Vayimaen (וימאן) R' Yaakov Asher Sinclair - One Small Step for a Jew

[Music] in 1967 Neil Armstrong the first man to walk on the moon was celebrated as a national hero while he certainly was an extremely Brave man but why was he a hero perhaps the scientists and the technicians who developed and constructed the spaceship should have been equally or more celebrated than he was after all it was their intellect and hard work that made the entire project possible Armstrong basically followed instructions in fact some speculate that it was exactly Armstrong's down to earth excuse the pun almost prosaic nature that got him the job the last thing that NASA wanted was some romantic Stargazer wandering around the moon going off script Armstrong was hailed as a hero because he did something spectacular the image of man walking on the moon was dazzling and Armstrong was the man man who made that image a reality it's much easier to get excited about fulfilling positive Mitzvah than to refrain from violating negative Commandments we feel so much more accomplished when we perform a good deed ding with cavana learning with a gmak than when we do when we merely refrain from doing what's wrong but feelings can be deceiving doing a mitas may feel more holy but the vill tells us that in fact We Get Much More reward for refraining from sin the mishna inin peric gimmel mishna Y Bas teaches that hasem grants each and every sad 310 worlds of reward the gone writes that a full 300 of those worlds are granted to the tadik because he turns Away From Evil whereas only 10 of those words are given to him because he did an a to he did something good it may be easier to do a positive Mitzvah Mitzvah ass celebrating yam learning an intriguing da or praying a meaningful to filler than it is to refrain from transgressing the feeling of spirituality the wow factor is indeed much more readily accessible than the cases ofto but the substance of a Jew the foundation upon which all is built is the when we commit to being more careful with what we see we're laying the foundation of our and therefore we're rewarded with the bulk of our reward inh