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From the Rabbis Desk:

Excitement is overflowing in the community as we are just days away from entering our new Shul! Everyone wants to help out but I'd like to tell you about  a noteworthy phone call I received this week.

A seasonal resident of the area, the man said he would like to do something for the New Shul, 'But Rabbi', he warned me. 'I don't have groiser gelt! I'm just middle class.'

'And who else do you think is making this miracle happen?', I asked him, 'The people withgroiser gelt?! No! It's  ordinary people like you and me that are pushing themselves, those are the ones that are making this dream into a reality!'

The phone call was apropos to the Torah portion this week, where we learn that the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.  

Why would G-d have chosen such an arid, desolate location for his grand wedding with mankind? Was the Waldorf Astoria already booked? Surely he could have found at least a 4 star hotel that had a vacancy for such an important event!?

The reason is powerful:

The Torah was given on a mound of earth because this is the essence of life:

Like Mount Sinai, which is nothing more than elevated earth, we too are created earthy and unremarkable with the task of elevating the ordinary; infusing spirit into the secular and meaning into the mundane.

G-d doesn't need holy people to be holy. He created us because he wants unholy people to be holy.

There's nothing special about extraordinary people  doing extraordinary things. But when an ordinary person does something extraordinary, that is truly amazing!

Like the arid Sinai, we are created ordinary people. Our job is to turn the dull into dynamic!

What is something extraordinary you will do today?? 

Question:

Dear Rabbi- How can you reconcile the Torah's view of the age of the world with the scientific analysis. If science concludes that the world is millions of years old, how can Torah calculate it at 5774 years?

Answer:

The answer lies in Adam's Belly button. 

Your question assumes that you are comparing apples with apples when really you've got apples and oranges. If the Torah and Scientific calculations on the age of the world were both talking about spontaneous generation, then you'd have a good question. But they're not.

When scientists see a diamond, they realize that its made of carbon and they calculate how long it takes for carbon to turn into a diamond....a good few million years at least!

The 5774 years of the Torah is talking about G-d's divine design of a world that was created already mature and developed!

Adam and Eve weren't created in diapers, they were 20 years old on their first day! Though they had no umbilical cord, Adam and Eve had belly buttons as they were part of a fully mature world! There were quite possibly already dinosaur bones in the ground on the very first day of creation, just to 'age' the world.

And if you still aren't sure- here's my favorite: Stars are so far away from earth that it takes a few years for the light to reach us so that we can see them with the naked eye. Yet Adam and Eve saw the stars right away! Clear proof that the light was 'pre-traveled' on the very first day!

The mature world is 5774 years old. Had this world formed spontaneously somehow, that might very well have taken 150 million years!

 The real difference here is that if we were spontaneously spawned, then man is nothing more than a mistake. But if we were put here by Divine design, it's because G-d cares deeply about our actions and choices. Let's be sure that we make Him proud!