Sparks of Alshich: The Excitement Of Doing Mitzvot - Rabbi Shmuel Wagshal

And this sheer was dedicated by the friends of Mosha Lebdev. We wish him brocha and hatzlacha in all his future endeavors. And he should have success in the rest of his journeys. So this week's parasha the Alshich discusses the pasuk U'shmartem mitzvotai va'asitem otam ani Hashem. You shall watch my commandments and do them, I am God. So what exactly is this pasuk referring to? What exactly is the commandment to watch my to watch my commandments and to do them? And why end off with ani Hashem? Now we know that the Alshich was the rabbi who gave the sermon on Shabbos afternoon in Tzfat in a very special period. In that period of time in Tzfat lived the Beit Yosef, Rav Yosef Caro. Lived the Arizal. Lived Rav Alkabetz and all the great wise people of Tzfat, the golden age of Tzfat. And he was the one who gave the sermon every Shabbos afternoon. And the book Toras Moshe, the sefer of the Alshich is kind of the compilation over the years of the different things that he taught. And the sermon wasn't just a few minutes, it might have reached sometimes two, three, four hours. So if you actually look inside the Alshich, it's quite long. But as we know the minhag is in the Jewish people the custom is to during the weeks of Pesach and Shavuos to read and learn the Pirkei Avos. Right? The ethics of the fathers. It's the tradition to learn it between the weeks of Pesach and Shavuos. And in these weeks he regularly expounds during his sermon on Shabbos afternoon on a mishna in a on a mishna in the tractate. So in order to explain this pasuk, he refers to a very very famous mishna in Avos. And the mishna says as follows. Ben Azai omer Ben Azai says, "Have a ratz l'mitzva kalo." You should always run and strive to do even a simple mitzvah or light mitzvah and run away from a sin. Why? Because one mitzvah mitzvah because one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah and one sin leads to another sin. And one sin leads to another sin. And one sin leads to another sin. And another thing it says is that the reward for the mitzvah is a mitzvah because the reward for the mitzvah is a mitzvah and the reward for a sin is another sin. The reward for a sin is another sin. The reward for a sin So he asked many questions on this mission which we're not necessarily going to go through all the questions but in the middle of this whole thing he he speaks about something very very fundamental. Something very very important. And he says that the mission says that somebody should be always seeking mitzvah. Somebody should be somebody who is perpetually always seeking and chasing and looking to do mitzvah. He should identify as a being whose whole day is looking how can I do the will of Hashem? How can I do another mitzvah? It shouldn't just be that when a mitzvah comes your way oh, it's the morning after dawn I'll put on and I'll say and then I'll move on with my day and then you know it's the afternoon I got to dawn oh look there's a poor person let me give some charity. A person should always be mindful and in a mindset and with an awareness that in every moment where could I do the will the will of Hashem? This is what the commandment of chasing to do a mitzvah is. But we all know that it's not always so simple to do this. And even though we want to do mitzvah and we want to be good and we feel good when we do mitzvah and we know it's the right thing to do and we're serving Hashem and we're having a great opportunity to do one of the commandments of God to constantly be in that mindset is not always so easy. And the question is why? So there are several reasons but he focuses on two. And he basically says that people don't want to do things that they don't feel that they're doing well. When people are doing things, they want to feel that they're doing it right. They want to feel like they're accomplishing. They want to feel like I'm doing something, I'm building something, I'm doing this the right way. People do what they enjoy doing and what they feel good that they're doing. They They enjoy what they're good at, basically. And there are basically two reasons why people feel some people feel that they're not actually good at doing mitzvahs. This is not their thing. This is not easy for them. And the two reasons he gives is first of all because people see that in mitzvahs there's the tzaddikim, the righteous people who do them with all the right mind with the right kavanot, with the right mindsets, and they do with all the stringencies, and when they daven, they daven with their whole heart, and when they do a mitzvah, they'll put them, you know, all their money into it and all their soul into it and all their time into it. And these guys, these rabbis, they're good at doing mitzvahs. They're good at it. This is their thing. When I daven, I daven, you know, I I I just do it. I pray a little bit then I, you know, I give a little charity and, you know, I'm I'm mediocre. This is not what I'm good at. So, there's a certain level of shame even when we're doing the mitzvah, a certain level of feeling down about ourselves even when we're doing a mitzvah sometimes that we feel like a little bit of an uncomfortableness in a very deep way. And this causes us not to kind of obsess about doing mitzvahs. We're not as excited as we should be about it because there is this underlayer, this underlining idea that we're not really doing it good enough. We're not good enough. We're not really doing