Divrei Simcha on Parshas Vaeira 5767

This week’s parsha contains seven of the ten plagues that Hashem sent on the Egyptians. Rashi makes a very interesting comment on second plague, Frogs. Moshe warns the Egyptians that frogs will swarm all over Egypt. But when the plague finally comes… only one frog jumps out of the river. The Egyptians start hitting it with their clubs and a miracle happens. The frog that was one before it was hit magically turned into two. They hit it again and it split and became two more. They kept on hitting it until frogs eventually swarmed over all of Egypt.

There’s an obvious question: why didn’t the Egyptians just stop hitting the frog? If you see that it keeps on multiplying, stop hitting it! The answer is that the Egyptians stopped thinking. When they saw that they could not kill the frog, they became angry. When a person is angry, they stop thinking straight and do foolish things.

What can we learn from this? If the Egyptians stopped for a few minutes and let their anger calm down a little, they would have been able to logically avoid this plague.

I’d like to therefore offer a few suggestions of how we can learn to think more logically. Rav Simcha Zissel, the Alter of Kelm (Rosh Yeshiva of a great European yeshiva during the late 1800s & early 1900s) says to gain peace of mind, we should practice patience. When we have a piece of news (that is NOT lashon hara) wait fifteen minutes until we tell someone else. Before speaking to someone, think for a couple of minutes what you want to say. Rav Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler used to wait a full day after receiving a package in the mail before opening it. This way we practice patience and are not always in a rush.

They say the great rabbis of the past used to have what they called a “Dead Hour”. When I first heard about this, I thought it meant they listened to Grateful Dead music for an hour, but I learned it is something else. They would sit and think for a full hour. They would relax and be calm for sixty minutes.

Our society today is always in a rush. When we are in a rush, we do foolish things. We get angered easily and do not think straight. When we are patient though and learn to wait before acting, we learn how to act intelligently. The plagues on the Egyptians maybe should have only been nine. If they had waited before acting, maybe there would have only been a few frogs hopping around Egypt, instead of millions of them. Let’s think before we act and then act wisely.

Good Shabbos!

-yes

Any questions or comments can be sent to me at [email protected]. Thank you!

By Rabbi Yaacov Seltzer
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(305) 652-0186