Tag Archives: gratitude

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Love is a Commandment

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Today’s daf discusses the halachos of one who gives a gift. The great importance of gratitude cannot be overemphasized. Rabbeinu Bachaya famously writes that one who fails to appreciate what others have done for him—using some trite excuse to explain away this lapse—will also lose appreciation for all the gifts that God bestows on us at all times. In Kelm people knew how to show their gratitude. It was normal to show one’s appreciation to the children of one who had been of assistance. Some had developed their hakaras hatov to such an extent that they even expressed their gratitude to the grandchildren of the one who had helped them.

An interesting question arose regarding such demonstrations. A certain Jew was in a far-flung town during the terrible years of the Holocaust. He knew that he had no chance alone, so he begged a non- Jewish friend to hide him. His friend did not let him down despite the danger of hiding a Jew, and that could lead to an immediate death sentence for interfering with the Nazi war effort.

After the war, this Jew went to Israel and was very successful in business. He always sent a large amount of money back to Europe to help his non-Jewish friend, who was not very well off. After some time, this man passed away, and the Jew wondered whether he was permitted to continue sending money to the non-Jew’s children. After all, although they hadn’t really helped him they were the progeny of the man who had saved his life. Don’t we find in the Torah that the descendants of Amon and Moav should have given Yisrael bread and water as an expression of kindness to Avraham through whose merits Lot’s life was sav? Yet, in general, it is forbidden to give a non-Jew a gift due to the prohibition…It was not as though the children would have a claim against him, since he had always helped their father. Yet he wished to continue giving to them if he could.

When this question reached Rav Nissin Karelitz, shlit”a, he ruled decisively.
“When a person feels gratitude to someone—or his descendants—there is no problem…it is only if he wished to give a gift not due to hakaras hatov that this prohibition applies.”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Gift of Gratitude”
Kereisos 24

This is a strange story from a Christian (or a secular Gentile) point of view. Of course, we can understand that the Jewish person whose life had been saved by the non-Jew, should want to show gratitude toward the person who helped him at the risk of his own life. We can see that it was incredibly generous of the Jewish person to continue to provide financial gifts to his benefactor years and even decades after the end of the Holocaust. We might even be able to understand the desire to do something good for the children of the Gentile benefactor as a further act of gratitude and compassion for what their father did.

But is it an obligation?

Most Christians are well versed in the concept that the Law of the Jews was replaced by the Grace of Christ, to the degree that Christians have virtually none of the obligations that God assigned the Children of Israel at Mt. Sinai. However, a careful study of the teachings of Jesus will reveal that every lesson he taught to his disciples and the multitudes that followed him was based in the Torah and the Prophets.

As Christians, we understand that we should show our gratitude to others, sometimes in a tangible way, but for us, it’s a “nice thing to do” rather than a commandment or an obligation. But given everything I’ve just said, are we seeing this picture correctly?

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions. –Mark 12:28-34 (ESV)

In the two greatest commandments, we see a couple of things and they may not be apparent to you. The first, which I hope is obvious, is that we are indeed commanded to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Jesus is directly quoting from Leviticus 19:18 in this part of his teaching:

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

So we understand in this instance that because the Master included this portion of Torah in what he taught and because he gave a mandate that all of the Gentile disciples should be taught to obey his teachings (Matthew 28:18-20), that this is a part of Torah (the Law) that translates into a commandment for Christians.

When you love your neighbor, you express it. When your neighbor (Jew or Gentile) does something outstandingly good to you, you return that goodness in kind, not just because it’s polite, or nice, or the right thing to do, but because God expects it of us.

The other thing we see in Christ’s teaching is that he directly links loving your neighbor as yourself with “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” which is we also find in the Torah. (Deuteronomy 6:5 – ESV)

We Christians aren’t just supposed to love God, we are commanded to do so. Not only that, but we are commanded to love our neighbor. It’s an obligation. And on top of all of that, the two commandments are so linked that if you don’t love your neighbor as yourself, then you cannot possibly love God.

Did everyone get that?

I’m not dumping the entire body of the 613 commandments onto the Christian church and the body of non-Jewish believers in Jesus, but I am saying what seems to be self evident. Once you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior and Master, what happens next isn’t optional. Once you get your train ticket to Heaven punched by the conductor, your journey isn’t over. Being “saved” isn’t the end, it’s barely the beginning.