it well. We don't do with all the kavanot of the Ariza and the Zohar and with everything else and with all the stringencies of all the different rabbis. We do it. And this makes us feel a little bit bad about it. And therefore, we don't want to obsess about it. We want to obsess about things that we're good at. So, this is the first reason that the says that people are not all the time chasing and obsessing and striving to at all times do a mitzvah. And he says a second reason. He says the second reason why people are not so excited to do mitzvahs and not so upbeat about it is because a similar reason but a little bit from a different angle. He gives an example. He says a person who's very poor and he wants to start a business and he has some merchandise that he could sell. But then he sees in front of him a Walmart, an Amazon selling millions and millions of products, making trillions of dollars of revenue a year. And he looks at his few items over here and he says this is ridiculous. I'm going to work so hard. I'm going to push. I'm going to give everything I got. Who knows if it's even going to work the sale? And even if it does work, what am I going to get at the end of all of this? A couple of a couple of dollars? I'm striving if I'm striving to be a millionaire, I'm wasting my time. Some people have this mindset in business also, right? It's like, you know, I want to do like I'm looking at all these great businesses and I'm starting from scratch. It's going to take me a million years to get to where they're getting to. So, they give up. It's not worth it. Why should I invest in this? So too says the Alshich, some people have that idea with mitzvahs. In reality, they want to do mitzvahs. In reality, they want to come close to Hashem. In reality, they want to learn. But then they look at the great rabbis, they look at the talmidei chachamim, they look at tzadikim and they see look how much wisdom, look how much knowledge, look how much connection to Hashem they have. It's going to take me a million years to reach their levels. I'm going to have to work so hard and who says I'm going to even get there? I'm going to get burnt out in between. And they look at their few, you know, they look at their little tehillim they're saying or the little mishnah that they're about to learn and they say, "What is this mishnah really going to get me? What is this one mitzvah really going to get me? What's this one penny of tzedakah really going to get me?" And these are the two reasons that the Alshich that people are despondent from doing mitzvahs. These are the two reasons the Alshich explains that people are not as excited about mitzvahs as they should be. So, what is the response to that? What does the Mishnah say about that? The Mishnah tells you to run to do mitzvahs. The Mishnah tells you you should be someone who's perpetually looking to do mitzvahs. But, on the other hand, you have these issues. So, what's the response? So, he says the response is in the Mishnah itself. And this idea is like classic Alshich idea that we speak about regularly, but from this angle. And he says that a person should always run and obsess and be excited about doing any mitzvah they can. Why? Because mitzvah goreret mitzvah. One mitzvah causes another mitzvah. And schar mitzvah mitzvah, the reward of one mitzvah is another mitzvah. What are these two ideas? The idea is that when a person does a mitzvah, how does it cause them to do another mitzvah? Because every mitzvah a person does creates an angel. Every time a person does a mitzvah, it creates a spiritual energy, literally an angel, and this angel surrounds him and puts him in a mindset of being more connected to Hashem. Excites him a little bit more about doing the right thing. So, when a person is in a down place, the energy around him is low, is weak, and he starts having all these thoughts that we just thought about. What's it worth? What am I going to get out of this? You know, I I I'm I'm I'm I'm going to try so hard, I'm not going to gain anything. I'm not even going to do it right in the first place. All this negative energy. But, the first thing that a mitzvah does is that right away it encourages a person to do better, to do more. How does it do that? Because you're literally creating an angel that surrounds you and pushes you and put puts up pulls your spirit up. In order to allow you to look at yourself as somebody who can do mitzvahs. All these doubts fall away because now that energy has changed. Now that energy is no longer an an energy of negativity or doubt, but an energy of positivity and feeling connected. And this pushes you reward for doing one mitzvah is another mitzvah. This pushes you to now exactly the opposite. Before you did the mitzvah, before you did the commandment, you felt down and negative. But now that you've done a mitzvah, suddenly your awareness, your clarity, your excitement, your your spirit is uplifted. This is the actual reward for doing a mitzvah. This is the actual reward for doing commandment that you put yourself now in a mindset and in a spiritual reality that you're excited to do mitzvahs and you feel look at yourself I am good at this. And even though you know and you're still aware that it's a long journey, but you're okay with that. It's again in the analogy of a business deal, it's like a person starts a business that he's not sure and he has all these doubts and he's questioning himself, but then he gets his first deal. And he feels great. He looks in