Baruch Sheamar is a bracha said during the morning prayer. It praises Hashem opening the section of Praises of Hashem. One interesting bracha is, “blessed is the one who decrees and upholds” , why are we blessing this, “decree” usually connotes a bad thing, and to uphold that bad decree would typically be a bad thing.  “and upholds” is referring to the person upon who the decree is against. Hashem will uphold that person to allow the to get through whatever trial or tribulation that may face.

A Moshel is given, there was a king , who built a huge tower, 100 stories high. He promised a  reward to  anyone who made it up the building. Many tried however noone made it past the 80th floor.  One day there was a big announcement, one guy had made it to the top! A huge celebration ensued and every came from across the nation to see the conqueror. When asked how he did it, the climber responded ” I had gone up 10 floors and wanted to quit, but I said to myself let go just 10 more before I quit, the same thing happened every 10 floors until the 80th, when I said to myself, let me go 1 more, beyond what everyone else did. I got to the 81st floor and took the elevator to the top”. We learn from this to do all we can, and when we think we can’t give anymore , try a little more, then Hashem will take you the rest of the way.

Each of us has our ups and downs we all go through periods when we are doing better in our spiritual existance and times when we are worse.  It can sometimes be very discouraging and we may feel that we should give up since we are not always doing as well as we would like.  It bears noting that Joshua who was chosen by G-d to be Moshe’s successor required encouragement.  In fact it was told to him in a fashion that implies that it was the only thing he needed to worry about.  We can all feel uplifted when we get down by the knowledge that even the greatest people need encouragement as do we.  Let just be sure to use those moments as a springboard to greatness!!!

This weeks Parsha opens up with the laws of Yifas Toar ( the laws pertaining to when a man in a war has a desire to be with a woman that he sees). There are specific guidelines as to how a man must behave, but under those guidelines she’s permitted to him. This may not be what we expected, that the Torah would allow us to do this. We learn something very important from this, the Torah gives us guidelines of how to act under all situations. Hashem who created the Torah and us, knows what we’re capable of withstanding and what we’re not capable of withstanding. So in a situation where something is forbidden its a proof that we have the ability to withstand that temptation.

The word “midos” means character traits,  there is a similar word in Hebrew “midod” which means measurements. In Hebrew when words sound the same, there is something that have in common, so what is the commonality between measurements and character traits. Each person is born with good and bad character traits, a person must weigh and measure for themselves when to use which of their character traits, and each person ultimately can be measured (”midod”) by the appropriateness of their  character traits”midos”.

In Hallel we say “I will praise you Hashem because you answered me, and your answer was to me a salvation” .  The word used for “answered” in hebrew, when the letters are changed around it can come to mean  “pained me” . We see from this that the answer which was a salvation can come through being “pained”, this pain was for a salvation. Everything Hashem does is for our good, so much so, that the pain in it of itself is our salvation, not that the pain would subsequently bring upon salvation.

The Chofetz Chaim tells over a story of a store owner who went to his wholesaler. The store owner owed the wholesaler loads of money, he placed an order to fill his entire store for the year, and tried putting the order on credit. Naturally the wholesaler said this would be unacceptable, a large order like this cannot be placed on credit, because of your large balance. A man in the store heard the store owners troubles and suggested he place a smaller order on credit, this way the wholesaler would allow, and this would allow the store owner to continue his business, feed his family and start to pay back the wholesaler. When Rosh Hashana comes, we tend to promise the world saying how we’d be the best Jew. Possibly instead of trying to purchase a huge order on credit we can start with a small order (a small mitzvah) get that done right, and work our way up.

We find something interesting in the case of idol worship, that we see no where else in the Torah.  If someone attempts to get another to worship idols, even when he is unsuccessful and the person does not worship idols, we consider it as if the one who  enticed was successful and is punished appropriately. What can we learn from this? if someone tries to get someone closer to Hashem, and he is unsuccessful it is considered as if he was successful. How much more so if a person attempts to bring themselves closer to Hashem , with a sincere effort, even if they were to fail, in actuality they will succeed.

One of the tactics of our yatzer harah (evil inclination) is to tell us how low we are, so that we think, doing one more avarah isnt a big deal. The letters of Elul stand in hebrew stand for “I am for my beloved (Hashem) and my beloved is for me”. This could come to to remind us, regardless of how low we’ve sunk and how many avaraot we’ve done, we are still G-D’s children, and we are never too low, so  an avarah is always beneath us.

The first bracha that we say in the evening prayer (Maariv) discuses night and day, one of the lines is “he rolls away the light from darkness then rolls away the darkness from the light” . We sometimes may feel that the dark situatuion that we are in is terrible, and thing we will be stuck in it forever. This is when we need to remember this posuk, no matter how dark it is the darkness will be rolled away for light. We must also remember the flip side that the light will also eventually be taken away for darkness, but then again that darkness will be replaced by light.  Life is eternily changing, so long as we remember that G-d is our eternal Loving G-D and he is directing everything, we will never be able to lose hope.