Q:
What should we think about when we’re getting a haircut? Is there something about hair that we could think about?
A:
It’s interesting that when you look at a person’s head you see so that so much hair can come out of the scalp. Hair, you know, doesn’t come out of the brains – it comes out of the skin of the scalp. How can the skin of the scalp produce so much hair? Look at a man – he has a long beard, way down to here, and it came out of the skin of the face. It’s remarkable! It’s a neis that the skin can produce this wool that is coming out of your chin.
The question is, where does the skin get it from? And the answer is that it’s a nisei nissim. Whatever you eat is transformed in the cells of your body into keratin by means of many miracles. Keratin is the material of which hair is composed. Now, you can’t make keratin yourself. If you could, you could patent it and become a millionaire overnight! It’s wool! How does the food you eat become wool?! It’s nothing less than a miracle. Hakodosh Boruch Hu has given the body such a wonderful ability that it can take anything that you eat and transform it into the necessary chemicals to produce the hair. That’s something to think about.
And by the way, while you’re thinking about that, you shouldn’t leave out another miracle: Why doesn’t hair grow on your wife’s face? Only on your face. It’s a remarkable thing; a neis. When people shave, let’s say goyim in the street, so you don’t see the difference. But when people live naturally, you see men are adorned with beards and women have smooth faces. It’s a neis.
You have to study that and see the miracles of Hashem that He performs in the world. Of course, you’re accustomed to it so you wouldn’t say it’s a miracle – but it’s no less a miracle than anything else that ever happened.
When we open our eyes and we look around us, we will see that the world is full of nissim, full of miracles. It’s only because we’ll see them once and we stop looking; we don’t think about it at all. But if you would continue to look at them again and again – if you would think about these things each time you sit down in the chair at the barber so each time it will enter your awareness, your consciousness, more and more, and the older you’ll become, the more excited you will become over the things that Hashem shows you in nature. And you’ll become a bigger and bigger ma’amin, a bigger believer in Hashem, just by means of the hair on your head.
That’s how it is with all of the great ideals, all of the Torah attitudes we want to acquire. Repetition is the key. In order to acquire the Torah attitudes it’s important for us to labor on the great function of repetition. People who make up their minds that they want to make progress in life, they must know that they have to review. They must constantly repeat the great principles to themselves in order that they should acquire them and it should become a kinyan in their nefesh. And that’s why each time you take a haircut you’ll think these thoughts, again and again, until you create for yourself a Torah mind.
TAPE # 918 (June 1993)