the bank account and he sees the few dollars and he's like, "You know what? Yeah, I'm not Walmart, I'm not Amazon, but listen, I got money in the bank that I didn't have before and that encourages him to do another deal and another deal and another deal." So too with mitzvahs. A person does a mitzvah and it encourages them, pushes them one more, one more. Let me just do one more. And this is the spiritual energy that someone is rewarded for doing a mitzvah. Of course that malachi makes the angel he makes when he does the mitzvah says the Alshich is also the in the end of days when he goes to the next world, that's going to be the reward in the world to come. It's going to be the spiritual energy of the angel that you've created in this world by doing the mitzvah. That is going to be the actual reward in the world to come. You're going to plug in and tap into that spiritual energy in a real way. But in this world right away, the reward you get is the the the the the the switch of mind. You get a paradigm shift in how to look at yourself and how to look at reality and how to look at mitzvahs. And he says that that's what the end pasuk and that's how you learn the pasuk. Ushmartem et hamitzvos. Everybody should seek to watch the mitzvahs. Meaning chase them, look for them, and of course the opposite is true. If we do aveiros, it's the exact opposite. We put ourselves into a negative mindset. Even small aveiros could turn our whole mindset our whole mindset around. We do one sin or another sin or another sin. We don't want to focus on that. We're going to focus on the positive aspects. But everything that has been said about the positive can also be said about the negative. But the idea is that Ushmartem et hamitzvos. Somebody you should watch the mitzvahs. Take it seriously. Understand that each mitzvah you do is not only going to help Don't look at it as just that mitzvah. Understand that it's going to give you the power and empower you and and and to give you the chizuk you need to do the next mitzvah. And it's going to help you get the next mitzvah. And the spiritual energy is going to bring you to do the next mitzvah. Va'asitem otam. You're going to watch the You're going to watch the mitzvahs. Va'asitem otam. You are going to create them. What are you going to create? The malachim, the angels. That are going to help you do the next mitzvah. That is going to help you get into the mindset of constantly wanting to do more mitzvahs. So your one mitzvah actually created in reality the ability to do the next mitzvah. Because had you not done this first commandment, the next commandment when it comes you also push it away. So there's an exponential gain to every single mitzvah you do. That every time you do one commandment, it's not only about that commandment, it's pushing you perpetually to do other commandments and giving you the courage and the encouragement to do what you need to do. And that's what the verse ends, "I need Hashem." For I am Hashem. And he explained this in two ways. He says, "First of all, every time a person is feeling down or feeling bad about himself and doesn't want to do a mitzvah because of all these ideas we said earlier, because of his negative mindset, he has to realize I need Hashem. God is with him. Don't look at this like you're on your own. Don't look at this as like, you know, I'm trying to work hard, I'm trying to do this, I'm on my own. You know what? It's course Hashem knows it's not always easy. And it's not always to be easy to be in the mindset of constantly seeking to do mitzvahs, constantly seeking to better yourself, constantly seeking to build your connection with Hashem. But Hashem is with you in the process. I need Hashem, I'm here. It sounds very, you know, big and I have to do mitzvahs and create angels and how am I going to do this? I need Hashem, I'm with you. And the second thing he says about I need Hashem, I am God, is that a person has to realize that unlike in material things, so a person makes $1 and he turns that $1 to $5 and $5 that at the end of the day, everything he's doing is limited. Every mitzvah he's doing is limited. Every I'm sorry, in in the end of the day, everything he's doing is limited. He has $5 and then he has $10, it's limited. But when a person looks at a mitzvah, each and every mitzvah is a commandment of God. Each and every mitzvah is is is it's forever. It's with us forever. It's nitzchius. So a person understands that everything he's doing matters tremendously. And this is the ratzon Hashem. This is what Hashem wants. So don't look at how you look at it. It's not about you. Don't look at it as like, "Oh, I'm just doing this little mitzvah. I'm just doing that little mitzvah. I'm just doing this small thing." Understand that you're creating malachim and you're making Hashem happy and you're coming into the realm of connecting to Hashem. And this in itself should encourage you to to put your own negative mindset aside and allow yourself to jump into it with excitement and with with pride and with a spirit. And this is the This is what This is how the Alshich understands the Mishna, the pasuk. Shmartem et hamitzvot. Keep the mitzvot. Va'asitem otam. And you will do all types of special all types of great things with them, creating angels, creating positive energy, creating a positive mindset about yourself. Ani Hashem. And understand that Hashem is with you in it and that all of this is bringing yourself and the entire world a great light of God upon everybody.