I know that living a moral and ethical Christian life, especially in terms of actual behavior (as opposed to an abstract and completely internal “belief” in Christ) doesn’t sound like the “grace” we’re taught in Sunday school or from the pulpit, but I can’t read the Bible any other way.

Once you realize that God expects that you love your neighbor, you’re supposed to do something about it. Otherwise, it isn’t love. Otherwise it isn’t love that you “feel” for God. If you have gratitude to God for saving your life and sparing you the consequences of your sins, show that gratitude to others and even to their children and grandchildren.

Love is an obligation. The struggle, not to feel love but to do love, is a battle. And you dare not fail to win the battle. If you do, how can you say that you love God? How can you win the war, not only for all those souls created in God’s image, but for your very own? How can you say you contain the light of God and that your soul cleaves to Him?

The Alter Rebbe had stated earlier that a person’s intention while performing Torah and mitzvot should be that his soul cleave to G-d.

He now goes on to say that a Jew’s spiritual service also includes the goal of becoming one with all the Jewish people. For this reason his intentions should not be limited to having his own soul cleave to G-d, but also that the source of his soul and the source of all the souls of Israel cleave to Him.

By doing so the individual brings about the union (yichud) of the higher and lower levels of G-dliness known respectively as Kudsha Brich Hu (“the Holy One, blessed be He”) and His Shechinah (“the Divine Presence”), for the former is the source of Torah and mitzvot and the latter is the source of all Jewish souls.

This explains the concluding phrase of the formula recited before the performance of certain mitzvot: “For the sake of the union of Kudsha Brich Hu with His Shechinah…in the name of all Israel.” As the Rebbe notes: “In the name of all Israel” implies that the union achieved through the performance of the mitzvah is for the sake of, and in the name of, all of Israel. For it is with the Shechinah that Kudsha Brich Hu is united and the Shechinah is the source of all Jewish souls.

Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 41
from Today’s Tanya Lesson
By Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), founder of Chabad Chassidism
Elucidated by Rabbi Yosef Wineberg. Translated from Yiddish by Rabbi Levy Wineberg and Rabbi Sholom B. Wineberg. Edited by Uri Kaploun.
Listen online at Chabad.org

To extend this particular lesson somewhat, in performing the mitzvot or the commandments of God as Christians, our souls are also cleaving to God and to all of His other creations.

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I’m Alive!

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“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” -Dr. Seuss

I admit, thank, surrender before You, to Your essential being, O King, He who speaks the world into being and who is the source of all being, who is alive and the source of life, and who is enduring, sustaining, and unchanging. Because You have returned within me and You are recharging me with my breath of life by and with Your gracious compassion. Great and magnificent is Your faithfulness.

Modeh anee lifanecha melech chai vikayam, she-he-chezarta bee nishmatee b’chemla, raba emunatecha.

-Modeh Ani

You just woke up. I just woke up. It’s a new day and we’re alive!

I’m continuing to follow the path of preparing a day before God. I’ve written about the activities that ideally lead up to this moment including An Introduction to a Prayer, Dream Not of Today, and Morning Rebirth, to mention just a few of the most recent blog posts in this series. In preparing for this moment, you have allowed yourself (again, ideally) to  dedicate your evening to reading, and studying, and meditating on God and His eternal Word, and praying the Bedtime Shema. Then, within the confines of His arms and blessing, you have fallen asleep.

And now it’s morning. And now you’re awake. What are the first thoughts that come to you? According to Rabbi Freeman, those thoughts should be of God, which is what you’d expect, and how grateful you are for returning you to this life, since sleep is where you approach the realm of death. You are reborn for another day. The breath of life has been restored to you, much in the same way God breathed life into the first man (Genesis 2:7). I can’t imagine what Adam must have thought in those first few moments of his existence, and if he really understood that prior to that moment, he did not exist at all, and then he was alive and the first living man. If he could possibly have comprehended all that God had done, how God had created the entire Universe for the sake of a man, how grateful would Adam have been?

There’s no way for us to understand the experience of the first man, but we can understand our own experience upon awakening, when we realize we are alive and we have lived to see another day.

I realize that most of you take that for granted. When you go to sleep, you expect to wake up the next morning. You expect to get up, use the bathroom, get a cup of coffee, check your email, take a shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, and so on, and so forth, just like you have a thousand mornings before.

