MAKE GOD BELOVED

There’s a beautiful story told about Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.

One of his yeshiva students once accompanied Rav Moshe to a doctor’s appointment and was sitting together with him as he waited his turn. The student’s aunt happened to work at the doctor’s office as a nurse. She was not observant, but she knew Rav Moshe and greeted him with great warmth and affection.

Her nephew, this yeshiva bochur – was getting so embarrassed. She joked with Rav Moshe. She called her nephew by his childhood nickname that he desperately hoped no one in the yeshiva would ever hear.

And then, without realizing that there might be any religious sensitivity involved, she said to Rav Moshe how much she loved him – and leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Remarkably, Rav Moshe didn’t flinch, but her nephew literally wanted the ground to swallow him.

The moment she left the room, he began apologizing. “Rebbe, I’m so sorry. My aunt isn’t religious. She doesn’t understand. She didn’t mean—”

Rav Moshe stopped him. He placed his fingers gently on the young man’s lips and said in Yiddish: “She has numbers on her arm. She is above me.”

That was all. “She has numbers on her arm. She is above me.” That’s what he said.

A lesser person than Rav Moshe might have focused on the awkwardness of the moment. A lesser person might have allowed himself to feel offended, or to look uncomfortable, or they might have used the incident to teach the young man a lesson about religious boundaries.

But Rav Moshe saw something else. He saw the numbers. He saw Auschwitz and the suffering beyond imagination that this boy’s aunt must have experienced. He saw a Jewish woman who had survived hell, rebuilt her life, and retained the ability to smile, to joke – and to show affection.

Rav Moshe understood what mattered most, and the young student learnt a lesson he would never forget.

This week’s parsha, Va’eschanan, contains some of the most important passages in the entire Torah. It contains a repetition of the Ten Commandments and it contains the Shema.

And then, immediately after Shema, is a commandment that has echoed through Jewish history and accompanied countless Jews through life and even into death: וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ – “You shall love Hashem your God.”

But the question is this: what does it mean to love God? Love is an emotion. How can we be commanded to feel an emotion, and – more importantly – how can we show that emotion once we feel it?

The Torah gives us a roadmap. You need to devote yourself to Hashem – when you are at home, when you are traveling, when you wake up, when you go to sleep. Learn Torah. Wear tefillin. Put mezzuzos up on your doorposts.

And it’s true, all of that is certainly part of it.

But Chazal offer a far more challenging interpretation.

The Gemara in Yoma (86a) asks: What does “V’ahavta es Hashem Elokecha” mean?

Abaye, one of the greatest of all the Talmudic sages, offers a beautiful answer. Do you know how you love Hashem, he says? Do you know how people will know you love Hashem? When what you do causes others to love Hashem:

שֶׁיְּהֵא שֵׁם שָׁמַיִם מִתְאַהֵב עַל יָדְךָ – “The name of Heaven should become beloved through you.”

He goes on to explain what he means:

שֶׁיְּהֵא קוֹרֵא וְשׁוֹנֶה וּמְשַׁמֵּשׁ תַּלְמִידֵי חֲכָמִים וִיהֵא מַשָּׂאוֹ וּמַתָּנוֹ בְּאֱמוּנָה וְדִבּוּרוֹ בְּנַחַת עִם הַבְּרִיּוֹת

“A person should study Torah, serve Torah scholars, conduct business honestly, and speak pleasantly with people. Then others will say: “How beautiful are his ways; how refined are his deeds.”

And they will say, he is a person of faith, his God must be wonderful, I want to have that God in my life, I want to love that God.

In other words, the Torah is not only commanding us to love Hashem. It is commanding us to live in such a way that other people will love Hashem because they have encountered us.

If people meet someone who studies Torah and keeps mitzvos, and find that this person is honest, considerate, patient and gracious – guess what: they will love Hashem.

If people meet someone someone who notices others, expresses gratitude and instinctively protects another person’s dignity – guess what: they will love Hashem.

That is the true test. Not only: Do I love Hashem? But: Does anyone love Hashem more because of me?

And, perhaps – and this is the not-so-good side of it: Has anyone been driven further away because of me?

A person can be a great Torah scholar and still make Torah appear ugly. They can be technically correct and spiritually disastrous.

Meanwhile, one small act of sensitivity can reveal more about Torah than an entire lecture. Rav Moshe did not deliver a shiur to that young man about the dignity of a Holocaust survivor. He simply said: “She has numbers on her arm. She is above me.” And… lesson learnt.

This same idea appears elsewhere in Va’eschanan: וְעָשִׂיתָ הַיָּשָׁר וְהַטּוֹב בְּעֵינֵי ה׳ – “You shall do what is right and good in the eyes of Hashem.”

The Ramban asks an obvious question. The Torah already contains hundreds of commandments, all of them aimed at making us good people. So why does it also need to tell us to do what is right and good?

