It’s time to warm up!

The weather across the country has been freezing! It’s time for a thaw.

Maybe that’s why in this week’s Torah portion the Frogs jump into the ovens?! In plague #2 against Pharaoh and his People, Frogs, an amphibious creature, jumps into the Egyptian ovens as an act of sacrifice.

In the plague #1, the cold Egyptian water turns to blood.

We have the cold turning warm and the cold putting out the fires.

Sometimes in life when we are cold we ought to warm up. This is true when we are cold to things of holiness and importance. Making excuses why we are not better people, better spouses, more involved parents, more active Jews all of these come from a place of coldness. When we take that cold water and turn it to blood, we heat things up and bring passion to our indifference.

Yet at the same time sometimes we get too excited about superficial and meaningless things. I’ll leave this one to your own judgement and self assessment, but suffice it to say that there are plenty of things that we overly invest ourselves in, that produce little to no value for our lives or the lives of those around us.

When we get too excited about those kind of things, we need some coldness to still those flames. This is the fire of the Egyptian excitement exemplified by the ovens. The frogs represent a need to cool things down a bit.

So as you shiver from the cold, maybe bring some fire and passion into your Jewish life and throw some of the coldness onto the unnecessary fires and passions.

Have a great Shabbos!