When giving is giving

In a home, in a relationship, in any situation where people work together, each side has to give.

What you give is not so important. How you give is.

You have to want to give.

~ R. Tzvi Freeman

There is giving that is real giving, and there is giving that is really taking. This depends on whether the receiver appreciates the gift.

Entering the teivah, entering the word

G-d told Noah, "Go into the ark (teivah)." "Teivah" can also mean "word," and the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that this means to enter into the words of Torah and prayer. This is a refuge against the tumultuous "waters" of worldly concerns of seeking a livelihood, etc., and also will help reduce those same pressures in their source and root.

It appears to me that there are two ways of "entering into the words" of Torah and prayer: to be "batel bemetzius," and to be "batel bayeish."

People Before G-d

How precious is a human being in the eyes of G-d!

Hashem cares more about how we treat our fellows than how we treat G-d. Aside from the salient examples of the Waters of Noah, and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where G-d withheld punishment despite rampant idolatry, until humankind began to wrong each other, we also see how much G-d cares about the honor of human beings from the laws of teshuvah. For when a person wrongs G-d, one needs only to regret the action and resolve to correct it, and one is immediately accepted.

How to achieve the supernatural

"And Hannah said in her heart" (Sam. I 1:13). This means (that He wanted) {that she wanted} to do something supernatural, and she did not want to pray verbally. "For with the word of Hashem were the Heavens created" (Psalms 33:6), and so too the nether worlds, and when we want to do something in opposition to the worlds {another version: not according to the nature of the world}, one must do this thing in thought. For there, all is entirely a single unity, [as in the Talmudic story of R. Chanina ben Dosa, who said] (Ta'anis 25a) "He who commanded the oil and it burned, will command the vinegar and it [too] will burn." [I.e. on the level of Thought, this is consistent, though not on the level of Speech and words, constrained by logic.] Therefore [regarding Hannah] "he did not hear her voice, but her lips moved" (Sam. I 1:13), because she wanted to bring this [level of Thought] to this [physical] world {another version: to understand this in thought}. [Hence] the lips [nevertheless moved], which are the last of the five speech-producing organs [corresponding to the Five Worlds, the last of which corresponds to the physical world].

Near or Far?

The [words] of the Baal Shem Tov: I heard in the name of my teacher, [Achiyah the Shilonite, that when we say] "You are He Who is Hashem our G-d," the meaning is:
When a person thinks that he is close to Hashem, using the [intimate second-person] pronoun "You," at that point he is far from Hashem, the distant [third-person] pronoun "He." On the other hand, if one thinks that one is not special and is distant from Hashem, the [distant] pronoun "He," then he is is close and and near Hashem, the [revelatory] appellation "Hashem our G-d."