Tomer Devorah with Rabbi Avigdor Miller's Commentary 5 Chapter 1 Mi Kel Kamocha Be Kind Even t

Shalom. We're continuing learning to devor. We're in chapter one learning about the first mida. Raber says that although there are 13 midot of raim, 13 principles of kindness of hashem, 13 attributes of mercy. The first one is the main one. It's the the one that is expected to from all of us to start with and therefore we should all pay attention and review it. We said that it starts with me. Who is God like you? And we explained the word is the name that signifies power and at the same time it signifies kindness. mercy. And we explained that the true power is when you can be merciful to everyone. Even people who are against you, even people who are not appreciating you, even people who might be hurting you, you still do not withdraw any of your goodness from them. Be it a smile, be it a good word, or even financial help or physical help. You do not say because he did this for me therefore I'm not doing it for him. We know that uh there is a commandment of um and that means taking revenge and taking revenge is part of this mida. until now I was nice to him but now that he did this to me I am not going to be nice to him anymore and that is of course um not the way Hashem uh behaves towards us now people ask questions do doesn't it say that Hashem gets u um angry and we mentioned that anger doesn't mean that Hashem God has an emotion of anger. God does not have an emotion of anger because anger comes from weakness. When a person is afraid that that he is in danger, he is afraid that things are not going his way and therefore he has to overreact to protect himself. Hashem is not afraid. He's not worried. He's in total control. and therefore he doesn't get angry. Another question people ask, but doesn't it say hashem? Hashem is the god of vengeance, of revenge. And we are saying that Hashem does not take revenge. Even if someone does bad to him, he continues doing good. How do we reconcile that? And we also call Hashem Kelana the the God who is vengeful. He takes revenge. Um and uh in in explaining both God's anger and God's revenge, we have to um look at it from our perspective. When we want to describe what happens in the world, we describe Hashem's um behavior. And by describing Hashem's behavior, we attempt to describe his feelings. But of course, we cannot describe God's feelings because he is unchanging. Yes, he treats us with love, with compassion, with kindness, but it doesn't mean that he has weakness of a human being who might be affected by um someone's suffering and his heart will hurt and he will help them. Often people help others because they are hurt. They feel vulnerable. They don't like to see someone else crying or in pain. And therefore, because of their weakness, they go and help. Someone who is less sensitive, someone who is of stronger character will ignore the cries. Two people might be of uh same level of kindness but one helps and the other doesn't. Why? Because one gets hurt more when he hears cries of others and the other one doesn't. But their level of kindness is the same. is just that the first one does kindness not for the other person but for himself in order to remove suffering from his eyes. Whereas the true kindness is when you do it for the sake of the one who is suffering. You are not affected by it. You are above. You're watching it and you have nothing to do with the person involved and the only reason you're doing it is because you know that this is the right thing to do. Hashem behaves towards us with kindness because this is who he is. This is what he does. Not because his feelings were affected. So when we describe God as a merciful God, it's not because we hurt God with our cries and with our pitifulness and uh God couldn't help himself. And in order to remove the pain from himself from seeing such a terrible occurrence, he is helping us to improve the environment. No, he's helping us because he in essence is good. When we say that God becomes angry, it's not because God all of a sudden has an emotion of anger, but rather when we observe people being punished. We say it must be that God became angry with them. God was fed up. God doesn't become angry. He doesn't get fed up. But in describing the events, we say in human terms, someone would receive a punishment only if the other party became angry. Someone would receive their due because they did something. We call it midgah. What you do, that's what happens to you. The way you treat others, that's how God treats you. We describe it in our terms. We call it revenge. I do something to my enemy and my enemy does something back to me. With Hashem, it's not like that. There is no emotion. Everything is truth. And therefore, when a person gets punished, it's because of God's attribute of truth. That's how the world is uh programmed, not because he's taking revenge. But from our perspective, that's what it is. We call it revenge. We call it mid mid measure for measure. So furthermore when we say when we say um revenge it is not the same as the word uh kina kina means jealousy. We say that hashem is a jealous god. However, you have to know that in English, the word jealousy and the the word to um covet are two different things. To covet means to desire