Avos 4:3 (notes)

לכל דבר אפילו דבר מאוס ושנאוי מכאיב ומצער, מזיק וארסיי

Dovid - insanity, spider web

Pain: RM woman / stove, hammer on thumb, saves teeth, informs something is wrong

אַל תְּהִי מַפְלִיג לְכָל דָּבָר — don’t push away anything. Don’t underestimate even the little things because they’re much more important than people think. Tehilim 119 samar m'pachdecha besari, m'mishpatecha yaresi (omek hadin, HKBH medakdek w/ tzadikim k'chut h'saara - impercepitible wind blows but thread moves, thats how you know there's wind, aveiros of tzadik are imperceptible but the siman is the yesurin & din that we see on them. Omek ha'din is awesome! Another pasuk in 119 "zacharti mishpatecha v'esnachem" stira!

As was mentioned here once, when you pick up the hood of your car and you peer at the engine, you don’t suspect that there’s the slightest superfluous thing there. Even an untutored man from Bedford Stuyvesant who’s tinkering with his car and sees a bolt that doesn’t seem to be doing anything important, he’ll never say that it’s not needed. One thing he knows – the people in Detroit are not crazy. He gives the manufacturer enough credit that he wouldn’t waste a screw or a wire. Putting in a superfluous bolt is out of the question! And so we can surely give Hakodosh Boruch Hu the same credit – you can rest assured that everything in the body is purposeful.

That’s why we disregard the contention of the foolish evolutionists and the crazy professors in the universities who claim that certain things, certain organs in man, are vestigial; it means they’re accidents left over from their fairy tales when man was changing from a monkey to a human being or from a rat to a human being! In the process, certain organs were left behind that should have ‘evolved’ out.

You know, once upon a time people who taught in the schools said there were a hundred and fifty vestigial organs. They claimed that a hundred and fifty parts of the human body were superfluous with no need for them at all. The tonsils? No need, they said. It was a great discovery in the world! The tonsils are superfluous, a vestigial organ left over from evolution from a previous state. And so, all over America they began making tonsils operations, taking out tonsils. The only operation that I ever had in my life, boruch Hashem the only one, was the tonsil operation. And to this day I cannot forgive the evolutionists because it was based on this erroneous conception of vestigial organs.

Today they’ve sobered up already – they’re catching up to the man in Bedford Stuyvesant who knows that there must be a reason for every piece in the car – and they discovered now that tonsils are very important. They’re part of the lymph system. If tonsils are inflamed, don’t blame the tonsils and cut them out. No. They’re doing their job of getting rid of some infections in the body.

Now, will you find a headline anywhere where they’ll admit that they harmed millions of people by removing their tonsils? On the front page of the science section of the New York Times, “We Were Wrong! Tonsils Are Not a Vestigial Organ.” No, they don’t do that. When they have a discovery which they want to use to make the whole world think that their theories are true, they fill the newspapers with it. But when it’s discovered that it’s nothing at all, not one word is said about it.

Same story with the appendix; it fell victim to the evolutionists. They said it’s just an accident left over from some previous state of existence and therefore the first chance you get, cut it out. They didn’t realize that the appendix is very important for the maintenance of our health. Like the tonsils it’s part of the lymph system which protects the body against disease.

So little by little they’re discovering the importance of everything. Of course, they still have some crazy theories about one or two things that they haven’t figured out yet but eventually they’ll discover there’s no such thing as superfluous. More and more will be discovered as time goes on because in nature everything is perfect. Everything is made exactly, precisely for its purpose. Nothing in the body is superfluous!

It’s a pity that today the world is taught to look at a person and to see just a heap of chemicals. That’s what they’ll tell you in the universities — all you are is a certain amount of nitrogen and calcium mixed with carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and some other elements. If you would take all these elements and separate them and try to sell them to a drugstore man, he might give you five cents or ten cents for it. Is that what a person is?

No! There’s a mysterious beauty in the human face; it’s the most interesting object in the universe. There’s nothing as appealing, nothing as noble and interesting as a human face. In the entire universe, there’s nothing that compares to it. If you’d travel, let’s say, to the far off countries; if you’ll traverse the vast wilderness and climb the highest mountains, you’ll never see anything in the universe as interesting as a human face. The nobility of the human countenance is unequaled.

I see the grandeur in your face. I don’t see just a face; I see your forehead, your beautiful nose and your eyes. Your face is engaging; it’s entrancing and spellbinding! I see those lips, the beautiful lips that can speak words! I see expressive eyes looking at me. You look at a person’s eyes and they express intelligence; they express a depth of thoughtful nobility and emotions, a depth that seems to be bottomless. Even the expression in your cheeks. The way the cheeks move; the expression of emotions, the smile or sadness – there’s nothing so noble in the world. Tzelem Elokim! You’re an image of Hashem!

Now, we have to stop here for a moment and ask ourselves: Why is the human face entitled to such a grandeur and beautiful nobility that it should be considered a tzelem Elokim, a reflection of Hashem Himself? What is it that makes the face of man so noble and entrancing?

And the answer is that it’s the neshama, the soul, that is projecting from the face of Man. And what is the source of the soul? What is the secret of the soul? It’s a chelek Eloka mimaal. It’s something of Hashem! וַיִּפַּח בְּאַפָּיו נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים – Hakodosh Boruch Hu blew into man’s nostrils the breath of life.

