In the midst of the Torah’s description of all the troubles that chas veshalom might befall the Am Yisroel, Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives an explanation, a reason, for why He’ll bring those punishments: חַ ת אֲ שֶ ׁ ר תַ ל ב לֵבָב מֵרֹב כֹ בְטו שִׂמְחָה ו בְ קֶיך ם אֱל אֶת הַשֵ א עָבַדְתָ ל – All this will befall you because you did not serve Hashem your G-d, with joy and with a merry heart, from an abundance of everything (Devarim 28:47).
Now, we should pay attention to those words because it’s a remarkable idea that the Torah is emphasizing here. After all, we would have said that it’s poshut why the punishments come – it’s because we didn’t keep the Torah, that’s all. That’s what we think the Torah should have said: “I’m punishing you א עָבַדְ תָ חַ ת אֲ שֶׁ ר ל תַ, because you didn’t serve Me.” But it doesn’t say that; it adds a caveat – it says that we didn’t serve Him “with joy and a merry heart.”
Serving Is Not Enough
Now, that’s a queer criticism. So what if we don’t serve Him with a merry heart? Ok, so we weren’t happy. Is that a reason for these terrible punishments? After all, we served Him – it doesn’t say we didn’t. We were good Orthodox Jews. We put on tefillin. We kept Shabbos. We learned Torah. We did chessed and mitzvos. The Am Yisroel was very frum. And so, does it make sense that we should be sent into Exile and suffer all these consequences just because we did it without happiness?
So Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “Yes. If you don’t serve Me b’simcha, in joy, u’vtuv leivav, with a merry heart, mei’rov kol, because of everything I’m giving you, that’s not called service. And if you’re lacking that, it’s already a big enough sin that it deserves everything mentioned in this parsha, all the punishments in the tochacha.”
The Avodah of Humility
Now, that has to be explained because it’s a chiddush to us. After all, we think we know what it means to serve Hashem. It means fulfilling the Torah; doing mitzvos, learning Torah, raising frum children, going to shul every day, keeping everything, the whole Shulchan Aruch. But we’re learning now that all that is not avodas Hashem yet.
It’s required of course; you must do it but it’s like wearing pants. You have to wear pants on the street, absolutely, but it doesn’t make you an eved Hashem. Keeping everything, being frum, makes you a Jew, that’s all. But it’s still only the bare bones minimum. It’s not avodas Hashem yet.
You know what avodah is? Avodah means someone who is a ‘subject’. ‘Subject’, if you'll translate the word, sub means underneath and ject means to throw, to cast; ‘to be cast underneath’. So avodah means that we are subjected, we are humbled, before Hashem. “We serve You because we are humbled before You.”
Wealth of Normal Living
The idea is like this. Suppose somebody is giving you a thousand dollars a minute; every minute another thousand. Imagine you go to your rich uncle and he has plenty of it to give. So he takes out $1000 and he hands it to you. “Nephew, enjoy it!” But before you have a chance to say thank you, he gives you another $1000. You’re surprised. “How am I going to thank him?” And then another $1000. So you’re tongue-tied. “Thank you Uncle Abe. Thank you Uncle Abe, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.” You can't keep up. And if you can’t keep up, all you feel is humility. You’re humbled before the giver.
And so when Hakadosh Baruch Hu gives you a gift and another gift and another gift – He gives tens of thousands of gifts, ribei revavos, tens of thousands of times tens of thousands of gifts – so you're not able even to say thank You for them because they're so many.
And it’s much more than just thousand dollar bills. Because $1000 is worthless if you can't move your bowels. If you don't believe me it’s worth much more than $1000 then ask a man who is in a hospital waiting for an operation to restore his normal method of urinating. One morning he got up and his bladder was full but he just couldn't evacuate it. And he told his wife, and they decided that they should go to the emergency room. It was embarrassing but it was an emergency. No choice. You can't wait any longer. They waited maybe an hour or two hours and now he's bursting.
The Priceless Procedure
And so they hurried to the hospital and they're standing in line or sitting in a waiting room, but finally he sees that he'll collapse. He goes over to the nurse at the desk and he says “This is an emergency.”
And she says “What is it?
“It's three hours already that I wasn't able to urinate.”
