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Who clothes the naked


"Certainly those determining acts of her life were not ideally beautiful. They were the mixed result of a young and noble impulse struggling amidst the conditions of an imperfect social state, in which great feelings will often take the aspect of error, and great faith the aspect of illusion. For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it."

"But we insignificant people with our daily words and acts are preparing the lives of many Dorotheas."

"Her finely-touched spirit had still its fine issues, though they were not widely visible. Her full nature like that river of which Cyrus broke the strength, spent itself in channels which had no great name on the earth. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs (George Eliot; from the epilogue to Middlemarch)”

We thank God for the Mitzvot that allow and empower us to have a diffusive effect of goodness on the world. We acknowledge that our souls are dressed in many unhistoric acts that may remain hidden to the world, but are our garments before God.


By: Rabbi Simcha Weinberg
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