Spiritual lessons from TREES

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Shais Taub’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

There was once a uh lumberjack company up in Quebec, up in uh you know, French Canada. And they put out an ad for a new lumberjack. And this uh little Yiddle shows up. And he says uh I'm here to apply for the new lumberjack position. They take a look at him. They don't really think he looks like these other you know, uh French Canadian lumberjacks. So, they said, "Do you have any experience?" He says, "Yeah, I have experience." They say, "Like where? Where did you work before?" He says, "Well, the Sahara forest." They said, "You mean the Sahara desert?" He says, "Oh, yeah. Now, [laughter] chopped down all the trees." Okay. It's interesting that when we learn that a human being is compared to a tree, it's in the context of a prohibition against chopping down trees. Ki adam ets sadah is a is a pasuk, it's a verse in parshas shoftim. It's speaking about the laws, the rules of engagement in battle and war. And it mentions that whereas you are obviously going to have to fight other uh people, combatants from the enemy side, you shouldn't needlessly destroy property. Ki adam ets sadah, you read it rhetorically as uh as our as our sages interpret, meaning, you know, you have to kill the enemy, fine, but why why you killing innocent trees? And that is actually the root of the halakhic prohibition of bal tashchis, against waste, wasting something. Now, one of the conditions is that we're talking about fruit-bearing trees. I mean, one must not uproot or damage a fruit-bearing tree. And in the Gemara, our sages interpret this also homiletically. The halachic meaning is the simple meaning not to destroy a fruit tree or for that matter anything not to waste anything that is um useful.

Jump to a moment

1. 0:01There was once a uh lumberjack company up in Quebec, up in uh you know, French…
2. 5:07Um and and in fact, that's one of the things we do when we consider this…
3. 10:41don't know where you are. So, uh he was close to the ground, maybe about 30…
4. 15:54approximately if there if there's a loss, if there's a profit. So, he doesn't know he's…
5. 21:29until we see the full payoff of a situation before we're ready to celebrate. That's that's…
6. 27:11out. So, the grape doesn't have anything added to it. Doesn't have to have anything added…
7. 32:17Being completely connected to whatever it is that you're connected to at this time without any…
8. 37:56your true self. That's fine. We're we're we're cool with that. Be a hypocrite in the…
9. 43:05Who can remember back to the Avis commercials? Avis Rent a Car. They would always say,…
10. 48:41bless you that that your children and also your students who are like your children should…

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