THEMES of Featured Chasidic Masters Articles

Beginner

A person should always strive to go on the median path, with the right balance, between pride and humility.

By Binyomin Adilman, based on Sefer Baal Shem Tov

"Moses" represents knowledge and balance. The verse: "G-d spoke to Moses from Mount Sinai saying...." teaches us that one must employ one's knowledge and sense of balance when estimating his abilities, not to be drawn by the evil inclination either to pride ("Mount") or to false humility ("Sinai").

Selling Your Integrity, Your Love and Your Soul

By Yosef Y. Jacobson

Fields represent a person's career and one's interactions in the "field." Homes, situated in un-walled cities, represent a person's internal home and family life. Homes in walled cities, surrounded by an additional wall of protection, symbolize the most vulnerable and intimate space of a person's life.

It is painful to lose things ("fields") in life. It is far more painful to lose people ("homes") in life. But the worst pain of all is when we lose our connection with the quintessence of life and reality, with G-d.

Intermediate

Undivided Loyalty

Only one bound to the earth must ascend to Jerusalem.

By Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Rothenberg Alter; adapted by Binyomin Adilman

A person's nature is to cling to and identify with his possessions; to land more than any other possession. One must then leave his home and set out on the road to Jerusalem for the festival, thus cleaving to the source of his life and spiritual vitality. But one who has no land is loyal only to the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth year-round.