After attending a lavish Kiddush at the Chelm synagogue, Hershele walked home happily stuffed. As soon as he walked into his small, crumbling hut, he called out to his wife.

"Yenteleh! What a Kiddush, what a Kiddush! I am going to marvel about this Kiddush for weeks! But the best part was the blintzes. Oy, such heavenly blintzes! Every bite was like Gan Eden. I need you to make me blintzes!"

Yentah, being the wonderful wife that she was, wanted to make her husband happy. The next time she went shopping in the marketplace, she asked around about the blintzes and managed to get the recipe.

"My dear husband, I have the recipe for the blintzes," she told him in a quiet, sad voice, "but it is not going to work. The recipe calls for fine flour, but our flour is rough. It is not going to work."

"Narishkeiten," replied Hershele. "Just use a bit less flour."

"It also calls for cottage cheese, but we do not have it. It is too expensive."

"So use milk instead."

"We also do not have sugar."

"So use some honey, for crying out loud!"

Lovely wife Yentah obliged and hurried to make her beloved husband the blintzes he so craved. When she served them, Hershele took one bite and spat it out.

"This tastes horrible!" he cried. "Why did my parents marry me to a wife who does not know how to cook?"

The moral of this semi-famous joke is never to trust Hershele. While he might think he is smart and capable, he made a simple mistake.

Recipes are meant to be followed precisely, with the right ingredients and amounts, the correct order, and timing.

This lesson applies to the recipe of life as well. If we use the ingredients correctly, we can make our lives beautiful. If we use them in the wrong places, we might end up with Yentah's blintzes.

What does it mean to use life's ingredients correctly? It is not about the ingredients themselves. Passion and coldness, joy and seriousness, ambition and contentment, we all have them. The question is where we place them.

Think about two ingredients we all have: passion and coldness.

Both can be used in the right or wrong way. Passion can fuel our growth or lead us into mistakes. Coldness can be the wisdom to slow down or indifference when we should care. So we need to use them wisely.

The first two plagues that G-d brought upon the Egyptians were blood and frogs. According to the Rebbe's teaching, they carried a hidden message.

The cold water represented the Egyptians' attitude toward spirituality and meaning. It held no interest for them. So G-d turned the water into blood, reminding them to be passionate about what truly matters.

And what about their material life? That was where the Egyptians invested their excitement and energy. So G-d sent cold-blooded, water-based frogs to cool their excitement for material things.

The plagues were G-d's way of saying, "You are mixing up My recipe! Be colder toward materialism and more passionate about your purpose and spirituality."

So there we have it. We need to use our ingredients wisely.

Be more passionate about the things that truly matter: Mitzvot, helping others, davening, and learning Torah. Be colder toward the things that don't: insults, material obsessions, keeping up with trends.

And yes, cooking might take a lifetime, but the result will be delicious.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!
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