A few days ago I was sitting at home and decided that it had been too long since I wrote a short story. I have always loved creative writing, even though I’m not the best at it. Anyway, I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to write about. Thankfully, I had the enormous power of the internet to help me out. I didn’t do much, just simply typed ‘creative writing prompts’ into the search bar and let the World Wide Web work it’s magic. Almost immediately thousands of results popped up on my screen. I searched through the many pages of prompts for a bit and none really caught my eye as something that I wanted to write about. None, until I landed on the simple prompt:
Write about an abandoned house.
It’s simplicity struck me, and suddenly thousands of idea began to flow through my head. there was so much openness to it, and everything was up to me. I had complete control of my story. I opened a new document and began writing immediately.
A few days later I was reading the translation of my torah portion and I realized that the lesson I had learned when writing my story applied to it as well. My portion, Shoftim, is all about rules. There are rules for everything; what to do if someone steals, how to choose a king, and the specific part that I have to read, what to do if someone is murdered. But that isn’t the point of this.
My point is that every single person in the time of the torah had a choice. They were in control of their story. Even though there were all of these rules, they could follow them or break them. The choice was theirs. That can be applied to modern day as well. It can be applied to Justice, to Kindness, to Love, and so many more.
You have a choice. It is up to you to make the right one.