Our Only Child | Rabbi Daniel Osher Kleinman

There was a girl who was born with a medical condition. Double inlet, left ventricle, pulmonary atresia. Essentially, her heart only had three chambers, and she underwent multiple surgeries to create a fourth chamber in her heart. And although the surgery was successful, it took a toll on her body. Eventually, she was zoche to make it through school and to grow up and to get married. But the doctors warned her, Your body is fragile and you can only have one child. The toll that a pregnancy will take is going to destroy your body, if you have more than one child. And this young woman eventually became pregnant, and when she found out the news, she was elated. And she told herself, I am going to make this the most important mission in my life. And I'm going to do it right, and I'm going to make sure not to eat anything that could be detrimental, not to do anything that could be detrimental, not to, Chas v’Shalom, put that child developing within me in any sort of remote danger. The Chofetz Chaim teaches us that each and every one of us in this world have a spiritual body developing within us. It's a state of pregnancy. And the Chofetz Chaim says that the Mitzvos that we have and the Aveiros, the שס”ה לא תעשה and the רמ”ח עשה correspond to the שס”ה גידים and the רמ”ח איברים of the spiritual body, because every Mitzvah and every Aveira has an impact on the fetus, on the child, on the Neshama developing within us. The Chofetz Chaim writes, the Ben Ish Chai writes, that when we look at something, what we use our eyes for is what helps develop the eyes of that Neshama, that spiritual body within us. When we look at דברים שבקדושה, you look at a הגבהה, with the words of the Sefer Torah, the Magen Avrohom writes that it develops Kedushah in the Neshama of a person. And if, Chas v’Shalom, a person sees something that's inappropriate, it can hurt the eyes of that fetus. Chazal say, אמר ר’ מנשיא אמר רבי יהושע בן לוי Somebody who sees something, if something enters your line of sight, your line of vision, and you look away, לא זן עיניו ממנו, you say: I'm not going to take this pleasure. I'm going to look away from it. The eyes of your spiritual body have just been infused with an incredible burst of energy, with an incredible amount of nutrients and vitamins and minerals, enabling it ultimately to see the זיו השכינה לעולם הבא. We only get a chance to live once. We only have one child. We're only going to give birth to one Ruchniyusdike body. Let's make it our mission that next time we walk down the street, we drive down the street, we're in a supermarket, we’re by a Simcha, and we see something and we can make a choice to look or to turn away, turn away and enable yourself to be נהנה מזיו השכינה לעולם הבא.