18. Vayikra-Zachor-Purim 5779: "Pass The Salt, Please..."

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/avrohom.lipszyc/videos/10156881954738257/ Notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xaobk6f4zcr1hzv/18.%20Vayikra%205779.%20Pass%20The%20Salt%20Please.pdf?dl=0 Handout https://www.dropbox.com/s/gtayuke5unrw4bv/18.%20Handout%20for%20Vayikra%205779.pdf?dl=0 People say that life has its ups and its downs. People also say that if G-d gives you lemon, then make lemon juice. And there are so many more sayings that allude to life being a package that isn’t all good, and that accepting life on life’s terms means to be able to accept that which is not tasty, or even inedible. Dare I ask, “Says who?!” Why couldn’t, and why wouldn’t, a perfect G-d make a perfect world, with a perfect life for each and every one of us? And I can already hear the pessimists talking to me about Tikkun (correction) for our sins, and even for the sins of our past lives. Not so, my dear nay-sayers. (a) Our sages tell us in Genesis, upon a word with a missing letter, that this teaches us that G-d created intentionally an imperfect world, absence of our sins, etc. (b) Our sages also tell us that the soul does not descend into this world for its own Tikkun, but rather, to accomplish a mission for G-d in this physical realm of the universe. So an imperfect life and an imperfect world is not the outcome of imperfect, and even bad, people, but of G-d’s perfect ways. Why would G-d choose that imperfection, and even inedible imperfection, be the mark of G-d’s perfect ways? This lecture is based on a maamor the Rebbe delivered in 1965, exploring the commandment not to miss putting salt on every sacrifice, the Purim story of Haman versus Mordechai and the law (-Talmud, Megillah 7b) “A person is obligated to become intoxicated on Purim until he does not know between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai.”