Machshavot HaLev - Yeshivat Lev HaTorah

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בלה תובשחמ
with everything we need to live the best life that is possible. He gave us talents and
abilities along with the understanding of how to utilize those talents. He presents
us with any tool that may aid us in achieving what we were put on the world
to accomplish and at the same time live the happiest life we could want. Elokai
neshama she-nasata bi… we have infinite inside of us. We don’t really need
anything else.
Rav Schwartz writes that while it is true that Adam was removed from Gan Eden,
he had already removed Gan Eden from inside himself. Gan Eden is a place of
total inner peace. It is happiness with who I am and what I have. There could
not have been a state of jealousy for what someone else had because there was
nobody else.
The Torah relates that Chava saw that the fruit of the tree were attractive. She
was drawn. She desired something she was not entitled to. She was no longer
happy with what she had but wanted to partake of something forbidden. She had
a ratzon for something outside of her Gan Eden. Adam and Chava created tayva,
desire, and it is this desire that Hashem refers to as mos tamus.
When we want something we can’t have, that is the beginning of death. We have
the ability to live with what we have and develop and foster our sense of self.
When we ignore our self for something outside our self then we begin to kill our
self. The Torah is telling us mos tamus. If we desire something then we will “die”.
Once we submit to temptation we will no longer be able to live in the peace of
Eden. We will make ourselves crazy always wanting and seeking something else.
The beginning of death is no longer feeling the Gan Eden, serenity of satisfaction,
in my 4 amos because every time we look at what we can’t have, we have trouble
living. We will hope for a different life which we will never achieve.
Parshas Korach opens with the words, “Vayikach Korach…v’Dasan v’Aviram ...
v’On ben Peles” (16:1). Most translations interpret the verse to mean that Korach
took Dasan, Aviram, and On. Rashi comments that he convinced them, he took
them, with words.
However, if we look at the pasuk, it literally translates as Korach, Dasan, and
Aviram took. The problem with the literal reading is that thepasuk doesn’t tell us