The Parshah From Vietnam - Parshas Ekev

Shalom from Vietnam, a land of rice patties and misty mountains and lantern lit rivers and ancient towns that feel like they've stepped out of another century. And yet, no matter how far I go, whether it's Hong Kong or Vietnam or Korea, the para comes with me because Tyra isn't bound by geography. It doesn't matter if you're in New York or you Shalim or Hanoi or Hoyan. The same words of Hashem echo across every time zone, calling to us, shaping us, and firing up our souls. So even though I'm thousands of miles away from home, the para still burns bright right here, right now, this is the para on fire from Vietnam. declares a pretty peculiar statement. Nobody ever commits a sin unless a spirit of senselessness enters them. This assertion that is making seems to be saying that only when a weave of irrational thinking floods one's brain and cloaks him with foolishness does one go ahead and commit a sin. Now what's strange about this declaration is that in real life we don't see that this being the case. What compels most people to sin is a desire that they're faced with. And despite knowing the repercussions, they consciously choose to follow the path of sin since it appears to offer more instantaneous pleasure. You wouldn't label someone who says lashara about a competitor as being foolish. We might call them cruel or mean or selfish, but we wouldn't think they they would warrant the title of foolish. The same applies to someone who looks at something they shouldn't look at or eat something they shouldn't eat. We wouldn't label them as stupid. We will label them as maybe lustful or gluttonous. So why is the Garra calling this person foolish? Why does the Garra choose that title to label him as? I believe this week's para gives us a clue. In the middle of Moshe's final speech to the Jewish people, as he told them about the spirit and the morals and the ideals that they're going to experience in Israel, he assert inserted a seemingly bizarre comment. Moshe addressed the Jewish people and asserted he declared, "All Hashem asks of you is to fear him. It isn't complicated. All he wants from us in life is a little fear. Isn't that too diff is that too difficult? That's what he says to the entire Jewish people. Now, let's ask a pretty obvious question. What kind of question is that? Of course, it's difficult to watch every word that comes out of our mouths every second of every day. Of course, it's difficult to watch where our eyes go. Of course, it's difficult to turn down a job opportunity that conflicts with Shabas. Of course, it's difficult to fast on tishov. Fearing Hashem dictates what we say and when we say it. What we wear and when we wear it. What we eat and how we eat and what we think and how we think it. Why did Moshe make it sound like it's easy? What exactly did Moshe mean when he proclaimed that all Hashem asks of us is to fear him? I mean, isn't fear of God a huge mountain to climb? Why was Moshe making it sound like it was no big deal? So the following foundation foundational explanation given by the can completely alter the way one looks at mitzvah the mitzvah explains that in Hashem's infinite desire to bestow goodness upon man he created a road map promising that all those who follow it will be led to unadulterated goodness. Every single one of the mitzvah on that map is another nugget of goodness. and if followed properly envelops the follower with peace and tranquility and harmony and holiness. Some mitzvah prevent us from becoming hurtful people. Some make us more benevolent, some more patient, and others are there purely to give us opportunities to build a relationship with Hashem. The mitzvah are the instruction manual on how to lead a loving home, on how to raise proper kids, on how to ensure society is safe. They teach us how to cope with sadness and how to proper properly channel joy. No scenario is not addressed and no circumstance is ignored. The mitzvah inject them all with goodness. They infuse life with meaning. The common denominator that runs through all 613 mitzvah is that they are all here for our own benefit. Not a single human being in the entire history of humanity ever benefited one iota from deviating from Hashem's path. Following this logic continues the Moshe turns to the Jewish people and emphatically declared that these commandments that he lovingly taught them all these years all 613 of them are purely there to attain goodness. Hashem isn't asking anybody to do something detrimental to their pursuit of goodness because these commandments are the very definition of the pursuit of goodness. And it's for that this reason that Moshe finished off his declaration by saying that everything that I'm telling you right now is all asks of us is to follow the map and it will lead us to his treasure chest of goodness. But there's another layer here. Not only did Hashem give us the Tyra, the road map to goodness, he also gave us unfathomable spiritual reward in the next world