I want to share with you a thought I had today. It’s gonna sound a bit strange to you but I really felt it as it entered my head so bear with me.
Let’s start with a confession.
We have a Torah commandment to wear strings on any four cornered garment. The commandment is called Tzizit.
For most of my life, I didn’t wear them. Why? Because the Fulds have the sweating gene. We all sweat.
The thought of wearing another layer, a four cornered garment just so I can wear these strings? I just found it too annoying and inconvenient so I never did it.
That all changed a few years ago.
A friend of mine opened a new factory to make what’s called Techelet. Techelet is part of the same Torah commandment that one of the eight strings is a blue string called Techelet. It is dyed with a very specific dye and it is very expensive.
Anyway, he gifted me a few pairs of Tzitzit with the blue string. (
, Marc)
, Marc)I saw that as a sign that I needed to start fulfilling this commandment and that day, I put them on, and haven’t missed a day since.
Still with me? Ok, good.
Now is when it gets a little weird.
We have a rule that when one enters a cemetery, if you wear your tzitzit out, like I do, you have to tuck them in.
Why? Because of a principle I learned about my whole life but only clicked for me today.
The concept is called Loeg Larash, and it literally means Ridiculing a poor person.
Because of this idea, we need to tuck in our tzitizit. Why? Because the person who passed away, who can’t fulfill Torah commandments, would be jealous when seeing the tzitizit.
He’d be upset that you can do this commandment and he can’t.
Strange, right?
Well, so I learned this rule hundreds of times but it never really made sense. A dead person is jealous of you because you have your tzitizit out?
Well, this morning, we went to visit Ari’s grave. We shared thoughts, we sang, we cried, and we just remembered.
As we stood there singing, I looked down and realized, I FORGOT TO TUCK IN MY TZITZIT!
That’s never happened to me, mainly because for most of my life I didn’t wear them and when I did, I definitely didn’t wear them out like I do now.
So I immediately tucked them in and stopped for a second to think about this idea.
A dead person jealous of my tzitzit? And for the first time in my life, it clicked, it made total sense.
Ari would ABSOLUTELY be jealous that he can’t fulfill this mitzvah.
Ari was extraordinarily passionate about Tzitzit as he was about several other commandments like prayer for example.
He took these commandments VERY seriously.
In fact, perhaps Ari’s passion for Tzitzit was no coincidence.
His name Ari appears twice in the entire Torah and when the commentator on the Torah Rashi describes the word Ari, which means lion, he says that an Ari jumps up in the morning with passion to fulfill God’s commandments.
Out of all the 613 commandments in the Torah, Rashi gives three examples:
– Wear the tzitzit
– Read the Shema
– Put on Tefillin (the black boxes we wear when we pray)
Out of all the examples Rashi could have mentioned, he mentioned two that are prayer related and one that is TzitIt.
It seems Ari’s passion for those commandments was no coincidence. He was apparently born with it. It was built into his name!
You would never see Ari without his Tzitzit out and a simple search on Facebook for images of Ari will reveal endless pictures of him in his four cornered prayer shawl with the Tzitzis and the techelet on display.
As I tucked away those strings this morning, after 47 years, I finally got it and it felt very real.
Ari was right there with us and you can be sure that along with his work up there on behalf of his people and along with his love and longing to be with all of us, he was surely feeling jealous that I was able to do this mitzvah and he isn’t.
I quickly tucked them away, looked up to Ari and said “My bad, bro.”