Just like the sun is supposed to rise in the east every morning like clockwork. You don’t even worry that it won’t.

But what if you were severely ill? What if your living from day to day wasn’t such a sure thing? What if you had a medical condition that might result in you dying in your sleep. Even trying to go to sleep might make you anxious or even terrified, if you thought you might not wake up again…ever. If you expected that you could die in your sleep and then found yourself awake the following morning alive and feeling well, wouldn’t you be grateful to God for returning your life?

It is said that each beat of our heart requires the will of God, and should God withdraw His will, our heart would stop in an instant. We really take our beating heart for granted because it’s never let us down yet, has it? If it had, we would be dead. So we assume that if it’s worked all of this time without a problem, then it will just keep on going and going and going, like the Energizer Bunny.

Frankly, if we worried second by second all day long about whether or not God was going to extend our life into the next minute or the next hour, we probably would be a nervous wreck and would never be able to just get on with our day to day routine.

So, for the most part, we don’t worry. But then, are we grateful?

If you do so at no other time, the moment when you first wake up is a terrific time to express your gratitude to God for who you are and the fact that you made it to the start of another day. And just as you pondered the ancient texts and the oft-repeated tales of the greatness of God and all that He has done while you were getting ready for sleep, you can allow the awareness of Him to enter into you, and to fill you with His light as you wake up.

In today’s study, Rabbi Freeman presented a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of Modeh Ani, from which I took my rather literal translation of the Hebrew at the beginning of today’s meditation. While we won’t always be aware of the full weight and import of this deceptively short and easy morning blessing each time we say it to ourselves and to God, we should at least be aware of what we are saying before we commit to using these words to express our gratitude.

Depending on who you are, and how you conceive of God and your relationship to Him, you may never choose to adopt this particular blessing as part of your process of waking up each morning and re-entering the world that God has made.

But I hope and pray you choose (if you haven’t already done so) something similar. It’s not only because God deserves our gratitude and praise, but because we need to make the effort to integrate who we are into who He is. Otherwise, what is our life without His love?

“While there’s life, there’s hope.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero

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Wonder

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WonderWonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of the religious man’s attitude toward history and nature. One attitude is alien to his spirit: taking things for granted, regarding events as a natural course of things. To find an approximate cause of a phenomenon is no answer to his ultimate wonder. He knows that there are laws that regulate the course of natural processes; he is aware of the regularity and pattern of things. However, such knowledge fails to mitigate his sense of perpetual surprise at the fact that there are facts at all. Looking at the world he would say, “This is the Lord’s doing, it is marvelous in our eyes” (Psalms 118:23).

Abraham Joshua Heschel
God in Search of Man : A Philosophy of Judaism
pg 45

Astronomers have combined two decades of Hubble observations to make unprecedented movies revealing never-before-seen details of the birth pangs of new stars. This sheds new light on how stars like the Sun form…The movies reveal the motion of the speedy outflows as they tear through the interstellar environments. Never-before-seen details in the jets’ structure include knots of gas brightening and dimming and collisions between fast-moving and slow-moving material, creating glowing arrowhead features. These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star’s birth, offering a peek at how the Sun behaved 4.5 billion years ago.

“Hubble movies provide unprecedented view of supersonic jets from young stars”
Physorg.com

How do you combine these two quotes together? Can you see the hand of God in “energetic jets of glowing gas traveling at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space?” I can. It’s not always easy, though. Building somewhat on yesterday’s morning meditation, we live in a world that strives to explain everything in terms of naturally occurring events. Nothing is amazing or astounding anymore, it’s just stuff that can be explained by science. But according to Heschel, just because you can explain something takes nothing away from the wonder of it being a creation of God.

Religious people and particularly “fundamentalist” Christians tend to take the opposite approach. They find wonder in all of God’s creation but see science as the enemy of God. Any scientific analysis of observable phenomenon is considered a denial of God’s existence. It’s only a miracle if it remains unexplained in terms of it’s physical, chemical, or electrical properties. Of course, by that thinking, we wouldn’t have the study of medicine which saves so many lives. We wouldn’t have the existence of the Internet which gives us virtually instantaneous access to information that would otherwise take weeks or months for us to locate. We would probably still think the Sun circled the earth and that God made the world as flat as a pizza.

