Shabbat Shalom!
As
John Wooden once said, “It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” All throughout life, people try and focus on
the “big picture,” but sometimes, the smallest of things makes the biggest
difference.
This
is shown in many ways, one of which is movies.
As many of you may know, I love to watch movies, and over the years I
have noticed that it’s not always the main character who contributes most to
the plot. It’s the secondary character, the
unknown character… the little guy!
Why
am I bringing this up, you may ask? My Torah portion, Vayeshev, relates to this
idea of noticing the “little things” very well.
In the portion,
Joseph has some dreams that cause his brothers to get very angry and
jealous. A short time later, Jacob sends
Joseph up to see them where they are grazing with their flocks. On the way, he gets lost and asks an unknown
man for directions. This person is
someone you would never expect to be important – he (or she) doesn’t even have
a name! Jewish history was changed by
this supposedly unimportant person. Without him Joseph never would have found
his brothers and never would have been sent down to Egypt, and his brothers and
father never would have gone down either, where they stayed for hundreds of
years only to become slaves of Pharaoh….. but that’s another story.
This kind of
thing happens in movies all the time.
The little guy turns out to be very important. I especially love Disney movies. There’s a perfect example of this in
“Cinderella.” The four mice are
certainly little, but these characters lend Cinderella a lot of moral
support. And with a little bit of magic,
they became the horses that took her to the ball. Without those little mice, she never would
have gotten there.
This coming Thursday
is a combination of three holidays that will never happen together again: Thanksgiving, the first day of Hanukkah… and
my birthday! I call it Thanksbirthukah!!
Each of these celebrates the power of the little guy….or girl, to make a
difference. The pilgrims were outcasts
in England. The Maccabees were bullied
by the Greeks. And me? Well, no one has made me an outcast, but it
took a while for my voice to be heard.
Literally. When I was a young
baby I couldn’t speak because I had speech apraxia, a severe motor speech
disorder. And it was only with special
care and speech therapy that I eventually became the talkative person I am
today.
So I know
firsthand how much of a difference the single individual can make. For my mitzvah project, I volunteered at the
Community Center for Northern Westchester, where I worked at the food pantry
and clothing boutique. I will continue
volunteering there hoping to make a difference for the families in need. You
can read about the Center in my Bat Mitzvah booklet. Thank you for your
donations. I also hope I made a difference for a child when I donated my hair
to Locks of Love.
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