The Greenbaums left Tante Rochel’s house and started walking home. There was a slight breeze and not a cloud in the sky.
“Look, Totty,” said little Yaeli. “There’s the moom!”
“You mean the Moon?” said Shimmy.
“Yeah the moom,” little Yaeli repeated. “It looks like a little banana. I bet it tastes so yummy. I want my own moom. I will keep it next to my bed and eat it when I’m hungry.”
“Yaeli,” Yitzy said. “The Moon is huge. You could fit quadrillions of houses inside the moon.”
“Quadillion? Is that more than a hundred?” little Yaeli asked.
“Way more,” said Yitzy. “It’s so, so big.”
Little Yaeli looked up at the sky again. “But those stars are tiny. I want some stars. They look like they taste like spwinkles.”
“Stars are bigger than the Moon,” said Basya.
“Nuh-uh, look they’re so tiny,” little Yaeli said, pointing.
“That’s because they’re further away,” Totty explained. “Stars are so, so far away. And there are so many that you could never count them all.”
“I know how to count!” insisted little Yaeli, pointing at the stars. “One.. two... three... seven... eleventeen...” her voice trailed off as she ran out of all the numbers she knew.
“When I get older I wanna be as big as the moom,” she said.
“You can’t be as big as the Moon,” Yitzy explained. “It’s not possible for the human body to grow that big.”
“But I don’t want to be so little,” said little Yaeli, sadly.
Parshas Eikev
Most Important
“Yaeli,” Totty said. “You’re more important than the Moon.”
“But the moom is so big!”
“Yes, but bigger doesn’t always mean better.” Totty pulled out some coins. “See, this is a dime and this is a nickel. The nickel is bigger than the dime, but the dime is worth as much as two nickels.”
“Totty,” asked Shimmy. “How can we be more important than the Moon? The Moon is part of sheishes yemei bereishis. It’s mentioned in the Torah and we use it to know when Rosh Chodesh and Yom Tov are.”
“And you’re not part of sheishes yemei bereishis?” asked Totty.
Shimmy thought about this.
“Can we go on an airplane to visit the moom?” asked little Yaeli.
“Yaeli,” said Yitzy. “An airplane can’t go to the Moon. You would need a rocketship to get there.”
“I’m going to ask Zaidy to give me a rocketship for Chanukah,” little Yaeli said. “Then I can go to the moom and see what it tastes like.”
“Totty,” said Yitzy. “Hashem did create Adam Harishon during sheishes yemei bereishis, but now there are millions of Yidden. But there is only one Moon. How can we be more important?”
“They should make more mooms,” said little Yaeli.
“And what about the quadrillions of stars?” asked Totty. “In this week’s Parsha Moshe Rabbeinu says that Hashem only loved the Avos out of everyone and everything else in the world. And he chose us, their children, over all of the other nations.
“This means that every single Yid, including you, Shimmy, Yitzy, Basya, and Yaeli, are the most important things in the world. Nothing in the world compares to the value of a Yid who learns Torah and does Mitzvos.”
“Is the moom a Yid?” asked little Yaeli.
“No, Yaeli, we are Yidden,” Totty explained. “We are bnei Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov. The Moon is just here to light up the night sky, to tell us when Rosh Chodesh is, and for us to look at and see how beautiful Hashem’s creation is. Hashem made the Moon for us, Klal Yisroel. Everything in the world was made for us, because we are the whole reason the universe was created.”
Little Yaeli looked up and stared at the Moon and many stars for a minute. Then she smiled at the thought that she was more important than the entire sky.
Have a Wonderful Shabbos!
Let’s Review:
- What makes a Yid important?
- Why did Hashem create the universe?
