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1 moshe heber on 2008 01 03

Very inspiring Divrei Torah..Chazak

2 YLS on 2008 01 04

Beautiful as always.

Perhaps this answers a question as to why the Torah mentions Kotzer Ruach before Avoda Kasha. I would have thought that the Kotzer Ruach was caused by the Avoda Kasha and should have been mentiond second. By the Torah stating it first, the Torah, as Rabbi Haber pointed out, is telling us that it is a Ruchnius related ailment of it’s own.

3 Bobby Minkoff on 2010 01 17

In psychology we often observe that people prefer certain pain to the pain of uncertainty, this would appear to be the case in Egypt. Ruach in this way could then be the courage to follow Hashem and His Prophet into the unknown.

4 Yehoshua on 2010 01 17

This is a brilliant dvar Torah!  I would take it a step further and say that kotzer ruach could be translated as impatience, the major plague of our era.  In Egypt, the people were so caught up in gashmiut that they did not even take the time to listen to Moshe’s words.  Today, there are so few people who are willing to sit down and listen to you.  That is why there is such a boom in psychotherapy.  Pirkei Avot even says, “Kaneh lecha haver” or “buy yourself a friend.” And so for one hundred dollars an hour (or more), people pay a psychotherapist to listen to them, to be their friend.  This would sound ludicrous if it were not for Pirkei Avot which, like every other part of Torah, is an expression of timeless and ultimate truth.