{"id":98314,"date":"2022-11-20T00:29:01","date_gmt":"2022-11-19T22:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/?p=98314"},"modified":"2022-11-20T00:29:01","modified_gmt":"2022-11-19T22:29:01","slug":"no-cap-on-mitzvah-observance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/no-cap-on-mitzvah-observance\/","title":{"rendered":"No Cap on Mitzvah Observance"},"content":{"rendered":"

No Cap on Mitzvah Observance<\/strong><\/p>\n

One Shabbat, my dear disciple, R\u2019 Michael Ben-Shushan was walking with his young son from the yeshiva building to his house, when a strong gust of wind blew his kippah<\/em> off his head. He instinctively covered his head with his hands and began pursuing his kippah<\/em>. Finally, the kippah<\/em> came to rest under a parked car. R\u2019 Michael bent down and tried mightily to extract it from under the car. His Shabbat suit became filthy in the process, but how could he continue walking without a kippah<\/em>?<\/p>\n

R\u2019 Michael demonstrated to his son that one does not forego his kippah<\/em>; a Jew does not walk without a head-covering. A kippah<\/em> indicates yirat Shamayim<\/em>, as the Gemara teaches (Shabbat<\/em> 156b), \u201cCover your head in order to obtain fear of Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

When R\u2019 Michael bent down to retrieve his kippah<\/em> from under the car, he was surprised to find another kippah<\/em> resting there. It was a blue one, with the emblem of our institutions on it. Had his kippah<\/em> miraculously changed into this one? R\u2019 Michael bent down once again to see if his kippah <\/em>was in another spot under the car. He found it stuck under a wheel. He managed to extricate it and found his name on the inside. He placed the kippah<\/em> upon his head and continued homeward. The entire time, he and his son discussed the wonder which had appeared before their eyes.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Rabbi Michael Ben-Shushan, in the center<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    When he related this incident to me, I said, \u201cThe first kippah<\/em> which you found belonged to someone else. His kippah<\/em>, too, was blown off by the wind. The difference between the two of you is that he surrendered his, while you did not. The other man probably continued on his way bareheaded.<\/p>\n

    \u201cWhen Hashem noted your mesirut nefesh<\/em> not to go bareheaded, you discovered the second kippah<\/em>, as a sign of sorts that your deeds are admired in Heaven.\u201d I continued, \u201cWere you happy to find the kippah<\/em> with our emblem?\u201d<\/p>\n

    He replied, \u201cSince I became a ba\u2019al teshuvah<\/em>, I never felt such joy as I did then.\u201d<\/p>\n

    \u201cIf so,\u201d I concluded, \u201csince you did the mitzvah with such self-sacrifice, you merited the gift of being joyful on Shabbat, which reinforces your level of service of Hashem. This is in line with our Sages\u2019 statement (Avot<\/em> 4:2), \u2018The reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

    One who has spiritual yearnings for mitzvot is granted the opportunity to do more mitzvot, bringing the joy of keeping a mitzvah to a greater level.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    No Cap on Mitzvah Observance One Shabbat, my dear disciple, R\u2019 Michael Ben-Shushan was walking with his young son from the yeshiva building to his house, when a strong gust of wind blew his kippah off his head. He instinctively covered his head with his hands and began pursuing his kippah. Finally, the kippah came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":27297,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1065],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-merit-of-mitzvot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rdpinto.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}