Science is a tool and like any tool, it can be used and misused. In the post-modern era, scientific inquiry is often used as a tool to “prove” that everything in existence has a “natural” origin and that the universe doesn’t require a supernatural agent to explain its formation (and never mind that no scientific inquiry can adequately explain how the universe came into being in the first place). Yet science as a method of investigation, is amoral. It’s neither good nor bad. It simply is (at its most basic level) a set of steps that tells us how to look at something with as much objectivity as possible so we can learn what it is without tainting the conclusions with our own intervention and personality.

That’s of course, if it’s used correctly and with its original intent. Human beings have a tendency to abuse tools in order to acquire the results they believe fits their best interests, the truth not withstanding.

Even if used correctly though, scientific inquiry can have an unintended side effect. It can dull wonder, as Heschel states (pg 46):

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

What a hideous way to exist. Nothing is amazing. Nothing is fantastic. No event leads us into the presence of sheer awe at the glory of God’s works. That is such a sad and sorry way to live.

OceanThere are atheists who are proud to call themselves by that name and who marvel at mankind’s genius as it progresses toward a higher and enlightened scientific and social order. As the last gene becomes identified and mapped and the last star in the galaxy becomes classified and planets made of diamonds are cataloged, it all is taken in stride and in self-satisfaction. But it’s all so empty without God, for whose glory creation exists.

Heschel wonders why a “scientific theory, once it is announced and accepted, does not have to be repeated” but observant Jews continue to pray the Shema twice daily saying “He is One”. The reason this is done is because the “insights of wonder must be constantly kept alive. Since there is a need for daily wonder, there is a need for daily worship.”

Heschel continues (page 49):

The sense for the “miracles that are daily with us,” the sense for the “continual marvels,” is the source of prayer. There is no worship, no music, no love, if we take for granted the blessings or defeats of living…Even on performing a physiological function we say “Blessed be Thou…who healest all flesh and doest wonders.”

Where is your sense of wonder? Perhaps it is doing well each day but if not, there is a way to inspire yourself. You don’t have to wait. Just start “doing” wonder. It’s like praying twice daily. Even if you don’t “feel” like it, the feeling doesn’t have to come before the doing:

People are not changed by arguments, nor by philosophy. People change by doing.

Introduce a new habit into your life, and your entire perspective of the world changes.

First do, then learn about what you are already doing.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
“Change by Doing”
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
Chabad.org

Do you need help? It’s available, in fact, no one can develop a true sense of God alone because God didn’t create us to be in the world alone. As Rabbi Freeman writes:

Each of us has deficiencies, but as a whole we are complete. Each one is perfected by his fellow, until we make a perfect whole.

What we have, we were given by God. The environment around us, our intelligence, our sense of wonder, others among us to complete us and encourage us. We need only take advantage of God’s gifts including the gift of prayer. We need never lose our sense of wonder in the universe or our awe in God. I suppose it’s why Jesus said this, for who but a child has the greatest sense of wonder at the world and beyond?

Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. –Matthew 18:3 (ESV)

Later today, I’ll post my commentary on this week’s Torah Portion Shoftim. Stay tuned.

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For God So Loved

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HumbleWhen this question reached the Alter of Kelm, zt”l, he explained quite decisively. “Two nations were forever distanced from Hashem due to their lack of hakoras hatov for the kindness of Avraham towards Lot, as the Ramban explains. Consider this, my brothers. Is there anyone in this generation who acts kindly to the grandchildren of a person who helped them? Surely so many years have passed, and most will surely have forgotten such an old obligation? We would be surprised to find even one such person in a city!”

Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, zt”l, recounted that the Alter’s rebuke did indeed bear fruit. “Boruch Hashem, I knew people in Kelm who truly knew how to express their appreciation towards those who had shown them—or their parents—kindness. I even knew people who bestowed kindness on the grandchildren of those who helped them. They did their utmost to do whatever good possible to those who had been kind to them and even their descendants. This is the level of truly pious and upright people who know their obligation in the world.”

The obligation for hakoras hatov itself is clearly explained in the Mishnas Rabbi Eliezer, “There is nothing more serious in God’s eyes than one who lacks proper appreciation. Adam HaRishon was banished from Gan Eden only because he lacked proper appreciation. God got angry at our forefathers in the desert only because they lacked hakoras hatov.”

Yomi Daf Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Need for Gratitude”
Chullin 62

“I gratefully thank You, living and existing King
for restoring my soul to me with compassion.
Abundant is your faithfulness.”

