Your Path to the King's Treasury

You've all heard the mashal, I'm sure, about the guy who gets invited by the king –– an entire day to take whatever he can in 24 hours from the king's treasury. This week Mrs. Shifra Rabenstein, in a shuir about the Aseres Y'mei Teshuva, put her own spin on it. I'll get to her changes in a second. I want to add some of my own too.

Let me remind you of the story first.

The king wants to make the whole day as pleasant as he can for the man, and he sets up the path to the treasury, lining it with every pleasure possible. Every few feet there is some other materialistic thing that catches the guy's attention. A five star restaurant with a maitre d who treats him royally, serving him a seven course meal accompanied by various expensive bottles of wine. A comfortable bed bedecked in the softest linens to sleep off his food and drink. A concert. A sushi bar. A show. A carving station. Whatever, you name it.

As the parable goes, the guy gets so distracted that either he completely misses his window and gets nothing from the treasury that he can take away with him, or he wakes up in the last few seconds and grabs a handful of coins, crying at his missed opportunity.

Mrs. Rabenstein added her own spin. "What if," she said, "What if the guy's friend comes with him and shakes him by the shoulder as he sees him getting distracted.

"Yankel, it's 1pm. You have to get a move on." "What? Oh, okay...just five more minutes, this bed is so comfortable..." "Yankel, it's 3pm! Your time is fading." "Huh? Right, okay...California roll please!"

"What if," Mrs. Rabenstein said, "What if, he not only reminds him, but he shakes him by the shoulders..."

"YANKEL! IT'S FIVE O'CLOCK! YOU ONLY HAVE THREE HOURS LEFT!"

"What if," said Mrs. Rabenstein, "What if we realize that Hashem is shaking us? Reminding us that we only have three hours left? What if Hashem is literally shaking the ground under us? How many hurricanes and earthquakes have there been in the past couple months? How much shaking do we need?!"

I guess my addition to the story would take on something that I heard from the rav of our shul on Rosh Hashana. He was talking about living al kiddush Hashem and how that is harder than dying al kiddush Hashem, how every moment, every choice that we make, is just that. He talked about how perhaps our living al kiddush Hashem is accepting our life circumstances, no matter how uncomfortable they might seem, and realizing that that is not only emunah, but that is living al kiddush Hashem.

What if our path to the king's treasure house isn't strewn with sushi bars and ice cream? What if our path has roadblocks and speed humps? Will we decide to take a different way that potentially leads us nowhere near our destination, just because it feels like we'll never get there if we stay on the path that we're on? Are we following a GPS that has the wrong address plugged in? Are we looking for the route that doesn't have traffic but may take us through all the bad neighborhoods and we won't necessarily ever make it there ever?

Yom Kippur has purifying properties in it of itself. We just need to go through it to get cleansed. Elul, the aseres y'mei teshuva, culminates in Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur climaxes at Neila. Neila peaks with Hashem Hu HaElokim. Hashem Hu HaElokim, and we have a personal relationship with him...He wants to give us from His treasure house. The question of the first Rosh Hashana ever was "Ayeka?!" That question reverberates still today...

Gmar Chasima Tova!