Emet Inspire - Rabbi Hersch Goldberger - Half The Action

Welcome back to this week's Emmed Inspire. In every action that we do, there's two aspects to it. There's the physical action and there's our intent. When we're serving God, they're both crucial. The baseline for any type of service that we have for God is that we have to follow the hala. We have to do the actions that we're required to do, but we also have to have the proper intent. If we're lacking the intent, there's a crucial aspect missing from our service of God. In this week's para, Parat Vira, Lot was appointed a judge in Sidome. And on the day that he was appointed a judge, he did a very bold mitzvah, one of the most amazing mitzvah you could possibly imagine. In Sedome, they had a law that no one is a allowed to take in visitors into their house. But he was sitting by the gate of the city. And even though he was a very public figure, he was appointed the judge that day. He decided he's going to take in visitors in his house. Two people he did not know. He had never seen these people before in his life. And what happened? He said, "Please come to my house." They said, "No." He said, "Please, please." He begged them. Finally, finally, finally, these people relented after tremendous begging. And Lo knew that he was risking his life. In fact, the people of Saddam found out that he brought these people to his house. And when he when they found out, they came to his house to try to take them away. He said, "No, I'm not letting you take them." And they were going to kill them. And they wanted to kill him also. To the extent that they these people who happen to be angels, they had to save Lot and they saved them from the people. But Rashi makes a very fascinating observation that even though Lo did something which we would never do to risk our lives to bring two people who aren't even asking us, they don't want to come to our house, he still brought them to a house. But Rashi says there was something lacking. The Pusk says that he learned he saw and Rashi says that what did he see? He saw it in the house of Afra and that it was an external action. It was something that was rooted for him. It wasn't coming from true service of God and from his true conviction in his belief in God. It was coming from something that he had learned, but he never really embied into his inner being. It's something that my friend, a dear friend of mine calls surface Judaism. That we could do all the right actions, but our intention is not necessarily what it's supposed to be. It's maybe our intention we're not even thinking. Maybe our intention is this is just how we grew up. Maybe our intention is that this is that this is something that's going to look good. It's going to give me honor. It's going to give me praise. People are going to like that I do it. But it's not necessarily going to be cuz I'm doing it for God. We need to have both in mind. But in truth, it's not always so easy for a person to realize where what his level is and why he's doing it. In fact, Rashi says later on that Lot himself did not realize what his intents were and what level of service of God. He thought that he was a greater sadic that he was. But in reality, since his mitzvot on even though on the surface his mitzvot were tremendous, amazing, the most awesome actions that you could possibly do, but since he was lacking in a certain aspect of his intent, there was something that wasn't on that level and he wasn't as great of a sadic as a righteous person as he really thought he was. With God's help, we should always make sure we do the right actions. And but it's not just that. We also have to have the right intent. Shabbat shalom.