פרשת האזינו
This week’s Parsha is a poetic song of rebuke by Moshe Rabenu for the Jewish people. Although this rebuke begins a bit harshly, it ends off by prophesizing that when the final redemption comes, Hashem will forgive the Jewish people for all their iniquity, thereby demonstrating His power and His mercy simultaneously. This song begins with Moshe Rabenu addressing the heavens and the earth to hearken to his word which obviously needs to be understood. The Sifri (quoted by Rashi in last week’s Parsha) explains that Moshe was hoping that the Jewish people would be strongly encouraged by the heaven’s and earth’s unswerving dedication to performing the will of their creator. They would say to themselves, “If the heavens and the earth, who receive no reward for their tireless service, yet nonetheless never fail to perform their duties, how much more so should we, the Jewish people, who receive tremendous reward if we do the right thing, and suffer terrible consequences if we deviate from our responsibilities, be expected to serve Hashem flawlessly.” Clearly, this Sifri too, requires explanation. How can one compare the heavens and the earth, who have no free will, to the Jewish people? What motivation can we take from forces of nature which have no evil inclination?
Perhaps we could explain this difficult Sifri with the Sefas Emes in Parshas Nitzavim. The Sefas Emes asserts that in truth, it is completely natural for a person to want to serve God perfectly in every way. He proves this with a verse in Ecclesiastes, (7:29) which says “God made man completely straight”. He explains that every person is endowed with a natural ability to know right from wrong and has an innate desire to serve his Creator. If a person were to follow this desire, he would serve God perfectly all of his days on this earth. But what happens is that a person allows his evil inclination to dominate him in a certain area. Once this happens, a person can no longer see that truth so clearly. Eventually, his distorted image of the world can carry him very far from his original outlook, depending on what degree his Yetzer Hara was able to roam free in his mind, and hence most of our life’s work is trying to straighten ourselves out again by proper Mitzvah observance, and by undoing the damage that was done to our awareness. The Sefas Emes concludes this masterful analysis of the human psyche by explaining a difficult verse in Psalms. The verse says, “Hashem, you perform kindness, by repaying our good deeds”. This verse seems self-contradictory. Why would it be considered “kindness” for Hashem to repay us for our service of Him as opposed to terming this recompense as simple wages? Based on what we have said, this term makes sense. Serving Hashem should have been natural for us, and this was only not the case because of a person’s crooked outlook. For this kind of service, he shouldn’t have gotten any reward, but because of God’s infinite kindness, He rewards us for doing things that should have been our expected course of action.
We can now understand clearly why the “Kal V’echomer” argument that we should have drawn from the heavens and earth is applicable to us. If they, who don’t receive reward, still do what is natural for them, surely we, who do receive reward, should be doing what (should have been) natural for us! This also explains why the next verse in the Parsha is “And the generation has corrupted themselves by going in crooked ways”. By allowing the evil inclination free reign on our minds, we have succeeded in perverting our minds from the simple and straight truth of the service of God, and can no longer see things clearly, and have therefore become a “crooked” nation.
With this concept in place, we can also explain a difficult Rambam. The Rambam in the laws concerning the Lulav (8:12) writes that although there is a Mitzvah to be happy during all of the holidays, there was an additional happiness which was experienced on the holiday of Succos, which is coming up in two weeks. Based on what we have said, this Rambam is easily understood. Succos, which comes out immediately following the cleansing period of Elul, Rosh Hashana, and Yom Kippur, is the holiday in which we are capable of feeling true happiness, because it is the holiday in which our minds have been purged of all the foreign and twisted thinking that sin had caused. Only now, when we can see things for what they are, are we capable of true Simcha, because truthfully, the world that Hashem made is a very happy place, we just needed to see it.
It comes out from the Rambam that a person’s natural state is one of happiness, and once he is able to clear away the warped effects of the sin, he will return to this natural state of bliss. With these words of the Rambam, we can understand an interesting point which always bothered me. We find that the water libation on Succos was the happiest event of the year. The Mishna (Succah 53) even states that a person who never witnessed this event, never experienced happiness in his life. I could never fathom what the incredible happiness was about seeing the Kohanim pull some water out of a river and dump it into a hole in the Mizbeach which descended down into the depths of the earth. R’ Gedalya Sher explains in the name or the Rugachover that we know from Rashi that Adam Harishon was created from the earth which was located underneath the Mizbeach. When that dirt was taken, there were holes left in the ground which reached down to the depths of the earth. These holes are where the water goes when it is poured down into the Mizbeach. So R’ Gedalya explains that when we perform this Mitzvah, we are doing a Mitzvah which affects the very root of the human race, and fixes a certain aspect which is connected to our very foundation. This process is certainly cause for the greatest joy, because as we explained, once a person fixes his foundation, he will naturally return to a state of joy, because as the Rambam said, this state is truly the ordinary condition of a straight thinker who has been untainted by sin. Parenthetically, this point is certainly buttressed by analyzing the song that was sung while this process was performed. The Leviim would sin, “Fortunate is a person who never sinned, and one who sinned, should return and he will be forgiven”. Based on what we have said, there is no more fitting song then one which refers to a person who has no sin, and can therefore see things clearly and experience true joy because he has been returned to his roots!
May we all merit to return to a state in which the service of our Creator is our only natural course of action!