Do You Serve Hashem With Your Heart? | Rabbi Yosef Benyaminov

I hope everybody wanted an amazing time to experience all the yummy tovim who begin with Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and finally Shemini Atzeret. Right? We we just had Simchat Torah. We danced with the Torah. We're happy. We rejoiced. Now it's all coming to an end, one would think, but really it doesn't have to. Not supposed to. Why? When we finish the Torah, the last pasuk says, "L'einei kol Yisrael." It ends with the letter lamed. And right away we begin reading Parashat Bereishit. It starts with the letter bet. What does that spell? Lev, the heart. The commentators tell us, "Why is that?" Because Torah is not just about reading and learning and processing with your mind. You also have to have a lev, the heart, towards the Torah. What does that mean to have a heart towards the Torah? We're supposed to also be excited when we're learning, when we're doing mitzvot. What is your emotional state like when you're doing mitzvot? Are you doing it just because you have to, as we say in Hebrew, "zeh lo tov"? Or are you doing it because you really want to? Are you excited about doing the mitzvot? Are you excited about learning Torah? How many of us are excited to go into minyan, especially shacharit, especially if you go early in the morning? Right? That's something that we have to work on. Why? I'll tell you something that I heard many, many years ago. If there's one thing that I want you to know from all the shiurim that I've ever taught, Torah, so taught this far is this. There's a concept in the Kabbalah called nahama d'kisufa, the bread of embarrassment. Basically, the question is, "Why did God create us by putting us into this world?" The Kabbalists tell us that it's because he wants to give us a reward. He wants to give us the ultimate reward of himself, the ultimate delight. So, the question is then, "Why didn't he give it to us right away? Give it to us in the next world. Why do we to come down to this world? The Kabbalists The answer is if we would have gotten in this world, imagine for a second a guy going around knocking on doors asking for bread. People give him bread. Here you go. You feel like you know, you didn't earn it, so you feel embarrassed that he has to eat the such a bread that that that has to take from others. But if you earn that bread on his own, he'll be proud and he'll eat it with it would taste better. That's why God sent us to this world that we earn our bread, so to speak, that we we do the mitzvot, we learn the Torah. And that's why the person has to understand that he he is this world to make money in all of my bias. You should have to positive filters that it's for me. It's not I'm not doing it for God. I'm doing it for myself. With that concept, we could always have positive emotions towards all mitzvot.