It’s been a hard summer. It's been a hard year. We’re all well aware that the troubles we suffer with have found their mark on us because we need to change our actions, but we nevertheless continue to make excuses to ourselves, avoiding change daily.
Our parshah opens with the famous Rashi, who explains how we may not realize that small mitzvos are important too! (we can literally step on them with our heels – vehaya eikev) This thought joins the final words of Rashi in last week’s parsha – “hayom la’asosam” – In this world we do the mitzvos, in the next world we get the reward. What an interesting system – delayed gratification, delayed reward. Imagine getting paid for all your work and all your efforts in some unannounced future time? Tough stuff.
But the commentaries explain. Just as we cannot fully comprehend the reason we get punishments in this world, we would certainly never understand reward, so Hashem postpones our reward to a time when we will have no questions and no excuses. Olam Haba, the world where truth rules. A story is told that shows how the truth can easily take a back seat to our carefully contrived excuses. And we weave a believable tale of sheker.
The driver was speeding like a madman when he got stopped by the sirens of a lone police car. Quickly scheming to get out of the ticket in a novel way, his mind went into overdrive.
When the officer asked him for his license and registration, he replied, “My license? It was taken away from me 4 years ago when I was locked up for driving while intoxicated. My registration? This car isn’t mine – I stole it from someone a mile back – that's why I was driving like a madman. In fact, I shot him, and the weapon is in my back seat now.”
Immediately the young officer called for reinforcements. The new commander arrived and asked the driver for his license and registration. Before being handcuffed, the driver had it all ready for inspection. Everything checked out, the car was, rightfully his and clean – no weapon, no apparent problems.
After he was let go (remember this is just a story), he turned to the new officer and said “I’ll bet the other officer told you I was speeding like a madman too. That's also not true!” We all have excuses for what we do, all ready to come to our defense when we are confronted with our misguided actions.
In this world, we can convince ourselves that these arguments can hold water. But in the next world – the Olam Ha’Emes, only the truth will be victorious. Eikev tishme’un as the parsha says, if we would only listen to the timeless soul within us all – our neshama, then we would gather the strength to change right here and right now.
Written by R’ Avrohom Hillel Reich based on a lesson and story by Harav Ben Tziyon Sneh Shlita
