פרשת שופטים

In this week’s Parsha, there is a fundamental Mitzvah mentioned. The Torah says “תמים תהיה עם ה’ אלוקיך” which loosely translated means, “You shall act ‘Tamim’ with your God.” One way that this ambiguous verse could be interpreted is that one should serve God with simplicity and guilelessness and never ask any questions on God’s commandments. This is not to say that one shouldn’t do what one can in order to understand the Torah, but after all is said and done, his understanding, or lack thereof, has no impact on the final result of his actions. He serves God completely disregarding his opinions on the wisdom of the Mitzvos and also without considering whether or not he has the physical or emotional capacity to keep the Mitzvos. This has always been a primary attribute of the Jewish people. When the Jews were commanded to leave Egypt they had no idea where they were going, what they would eat, or how they would survive. Yet they did not hesitate to fulfill God’s commandment with complete faith that things would turn out alright. Similarly when the Jews were offered the Torah, they had no idea what was in it or whether they could meet its demands, yet they still responded “נעשה ונשמע” indicating that they had complete confidence in God that He would not give them a Torah they could not keep. This trait of blind faith has always been a hallmark quality of the Jewish people. Similarly, Rashi explains that the “purity” which the Torah is asking from us in this verse, is a purity of trust in Hashem in which one has no need to visit a necromancer in order to determine the future, but rather fosters a trust in Hashem that everything will turn out okay.

The Ba’al Haturim points out that the “ת” in the word “Tamim” is written noticeably larger in the Torah in order to show how integral this Mitzvah is to the Jewish people. This large letter indicates that when the Jews cultivate a true faith in Hashem, it is as if they completed the entire Torah. This is demonstrated by the fact that the letter which is enlarged is the last letter in the Aleph Beis.

The Shem Mishmuel in Parshas Bechukosai says in reference to the Midah of guilelessness that it is well known that all sin in this world began with the sin of Adam who was enticed by the snake. What argument could the snake have possibly given to convince the righteous Adam to go against a direct command from Hashem? The snake was very crafty and used a very clever argument which on the surface, made Adam feel like he was performing a Mitzvah. But certainly Adam should have listened to Hashem’s direct commandment, even if he felt that he could serve Hashem better in a different way. It comes out that the source of all sin happened from Adam being overly crafty, even with the right intentions. The Shem Mishmuel concludes that it stands to reason that one of our primary focuses should be to correct this iniquity is by doing God’s will with purity and sincerity, and without being overly crafty in the meaning of it, and by doing this, we may even merit bringing the world back to the way it was before Adam’s sin.

I once heard a beautiful explanation of the Midrash Yalkut on Psalms (674). The verse says, “God’s Torah is pure, and it returns the soul.” The Midrash says, “Why is the Torah pure, because it returns the soul, and why does it return the soul, because it is pure.” This means that the observance of the Torah has an incredible mystical power to return a person to the proper path, however there is one caveat. This power can only be accessed when one is observing the Torah with purity and simplicity. When one’s Torah observance is convoluted and tainted, this power will be lost.

This principle is powerfully demonstrated in this week’s Parsha as well. The Torah commands the Jewish people to appoint a king to lead them, however it warns that the king should not marry too many wives or accumulate too many horses, lest his heart be swayed. The Gemorah in Sanhedrin (21) says that Shlomo Hamelech reasoned to himself that since the Torah told us that the only danger is that one’s heart will be swayed, he could be careful enough to avoid this pitfall and he went ahead and married more then the allotted amount of wives. However Shlomo suffered the bitter fate that the Torah promised and his heart was swayed. One could ask, was the great Shlomo Hamelech unable to control his heart going astray as he estimated that he could? Rather we could explain based on the Gemorah which says that Hashem created a Yetzer Hara, and he created the Torah as an antidote for that Yetzer similar to the above quoted Midrash. Specifically because he ignored the direct commandment in the Torah and didn’t serve God with a pure innocence, the mystical power of protection from the evil inclination was temporarily withdrawn from him and he submitted to the sin of letting his heart be drawn astray even though normally, he would have been able to withstand this test as he estimated that he could.

I would just like to offer another explanation in the verse, “One should be ‘Tamim’ in his service of God” based on the translation of Onkelos. Onkelos translates the word “Tamim” as “complete in one’s fear of God.” Meaning that one’s service of God has to be complete in which he has no aspect about his service which is subdued or held back. This means that every action that one does, whether big or small, is done with the sole intent to serve his creator. There are no places in his heart or in his actions which are bereft of God and there are no parts of his life which he reserves for himself and his own personal pleasure. This is what the verse means when it commands us to serve God with “תמימות” – perfection. Parenthetically, this explanation is very appropriate during the time we find ourselves in. Elul is an acronym for the verse “אני לדודי ודודי לי” – “I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me.” Many commentaries explain this verse to mean, when I allow myself to belong completely to my beloved, leaving no part of me that is free of Him, only then will my beloved by completely to me!

May Hashem bless us this Elul to re-dedicate ourselves to His complete service with conviction and guileless faith!