5771 פרשת בחקותי

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah gives over to us the Tochacha which is the rebuke the Torah gives to Bnei Yisroel for not keeping the Mitzvos. However, in the beginning of the Parsha the Torah begins with the Pasuk that says if you go in the way of my laws and if you keep my commandments you will have great blessings while if you don’t the opposite will occur.

 The commentaries ask what the Torah is telling us with the words “if you go in the way of my laws” it seems to be the same idea as the words in the second half of the Pasuk that says “if you keep my commandments.”

 Rashi explains that the words, “if you go in my ways” refer to learning Torah with effort while the words “keeping my commandments” relates to actually doing the Mitzvos.

 The Siforno has a different interpretation of the words “if you go in my way” which is that a person should follow in the ways of God when he goes through his dally dealings while the words “and you shall guard my commandments” means that you should learn the Mitzvos to understand them and then you will be able to serve God properly as a worker who serve his master out of love not from fear.

 If we look at the Siforno a little more closely we can ask the following question. The Torah in this Parsha seems to be telling us what we must do in order to receive all the blessings that come from God while if we Chas Veshalom do not do what we are supposed to then we will receive the opposite. I can understand this using Rashi’s explanation as what we are required to do is put effort in our Torah learning and do the Mitzvos which would seem to be the foundation of being a Torah Jew and is something that on the surface any person can do. However, according to the Siforno the bar seems to be raised where the minimum is for us to be able to not only do the Mitzvos but understand them to such an extent that we can do the Mitzvos like workers who do it from their own willingness not those that do the Mitzvos from fear. This seems to be something that relates to the Tzadikim of the generation not to the regular person. However, we know that the Torah is not talking only to the Tzadikim but to all of Bnei Yisroel. How then can it be that we can all reach this level in our service of God that the Torah expects from us just by understanding the Mitzvos?

 The answer could be that in essence if a person truly learns and understands the Mitzvos he will appreciate how special the Torah and Mitzvos are and he will run to do the Mitzvos not from fear but because he realizes what an incredible thing he is doing. A person will be so indebted to God for giving him these special Mitzvos that he will run to do them with a tremendous feeling of love and gratitude.

 If we can try to stop doing Mitzvos only from rote and actually think about what we are doing it will bring us to do the Mitzvos with love and then we will truly merit all the blessing that God promised Bnei Yisroel in this week’s Parsha.

5768 פרשת בחקותי

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah describes to Bnei Yisroel the physical reward for doing the Mitzvos and conversely the punishment for not keeping the Mitzvos. The Pasuk uses two different words for keeping the Mitzvos. The Torah at first says:

If you walk in the way of my laws….

The Torah then continues and says:

My commandments you should guard and do them.

Rashi explains the difference as follows:

 We can’t explain the concept of “walk in my laws”  to mean keeping the Mitzvos since that is what “and guard my commandments”  means so we must say that the words”walk in my laws” means to toil in our learning of Torah.

After the Torah describes to us the reward for toiling in Torah and doing the Mitzvos, it tells us the punishments for doing sins and it begins by saying:

If you don’t listen to me and don’t do the Mitzvos….

Rashi as before learns that “not listening” means not toiling in Torah and “not doing  means not doing the Mitzvos. However, here Rashi adds another idea and says:

Since Bnei Yisroel won’t toil in Torah learning, they won’t do the Mitzvos.

 From this Rashi we see a clear connection between a person toiling in Torah and keeping the Mitzvos.

 There are 2 questions we can ask on this concept:

1. Why are these two ideas connected at all, we see many people who keep Mitzvos who do not toil in Torah?
2. If toiling in Torah is so important, what is the definition of toiling in Torah?

There are many possible ideas we can use to answer the first question, but let us focus on one particular idea. The first thing we have to understand is that a person can do Mitzvos even though they are not toiling in Torah. For example, a person can daven with a minyan, wear Tzitzis and Tefillin and do many similar Mitzvos even if he never opened a Sefer. However, when it comes to Mitzvos where there is a very strong Yetzer Harah, it will be very difficult if not impossible to keep those Mitzvos. Those Mitzvos can run the gamut of Mitzvos between man and his fellow man which include being perfectly honest and truthful to the sins between man and God which can range from the big three Avayros to not going to shul in the morning when you are too tired. Chazal tells us that God created the Yetzer Harah and created the Torah as an antidote. Toiling in Torah works because the Torah then becomes part of you and when the Yetzer Hara tries to convince you to transgress a sin, the Torah that you imbibed has already changed you and will enable you to see the truth more clearly. Chazal tell us that a person who learns the topics in the Torah that relate to a certain prohibition in depth and with real toil they will inherently become more sensitive to that sin and the next time he is tempted by it, it will be easier to do the right thing.

In order to understand what it means to toil in Torah, we must look at a Mishna in Pirkei Avos. The Mishna says:

 Someone that increases his possessions increases his worry, someone that increases their learning of Torah increases life.

 Rabbeinu Yonah in his explanation of these words says compares the worry that a person has when working to increase his assets to the person who is learning Torah. However he says that even though the worry and the stress is the same as someone acquiring assets and technically should make him ill there is a special Bracha that a person who tries to learn Torah with all his energy will merit life.

 I once heard that since Rabbeinu Yonah is comparing the worry of someone working to acquire assets to someone learning Torah, it means that the way a person goes about both of them needs to be the same. The same energy a person puts into acquiring and safeguarding his physical assets is the same energy one must put into his Torah learning. Just like a person works with every ounce of energy to get stuff done at work or putting together a deal we must act that way when learning Torah also. To help make achieving that easier we should always tell ourselves that each and every word of Torah is more valuable than all the money in the world.

 Now coming towards Shavuos we should try to increase our commitment to learning Torah and putting our true energy into learning Torah and we should merit not only to grow in Torah but also in our Shmiras Hamitzvos and merit all the blessings that were told to Bnei Yisroel if they toil in Torah and keep the Mitzvos properly.