for following it. Think about that for a minute. Hashem rewards us for following the guide book that is solely there to give us the greatest life we have. We get rewarded for living a life of goodness. Is there any other deal on earth as good as that one? When we realize that every single one of the mitzvah are here for our own benefit, it's suddenly it's not as nearly as hard to follow them. Suddenly, it's not overly difficult to refrain from doing something we ought not to do. When we vividly internalize that refraining from saying something that we shouldn't say or thinking something we shouldn't think or doing something we shouldn't do is purely for our personal benefit, it becomes significantly easier to follow suit. And similarly, when we realize that fulfilling the mitzvah brings the best form of goodness into our lives as well as unfathomable spiritual reward in the next world, it becomes drastically easier to fulfill those mitzvah. And therefore, the Gumarra incited declares that nobody sins unless a spirit of stupidity overcomes them. For how s foolish must you be to deviate from the Tyra which is purely in place for our own benefit. How foolish is it to neglect the map leading us to a life of supreme contentment? Imagine you were going to Disney World for the first time but had only 6 hours to spend there. And being that time is precious, you would need a plan to ensure that you got the most out of your short visit to the park. So, imagine if the day before you arrived, you got a letter in the mail from the owner of Disney World personally drawing out a map of the places that you should go and the places you should avoid and the bridges you should go around and the rides that have too long of a line, the the shows that you got to see and the pathways that get too crowded. Imagine the owner writing it all out for you. Would you take one look at it and say, "Mh, look at how many places he tells me not to go. Look at all the rides and attractions he tells me to avoid. I'm not listening to this. And you throw it in the garbage. How foolish. How dumb. He is sending the letter to you to help you get the most out of the park. Aren't we all a little bit the same? How foolish we are to fall to the glitter and glow of the sins we commit. How foolish it is to abandon the god stamped map of a utopian life in exchange for our own convoluted version of pleasure. The name of the para is that's because the very first pock in the para describes Hashem telling us that if we're careful to fulfill all the mitzvah, even the seemingly insignificant ones that people step on with their avail, we will be granted a life of bliss. Merely showing up a few times a year to perform the big grandiose mitzvah while neglecting the hundreds of other seemingly less glamorous ones is demon is demonstrative to Hashem that we don't view his Tyra as a road map to goodness, but rather as a roadb block getting in the way of our hike to happiness. It's precisely the dayto-day grind of following each and every one of the 613 commandments, even the small ones, that reflects our firm realization that all Hashem wants for us is goodness. And in his kindness and grace, he shows us exactly how to get there. How foolish it would be of us to miss out even one mitzvah. The only person in the entire Tanakh who is called Sadik is Nak. Why is that? Weren't there other great righteous men who filled the pages of the Tyra? Perhaps it's because a righteous person is someone who has the ability to pick himself up despite falling seven times. A sadic isn't someone who was born into an illustrious family and was tutored his whole life and lived in a spiritual incubator, never facing the challenges of the real world. A sadic is someone who stared down challenges and overcame them. For 120 years, Nyakah went outside and worked on the TVA while the naysayers mocked him. He didn't give up and he didn't budge. He showed up rain or shine. He tried to inspire them to change their ways. They called him crazy. They called him insane. Yet, he stood there day in and day out, year in and year out, decade in and decade out, never flinching once. He knew that the best life on earth was a life of following Hashem. And no amount of mockery and scorn would convince him otherwise. In achel, the human heel can absorb more pain than any other part of the body. You can stick needles into it. You can walk with it on coals. The Tyrus specifically uses this term to tell us that we must show up as soldiers in Hashem's army day in and day out. Not only for the big parties and the gatherings, but for the early morning drills and the late night missions and the grinding it in the heart the heat of the day. A soldier is there no matter the circumstances and he takes the pain for he knows there is nothing more rewarding than serving the king. So too we show up rain or shine to follow Hashem's Tyra with the conviction that there is nothing more rewarding. Now listen to this. After the destruction of the first pes