–Modeh Ani

Gratitude is a quality that isn’t always well demonstrated in the modern world of the west. In many other cultures, including the middle east, hospitality and the expression of gratitude is still highly prized (at least among the older generation). What about those of us who are attached to the God of Israel and who are disciples of Jesus?

Every morning, before getting out of bed, I silently bless God with the Modeh Ani for preserving my life for another day. I’m not telling you this because I think it makes me a better person or anything, but to illustrate the point that we depend on God for literally everything in our lives, regardless of what it is or how we think we’ve acquired it. If God is so gracious to us that he “opens His hand and satisfies the desires of every living thing” (Psalm 145:16), how can we fail to acknowledge that before Him or not proceed to pass that graciousness on to others.

Despite the terrible shortages, the Imrei Emes always put the needs of the poor first. A certain chassid once brought him a little challah for Shabbos. This challah was made of the finest flour—a danger for the baker since this flour was set aside for soldiers—so the rebbe could avoid using coarse bread for hamotzi on Shabbos. This challah was considered very valuable since it was of much better quality.

To the surprise of all, the rebbe gave out this precious bread to his chassidim who came for shiyarim. The rebbe explained his generosity with a statement on today’s daf. “In Chullin 63 we find that the chasidah bird is called this since it does kindness exclusively with its own kind—they only share food with each other. Interestingly, we find in the Yerushalmi that mice are called wicked because when they see a lot of fruit they call their friends to join them. We may well wonder the exact difference between the two. After all, aren’t both kind to their own species exclusively?”

“The answer is that mice only call their friends when there is a lot. A chasidah shares even when there is not so much to be shared…”

Daf Yomi Digest
Stories Off the Daf
“The Rebbe’s Chessed”
Chullin 63

It’s not that we don’t do this, but we all need a reminder that we have a duty to share what God has provided with others, not just when we have plenty, but when we are in want. That’s why I recite Modeh Ani in the morning…as a reminder that I am grateful to God for my life and what I have and that what I have should be shared. But what we share shouldn’t be just what we have, but who we are. Ultimately, they should all be the same thing.

The Rebbe wept profoundly as he spoke these words:

The entire being of Moses was the Torah he brought to his people. The Torah was more than something he taught. It was what he was. It was his G-d within him.

Yet when it came to a choice between the Torah or his people, he chose his people. He said, “And if you do not forgive them, then wipe me out from Your book that You have written!”

His whole being was the Torah,
but deep into his essence, at the very core,
was his oneness with his people.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman
Bringing Heaven Down to Earth
Based on letters and talks of the Rebbe
Rabbi M. M. Schneerson
“The Ultimate Sacrifice”
Chabad.org

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. –John 3:16

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Abundant is Your Faithfulness

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This blog has been a long time in the making, perhaps as long as two years. I’ve been searching for something. I’ve been looking for a road. I’ve been staring into the dark abyss looking for even the faintest glimmer of light. After two long years, I think I’ve found it and so, to share my tiny light in the darkness, I’ve created this blog.

Rabbi Tzvi Freeman said something recently at Chabad.org that resulted in my finally finding the right name and letting me launch this weblog.

When you get up in the morning, let the world wait. Defy it a little. First learn something to inspire you. Take a few moments to meditate upon it. And then you may plunge ahead into the darkness, full of light with which to illuminate it.

Every morning when I wake up, before I get out of bed, I silently recite a blessing to God, thanking Him for returning my soul to me. While I don’t usually think that I might “die before I wake” as I go to sleep, I am aware that my life is in the hands of God; my well-being depends on His chesed and His providence. In that sense each new day, when I become aware that I’m still here, is a gift from God.

I’m going through a transition and learning to find my faith. I have gone through the past year searching for the path I must walk and now I believe I am walking on it. The path isn’t always easy and much of the time, it’s shrouded in twilight. Although I walk with God, there are times when I feel that I’m totally alone in the dark. Yet as Rabbi Freeman said, I can also let myself be inspired, allow God to illuminate me, and then become my own light casting away the darkness.

In the days and weeks ahead, I’m going to pursue the journey of bringing light into the darkness, may it be the will of God.

I invite you to join me and we can become aware of each new day and the promise it brings.

“I gratefully thank You, living and existing King
for restoring my soul to me with compassion.
Abundant is your faithfulness.”

–Blessing Upon Arising in the Morning