Daf Yomi
Bava Basra 6
Many years
ago, Rav Shmuel Kaminetzky, the Rosh Yeshiva of Philadelphia, visited
Edmonton. He was very gracious and, in
addition to his lectures and classes, allowed people to take pictures with
him. It was before I came to the city,
but I’m well aware of his time here, because one of the community members
proudly displays a picture of Rav Shmuel and their five year old son on their mantelpiece.
At the time
the picture was taken, the family was not yet Shomer Shabbos. Why did they care? Why was the photograph important to
them? Why did they prominently feature it
all these years so that nobody who comes to the house ever misses it?
Abaye
taught: If there were two houses on either side of a public thoroughfare, each
one must make a fence on half of his roof; not opposite each other, but
overlapping.
Rashi
explains: The overlap ensures that neither can see the other’s private
activity.
The Gemara
asks: Why mention the public thoroughfare?
Even if they were alongside one another in a private area, the law would
apply!
The
Gemara answers: It is necessary to teach that the law is also true in the case
of the intervening public thoroughfare.
Why? I might have said that one
could say to the other that he need not reciprocate the fence construction,
since the one who desired privacy would anyway have to conceal his activities
from the public. Therefore, this law
teaches that he could respond, ‘The public look up at me during the day,
while you see me at night too.’ Or, ‘The
public watches me when I’m standing up, but not when I’m sitting down; you watch
me whether I’m standing or sitting.’ ‘The public watches me when they’re
focused on me; when they’re not focused on me, they don’t see me; you automatically
see me.’
In previous
generations, people spent much more time working hard to make ends meet. Baruch Hashem, in the twenty-first century, we
have a significantly greater quantity of free time on our hands. And thus, the entertainment industry today is
booming like never before. We follow
more sports, buy more music, and watch more TV and movies than there are hours
in the day!
And it
doesn’t stop there. Not only must we
watch the entertainers do their thing, we also need to know everything about
them. Where do they live? Who are they dating? Are they on the brink of divorce? Are they having a baby? Do they like each other in real life? Which events did they attend? What clothes and food do they enjoy? What are their political views?
Seriously?! Who cares?
Just because they play a good game of football, why should their
political affiliation make a difference to my life? Just because they make good music, why should
their personal relationships matter to me?
It’s utterly irrelevant!
And yet
there’s an entire industry spun off from the entertainment industry that knows
that the public looks up to entertainers. They want to know what they’re doing, day
and night. They want to know the ups and
downs of their lives. They’re focused on
them, watching their every move.
In life, human
beings look for heroes. We seek
successful people to look up to and model our own lives after. We don’t just want to know how they’re
entertaining us, but what makes them tick?
What sets them apart? By knowing
every detail of their lives, we feel almost as if we are being swept up in
their success. We feel their highs and
lows, we rejoice as they rejoice, weep as they weep. They are our heroes.
But we must
always ask ourselves: are we choosing the right people to look up to? Yes, they may be great entertainers, but does
that truly qualify them as role models for ourselves and our children? Do our kids really need to be exposed to the
tabloid magazines and the crazed efforts of the paparazzi?
When Rav
Shmuel came to Edmonton, the five year old boy’s family was not yet
observant. And yet today, they are a
shining example in the community. The
young man left town to study in a yeshiva high school and subsequently went off
to Israel to yeshiva. He now works
diligently in his non-yeshiva field, but is completely dedicated to Torah and
mitzvos – truly a model Jew for all to see.
How did
that happen? Because his parents made it
clear to him who his heroes should be. At
the time, perhaps they weren’t quite ready to take the plunge. But they always made it abundantly clear to
the kids which direction they were heading in.
What true success means. Whom to
look to as models of greatness in life.
Who are
your heroes? Do you revel in stories of
people who changed the world? People who
made this world a better place, physically and spiritually? Whom do you talk about at the dinner
table? True movers and shakers or simple
moviemakers? Good sports or rich
sportspeople? Great scientists or confused scientologists? Spiritually profound leaders or spiritually
corrupt fame-seekers?
Great
people stand on the shoulders of even greater people. If you seek true, meaningful greatness for
yourself and your children, you need to look to the right heroes. May you look up to and model your life on heroes
who have chosen eternal greatness!
