בס׳ד

"Where does it say that you have a contract with G-d to have an easy life?"

the Lubavitcher Rebbe



"Failure is not the enemy of success; it is its prerequisite."

Rabbi Nosson Scherman



29 Mar 2011

The three legged table

The Gemara (Ta'anis 25a) tells the story of R' Chanina ben Dosa and his wife. R' Chanina, it is said, made do with so little, that from one Shabbos to the next all he ate was a small measure of carob. Once his wife complained about their extreme poverty. "How long are you going to make us suffer like this," she asked. Rabbi Chanina prayed, and a golden table-leg was given to him. That night, his wife had a dream in which she saw all the righteous in Gan Eden sitting at tables with three legs, while R' Chanina and his wife had a table with only two. "If that's the case," she said, "I don't need it; I'd rather suffer than to diminish our Olam Ha- ba!" He prayed again, and the golden leg was taken back. The Rabbis taught: The second miracle (the revoking of the leg) was greater than the first, for normally things may be granted from Heaven, but they are never taken back!
http://www.torah.org/learning/olas-shabbos/5764/yisro.html#

My son related to me an incident that had occurred to him while traveling on the train yesterday morning. Someone had left his keys on one of the seats of the train. As my son was exiting the train, he spotted the keys. He and a fellow passenger decided they would remove the keys and would hand it in to the lost and found department in the station. As they left the train, they saw a man running frantically towards the train. They ascertained that he had indeed left his keys on one of the seats and they returned them to him, no worse for the wear. I asked my son if he had received a reward. He looked at me incredulously. "A reward? Here? Do I want a two legged table in Olam Haba?"
Yesterday evening I chanced upon an article that I chose not to post. Leave it for some other blogger to rationalize that it's not lashon hora if it has already been publicized in the media. As for me, I would rather work on achieving the reward of a three legged stool than getting temporal satisfaction from having a popular blog post for the day. Baruch Hashem, other bloggers felt the same way.

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