance and beginning to give in.  When we  realize even a tiny percentage of the mitzvah’s true value we’d realize that gouing towards the mitzvah and away from avarot isn’t much of a difficult desicion.

There is a posuk in the torah that says “this is the torah, a person who dies in a tent” , the Rabbi’s say that this is trying to teach us the way to acquire torah, one should be willing to “kill themself” (as the expression goes) for it .  Willing to go to all extents of their thought capabilities to accomplish the learning of torah.

There is a Posuk in Mishlei (Proverbs, written by King Solomon) that reads: “A path of life awaits the wise man above so that his soul turn away from Sheol (hell) beneath”  This is explained as telling us the way to keep out of hell, by continually striving upwards, above and not settling for anything below the top.  Life is similar to a down escalator, one certainly can climb up on it, but if there is not continuous effort and climbing in a matter of seconds he will reach the bottom and not get up to the top.

In this week’s Parsha we learn that when a woman gives birth she becomes tamai (ritually impure) but why should that be?  When a person dies the corpse is the highest level tumaah (ritual impurity) that exists.  A human has such a tremendous capacity for kedusha (holiness) which ends at death.  Therefore the absence of that kedusha (with the departing of the soul) leaves a vacuum which must be filled.  The tremendous void is filled with that tremendous level of tumaah.  When a woman gives birth, a person that had been inside of her is now gone.  That leaves a spiritual void.  It is a lower level of emptiness, because that baby is only potential and has not actually fulfilled any mitzvos.  Let us strive to become so great that when we die we leave a massive emptiness behind.

There is a general rule that one is not allowed to rely on a miracle.  Additionally the spiritual world runs by the same rules as the physical one.  That being the case there would be times that a person may have removed himself from any possibility of succeeding in his spiritual growth due to his many sins.  Yet in this instance not only are we allowed to rely on a miracle, we must! Who among us has not sinned and yet we all must believe that we still have the opportunity to grow and succeed - because we do and we will!!!

We may ask, what do we gain by being Jewish.  It would be much easier for us not to be, rather than having 613 commandments we would have only 7 requirements.  When we see a cow in a field she seems to be extremely content and happy with her patch of grass and everything else that it may want.  We may at times wish to be that cow and have it “made in the shade”.  If however we were to step back and really look at it, we certainly prefer being human.

There is a verse in Shir Hashirim (the Song of Songs) that states “I am asleep, but my heart is awake. The voice of my beloved knocks, “open for me”" Using the standard understanding of this holiest of writings, that the Beloved is HaShem, and the I is us (the Jew) maybe we can view this posuk as a reminder that though we may seem to have given up all vestiges of our relationship with HaShem (I am asleep) we do not have the capability to totally shut it down (my heart is awake) and HaShem will keep sending us messages to return to Him.  Let’s listen and open up for our Beloved.

There is a Gemara that tells us that when Moshiach comes and HaShem slaughters the Yetzer Horah (evil inclination) both the tzadikim (righteous people) and reshaim (wicked folk) will cry. If both wicked and rightous weep, then what makes the difference? An answer brought is that crying and remorse is simply not enough, one can cry and bemoan all the wicked acts he does, and remain evil.  Action is required, we must feel the pain of our misdeeds and then correct them.  Only then can we change from wicked to righteous.