Toras Avigdor Junior
Parshas Tzav
Tzadok and McGillicuddy Clean Up
Continued from last week…
Tzadok “Hatzadik’s” helicopter has just spun out of control and crashed, sending wreckage flying everywhere. The Friedman family stands near the scene, surrounded by burning aircraft parts.
“Vell,” said Tzadok in his heavy Israeli accent, grabbing a broom that happened to be nearby. “I better start to cleaning up dees mess.”
“Tzadok,” asked Dovid. “How are you going to clean up those huge pieces of metal with just a broom?”
“Oh don’t vorry,” Tzadok replied. “I have given zees broom a special brachah so dat it vill able to clean up anyting!”
As Tzadok tried sweeping up the large helicopter pieces, workers arrived with bulldozers, excavators, and a dump truck to start clearing the airport taxiway from all the rubble. Suddenly a limousine pulled up, and none other than Mayor McGillicuddy himself stepped out, wearing a hard hat and reflective vest, followed by several reporters and newspaper photographers.
“Let’s start cleaning up!” said Mayor McGillicuddy with a huge smile, resting his arm casually on a bulldozer as the photographers snapped pictures of him. “We’ve got to get this airport back in service!”
Tzadok looked up in surprise. “Are you ze famous Mayor McGillicuddy?” he asked. “I hear so much about you!”
“I sure am!” said the mayor proudly, holding out his hand for Tzadok to shake. “It’s a pleasure to meet you!”
“But you’re ze mayor!” Tzadok said. “Vy did you come to cleaning up? Zat doesn’t sound like someting a bigshot mayor like you should be doing – vy don’t you leave it to ze construction vorkers?”
As the big burly construction men started driving the bulldozers and pushing the wreckage off towards the dump truck, Mayor McGillicuddy posed for some more photographs, before turning back to Tzadok.
“Who, me?” he asked modestly, but loudly enough for the reporters to hear. “Oh I’m just a regular guy just like everyone else here. It is my duty to clean up my city like anyone else.”
The excavators started lifting the helicopter pieces into the dump truck as Mayor McGillicuddy continued to run around, standing for pictures in front of the clean-up operation.
The Friedmans watched all of this with fascination. After a few minutes, Totty turned to Moishy and Dovid.
“Boys,” said Totty. “Does this remind you of anything?”
“Yeah,” Moishy said. “Remember a few months ago, when the seforim shrank in school collapsed? Everyone rushed to pick up the seforim, even the Rebbeim.”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Totty.
“Why did the Rebbeim help pick up the seforim?” asked Dovid. “Why couldn’t they just let all of the kids do it – they are busy learning and teaching.”
“Ah,” said Totty. “But the Torah tells us something different. You know, in Parshas Tzav it says that the kohen would clean up the leftover ash from on top of the Mizbeiach. Now if you’ve ever tried to clean up burnt ash, you’d know that it’s a very messy job. It’s much finer than dirt and it gets everywhere and makes you dirty. So why would that be a job for the kohen, who has one of the most important jobs in Klal Yisroel?
“And the answer is that no matter how important a person is, we are still nothing in front of Hashem. Not like Mayor McGillicuddy, who is trying to look like a regular clean-up man, but is actually just standing around pretending so that people will think he is helping. When we are in front of the Ribono Shel Olam, we must be humble and modest in front of Him.
“Hashem is so great that even the kohen does what looks like dirty chores in his service of Hashem. This is an important lesson. Let’s say you’re in shul and see that someone left an empty plastic cup on the table. Don’t think ‘oh the janitor will take care of it’, oh no! Pick it up and throw it out yourself. Nobody is so important that he can’t do little things like that in front of Hashem.”
A thought suddenly came to Moishy. “Oh, is that why Rabbi Frank is always putting the seforim away in shul, even though he’s a big talmid chochom?” he asked.
“Exactly,” Totty said with a smile. “And that’s something all of us can do. We should never think that we’re too important to do something when we are serving Hashem.”
Have A Wonderful Shabbos!