KORACH
- WEEDS
May 3, 1993 "Depart, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away in all their sins." Numbers 16:26 In early May outside of the city, you'll notice that lawns everywhere are sprinkled with very pretty yellow Dandelions. To the unitiated eye, they look like little yellow flowers that beautify the landscape. But as anyone with a lawn can tell you, dandelions are the most intractible weed there is, the infamous crab grass that spreads like wildfire through a lawn, and if not controlled will completely take it over and destroy the lawn. After a week or so of its pretty yellow 'flower', it turns into a ball of white gossamer seeds that the wind blows all over the lawn to spread the weed in all directions and wreak havoc. The name Dandelion comes from the French words 'Dent de lion', Lion's teeth. Dent in French means 'teeth', like in the word 'dentist'. The implication is that they are as hard to remove as if you were trying to remove a tooth from the mouth of a lion - that is, not very easily. But even though they spread so easily and eat up the lawn fairly quickly, they can be controlled if one tries. Their roots are fairly shallow, and if sprayed with weed killer they die fairly easily. Unlike a real flowering bush whose roots go deep and has a real permanence, these weeds are very susceptible to weed killer. I have spread powdered weed killer over my lawn and seen the Dandelions shrivel up overnight. The Dandelion is a very good analogy to the Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination. At first glance, it looks very attractive. The untrained eye can mistake it for something that is actually very nice. Just as the dandelion looks like a pretty yellow flower, the Yetzer Hara tempts us with things that look on the surface very attractive. But in reality it is not pretty, it is just a 'front' for something pernicious that, if unchecked, will destroy what you really want. If unchecked, it can spread very quickly. After its 'pretty' stage, the Yetzer Hara turns overnight into another form that spreads fast, just like the Dandelion changes into the puff-ball of seeds that spreads in all directions. But if you are attentive to the dangers of the Yetzer Hara, you can control it. If you examine and uproot it, and put 'weed killer' on the temptations of the Yetzer Hara, its roots are not that deep and can be controlled. But it is hard to eliminate the Dandelions completely from a lawn. Even after applications of weed killer eliminate most of the dandelions, there always seem to be a few corners that have escaped destruction, and will spread again if not watched carefully. Likewise, even the greatest vigilance against the Yetzer Hara cannot destroy it completely. There are small pockets of our psyche where it maintains a foothold, and therefore we must be ever vigilant to watch out for it and destroy it, and not be fooled by its pretty flowers. Another lesson is that it's not enough for us to just root out the Dandelions on our own lawn, and not enough to control the Yetzer Hara just within ourselves. If we have a neighbor who doesn't control their Dandelions, then its seeds fly onto our lawn to take root. Therefore we have to either convince our neighbors to control their Dandelions, or we must live in a neighborhood where people are likeminded and control their weeds. Neighbors with fields of pretty yellow dandelions are like the infamous 'shochain ra', the bad neighbor, that can influence us even though we are careful about our own lawn. Lot was in error when he lived in Sodom, thinking he could be good in such a bad environment. In a city of idol worshippers, the good people are killed along with the bad, perhaps because they should have known better than to live in an evil city. Because if we are surrounded by fields of dandelions, it is virtually impossible that their seeds don't fly onto our lawns and take root. Therfore, there are many lessons we can learn from these weeds:
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