The Ramban’s answer is that no legal code can anticipate every situation. The Torah cannot write a separate commandment for every conversation, every business interaction, every family disagreement, and every encounter with another human being.

And so, after giving us detailed laws, the Torah gives us an overarching instruction: Be a mensch. Do not hide behind technicalities. Don’t just ask, “What am I allowed to do?” Ask, “What is the right and good thing to do?”

What does kindness require of me? What does goodness require of me? What does human dignity require of me?

There is another story told about Rav Moshe Feinstein. One Saturday night, after spending Shabbes at his son’s yeshiva in Staten Island, he was being driven back to the Lower East Side.

A few minutes into the journey, he asked the driver to turn around – he had forgotten something important.

The other passengers in the car wondered what Rav Moshe could possibly have left behind. A sefer? A letter? Perhaps some important document?

When they got back to the yeshiva, Rav Moshe went to the kitchen. He found the elderly Russian woman, the cook who had cooked the Shabbes meals and he apologized for leaving without thanking her.

“Everyone enjoyed the food so much,” he told her. “Thank you for all your hard work to make such tasty food for us. I bless you with nachas and joy from your family.”

Then he came back to the car and told the driver he could go.

The other passengers, all of them his students, were astonished. They asked him whether Jewish law required him to turn the car around to thank her. Rav Moshe looked at them with his kindly eyes – and he answered that there is no limit to hakaras hatov—to gratitude. And gratitude is foundational to the entire Torah.

Rav Moshe Feinstein had one of the most extraordinary Torah minds of the twentieth century. He carried the problems of the Jewish world on his shoulders. People waited desperately for his decisions on matters of enormous consequence. But he could not continue driving home because he remembered that there was a woman in the kitchen whom he had not thanked.

Greatness in Torah is not only remembering everything written on the page. It is remembering the person in the kitchen whom everyone else has forgotten.

Va’eschanan also contains another extraordinary description of Torah: כִּי הִוא חָכְמַתְכֶם וּבִינַתְכֶם לְעֵינֵי הָעַמִּים – “For it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations.”

The Torah imagines that the nations of the world will observe us and then say: רַק עַם חָכָם וְנָבוֹן הַגּוֹי הַגָּדוֹל הַזֶּה – “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.”

This is sometimes quoted triumphantly, as though the nations of the world will automatically admire us simply because we have the Torah. But that is not what it says. What it says is that the nations are watching – they are watching what the Torah produces.

They see how we conduct business. They see how we speak to waiters, to janitors, to nurses, to employees, to strangers. They see how we behave when we are inconvenienced. They see whether our religious commitments make us more gracious or more demanding, more humble or more arrogant, more compassionate or more indifferent.

The Torah may be an incredible document given to us by God. But the only Torah most people will ever encounter is the Torah they see in us.

Andf the Torah wants us to notice the person who is struggling.

Notice the widow. Notice the lonely child. Notice the employee whose work is taken for granted. Notice the person standing at Kiddush whom no one has greeted. That is the real test of “V’ahavta es Hashem Elokecha.”

Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky was another one of the great Torah scholars and Jewish leaders of the twentieth century.

He wrote one sefer, a monumental work called Achiezer, in 3 volumes – published in 1922, 1925 – and the third volume in 1939, just a few months before he died.

His most active years as a leader of the Jewish people were the 20s and 30s – and the question is, why didn’t he publish more during that period? He was at the height of his fame – and he was a prolific writer. In recent years they published two thick volumes of his correspondence – so why didn’t he publish more in his lifetime? He certainly had plenty to publish.

He answered this question himself. He once told someone that when he was young, he dreamed of writing and publishing countless works of Torah scholarship. But when he grew older, and he became more active as a rabbinic leader, he began to feel that helping one suffering widow was possibly more important than any volume of Achiezer.

He wasn’t saying that his published Torah wasn’t important. What he was saying was that his concern for that widow was also a product of his Torah scholarship and was no less important – and possibly more important.

Va’eschanan contains the Ten Commandments. It contains the Shema. It contains some of the most majestic theology in the Torah. But all of that theology ultimately comes down to the person standing in front of us, and how we treat them.

Does our Torah make us kinder?

Does it make us more patient?

Does it teach us to be grateful?

Does it train us to see what others miss?

When someone encounters us, do they leave with a warmer feeling toward Jews, toward Torah and toward Hashem?

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ – “Love Hashem your God.” Live in such a way that Hashem becomes beloved through you.

Rav Moshe did it by not flinching when he was kissed by a Holocaust survivor, and by turning the car around to thank the yeshiva cook.

Rav Chaim Ozer did it by placing a widow’s suffering alongside, even above, publishing his work in Torah.

Our task is to live in such a way so that someone looks at us and says: “If this is what Torah produces, if this is what loving God so that you do His mitzvos produces – then Torah must be beautiful, and loving God and doing mitzvos must be beautiful.”

That is how we love Hashem. And that is how we make Hashem beloved.