My First Wrestling Match


This past Wednesday was my first wrestling match.

I didn’t actually wrestle.

Matthew, a proud graduate of Hebrew School has been taking up wrestling in High School.

He’s #16 in the state.

I’m lucky that he’s my friend, cuz he’s a tough cookie.

I found out that he was wrestling #2 in the state and could take the title for himself.

I dropped everything and zoomed over to put on tefillin with him.

“The nations of the world will see that the name of G-d is upon you, and they will fear you. These are the head tefillin”- Talmud.

That’s what I told him.

“May your opponent melt in front of you!”

Later that evening, I figured he could use some moral support, so I took Moussia with me to the match.

It was a packed house, and lots of energy in the room.

It’s been almost 25 years since I’ve been to a sporting event, and my first wrestling match.

I forgot how “crazy” it gets at these events.

The Rebbe taught us to channel that “craziness” in to holiness.

That’s why Natanya & I moved to Temecula (pretty crazy isn’t it?).

At any rate, Matt had a three minute match.

It was rough.

His opponent was #2 in the state for a reason.

He was a really tough cookie.

Matthew gave it his all, but his opponent won (maybe he put on tefillin too?)

Consoling a friend or student after a loss is not easy.

Can’t say I did a great job.

At least I didn’t talk too much.

I thought about how depressed Matt must be.

Losing an opportunity to get the #2 title.

And then I remembered the Tanya of the Day.

It was about wrestling.

We’re taught to pay attention to life and find connections between the weekly Torah portion and things that are happening in our lives.

I try to pay attention to the other daily study too.

The lesson was about the importance of morale.

If one wrestler is lethargic and depressed.

His opponent has a good chance of winning.

Even if he’s weaker.

Same thing with serving G-d.

G-d really believes in us.

And has big expectations from us.

If we’re depressed, it’s 10X harder to do the right thing.

Many sins are born from depression.

So we have to keep our morale up.

And Tanya gives guidance on how to do it.

May we continue to be happy, joyous and succeed in winning the wrestling match against our yetzer hara (evil inclination).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Outreach

Image
A few months ago, in honor of the Rebbe’s birthday, I made a resolution to get back into the habit of going every Friday to do some outreach, visit some Jews and do mitzvahs together. Especially tefillin for men, and Shabbos candles for women. Today Hashem taught me a lesson about this. I was planning to go a bit later in the day, but had to run to Lowes for a couple cans of paint. While pulling out of our driveway, the thought crossed my mind to bring a pair of tefillin with me just in case I meet some Jews, but I brushed it off, saying, “I’m going to do some outreach later today anyways.  How many Jews will there be at Lowes already?” Sure enough, I walked up to the ProDesk and two Israelis were sitting right there. Hopefully, they’ll put on tefillin like they promised, but it’s a reminder for me to always be prepared for mitzvahs that Hashem lines up in my path. This Shabbos is the “Vision Shabbos”, when G-d shows us all a vision (at some level) of the Third Temple we are waitin...
Read more

Lag Baomer In NY

Image
The Jewish Children’s Pride Parade was an invention of the Rebbe and a brilliant idea that changed the course of post-Holocaust Jewish America. It features the most inspiring Jewish and Torah themed floats, Jewish children marching bands, and a Jewish wonderland. About ten years ago, I begged my father to attend with me and our 3 toddlers. He reluctantly came but was busy doing some work on his phone during the procession.  He thought it would be a regular children’s event, ie boring for adults. But once I tapped his shoulder to asked him to watch the floats and the children, he stood up and watched them march by for hours , with tears streaming down his cheeks. In the early 1950’s the Jewish people were not in great shape.  The American Jews were very few and assimilated.  The European Jewish immigrants were refugees and broken from the Holocaust. In those days, the saying, “S’ iz shver tzu zayn a Yid- it’s hard to be a Jew” was common. Jews were not holding their heads ...
Read more

I Really Mean You!

Image
The Great Lag Baomer Parade in NY was absolutely fantastic! It was a lot to schlep the whole family, but it was totally worth it. When we returned, I spoke with Ron. He asked about the parade, and I invited him to come with me to NY another time, which he immediately jumped on with excitement. I asked him why he didn’t come with us for Lag Baomer, to which he responded, “I wasn’t sure if I was invited”. I told him that we really wanted to bring a Temecula delegation with us, referencing my email asking the community to join us, and showed him my to-do list, highlighting “bring group” for Lag Baomer. It really was a priority to bring a group with us. It was my intention to call everyone I thought might like to join, but I really am busy and sometimes proactive one on one communication just doesn’t happen, even though I really want it to.  Just like I wrote this email last Wednesday, but got interrupted and only am sending it now… What I want you to know is that whenever I write, “yo...
Read more