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Parshas Vayechi - Make the Ordinary Extraordinary

By BJLife/Ori Strum

Posted on 01/06/23

Parshas HaShavua Divrei Torah sponsored by
Dr. Shapsy Tajerstein, DPM - Podiatry Care.
(410) 788-6633

Many of us are aware of the incident that took place on Monday Night Football with Bill’s safety, Damar Hamlin. The most shocking part of the story is that the injury seemingly came from nowhere. There was no dangerous head-to-head collision. It was an ordinary situation where the defender tackled the wide receiver. This same play literally occurs tens of times a game, hundreds of times a week, and thousands of times a season. Yet, the ordinary situation turned into something dramatic and extraordinary. Unfortunately, in this case, the extraordinary was something dangerous and scary. 


In fact, Doctors around the country are still grappling to try and understand what exactly happened, but the leading theory is that the cardiac arrest resulted from an extremely rare case of Commotio Cordis, a condition where the heart stops beating due to a blunt force to a specific part of the heart, during a specific time in between beats of the heart’s cycle. 


There is a powerful message here. Depending on the meanings we apply to every situation and encounter in our lives, we have the opportunity and potential to turn the seemingly ordinary, routine and mundane situations into something unbelievable, great, and extraordinary. Extraordinary moments don’t have to be rare. With opened eyes and an opened heart, we can discover greater meaning and purpose in the simple and mundane. When we live in this way, our lives will take on new levels of meaning, understanding, and purpose. 


The holy Baal Shem Tov explains that when the Torah (Parshas Vayechi 49:14) tells us: יששכר חמר גרם, which literally means, “Yissachar is a strong-boned donkey,” we are also being taught a message about the importance of uplifting the mundane. יש שכר – there is a spiritual reward which חמר גורם – comes as a result of the physical and materialistic. What this means is that through our involvement in the simple, mundane, and physical– such as eating and drinking – we have the potential to harvest the sparks of holiness and spirituality that are contained within them. 


Our job on this world is to take the ordinary and turn it into extraordinary. Or maybe better stated, to see the ordinary as extraordinary.  


We are not meant to distance ourselves from the world of physicality, rather we are meant to harness the lofty aspect of holiness that is contained within it and uplift the mundane world into a world of kedusha.