What should a person do if the wife is busy with the children, and doesn't cook, and she tells you to buy takeout food?
ANSWER:
In a certain sense, it's his lucky break; there's so much good food to buy. Gourmet things you can buy, so go outside and buy, and enjoy life! Bring it home and she'll be jealous of you.
Of course don't eat things that are not clean, that are not sanitary. Find a place where the people can be trusted that they don't put their hands into the food, and make sure you choose the right kind of diet.
A person could live very happily on takeout food.
Good Shabbos To All
Question #269
QUESTION:
How can we honor Rosh Chodesh in our days?
ANSWER:
That's a big order, we don't have time for it, but this much we can say. Rosh Chodesh is like the woman who had a lot of children, and the father brought home a watermelon. It wasn't a big watermelon, and for thirteen children it wasn't much. So she cut it up into little slices and gave each one a little piece. "Tomorrow," she said, "is another day, tomorrow we'll enjoy it all over again." She handed out little pieces each day so they should enjoy it more.
Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave us life, life is the biggest watermelon there is. There's no such fun as being alive; the biggest fun is being alive. Practice it tonight when you walk out, think how good it is to be alive. The trouble is that it is dished out in one long monotonous string. Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives you seventy, eighty, ninety or a hundred years, and therefore you feel it's nothing. What does He do? He dishes it out in portions. He cuts it up first of all into years. Oh, every year you feel, "another year I'm getting? Baruch Hashem", you're so happy, an additional year!! You're able to appreciate life more. But that's even too much, it's too big a portion, so He chops it up into months. Even that's too big, so He chops it up into days.
However, you want to enjoy life? Chop it up into hours, live from hour to hour, enjoy each hour. It's a pity, people say, "Well I have a whole day ahead of me." Suppose you have a whole day of vacation, it's boring already, a whole day ahead of you. If you have only one hour vacation, you'll try to play it up to make the most of it.
Therefore life is chopped up in small portions, so we should make the best use of it. Therefore when Rosh Chodesh comes, it's an opportunity to stop and think, What did I do in the past month? How much did I accomplish in the past month? And what am I going to do with my coming month? That's the way to treat the month.
That's why it says, v'hoyou l'osos, He's talking about the luminaries, v'hoyou l'osos u'lmoadim, ulyomim u'lsohnim, they're going to be for days and years. We need the sun and the moon to mark the days and the years; to chop up time into pieces. We shouldn't live with one long monotonous thread of life and not appreciate it. You want to be happy? You have to live by the day.
There's an old Latin saying, carpe diem, snatch the day. Grab the day, each day grab it!! Be happy with the day, carpe diem.
This is transcribed from questions that were posed to Harav Miller by the audience at the Thursday night lectures. To listen to the audio of this Q & A please dial: 201-676-3210
Important Numbers
