Rabbi Minkowicz Weekly Torah Lesson Parsha Eikev 5776

it's time for Rabbi minkowitz weekly Torah lesson a place where life's most difficult questions are answered here with his spiritual perspective and insight Rabbi minkowitz welcome to this week's Torah lesson this week's Torah portion is pasas AEV the question of the week is what is our best protection so in this week's Torah portion we learn about the special Mitzvah the Mitzvah of a fixing a muza on our doorpost put them in our house or offices anywhere we dwell we put up the Mitzvah of Maza but you find something very interesting and unique about the Mitzvah Maza is that generally speaking there's 613 Commandments 248 positive 365 negative Commandments but generally speaking there is no reward for the mitv and know the reward is you should do the Mitzvah because by doing a Mitzvah you're doing what God wants and the greatest reward is the doing the Mitzvah itself is having in relationship with God and ultimately a person shouldn't do a mitzvah for a re reward the highest level doing a Mitzvah is because God commanded you and by doing a Mitzvah as we know is that Mitzvah word creates a connection and anytime you do a Mitzvah you're connecting with God but what's unique about several the mitzvos and specifically let's see in this case of mza the Torah tells you guess what there's a special reward you're going to get and know God's giving you a motivation to do the Mitzvah and the Torah tells us so that your days will be lengthened you'll live a long life your children's life will live a long life on the on on the place that God gave us the land of Israel God will obviously give us many many blessings because we observe the Mitzvah Maza based on this the fact that the Torah gives us these beautiful blessings the commentaries tell us that here you see that when it comes to Mitzvah mza a person could do it for reward and not only that we know that the the Mitzvah is here to protect us and if a person is doing it for the protection that's great and a matter of fact based on that there's a there's a ruling that you should have M where you are it's in your car you should have a mza you should keep one maybe in your briefcase because a a mza is a protection not only that that m is a protection the physical Maza but we know there's a famous story with the previous rebi when he was once taken into prison for spreading Judaism and they took him in for questioning and they asked him do you know where you are now obviously he knew where he was and they knew where he was but he took the question to his advantage to bring in God's blessing and he responded and he said I in a room I'm in a place which is exempt from having Aza now the question R asked what kind of response was that why is he telling non-jews about that he's that he's exempt from having the mza if he should have mza he should have put one up and if he's exempt so what's the point of telling them so he knew about that and there he brings out a fascinating idea because we know that when you learn Torah it's as if um for example you learn about a sacrifice if you brought the sacrifice so by him mentioning that it's it's exempt from having a mza because he spoke about the mza the mza was there for a protection for him so the brings out here you see the tremendous power that mza has mza has power that it's there to protect you in your homes where you keep them up it's there to protect you in your offices it's there to protect you in your car you taking with you um it's there to protect you wherever you take M with you mza has tremendous power of protection so to answer the question what's the best protection we have is keeping them we go and making sure we have them fixed in our homes our offices in our cars and whever whatever any place that belongs to us that will protect us in a big way this week's Torah lesson is in memory of Bor and schomo Ys May their souls be elevated for the Torah that we're studying in their memory thanks so much for joining us for our weekly Torah lesson for more information on kabad please see our [Music] website