Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The Gardener

Art Susan Rios

R' Aharon Rokeach of Belz was a holy man. He was completely dedicated to Divine service, and his mind was constantly filled with elevated and holy thoughts.

One day, he summoned his attendant and requested that he hire a gardener to cultivate the garden in his courtyard.

The members of the Rebbe's household were astounded by this strange request. Why was the Rebbe, who lived every day of his life with exacted sanctity, suddenly concerned over the garden's aesthetics?  Despite their bewilderment, they nevertheless hurried to do his bidding.

On erev Rosh Hashanah, the Rebbe instructed his attendant to inform the gardener that today would be his final day of work, as the coming year would be a shemittah year.

The Rebbe's pure intentions were now fully understood.  Everything he had done was simply in order to practice the mitzvah of shemittah.

Source: Rabbi Yisrael Bronstein

4 comments:

Ilan said...

::Thumbs Up:: for the new color scheme.. much easier to read!

Devorah said...

I had a few complaints about the last colour scheme.... I agree this one's better.

Leah said...

Hi Devorah! Did you delete a few posts that you previously posted?
Have a great Shabbos!

Devorah said...

No, BLogger had some severe maintenance issues and was in 'read only' mode for about 36 hours... in the process they removed all the posts and comments from May 11 onwards. They have since reinstated the posts, but a few comments were lost along the way.