[Avodah] mitzva to be a normal person

[Micha Berger]

An exchange on Areivim:

RSBA:
: There is a vort from the Kotzker (IIRC):
: "Ve'anshei kodesh tihyun li" - you should be 'heiligeh MENTCHEN'.

On Mon, 11-Feb-2008 12:52am, R Saul Mashbaum replied:
: Slightly expanded version which I saw in RSYZevin's sefer "LTotah
: Ulmoadim":
: The Kotzker said that HKBH says he has no shortage of heilige
: malochim; what He wants from us is to be *anshei* kodesh.

My father suggests a similar reading into the morning tefillah:
Le'olam yehei (1) adam (2) yerei Shamayim.

BTW, note that -- like in my recent diyuq in R' Zundel Salanter's call
to the young R' Yisrael -- that it's stated as a noun. Not to posses
yir'as Shamayim, but to be a yorei Shamayim. That it becomes an
essential definition of who and what you are, not just something you
do.

SheTir'u baTov!
-micha

-- 
Micha Berger             "Man wants to achieve greatness overnight,
micha at aishdas.org        and he wants to sleep well that night too."
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