Live Like a Palm

Tzaddik katamar yifrach (the Tzaddik flowers like a date palm.) (Tehillin 92)

Why is a righteous person likened to a date palm?

A date palm uniquely has a smooth bark, with impressions from previous years’ growth, the leaves and fruit are at the top and the tree grows directly upwards.

This is how a Tzaddik lives his/her life. The Tzaddik’s past is not visible but is seamlessly integrated into their present, their whole focus and activity is based on the present and they are always striving upwards towards the future – finally their paths are straight.

What does this mean in practice? 

There is not a person in this world who is purely righteous and never sins. The Tzaddik takes the mistakes he has made and grows from them by returning from the wrong path, strengthening himself against the same mistakes and coming out a wiser and better person for it.

Thus he adds this mistake to the knowledge base on which he grows and moves on to the next level.

The Tzaddik thus integrates the past into his being, but does not ignore the past (making the same mistakes over and over) nor does he live in the past (I was… or if only…) but instead, by focusing on the present and the opportunities at hand, he is in a complete state of being in the present – the opportunities to do good and allay bad, offered to one at any point in time.

How does he achieve this?

By striving upwards and to the future, by focusing on where he is going, the Tzaddik continually moves and does not get stuck in one spot.

What is the future he strives for?

The World to come where every moment of time on earth is audited and every deed performed, paid in consequence in the infinite.

The Posuk in Yeshaya (60:21) states  ve’ameich kulam tzaddikim (Your people are all tzaddikim) – H’s people are all righteous.

What does this mean? 

That Hashem’s people are those that live according to this principle.

What in Torah helps us live this concept? 

The Shalosh Regalim, Pesach, Shavuous and Succos . 

• Pesach  is the commemoration and absorption of the past, Yetzias Mitzraim 

• Shavuous  is the present – the celebration of receiving the Torah. Torah  is the tool by which we cash in on opportunities availed in the present and resist the desire for licentious physical gratification – it gives everything meaning   

• Succos is the future: the Succah is symbolic of the world to come. The lulav is a tefillah for rain and crops for the year to come.

Thus the Jewish year continues on a cycle of building on the past and living in the present to attain the ultimate future.