Are Mitzvos Difficult?

By Rabbi Moshe Krieger, Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah (www.bircas.org)

In Parshas Re’ei, Moshe continues exhorting the Jewish nation to stay strong in their commitment to Hashem and the Torah. Moshe clearly felt that the Jews needed a lot of encouragement, as there were awesome challenges ahead of them. They would soon be ordered to drive out the Cana’anite inhabitants of Eretz Yisrael, yet refrain from emulating their practices. It would take great fortitude to reject the gentile influences of idolatry and immorality, and to choose to be the holy nation that Hashem desired them to be. Sefer Devarim is replete with the support that Moshe gave the nation. However, one statement (Devarim 12:23) is puzzling: “Just be strong not to eat blood, for the blood is the soul.”

Why would anyone eat blood, and why did Moshe think this was something the Jewish people needed to “be strong” about?

This question is the subject of a dispute between Rabi Yehuda and Rabi Shimon bar Yochai (Sifri 12:23). Rabi Yehuda infers that the Jewish people had a propensity for eating blood! Rabi Shimon bar Yochai disagrees. Rather, Moshe’s words contain a different lesson: if a person needs to be strong to refrain from eating something as disgusting as blood, how much more must he work to avoid forbidden activities that he is attracted to!

Rabi Shimon’s answer still needs explaining. Why indeed should a person need to work hard to keep a mitzvah that is easy for him?

The Gemara (Makkos 23b) says that though a person is disgusted by the thought of consuming blood, he is nevertheless rewarded for abstaining. The Ya’avetz explains that before the Torah was given, abstention from blood was not a mitzvah, and therefore gained no reward. Now that the Torah was given and abstaining from blood is a mitzvah, a new desire became present in a person, creating a more favorable image of blood and leading one to sin. Therefore, when a person does abstain, he is worthy of reward. This also explains why Moshe Rabbeinu needed to encourage the Jews in this area. Now that they had received the Torah, life would never be the same. Even the mitzvos that were not hard to keep in the past now needed work.

Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz notes that we can gain a great insight into this unique dynamic of the human condition from a story recorded in Melachim I. David HaMelech, lying on his deathbed, told his son Shlomo that Shimi ben Geira had rebelled against him and deserved the death penalty. David had refrained from ordering his death himself to ensure that he was not acting out of revenge. David commanded Shlomo to find a way to execute Shimi. However, Shlomo HaMelech did not kill Shimi immediately. Instead, he made him swear that he would never leave the Yerushalayim area. If he did, it would be deemed an act of rebellion, punishable by death. Shimi accepted this condition and swore to it. One day, one of Shimi’s servants fled the city, and Shimi chased after him. Sure enough, Shlomo HaMelech learned of the incident and put Shimi to death.

Rav Chaim asks, how did Shlomo know that Shimi would end up breaking the oath? He might have lived out the rest of his life in Yerushalayim, causing Shlomo to violate his father’s request! The answer attests to Shlomo HaMelech’s wisdom. It is true that a person is fully capable of living in a certain locale until the day he dies. However, if it is a mitzvah to stay there, and he cannot choose otherwise, he immediately feels constrained and longs to break out. Shlomo knew that Shimi would not be able to contain himself, and was therefore quite certain that he would be able to fulfill his father’s wishes.

In truth, this struggle in the human psyche exists with every mitzvah. Mitzvos wouldn’t be so hard if they weren’t mitzvos! We see that all mitzvos need encouragement, and what applies to the prohibition of consuming blood applies even more so to sins that play on our base desires. Such work is needed throughout the year. However, there are special times when Hashem facilitates this work, allowing us to accomplish more. The month of Elul is one of those times.

Rav Yerucham Levovitz often compared the month of Elul to going to a spa, where one whose health is failing goes to get refreshed. Similarly, we often get entangled in all kinds of problems during the year, and our souls need refreshment and rejuvenation. Just as a person goes to a spa to detoxify himself from all kinds of physical maladies, so too the month of Elul detoxifies our souls from all the spiritual illnesses that we contracted during the year. If we use the month of Elul to strengthen our relationship with Hashem, the freshness of a spa can’t compare to the sense of spiritual renewal we can achieve.

The Alter of Slobodka took Elul very seriously. For the entire month, he focused only on spiritual pursuits. He wouldn’t even verbalize mundane matters; if he needed something, he would either write it down or hint to others. He learned mussar (works on character development) passionately for an hour in the morning and another hour at night. Even when he was learning Gemara, he would apply its lessons to himself so intensely that he often burst out crying.

He didn’t work on just himself. As the rosh yeshivah, he encouraged his students to follow in his footsteps, and he even gave special speeches in character improvement twice a week. When people saw how hard the Alter pushed himself in Elul, they followed suit. Some would say that Elul in Slobodka gave them all the inspiration they needed for the entire year.

May we be zocheh to strengthen ourselves against the evil inclination the entire year, and especially in Elul!

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