If a person will have a wayward and rebellious son who doesn’t listen to his father and his mother. (Devarim 21:18)
The whole problem with the ben sorer umoreh is not what he did or what he does. It is what he will do. As Rashi explains, someone who eats meat and drinks wine like that, and ignores his parents’ warnings, will eventually run out of money and become a highway robber. Better he should die while he is still a good person, while he is still zakai. So explains Rashi.
So we see that the ben sorer umoreh’s problem is not aveiros that he did. It is that he is too attached to physical pleasures, to taanugim.
We commonly think that the main challenge in Jewish life is to avoid aveiros. There is more to it than that. The key issue we face is how to relate to physical pleasures and comforts. Do we take pleasure in Hashem, or do we seek the pleasure of material comforts?
The modern world offers us a sea of fun and pleasure. We have games, we have computers, we have so many things. They may seem innocuous. What sin is it to play an innocent game or enjoy kosher features of a digital device? But in truth, these things a great danger to the Jewish people.
This danger is as serious as that of the Haskalah movement a hundred years ago, and the Reform movement two hundred years ago. Both these movements started with “little” things. They printed some books. At first, they were not books denying and abusing the Jewish faith; they were just fun books to read, full of entertaining nonsense. And Jewish children read those books. It later developed to much worse things, as we know. But it all started with a subtle change of direction, with seeking material pleasures rather than spiritual ones.
It was such a subtle shift that some Gedolim at the time did not even see where it was leading. But the shift was there. It led to such a horrible deterioration of the Jewish people that the only option left was a Holocaust, a total destruction, paving the way for a new beginning.
My father-in-law, Harav Mordechai Mann zt”l, recounted that in his town back in Europe, which had a large Jewish population, there were only two yeshivah bachurim left. Everyone else went off on different paths. When he would come home for Pesach vacation from yeshivah, he felt uncomfortable walking down the street. It was an embarrassment to be a yeshivah bachur. This was the end result of the “little” things the Haskalah movement started decades earlier.
It is the same today. People are starting to look toward the outside world in seek of pleasure, and it is very dangerous. The danger is not just in seemingly innocent children’s movies, and games on the computer. It is also in ordinary material pleasures that are completely clean of forbidden content.
The issue is not whether the activity is prohibited or permitted. The issue is which direction it leads you. Where are you seeking your pleasure? We should find all our geshmak and pleasure in Torah itself. The Torah should be everything for us. It should be both our occupation and our pleasure. If we need some physical enjoyment, we have Shabbos and Yamim Tovim for that.
Unfortunately, many people’s lives focus too much on the pursuit of material pleasures and comforts. A Jew should focus on Hakadosh Baruch Hu alone.
