JOINING THE MARINE (PARK) CORE!

BS”D

Joining the Marine [Park] Core!

“Rockin’” in the Winter: Polishing Orthodox Jewels!

  By

Rabbi Hillel L. Yarmove © 

Nature enthusiast though I may be, I usually do not write about rocks or stones. 

Having said that, I found myself facing a dilemma which besets me every year around this time: When the rest of the beriyah is, as it were, hibernating, what am I going to write about?

Then, guess what?

Fortuitously, I began a project for my talmidim in Talmud Torah Darchei Avoseinu here in Lakewood that involved—of all things—rock polishing.

But what is rock polishing?

Using a rather inexpensive little machine available at most hobby stores, you end up doing to local pebbles what the ocean has been doing to flotsam and jetsam for centuries: you toss bits of rock and quantities of sand over and over again. Eventually, the rocks, pebbles, bits of glass—whatever!—become smooth and even attain a polished look.

+Wow!

Actually, the rock-polishing machines come with their own set of “semi-precious” stones and various grades of abrasives which ideally you systematically put your stones through, starting from a rough abrasive and ending up with “Fuller’s (diatomaceous) earth” in order to achieve the “makeh b’patish” effect. Frankly, I did not have the time to put my stones, which were all gleaned from the soil of Lakewood, New Jersey, through all that. Instead, I used sandbox-quality sand and (in imitation of how rocks are actually “polished” in the ocean), I spun the sand and the rocks in my machine—although admittedly not as long as I might have wanted to do under other circumstances. When the clamoring of my talmidim for the “polished” stones seemed to have reached a peak, I emptied the contents of the machine into a colander to separate the newly “polished” stones from the ambient sand and water, rinsed my “gems” off, and covered each with a thin coating of “super-dry” (nail) polish. Voila!

Nu? So, is there something to learn here?

I should say there definitely is! My little procedure cost me next to nothing, since I already owned the polisher and the sand. The stones were gratis, put there by the Ribbono shel Olam, and now they are being treasured by my students as though they had actually received rubies, emeralds, and sapphires (OK, maybe I overstated this a bit!). And it also reminded me, a mentor of budding talmidei chachamim, that what look like ordinary pebbles can be polished to achieve the maximum clarity, brilliance, and beauty so that they can indeed become outstanding “jewels.” I’m sure the metaphor is not lost on you: the same is true with teaching young Jews. For we often overlook the potential greatness latent in our seemingly run-of-the mill pupils. We conveniently forget that somewhere along the way they have acquired a not-so-sheer veneer of “mundaneness,” and it’s up to us teachers and parents to bring them back to a pristine sheen. What a shame if we neglect to provide them with the inspiration that can polish them!

So, in the last analysis, what is this month’s column, written in the dead of winter, really about? Polishing Orthodox Jew(el)s!

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Question or comments? I may be reached at hillyarm@yeshivanet.com.