Nishmas chayim, the breath of life, is not mentioned in connection with any of the other living creatures. It says that Hashem formed the other creatures. He didn’t breathe anything into them and they live anyhow. So, we also can live without the breath of Hashem; for what purpose did Hakodosh Boruch Hu breathe into Man?

It’s because when you blow, you blow from yourself. And, when Hakodosh Boruch Hu blew into man, He blew from Himself. It means that in man there is something of the divine! That’s what it means when it says, “Man is made in the image of Hashem.”

– it actually means that there is something of Hakodosh Boruch Hu in men.

Now, what that means certainly must be explained because Hakodosh Boruch Hu doesn’t have any form; absolutely not. But He certainly does have greatness and glory. And His greatness and glory are infinite. He has wisdom and His wisdom is infinite. He has perfection of every kind and His perfection is infinite. And because Hakodosh Boruch Hu is bli gvul u’bli tachlis, because He is infinitely great, so what He put into Mankind is also infinite.

It doesn’t mean that you’re already perfect but it means that you possess within your soul a capability for endless perfection. בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם means that Man has within him potential for infinite nobility, infinite glory, infinite wisdom, and infinite perfection.

Of course, nobody will live long enough to bring forth all of the qualities that are concealed within his neshama. But as long as you live you continue to have that opportunity to draw forth that reflection of Hashem’s infinite perfection. And it’s such a wondrous reflection that if you could live forever, you would be capable of drawing forth endless and infinite greatness.

And all of that greatness, all of that potential perfection, is included in the word tzelem; all of these infinite attributes are reflected in the face of man. Tzelem comes from the word tzel; it means a shadow. A shadow is not the original thing but it reflects the original. Just like the original moves, the shadow also moves; it has the outlines of the original.

It’s like a picture that plays on the screen from a movie projector; you see forms moving but actually it’s nothing but color and outline – if you put your hand on the screen there’s nothing there. And the face of Adam is a form of a tzeil, a shadow of the Shechina; it is something that resembles Hakodosh Boruch Hu because it is a reflection being projected from the neshama, which itself is reflecting the kedusha of the Shechina.

And because this principle is so important, because it’s the foundation of the Torah, that’s why there has been raised against it a tremendous opposition; and in the last hundred years this opposition has become greater than ever before. That’s the theory of evolution; evolution is an open attack on the principle of gadlus ha’adam; it’s an open war against this Torah principle of tzelem Elokim. The government is giving billions of dollars to help the evolutionists fight their war. Billions of dollars! NASA is trying to fly ships to all the planets in order to discover some other creatures who developed by accident in other ways.

All over the world, it’s evolution, shmevolution, wherever you turn. If you would consider how much literature is devoted to the subject of belittling man, if you would see the libraries and the institutions, the funding by governments, how many different branches of research have been established in the subject, you’ll see that there’s nothing in the world today that is getting as much attention as the attack on the greatness of Mankind.

Now, in what way did Hakodosh Boruch Hu reveal the greatness of man in this world? The answer is בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים עָשָׂה אֶת הָאָדָם; by means of the reflection of His image that He places on Man’s face. The face is a screen upon which the neshama projects itself; the soul throws its own image on the face in order to bestir you to appreciate the greatness that Mankind possesses within.

It’s a pity that we have lost the ability to appreciate the grandeur of men; it’s because we have ignored the great principle of tzelem Elokim. The face of Mankind is intended to accentuate the diamond that our neshama is. A human face, with its intelligence, its emotions, its responsiveness, its yearning and all the great emotions that a human face expresses, is supposed to be for us a reminder – the tzelem Elokim is expected to awaken in us the appreciation of the infinite greatness that the Creator breathed into Man.

That’s the purpose of the face; to bestir us by means of the externalities to appreciate what he is internally. So, when you see the tzelem Elokim on a person’s face you’re expected to use that as a lever to stir yourself to an appreciation of the greatness that lies within that person’s mind and soul; to see the gadlus ha’Adam, the greatness of man.

And it’s only when one understands the gadlus ha’Adam that Hakodosh Boruch Hu taught us when He created Man, it’s only when you internalize the words of the possuk, “In the image of Elokim, Hashem created Man,” that you have the key to understanding the words in our parsha that we began with tonight: כִּי קִלְלַת אֱלֹהִים תָּלוּי – the hanging man is a disgrace for Elokim.

That poor fellow, the sinner who was hung for public view in order to encourage loyalty to Hakodosh Boruch Hu, must nevertheless be taken down as soon as possible because it’s a disgrace that a man who had so much potential for greatness, so much nobility and perfection that Hakodosh Boruch Hu implanted within him, should have wasted the great opportunity that life is.

It’s only when Man walks on the face of this earth carrying the portrait of the king and not realizing what he’s displaying, only then can he reach such degradation. If a man carries a portrait of the king and he thinks that he’s just carrying a bag of apples, he’s a failure! He has to know the value of what he’s carrying and how that makes him so great in the world. Because as long as the heart beats within man, as long as he still breathes, the tzelem Elokim – the greatness of his neshama – shines from his noble face reminding himself and others of the infinite greatness that he should be always trying to draw forth from his soul.