Thank you for the opportunity to share a little with you all. The book of mishlei is one of the three books in tenach that Shloma Hamelech (wisest of the wise) wrote for us.

Who, given the opportunity to learn skills which are vital to us, would not jump at the chance to be under the wing of a master craftsman, lapping up every nuance, every subtlety that he may suggest. Yet, when it comes to the most sublime of all character refinement and improvement through the ultimate hand book (the torah), we sometimes ignore that chance – a free and uplifting chance at that, because it removes us from our comfort zone too much.

Basically, mishlei in a nutshell is about the two sides of man, he who follows the concepts of torah – the tzadik, and he who doesn't – the rosha. Shloma Hamelech shows logically, how it just makes so much sense to follow the former path, rather than the latter. He points out a beautiful picture of all the advantages of following an upright life, and its converse – the pain of being a slave t one's own desires. Thus, it becomes clear, that mishlei is not just a safer written by someone who liked learning, telling us to do the same. Neither is it a collection of famous truisms and known sayings ('spare the rod and spoil the child' and those of that ilk). It is infinitely greater than that.

He relates the importance of following a torah pathway through every facet of life. He uses nature ('The tree of life' perek 3), the animal kingdom (the command to the lazy person to learn from the industrious ant, who needs no taskmaster over it to ensure it does the job), even human relationships ( see perek 7, where he goes to great lengths in describing the seemingly real lure of the 'foreign woman'. Yet when reality sets in, one realises that, following that which was just a transitory pleasure can ruin one. Note that eventually we reach one of the climaxes of the safer right near the end, where there is a description of the flip – side to this the ashes chial!)

There really is so much to write, so much to share, but let this serve as just an introduction to a safer that one could spend years on and not get bored. Indeed, a small group of us have been doing just that in a pre-shacharis sader each week.

I hope you enjoy mishlei and i am happy to field questions on it and pretend to know the answers...

Rabbi L.