What's More Beautiful?

 


What is more beautiful, nature or a garden?

If you say garden, will that be an insult G-d?  If you say nature, why do people spend so much money on landscaping?

Personally, I'm a garden person.  While we still lived in NY, Natanya and I would walk to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens at least a couple times a week.  It was our favorite place.  Every time we visited, there was something new, exotic, and everything was arranged to create such amazing beauty.

Nature is beautiful as is, but we can make it even more beautiful.  Of course, some parts of the world are too beautiful as is and we can only mess things up by trying to interfere, but the vast majority of the planet is here to be cultivated. 

It's not just about plants.  G-d created His world complete (עולם על מילואו נברא), but He wants us to make it even more perfect.  

Exactly 70 years ago from tonight, the Rebbe, in his inaugural address as Rebbe declared באתי לגני-  G-d is coming to His garden.  The purpose of our generation is to make the world as perfect as perfect can be.  This perfection is moshiach.

Interestingly, the President in his inaugural address this week, said something similar: "This is a great nation, and we are a good people...  But we still have far to go.”

Just because we have far to go doesn't mean that we aren't good people, and just because we are good people doesn't mean we don't have far to go. 

Practically speaking, there are many ways to make this world a garden.  For starters, the world is structured such that in order to survive, we have to work hard & create value.  Construction, health, landscaping, ideas, education, mental health, technology, music etc. are all ways to cultivate the world and make it more perfect (according to one opinion, this is why professional gambling is prohibited by the Torah, because it's the only way to make a living without adding value to the world). 

Another way to make the world a garden is to be a good person and promote the 7 commandments, which is the simple recipe to make the world a good place.  For a Jew, however, the ultimate way to make the world a garden is not just to build another building, plant another tree, or even be honest and help people.  The ultimate cultivation of the world into a garden is to make it holy.  The 613 mitzvos, which are the uniquely Jewish commandments, like laying tefillin and lighting Shabbos candles, and don't appear to make the world a better place, are the same mitzvos that make the world holy, i.e. a place where G-d will want to call "His garden,” because it is the most beautiful place in the entire universe.

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