Guest Posting From Chabakuk Elisha: His Grandmother's Cow

(Painting by Victor Brindatch)

A chossid once happened to be at the home of a certain Jew who was critical of Chassidus. This Jew criticized the concept of Rebbes, stating that these men were frauds and charlatans who, out of there desire for money & power, took advantage of simple minded Jews and manipulated them into giving them their money, thus getting rich at the expense of these unfortunate souls.

The chossid replied that this Jew reminded him of his grandmother's cow. This cow was a good cow for a number of years, it was friendly, gave them milk, was agreeable, and devoted.

But the cow thought it was unfair that it had to remain in the stable instead of in the home, and that it only got water to drink and straw to eat -- while the owners ate real food in comfort. The consolation for this cow was that every week when the owner's wife cooked for Shabbos she would dump all the leftovers in the trough, which the cow ate with passion. At least the cow would get these delicious morsels of food.

Now, it once happened that Yom-Tov followed Shabbos and the rebbetzin, busy with the Yom Tov preparations, dumped-out the leftovers, instead of pouring them into the trough.

At this point the cow was waiting for the usual delicacies, and instead, only water was brought out for it. This was very disturbing, and the cow started to think... It must be that the people were becoming greedier, and had decided to eat the leftovers themselves! All the leftover scraps, cold soup, bits and pieces and burnt crusts were surely being kept and eaten by the greedy people and not even this would be shared with the cow!

Needless to say, the cow became furious; it started braking things, stopped giving milk and became downright useless to the point that they had to rid of it.

So too, said the chossid, there are people who think like this cow. They think that theirs is the only reality, and like the cow, they can't imagine that their perspective might be incomplete. Thus, the cow couldn't imagine that its delicacies could be someone else's garbage.

The Jew in the story couldn't imagine that others do not share his greed for wealth as the most valuable material in existence.

Similarly, in many, many, areas, people cannot get past their own way of thinking to understand that there may be something higher…