Imagine waking up in the morning. You realize your phone's alarm did not wake you up. You look up, its really dark and you're actually not in your bed. You open your eyes slowly, blinking wildly at the sight of what you're staring at: pitch-black darkness. Its really only 4 or 5 in the morning, the darkest point at night, and you are in a cave. You are sleeping on dirt. Your diet consists of carobs and water from a stream that "magically" was created just to supply water just for you.
All you want is a nice 2 scoop white chocolate mousse ice cream, some penne a la vodka pasta from your favorite kosher italian/pizza place, or some of your mom's friday afternoon schnitzel while smelling the food for Shabat Kodesh, or maybe just a glance of a mattress, or a pair of shoes that your blistered feet can walk with.
The fact that we have so much today is unbelievably generous of Hashem to give us (or at least to give our parents parnasa to buy for us all these things)!
These paragraphs above describe the living conditions of Rashbi and his son, Rabi Eliezer. They were NOT FROM THIS WORLD! Imagine not even dreaming about a world where women are plastered on expensive paper half-naked to make the public buy 30 grams of cloth, or a world where you can view another person from a box-device in your own pocket! Let's become sensitive to all these luxuries and gifts from Hashem and USE THEM FOR AVODAT HASHEM! Rashbi did not go through 12 years of living in a cave, wait. Let's type it again: 12 YEARS LIVING IN A CAVE! Imagine one weekend in a fancy tent with food! He didn't hide for 12 years in a cave just to survive, he did it to reach levels of Purity to reveal to the world the Sodot (hidden kabbalistic secrets) of the Torah HaKdosha.
"But this is not our generation." You are right. It isn't. But that means we can do so much with what we have to get to levels that Rashbi and the Tana'aim reached WITHOUT PAIN AND SUFFERING, because they gave up their lives for the Torah and Hashem!
Why is it so difficult to give up 9 months of your (B'H) 120 years to learn in a Yeshiva/Seminary in Israel? Or more importantly, WHY do you/did you have the zchut to be born Jewish at all (forget about being raised Jewish)?
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