“Oh,” she says, “You should have said that immediately.”
And she hurries him through a side door and they go straight to the operating room. But it's not simple. And that’s only one little procedure just to temporarily relieve him. Because now he has to have one operation and another operation. And there are weeks in between when he walks around in the hospital holding a bottle in his hand.
He looks forward to that great day when he'll come home and once more he'll be like everybody else; he’ll urinate like a king! Oh, he'll be like a millionaire when that happens.
The Priceless Pump
But you, you’re already that millionaire! Hakadosh Baruch Hu is giving you a thousand dollars and a thousand dollars and a thousand dollars every day. Just because it happens always so it’s not worth $1,000? So if you’re a millionaire right now, without any procedures and operations, you’re not going to be humbled in gratitude?
Or every day the miracle that your heart continues to pump. It's a very delicate adjustment that the heart should pump because this opening has to open and while this opening opens another opening has to close at that moment because they can't both be open. So while one opens the other closes. And when the next one opens, the old one closes. And it goes on all day long, day and night, without a hitch for so many years, and you don't even feel the process. It's so perfect. It's so smooth within you. Your heart is beating.
And so He's giving you greater things than $1,000. People pay $10,000 that their heart should begin to beat again. Suppose chas veshalom Hashem would be giving you money but your heart isn't beating. Chas veshalom if the heart stops beating so they rush him into the operating room and the doctor makes an incision in his chest and he takes hold of the heart in his hands and starts massaging his heart. He massages the heart until miraculously it starts beating again.
Only a good doctor could do that and so if he presents you with a bill for $10,000, are you going to quibble? It's cheap at any price. And Hakadosh Baruch Hu is giving it to you all the time. He is giving you gifts one after the other. Not only your kidneys and your bladder and your heart. Hundreds of gifts He’s giving you every minute. Thousands, tens of thousands, of gifts. And what the tochacha is saying is that we have to start thinking about them. We’re obligated to be humbled in gratitude.
American Heads
Now it’ll take some time to get this into our heads. Hearing it is not enough because we’re kefuyei tov today. “What’s to be grateful for?” the American head says.
Here’s an American boy who grew up in an American house. His parents fed him and clothed him. Did he stop to say thank you when his mother gave him breakfast? When his father paid the rent did he say thank you? It didn't even enter his mind. And it will never enter his mind. Even when he's an old man he doesn’t look back and say, “Look what they did. They paid rent for me. They fed me.”
Like I told you once before, his mother gets down on her knees before the child and begs him, “Please, do me a favor and eat.” And finally when this little czar sitting in his high chair, after being cajoled and bribed, when he finally condescends to take a spoonful he feels that he has conferred upon his mother the biggest favor.
And in America the children never grow up. Only that instead of porridge, now he wants to confer a favor on his parents by taking a car from them. He wants his allowance. He grows up to be the most corrupt kind of individual, a mushchas, a monster. To thank? To feel humbled? Such a meshugas would never enter his mind.
Seeing Is Believing
Even now when I’m saying this to you, people will think, “Why should I thank them?” I hear all kinds of reasons why it’s not necessary to thank them. And surely to be grateful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, they don’t understand. Your father, your mother, at least you see them. You see your mother slaving away over the stove. You see your father, he comes home wiped out after a day of slaving away in the office. You see that, so it’s easier. But Hashem, out of sight, out of mind.
And so we have a big job ahead of us; because that’s the foundation of everything. What can I pay back to Hashem for all that He bestowed upon me? (Tehillim 116:12). I can’t do a thing because You don’t need a thing from me.
“How am I going to serve You?” When a butler serves, he walks in with a tray carrying a bottle and glasses; so he's doing a benefit. But how am I serving Hakadosh Baruch Hu? What am I giving Him? He is rich. He is powerful. He has everything. He has me too. So what am I doing for Him? There's nothing I can do except to feel that I cannot do anything.
How could there be any service towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu?
The answer is that it’s the attitude that means everything. The feeling that you must do something and that you cannot do anything, that feeling is avodah. It's a feeling of being humbled before Hashem. That's the concept of avodas Hashem. Everything I do in this world, everything I do as a Jew, it’s because I’m weighed down in debt to You, Hashem.
