Ladies, why you actin' so cray cray?

In Perek Gimel, we learn about how the women were being haughty. They looked down on others and all thought they were the greatest. These women were also acting inappropriately and dressing in an appropriate way. They weren't trying to attract Hashem by dressing modestly and davening all the time. They were trying to attract men by dressing immodestly and not acting in a modest way. By doing this, they also caused the men to sin by attracting them. The punishment of these poorly behaved women was that the men would die in war and they would no longer be wealthy.

Today, there are still several women that act in an inappropriate way. Most of them spend their lives depressed because they waste it with stupid stuff. They end up with babies before the even finish college and no form of income to support them. If today's women learned from the past, society wouldn't be messed up like it was back in the days of Yishayahu.    

YOU IS WRONG

    In this perek the people do 5 sins. The one I found  most interesting is the one in Pasuk Caf Aleph. It says, "Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and in their own estimation, of profound understanding." This means that the people who think they are right and that no one else is. They were sinning, but justifying their sins because in their own perspective it was the right thing to do.
         Lily and I did a skit on this which I think explains this very well. In the skit a girl was going to go buy a candy bar but her friend saw her and told her to just steal it. The girl asked why and the friend responded with, " You are helping the fat people defeat obesity if you take all of the candy bars so they can't have any." The friend simply justified the wrong. Shame!

#always #sinning

In perek Hay, we see several sins of the people. Two stood out to me. The first is the wealthy people that go from house to house and field to field and take the houses and fields just because they're so powerful. The punishment for those wealthy people is that those houses and fields that they take for themselves will be desolate and won't bear crops. The second sin of the people was committed by the hedonistic people. Those people didn't have a regard for Hashem and didn't see the great things that He has done for them. The punishment of those haughty people was that they would become completely humbled and not even have enough food or drink.

These two stood out to me because both of the punishments were Midah Kineged Midah. Our legal system is in a way similar to this religious legal system. If you murder someone, you can likely be sentenced to a death sentence. If you steal something from someone, and get caught, you will have to pay back and give extra to the person you stole from. A while ago, I through an ice cube at someone and a few minutes later, I tripped on an ice cube. All of these example have something in common with the punishments back in the time of Yishyahu.

Perek Gimel :)

                   In this perek it specifically talks about The women and how they were haughty . The women looked down others, they only care about materialism and their goals were to try to attract male attention  by wearing perfume and wearing provocative clothing. The punishment for this was very clever in my opinion. The males were to die in war and the women would be left with nothing! Only hashem would think of that!
           In today's time, I often see that some women dress to impress. For example, lets say this really cool cocky, arrogant teenage girl goes to a party, she might wear a skirt that is shorter then her usual skirts and her shirt might be a little low cut. She walks around confidently and loves to show herself off. This is just like the women in the perek. Of course I don't think they get punished for it today.

The Farmer and his Vineyard

There is a metaphor used in Perek ה that expresses what Hashem was trying to accomplish and what really happened. The beginning of the Perek tells a story about a farmer who does everything right to his plot of land. He waters it regularly, it gets light constantly throughout the day, and the farmer comes to check on them every once in a while. This is an extremely attentive farmer. But the crops didn't grow as the farmer planned. They came out of the earth in the form of wild berries instead of nice, beautiful grapes. The farmer wasn't elated about this growing mistake. From this story we take the farmer and compare him to Hashem, and we take the vineyard and compare it to the Jewish nation. Hashem does everything to care for us. But instead we rejected him and turned out a different way. He wanted us to become a person with justice and righteousness, but instead we became injustice and complained a lot. 

This idea still applies today, and I think we should remember this metaphor throughout our lives. Hashem does so much to help us and take care of us, but we, as humans, always take the bad things to look at and talk about. Instead of thinking about the good things that happen to us and praise Hashem, we take the bad things and complain to Hashem about them. If someone has a life where everything is good, but one day this person got a bad grade on his test. He wont think about all the good he has, rather he will take this bad example as a reason to complain. 

I think that the reason why we look at the bad things is because our sadness has so much more impact on our emotions than happiness does. I think we need to take this into consideration. We need to remember to always have a healthy balance of both. It is human nature to complain, but we also need to put some time aside to focus on the good things and to thank Hashem. 

The Jewish People and Jean Val Jean

Perekim 1-5 of Yeshayahu tell of all the sins the Jews were committing. Yeshayahu was on a mission to get the Jewish people to repent and change their ways. We see that Yeshayahu's efforts mean nothing to the Jews. They laugh at his attempts to speak to them.

I propose the Jews take a cue from Jean Val Jean. In Les Miserables, Jan Val Jean is put in jail for stealing a loaf of bread for his sister's starving family. When he is finally out on parole, he is extremely angry at the world. He had been unfairly contained in prison, forced to do extremely difficult labor for 19 years. He had never experienced kindness from anyone. With nowhere to go, Jean Val Jean winds up in a church to rest. The priest finds him there and offers him food, wine, and a warm place to sleep. In the middle of the night, Jean Val Jean decides to steal two exquisite candle sticks from the church. He is immediately stopped by the police and taken back to the church to confront the priest. The priest tells the policemen that they have made a mistake, that he gave Jean Val Jean the candlesticks as a gift, therefore saving him from being thrown in jail. After this incident, Jean Val Jean cries out to G-d and vows to become a better man. He turns his life around completely and becomes a well respected, fair, kind mayor of a city.

Like the priest in Les Mis did for Jean Val Jean, G-d is giving the Jewish people a chance to change their ways. G-d is presenting the opportunity of forgiveness, yet the Jews stay steady in their sinning ways. All it took was one act of kindness from the priest for Jean Val Jean to turn his life around completely. Why, then, can the Jewish people blatantly ignore the word of G-d and continue sinning!?

Corrupt Leaders

In this past week we talked about another sin that the Jews did. We talked about how the leaders became corrupt and weren't loyal to G-d anymore. More specifically they went against G-d, and they tried to prove his anger. These specific sins were like those of Sedom. They also performed the sin of taking the money from the poor or even taking advantage of the poor. When we add all these sins together, an even bigger sin comes about that is in my opinion worse than all of the other sins. By going against G-d, they caused the rest of the people to go astray. This in my opinion is the worst that they could have done. They are supposed to be leaders that bring people closer to G-d and show that G-d is great. But instead they did the opposite. They got people farther from G-d.  
I think that this is a test for the Jewish people. A test to see if the Jews can see the difference between corrupt leaders and good leaders. A test to see if they know when to continue following the leaders or when to stop because they are straying away from G-d. We need to be able to realize when we need to back off from a ruler or even a Rabbi. If you know that your Rabbi is telling you something completely wrong then you should know to find another one. This is a horrible sin because the leaders are actually doing the opposite of what they are supposed to.