It Starts With LOVE

Parshat Eikev

by Rabbi Avi Billet

"If you listen to God, He will keep his covenant with you. He will love you, He will bless you, etc." (7:13)

And what does He want of you? "To walk in His ways, to love Him, and to serve" Him. (10:12)

After all, "God desired to love your forefathers, and He chose their children" (10:15) to be His nation, to whom He gave His Torah and has asked of them filial devotion.

He models this kind of love through "loving the stranger" (10:18), an expectation He commands and demands of you as well (10:19)

In the Shma we are famously instructed to love God (6:5), and that exhortation is repeated in 11:1, as a condition to receiving rain and good tidings in the land (11:13 – in "V'haya Im Shamoa"), and as a condition to inheriting the land from those who no longer deserve to be its inhabitants (11:22).

One can argue that a theme of the parsha is all about love. Sometimes love is natural, as in God's love for our forefathers and for the stranger; sometimes it is commanded, as in our love for God and our love for strangers.

Coinciding with the command to love God is a command to revere God. The Shma is preceded by "Fulfill the commandments so you may revere your God…" (6:2), and is followed by "Revere and serve your God" (6:13); and in our parsha, the instruction quoted above in 10:12 of what God wants of you actually begins with "to revere Hashem your God".

In Vayikra 19:14,32 and Vaikra 25:17,36,43 we see a number of "You must revere your God" instructions as well.

Essentially, these two themes, loving and fearing God, are counted as two separate commandments. The Sefer HaChinukh lists them as commandments 418 and 432 respectively, while Maimonides has them as positive commandments numbers 3 and 4.

Now that we are a little over a week away from the month of Elul, it is an appropriate time to revisit these commandments to understand how we can best go about fulfilling them.

Sefer HaChinukh suggests a person can't fulfill commandments properly without loving God. If our attitude is such that every deed we undertake as part of our religious experience is fulfilled under the premise that we are doing this for love of God, the act is elevated and becomes more real. This is why the Shma reminds us that these words must be on our hearts all day and every day, and we must review them in our heart and soul.

Revering God, on the other hand, manifests itself in a person who guards oneself from sin on account of fear of punishment and retribution.

Maimonides goes about explaining the two commandments slightly differently. He compares loving God to how a person relates to a person one admires greatly. "When you love someone, you pay attention to the person, you praise the person, and you want others to love your friend as well." You introduce your friend to everyone. Wouldn't it be amazing if we were able to communicate this about God?

The greatest example of this was our forefather Avraham whose existence dripped with his love of God. He is credited with bringing people close to  monotheism through simply being an exemplary character, with a stellar reputation, who just modeled his love for his God on a very consistent basis.

Fearing God is not just about being scared, or fearful of punishment. It is about a higher level of respect, including not taking or using God's name in vain.

These commandments are hard to take on in practical terms. How does one apply love or reverence to a being we can not see, to which we cannot relate in our o-so-humanly needy way?

Through example. We know how to love our parents. We know how to love our children. We must view our love of God in such a way.

God's modeling of love of the stranger is helpful as well. Whether the "stranger" is a convert or someone who has chosen to live amongst the Jewish people, the life choice that causes one to give up everything to cling to the Jewish people is so beloved to God, that His love effuses to that person in a way which is humbling to the rest of us. How could we ever mistreat or stigmatize someone who has, by choice, joined our people, who God Himself loves unconditionally?

And finally, as Rabbi Chanina suggests in the Gemara (BRachot 33b), even reverence of God is something which is not as challenging as we thought. When Moshe introduces it in our parsha, Moshe says, "What does God 'ask' of you?" Not what does God demand or command, but what does God ask.

One can suggest that the reverence of God begins as a choice we make – because the command is more frightening and stifling. But if we build up our love of God, through the model of our relatives and the model of the stranger, hopefully we will come to revere God in the way the Torah otherwise instructs.

It starts with love. The rest will naturally flow from that source.

Honor and Reverence

Parshat Kedoshim

by Rabbi Avi Billet

In the listing of ingredients for the proper pursuit of holiness, the Torah puts reverence of one's parents and the observance of the Sabbath at the forefront, on just about equal footing.


Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch clarifies that the term used in the Torah "Imo v'aviv tira'u," which is often translated as "fear your parents," is better understood as an instruction to "be mindful of our parents and of our obligation to fulfill their wishes."

More importantly, Hirsch says, it is not "the good that parents do for their children, but the mission given to the parents concerning their children that is the basis of the mitzvah of honoring one's parents."

As to why observance of the Sabbath is attached so closely to the commandment to fulfill the wishes of the parents, Hirsch explains, "A child who sees his parents observing the Sabbath will learn from their example to place his world at G-d's feet; obedience to parents leads to obedience to G-d."

In a larger sense, the mitzvah of reverence for the parents should be an easy one to fulfill. If I owe everything, life itself, to my parents, I should logically want to repay the kindness and fulfill their every wish.

But Hirsch twists the idea on its head. It's not just about the fact that parents bring children into the world. Their responsibilities to their children do not end there. It is they who are to mold and shape and guide their children, so that their children will understand the role their parents play in raising them not only as ethical human beings but as incredible Jews.

This reverence of parents, then, is merely a reflection of the reverence of G-d that the parents demonstrate and display to their children on a daily basis.

Whenever I try to talk to younger children about G-d, I always use their parents as the example. "When you want something and you ask your parents for it, do they always give it to you? Or do they sometimes say 'No?'"

What's fascinating is that the Sabbath and honoring one's parents share similar billing in the Decalogue, and both appear there with a different action word. We are told in Shmot 20 to "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy," and to "Honor your parents."

In his book "Or HaDeah," Hassidic Rabbi Uri Langer suggests that just as Shamor and Zachor were said in one saying with regard to the Sabbath (Rosh Hashana 27), Kavod and Yirah – Honoring and Revering were said in one saying with regard to how one is to relate to one's parents.

It is easy to honor one's parents when they are gone – to say kaddish, to commemorate a yahrzeit, to say the kel malei rachamim, to speak of them in a respectful way. On equal footing is the obligation to revere them – to listen and to fulfill their will - when they are alive. One reveres one's parents through following their ways.

In the end, the responsibility is two directional. The child has to follow the ways of the parent, but the parent must make the life choices and commitments to be admired by and desirable to the child.

It is no one else's responsibility. Not the school, not the shul, not the rabbi, not one's friend, not even one's own parents (the children's grandparents). It is my responsibility. It is your responsibility. The honor is earned through bringing the children into the world. We will all surely be honored once we're gone.

But the reverence is what we really aspire to, and truly want from and for our children – to follow the path we have chosen and to want with all their hearts and souls to carry it to the next generation.

Maybe observance of the Sabbath is a good first ingredient to achieving the reverence. But even observance of the Sabbath requires a lot more than "not violating the law." We must make Shabbos a day of holiness of beauty and the beginnings of a family bond that creates reverence of the holy day and reverence of G-d.

Through this first ingredient, may those of us who are parents merit to enjoy the honor and reverence we receive as we model it for our children through our own honor and reverence for G-d.