something that someone else has and to perhaps plan to take it away from them and that is bad. That is what the ten commandments says. Do not covet. Do not desire what someone else has. It's his. It's not yours. Strive for your own good. Don't take away good from someone else. However, the word jealousy like we say a husband is jealous of his wife doesn't mean that he wants to become the wife. Rather, it means that he doesn't want someone to take away what's his. In marriage, the two spouses are committed to each other and if someone else takes them away, the other spouse becomes jealous. They are protecting their rights. When when we say that God is uh a jealous God, it means that we and our God Hashem have a covenant like marriage and we are committed to him and he's committed to us. However, when we turn to other gods, to other powers, to other idols, Hashem tries to bring us back. He tries to re-establish the covenant that we committed ourselves to and therefore he behaves in the way we would call a jealous person would behave fighting for his own rights and therefore uh we have to understand that whenever we describe Hashem we are describing him from our perspective. How would we describe a person who behaved like that? But Hashem doesn't have any weaknesses and therefore he's unchanging. His emotions do not rise and do not fall. Okay. Now coming back to our topic, Hashem is kind and we have to emulate him. We have to try to be kind just like he is. This is the first mid and it's the simplest, the easiest of all traits and therefore the one that is most important to emulate. We can be successful in this one and therefore we are obligated to do it. First keep in mind that you often act contrary to the will of Hashem. Now when you encounter other people and they bother you. So the first thought should be I also sometimes do things against Hashem. I also sometimes bother Hashem. And yet God allows you to continue to exist and even gives you all the things that make life pleasurable. Not only he gives you life but he continues to give you pleasure bonuses. Then the second thought is realize that you wouldn't do the same for others even if they don't insult you. Even to our friends those that love us. We cannot give them so much good. We don't give them life. We are not in charge of their success and their pleasure. We may contribute to it a little bit. You wouldn't bestow so many benefits even on your best friend. So your benefit to your friend is minimal. God's benefit on you is great. When you sin against God, it should be a much greater problem. Hashem has much more demand. I gave you life. I gave you good. And this is how you're behaving. We don't have so many demands on our friend. We don't He doesn't owe us anything. And therefore, when he doesn't treat us exactly the way we want, our um being upset at them should be much less than Hashem's being upset at us. And therefore, we have to keep in mind that why should I get upset at my friend? He doesn't owe me anything. I do for him very little. Not only that, I have my own responsibilities towards God that I'm not fulfilling. And God is kind to me. He's merciful to me. He's forgiving and patient with me. Nevertheless, we have to learn a little bit of the ways of Hashem. You must tolerate people who are not polite to you. Even more so you have to tolerate people who are not impolite which means one extreme is when a person is disrespects you. A lower level is a person who doesn't disrespect you. He's not impolite, but he's not as pleasant towards you as you would like. You merely don't like something about them. Their nose, the way they smile, the way they walk, the words they use, but they didn't do anything directly towards you. Sometimes we don't feel good towards certain people and certainly we have to treat them with kindness and respect. If someone is arrogant, silly or has some unadirable quality, you surely have to tolerate them because they're not hurting you. On the higher level, even if they go ahead and hurt you, you still have to tolerate them and be kind to them. Yes, you can protect yourself. You can distance yourself from them and you should but you cannot treat them in any way worse because you have to remember Hashem does not abandon you and Hashem does not treat you any worse even though you don't fulfill your obligations. Not only that, the novelty we are learning is that even if he is doing something against you, you still have to tolerate him. This is not a personal fight between me and him. There's nothing personal in the world. The world was created for me. God created the entire world and he runs the whole world for me. If someone is hurting me, is not polite towards me, it's not personal. It's between me and God. Hashem sent him my way. Hashem is bringing this experience to me because for some reason, Hashem decided that it's good for me. I might say I don't like it. Yes. But as the Mishna pit says, against your will you were created. We didn't ask to be created. We were created against our will and against your will you live. We don't choose the length of our life. And therefore the experiences that Hashem brings to us are against our will. Why in the next world we will know that it is for our good. Yes, it's for our good but nevertheless it's difficult. We