LIFE IS FRAGILE

“Once I went to speak with a special rabbi, Rav Noach Weinberg. We spent a long time talking about the essence of life and the meaning of life. He told me, ‘Try to live each day of your life as if that would be the last day of your life.’

On the bus ride back, suddenly someone got up and said, ‘Chafetz chashud [suspicious object]. There is a suspicious object in this bus.’

I was thinking to myself, ‘Look how fragile is the human being. Just moments ago this rabbi told me to live my life as if it is the last day of your life.’ And I realized we are fragile. Today we are here, maybe tomorrow we’re not here.”

Daniel’s Reflection

Rabbi Sergio Slomianski is the chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Mexico City. We got to spend a quick 10 minutes before he had to officiate at a funeral. In that 10 minutes, he conveyed quite a lot! We talked about how fragile life is and that we never really know if we will be here tomorrow. Rabbi Slomianski also shared how the spiritual life keeps us from being overly materialistic and provides greater meaning. Finally, the Rabbi emphasized to me how he found that his own spirituality had to first be preceded by study before he could experience a spiritual feeling.