Day 8 - Youthful Actions as a Window to our Inner Virtues (Orchos Tzadikim)
00:00 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back to day number eight of Orchis Sadikim. We're on page 39. And now we have a special treat from Shlomo Amalek, from King Solomon in Proverbs. Shlomo Amalek says further what does King Solomon say? An amazing thing that even in his actions may the youth be recognized, whether his acts are pure and upright. So what is this Pasuk referring to?
00:32
Says the author here, zeh ha-Pasuk, ne'mar al-hafchanas ha-na'orem, that we can evaluate the traits of the youngsters from when they're young. Ki minu u-re'em ni'kuru mi'do sayem. Youngsters from when they're young. From when they were young, you're able to discern their traits. You're able to see that some of the younger children, they have the of shame, some people have chutzpah, some people have uncontrollable urges, and others other children, from their young years, you're able to see their tendencies. Some have great traits, great midos, he says, the traits that you see in elders. You could have seen those exact same traits in them when they were children, but sadly, when they were young they didn't understand, they didn't discern in these traits and they weren't able to bring them to their perfection, to bring it, to maximize the traits. And those young children who grew up with great traits but then they went, they left their home, they went to school, they went out into the world and those positive traits got covered up by a bunch of nonsense.
02:11
It's possible that a person can make believe that those traits, because they're willing to accept it, says. But sometimes they get covered by all that dirt and by that nonsense of the world and they get confused and they don't even realize that they ever had such good traits. They don't realize that really they were a Baal Chesed. They were really really kind to others and they were giving and they were committed to serving the community or whatever any good trait you can imagine. And suddenly they became self-serving and all it is is how can I make the next buck and how can I make more money? And it all becomes about perhaps not using their positive traits anymore. And it's very, very hard to unravel and remove those negative piles of negative traits or negative influences that are now causing him tremendous pain. But now, when you're older and you're a little bit more mature, you're able to see things with a different perspective perhaps and you're able to clear away some of the blockades that were standing before a person making those corrections to their traits. So imagine someone hid a silver tray buried underground and it became very, very tarnished. Such silver requires polishing after polishing before it can regain its original luster, until it's able to be restored to its original beauty. So a person who had nice traits and then sadly got stuck, got trapped in the negative traits. He needs to really work hard to identify the positive and the negative and to separate between the two, between the impure and the pure, and to serve Hashem and to be accustomed to the way of Hashem, until he's able to restore those midos back into his consciousness and into his repertoire of traits that are available for him to use and perfect himself.
05:09
So what Shlomo HaMelech is telling us here is that number one, a very important thing, and I remember asking my grandfather this. I asked him how can? He was talking about in his Shmuzin Rabbi Shlomo HaVolbe, my grandfather would say about how important it is for a person to identify their traits. And I asked him innocently how do I identify those traits? He says one of the ways you can identify those traits is actually a secret here that the Orchis Tzaddikim is telling us from Shlomo Amalek in Mishlei, which is if you look at your childhood, look at the way you acted in your childhood, when did you act?
05:41
When you have dispute? How did you act when you have dispute?
05:46
How did you act when you had conflict? How did you act when you were angry? How did you act in all of the different circumstances that you can recall? You can see your traits with purity. You can see how they were, and it could be that the older person gets it gets covered up with all of this nonsense of the world and customs and things that you've learned from culture or from whatever it is influences, and now those good traits get covered up. A person has to really think back and investigate what are those positive traits that I possessed as a child, because they're really there. They're hidden, though, and you're going to have to work hard to, you know, to brush that silver, to make it sparkle from all of the mold and all of the dirt that got covered up for years, but to bring about the beautiful you that's within you, and Hashem should help us all that we should succeed to do so. And Rez Hashem. Next week we'll continue to the ninth part of the introduction of the Yeruch HaSaddikim. Have a good night, everybody.