cannot complain I don't want it because this is what's in front of us and that's what we need to deal with. how the best possible way. So if Hashem sent a difficult person my way, I have a test in front of me. If I can do something to distance myself from them, I should. If I recognize that I put myself in this situation because I chose a bad com uh friend or company, then it's my responsibility to fix my mistake and change friends. However, if I see that I cannot change my situation, I cannot change my relatives, my spouse, my neighbors, I'm stuck temporarily with the situation God put in front of me. It should teach me that it's from God and I have to deal with it. how I deal with it becomes my reward in the next world or god forbid failure in the next world. And therefore when someone disrespects us, is impolite to us, bother us, bothers us, we cannot be upset at them. They are nothing. They are just a pawn in God's hands. Who is the one who is guiding them? That is Hashem. And we have to turn to Hashem and say, "Hashem, please give me strength. Hashem, please give me patience. Hashem, please help me to overcome this. Give me clarity to know what I should be doing to fix this." Now, we continue. Most people will not put up with someone they don't like even though the person didn't do a thing against them. That is surely a sin. We have to learn from Hashem to get along with everybody. It doesn't mean you have to admire them or approve of them. You don't have to follow their example if they're doing something wrong. On the contrary, you have to recognize wrong characters uh character traits in them. But you must not deteriorate because of them. Because they hurt me, I will hurt them. That means I'm they are stronger than me. They are influencing me to become like them. They're succeeding. I'm not going to let them succeed. I'm going to stay good. I'm going to stay strong and I'm going to show them the example of what good is. Just because they are misbehaving doesn't mean that you should also misbehave. You have to utilize their misbehavior to improve yourself. If you are able to deal with them and tolerate them, then the worse they are, the better you will become. The worse they are, the harder the test, the greater you become. This point is stated in misim. Everything in the world is a test. You are constantly surrounded by people who are doing things you may not like. The neighbors, your in-laws, mutanim, people that your children got married to their child, even your own spouse. And when you are able to be polite and tolerate someone you dislike whose behavior deserves criticism, you should know it's a great success for you. You recognize that there's God in the world. You recognize that there is a purpose. You recognize that God runs the world and he uh designs everything for your benefit. And you responsibly take upon yourself the challenge and you pass it. You don't blame, you don't become a victim. Of course, the first thing to suspect is that maybe you are wrong too. I don't like them because I don't like how they're behaving, but perhaps what they're doing is according to according to Jewish law. It's just that I am used to other things and they are wrong. Maybe they are tolerating you. But even if you are convinced that they are wrong and that you are perfectly correct, even then you should try to emulate the ways of Hashem and be tolerant. Think that despite what they are doing, you're not going to deteriorate. You're not going to fall to their level. Say to yourself, I will not I will not spoil myself because of them. I will continue to behave toward them in the very best manner. What we have said here is not enough. We must talk about these qualities with many examples. Just to talk in general about the concepts doesn't have much of an effect. Everyone will agree and then forget about it. You need many illustrations from real life to see how to implement these principles in practice. The more you talk about it, the more benefit you receive. And that means that we should choose in our life people who we see are patient. People who we see that are kind, people that we see control their emotions, their character traits, people that we see treat each other with love, even difficult people. And we should get close to such people. We should observe them and copy them. We should notice what's happening around us and we should take note that is from Hashem and we should direct our thoughts that I want to be like Hashem. I want to be greater, higher. I don't want to go down on a level of personal fight. I am above that. God is on my side. I do not need to fight myself. Hashem is going to fight for me. He's going to put the right people in front of me and when I ask him, he's going to remove them from me. He's going to protect me. It's not going to be dangerous. And therefore, I can afford to be patient. I can afford to be kind. I can afford to forgive. May we all start and practice this um level. May we all become like Hashem on this first level to begin with and we will see that our relationships will improve. our peace of mind will improve, our physical health will will improve and certainly our stature in the next world and our reward in the next world will improve tremendously. Thank you for joining. Shabbat shalom.