Chukas

פרשת חקת

This week’s Parsha tells us how the Jewish people sent out messengers to the people of Sichon to request their consent in having the Jewish people pass through their land on the way to the land of Israel. The people of Sichon responded with a flat out refusal, even though their acquiescence would have cost them nothing, and furthermore proceeded to wage war against the Jewish people in response to their humble request. The Jewish people responded in kind and completely wiped out the people of Sichon, took their land and the surrounding lands of “Cheshbon”. The verse then goes on to say, “This is what the wise people say, ‘we came to cheshbon’”. The Gemorah in Bava Basra (78) explains this cryptic verse that the “wise people”, or the “Moshlim” are referring to those people who have conquered their evil inclination, and the end of the verse is teaching us the way to conquer our inclination – “by making a cheshbon (a calculation)” – or more specifically, a spiritual accounting. The Gemorah explains that we learn from this verse that we are required to calculate the value of a Mitzvah against the amount of toil it takes to perform that Mitzvah, and the pleasure of a sin, against the amount of punishment we will receive from that sin. This Gemorah requires great explanation. These verses are referring to war. Where do we see any hint about one’s personal spiritual accounting in them? And even if we could make some sort of inference in the verse, why would the Torah put this message about spiritual accounting smack in the middle of a discussion about the Jewish military cause.

Let us begin by taking a closer look at the verses. The Torah goes out of its way to name the city which the Jewish people conquered, whereas the Torah does not usually concern itself with such small details. The Gemorah in Gittin (38) harps on this point and explains that the city of Cheshbon had an interesting history to it. The city of Cheshbon used to belong to Amon and Moab and Jewish people were not allowed to wage war with either of these two nations for various reasons. But because Sichon had recently conquered the land of Cheshbon from these nations, this ban was lifted. R’ Eli Lopian projected that it stands to reason that the king of Sichon was probably very excited when he managed to conquer the land of Cheshbon and acquire it from the nations of Amon and Moab, and probably attributed it to his great military prowess. He never imagined that this military victory would actually be his undoing. This is Hashem’s “Cheshbon” or calculation in making everything work out for the benefit of the Jewish people and the world at large. Similarly the message for us is clear. The only calculation which is worthwhile making is the calculation of what God’s will is in this world because at the end of the day, this is the only “cheshbon” which is going to last anyways. This poignant message is apparent to us from the story with Sichon and Cheshbon. Once we have inculcated this idea in our psyche, we will certainly spend a great deal of time weighing our actions and examining them to ensure that they are in line with God’s will, and if for some reason we find out that they are not, we will do everything in our power to fix them, because we do not want them to be “fixed” for us like what happened to Sichon.

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It comes out from all that we have said that every Jew must spend a little bit of time each day examining his actions and making certain that they are perfectly in line with the will of God. Any person who does not do this will be remiss in his obligations to his Creator because without this crucial calculation, it is impossible for a person to every really know that his deeds are up to par with where they should be. R’ Yisrael Salanter used to call this daily evaluation, “life for the soul”, and he would compare it to a person who was sick but refused to visit the doctor to get a diagnosis. Similarly, if a Jew refuses to evaluate the cause of his spiritual ailments by constantly failing to examine his deeds, he will certainly be lost in the spiritual abyss and will eventually die a long, agonizing spiritual death which is much more painful than any physical death could ever be. Chazal teach us that the major deterrent from performing this vital task is laziness. There is a Midrash Rabbah in Devarim (8:6) which says that King Solomon, the wisest man ever to live counted the seven levels of laziness that a person can fall to, but the worst of all seven is one who is unwilling to examine his actions and perform a Cheshbon Hanefesh on a regular basis. Moshe Rabenu says, “It is in your mouth and your heart to do”. There is almost no work involved. All a person has to do is close his eyes for a few moments and consider his actions, and whether or not they are in line with the Torah’s demands, and if they are not, to speak out his shortcomings and repent. If a person is too lazy to do even this, he has truly reached the bottom of the barrel as far as laziness goes.

I would just like to conclude by referring to my father who excelled in this important trait of self-examination. After my father had passed away, I visited one of the Gedolim seeking a little bit of comfort in my difficult time, and he told me that my father was a very great man, but the greatest of all his qualities was his tremendous devotion to this activity of taking spiritual accounting on his actions. Indeed at the end of his life, we found his notebooks to be filled with detailed descriptions of each one of his daily activities such as eating and sleeping, and whether or not he felt he was truly serving God fully with each of these actions, or he still had to work on them. We also found that he had accepted upon himself a great many resolutions to be extremely careful to serve God above the letter of the law which was required of him.

May we all merit to take advice from our great leaders and take upon ourselves to perform a spiritual accounting on a daily basis! reach greater levels!