Welcome to the short, practical Lelamed Weekly Dvar. I want to take a moment to share with you a special project I've been working on, and something I'm very excited about. For many years I've felt that the Weekly Dvar shouldn't be just weekly and that there's so much beauty in Torah that once a week doesn't do it justice. I was sure there were inspiring daily segments on the Parsha somewhere out there, especially because the Parsha is already broken down into seven segments (Aliyot). I didn't find anything that spoke to me, so I decided to write these daily segments myself. Over the last 3 years, I've been sending you Divrei Torah on different Aliyot, and have finally completed the cycle! Once edited, I will make these Daily Aliya writings available to everyone, and you can share and enjoy them daily, read them all on Shabbat, or have one of seven Divrei Torah to choose from on every Parsha. I hope you will enjoy reading the Daily Aliya as much as I enjoyed writing them. Please consider forwarding this to others, and I hope you enjoy... Shabbat Shalom. _______________________________________________ Dvar for Bereishit 4th Aliya As we begin Bereishit, after recounting creation and Adam/Chava’s sin of eating from the forbidden tree, life seemingly settles down for Adam and Chava. Adam goes off to work, they have two children, and after a mere 6 Pessukim (verses), their world is rocked by one child (Cain) killing the other (Abel). How do Adam and Chava make sense of what happened, and how do they (and we) move forward after tragedy? The Midrash relates that Adam and Chava wept by Abel’s body, not knowing what to do until they saw a raven burying its dead in the ground, which they decided to mimic. The irony was that the raven is typically cruel to its young, yet it buried a dead bird, an act of absolute kindness that cannot be repaid. Menachem Feldman (www.chabad.org) explains that this lovingkindness is the proper response to senseless evil. The appropriate response to cruelty is love, something that comforted Adam and Chava, and can bring us closer to G-d and each other today. We all have within us the greatest power there is: the power to be kind. Shlomo Ressler _____________________________________________ Quotation of the week: "Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are." - Roy T. Bennett