פרשת קדושים 5771

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discusses many Mitzvos one of which is the commandment to “love your friend as you would yourself”.

 The Siforno explains the Mitzvah the following way. A person should do for his friend what he would like to be done to himself if he were in his friends place.

 If we look at the Siforno a little more closely we can ask the following question. We know that Hillel had defined an aspect of the Mitzvah of “loving your friend as yourself” as not doing to your friend what you would not want done to you. If the Siforno’s definition of the commandment is correct why did Hillel not explain the commandment like the Siforno which would be inclusive of both doing to your friend what you would want done to you and also not doing to your friend what you would not want done to you. This is because inherent in only doing what I would want done to me would preclude doing something bad to someone else.

 We could answer that both of these are actually the flip side of the same coin meaning that the idea of Hillel is the prohibition (i.e. don’t hurt your friend) and the explanation of the Siforno is the other side (i.e. do good for your friend).

 However we know that Chazal were very specific in the words they used and if Hillel said something in a specific way it is because he felt that this is the best way to explain the Mitzvah and if he would have said it like the Siforno it would not have been the ideal explanation.

 The answer might be that there are two aspects to this commandment. The goal is certainly as the Siforno explained to actively do good to everyone the same way you would want to be treated if you were in their shoes.

 However, this is a very difficult level to achieve as a person naturally likes to receive and even when he gives likes to feel he will be getting something in return. That is why there is the concept of chesed shel emes which is a kindness someone can only do to someone who has passed away who can in no way ever return the favor.

 The only way a person can reach that level is by first creating the feelings that another person is one who is someone special to me. This feeling can be created by a person going out of his way to ensure that he does not harm him in any way.  This is the idea of Hillel. When a person endeavors to ensure that he will not do anything to someone that he himself would not like he will begin to view that person as akin to himself. Once he creates those feelings he will be able to strive to reach the level that the Siforno describes.

 Now we are in the middle of Sefira the mourning period for the deaths of the 24,000 students of Rabbi Akiva who died because on their level there was something lacking in the way they treated each other. If we can work on ourselves not to hurt other people in any way we should merit reaching the highest levels of this Mitzvah and merit seeing true peace for Bnei Yisroel with the coming of Mashiach.

פרשת קדושים 5768

 In this week’s Parsha the Torah discussed the special Mitzvos relating to the requirements to leave over certain portions of the produce of a field for the poor of Bnei Yisroel. These three Mitzvos are Leket, Shichacha and Payah. Right after explaining the laws that relate to these Mitzvos, the Torah brings down the Mitzvah of ”do not steal”. The Ibn Ezra explains why the Mitzvah of not stealing is brought down in the Torah right after the laws relating to the mandatory charity that one must give from his field the following way:

 Since I commanded you to give from your own money to the poor of Bnei Yisroel for the honor of God, you surely should not take what belongs to other people.

 If we look at this Ibn Ezra a little more closely, we can ask the following question:

 The Ibn Ezra says that since a person’s action of giving charity is done for the honor of God, that person should surely not steal. We know that every Mitzvah we do is for the honor of God, so what is the connection between the fact that giving charity is for God’s honor to not stealing; why couldn’t the Torah put the sin of stealing after the Mitzvah of Tefilin and the Ibn Ezra can still say that since you put on Tefilin for God’s honor you shouldn’t steal from other people?

 We might think to answer simply that charity relates to giving away a person’s own money and stealing relates to taking away other people’s money so the comparison between money and money is there which would not apply to the Mitzvah of Tefilin.

 However, that answer would not be valid, since on the surface, there is no contradiction between someone being charitable and stealing. We have all heard famous stories of mobsters being very generous to causes they felt were important to them, even though they had no problem stealing every day of the year. The actions come from two totally different instincts. When a person gives charity, it makes him feel good, so it could be worth it for him to give up money that he stole for that purpose.

 To make this question a little stronger, we can ask that even if there is a direct correlation between the trait of giving charity and the trait of honesty which will prevent a person from stealing, (meaning that if a person gives charity, it would logically convince them not to steal), why put the prohibition of stealing after the specific commandments that relate to charity from the field and not after one of the myriad other Mitzvos in the Torah that relate to giving charity in different forms?

 In order to answer these questions let us try to explain what is different about this form of charity compared to other forms of charity. The difference is that by these three Mitzvos it is easy to avoid giving the charity without any one knowing while by other forms of charity it would be very difficult to avoid giving charity it in a way where it would not be obvious to other people. To see this concept more clearly, let us examine the Mitzvah of Leket a little more closely. The Sefer Hachinuch, when describing some of the laws of Leket says:

 If one or two stalks of grain fell then it is considered to be Leket, however if three stalks fall it does not fall into the category of Leket and belongs to the owner of the field.

 From this Sefer Hachinuch, we can see how easy it is for a person to avoid doing the Mitzvah of Leket. No one would ever know if he dropped two or three stalks and he could easily take everything for himself. The laws of Shichacha and Paya have similar laws that make it possible to avoid doing the Mitzvah properly. This is in contrast to a person being asked by a poor person for charity. It is very difficult to look a poor person in the eye and say “I have no money”. Now we can begin to understand this comparison.

Chazal tell us that the difference between a ”Ganav” and a ”Gazlan” is that a ”Ganav” steals quietly in the middle of the night so he doesn’t get caught while a “Gazlan” steals in the open since he fears no one. The Pasuk that gives the commandment not to steal in our Parsha uses the language of ”lo tignovu” – meaning – don’t steal in a stealthy way.

 What the Torah is telling us here according to the Ibn Ezra is that if a person keeps the commandment of Leket, etc, even though they can easily get away with not doing the Mitzvah without anyone knowing (except for God) then he must be doing the Mitzvah only because of the honor of God. If this is the case, how could he think about taking someone else’s money, even though he believes he could do it without being found out, since the honor of God is so important to him. This is the correlation the Torah is making and this is why the Torah could not have put this Mitzvah of not stealing anywhere else in the Torah, but rather it had to be after these particular Mitzvos.

 To take it a step further, the Ibn Ezra says that God gave Bnei Yisroel the Mitzvah of Leket specifically for the honor of God so we not only will have the Mitzvah but in order for us to have the tools we need to help us fight our strong Yetzer Hara for stealing about which Chazal say most people are involved in some sort of stealing.

 We can learn from this Ibn Ezra a very important lesson in fighting the Yetzer Hara. A person can use an idea he garnered from one Mitzvah where he had no desire to transgress a sin to a place where he does have a desire to transgress a sin. In our case, by the Mitzvah of Leket, there is not much of a desire to transgress this sin since the amounts are minimal, nevertheless, since it would have been easy to transgress the sin without anyone knowing, he inherently did the Mitzvah for the honor of God. A person can then take that feeling and move it over to the transgression of stealing for which there could be a much stronger desire and use it to fight that desire. He could say to himself, “I, a person who cares about the honor of God do such a sin even if no one would ever know”. There are many such examples throughout our lives where we can use ideas from one Mitzvah to help us fight our Yetzer Hara in more difficult areas. If we can take these ideas and work on ourselves, we should merit having a true Kabbalas Hatorah this Shavuot.