3. Vayeira 5780: When Our Fire Dies: Rebuilding Our Fire Within

FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/avrohom.lipszyc/videos/10157488581943257/ SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/hachaim/4-vayeira-5780-when-our-fire-dies-rebuilding-our-fire-within Written Notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4nahrc038ypp6fd/3.%20Vayeira%205780%20--When%20Our%20Fire%20Dies%20--Rebuilding%20Our%20Fire.pdf?dl=0 YouTube: https://youtu.be/NYqtVPjTk_8 -- There is a saying referring to our emotional experiences that, “הזמן עושה את שלה -Time does its thing.” Emotions are like a fire that needs to be consistently fed and renewed, or, “Time will do its thing,” to our emotions, which primarily means that time will weaken our emotions, to a point of utter extinction. And this works for the good and for the bad, as we are taught concerning emotions such as anxiety, depression (non-clinical) and the likes, “There is a white wolf and a black wolf within our emotions, and it is the one we feed that grows, and the one we don’t feed gets smaller and smaller.” Thus, emotions are not hard-wired, and we can, and must, either evolve or devolve them, depending on whether they are beneficial or hurtful to us. And so, it is with our emotions that fuel our relationship with G-d. The question is, what if we were side-tracked and too preoccupied to work on our emotions in our relationships, and suddenly we see that the fire in our relationship has extinguished. Can we reignite and rebuild the fire? This lecture is based primarily on a maamor the Rebbe delivered on this Shabbat, in 1965, exploring the mystical --and our personal and practical-- dimensions of the story of Elisha the prophet helping the wife of another prophet, whose husband had died, and she and her children were left poverty-stricken.