mikdash, the subsequent exile into Babylon and the episode with Hmon and Purim, the Jewish people enjoyed relative tranquility and prosperity in Persia. Life was pretty good. One day out of the blue, King Cyrus, king of the Persian Empire, decided to grant the Jews permission to move back to your and rebuild the Bameikdash. So, Misanas, the royal treasurer, was instructed to go into the royal vault and remove the vessels stolen from the basikt. Thousands upon thousands of vessels were brought out. And Ezra, the leader of the Jews at the time, he excitedly ran to the town square and broke the news to the Jewish people with the Purim story still in their mind. And the bas destruction not not too far away. You would think there would have been a national outpouring of excitement to go back to Jerusalem. They should have been ecstatic. There should have been a stampede to begin the pilgrimage back. But no, there was not. Not even close. Out of the millions of Jews that were living at the time in Persia, shockingly, only 42,368 people picked up and marched with Ezra back to Jerusalem. only 42,000 people. After almost being annihilated by Hammon, after going through the pain of getting exiled and watching the Bamedash burn, we were finally given an opportunity to go back. And yet 95% of us didn't. We liked our life in Persia. Of course, we wanted to rebuild the Bameikdash, but only conceptually. We'll send a check in the mail and live comfortably in our homes. We didn't yearn to actually go back in there and build it. The act of such devotion by these 42,000 people picking themselves up without missing a beat to go serve Hashem with elacrity was so praiseworthy in the eyes of Hashem that he did something almost never done in Tanakh. Hashem listed each and every family that accompanied Ezra by name. Paria Yeshua Ya Elam Zatu Zakai B etc. These previously unnotworthy individuals realized the tremendous opportunity they had in front of them. The opportunity to move back to Jerusalem and rebuild the mikdash. The opportunity to be one with Hashem and his mitzvah. They were soldiers in Hashem's army. From the big commandments to the small, from the glamorous to the technical, it made no difference. They were marching in lock step with Ezra. And therefore in reward their names got co-codified for eternity in the most important book in the history of humanity. Listen to this story. I once found myself in the office building of BP Print Group, a printing company in Lakewood, New Jersey. And being a large company with well more than a minion working there, they built a schol inside of their building. What's unique about this minion is that in addition to the graphic designers and the printers and the editors and the writers that dive in there, there is often a large number of Mishim from as part of the minion. They come to the company to print out their letters of recommendation to attest that they are in need of stuck. Now, what took place during Khazar Sashhats absolutely amazed me. A man got up with a pushka in his hand and began walking up and down the aisles collecting stuck. Like in most shows, only a handful of people actually put something in the pushka. That is until the man got to the mushiman. Without missing a beat, each and every one of them reached into their pockets and placed some money in the pushka. Now, the reason this impressed me so much was because they were actually taking from the very money that they themselves collected by standing out in the rain and going doortodoor and embarrassing themselves. This was the very money that they needed desperately to pay for their wife's chemotherapy or their infantility treatments or the bank that was about to foreclose on their house. Yet, they took that very money and placed some in the pushka. Not a single one didn't because these people are attracted to a currency of a different kind. A mitzvah that comes walking by is too attractive to pass up. They couldn't hold themselves back. Even after a tearfilled mka, begging Hashem to save them from their financial plight. They grabbed the mitzvah of a smile on their face before it passed them by. For them, it was simply too precious not to. When we realize how each and every mitzvah contains a precious ingredient for a life of goodness, we realize how foolish it is to overlook any of them. Suddenly, each and every mitzvah is prized. Each one is too cherished to step on and move. And none of them are insignificant. Like puzzle pieces, each one make up the ultimate life of goodness stamped with the approval of Hashem, as he normally does, summed it up best in Cohelis. mitzvah loa keepers of mitzvah will know no evil. When we realize how fortunate we are to be privy to these mitzvah, we will do whatever it takes to properly fulfill them. And when we do, aside for living life to its fullest, our names get etched in Hashem's heavenly record books for eternity. How fortunate are we that we merited this? We are the luckiest people on the face of the earth.