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Below is part of RSRH's commentary on Bereishis 29: 10 -12<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><b>10
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>When Ya’akov saw Rachel,
the daughter of Lavan, his mother’s brother, and the sheep of Lavan, his
mother’s brother, Ya’akov<br>
stepped up and caused the stone to roll off the mouth of the well, and
watered the sheep of Lavan, his mother’s brother.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4>11
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>Ya’akov kissed Rachel and
burst out crying.<br><br>
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4>12
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>Ya’akov then told Rachel
that he was her father’s relative and that he was Rivkah’s son, and she
ran and told her father.<br><br>
</i></b></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>In this episode we
learn of the assets with which Ya’akov equipped<br>
himself for building his future. Money he did not have. His most
conspicuous<br>
asset was his physical strength. What others could do only by<br>
a combined effort, he did alone and without strain. His
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>strong and<br>
healthy body </i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>was, at that
moment, his sole material asset. This is a great<br>
treasure, an important asset for the future, an asset that can be
attained<br>
only by a past lived in purity. It is the foundation for
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>oshur
v'kavod</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>, which<br>
the Torah offers with its left hand (see
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>Mishlei
</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>3:16).<br><br>
The second asset revealed here in Ya’akov is his unshakable
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>sense of<br>
justice and rectitude</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>.
Like Moshe, who also first found his future beside<br>
a well, so Ya’akov, too, cannot tolerate treachery or dereliction of
duty.<br>
This is the same devotion to duty that Ya’akov was later to
demonstrate<br>
so admirably under the most trying conditions of servitude.<br><br>
The third asset is
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>enthusiasm for
work</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>,
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>alacrity in
action</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>, enabling<br>
him to lend a hand and to rush to someone’s aid, even where the
matter<br>
does not affect him personally — a trait we would hardly have
expected<br>
of this </font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3><i>ish tom yoshav
ohellim</i></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>. <br><br>
Thus, Ya’akov’s personality included within it all the special
qualities<br>
of his people, a people destined to represent with equal dignity the<br>
various material and spiritual pursuits in life. Ya’akov’s abilities were
so<br>
diverse that each one of his sons could claim that his own unique
talent<br>
came to him by inheritance from his father.<br><br>
Question: Are we to deduce from the fact that Yaakov had a strong
and healthy body that he exercised while studying in the yeshiva of Shem
v'Ever? If so, then should this be part of the
"curriculum" in yeshivos?<br><br>
See my (unpublished) article </font>Exercise, Torah Learning and the
Chofetz Chaim at
<a href="http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/exercise_torah_cc_v2.pdf" eudora="autourl">
http://personal.stevens.edu/~llevine/exercise_torah_cc_v2.pdf</a>
<br><br>
<font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=3>I was told that Rabbi Yehudah Davis,
Z"L, who headed the Mountaindale Yeshiva for many years,
instituted a 20 minute period of exercise in his yeshiva when it was
located in Brighton Beach and also went swimming with his talmidim in the
summer before davening. <br><br>
YL<br><br>
<br>
</font>YL</body>
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