This time, unlike our usual practice, we will begin the dvar Torah from its second part, from its connection to our Torah portion. Hashem tells Bnei Yisrael that when they arrive in the land and encounter תשתחוה לא ...והיבוסי החוי והכנעני והפרזי והחתי האמורי‘ ’כמעשיבם תעשה ולא תעבדם ולא לאלהיהם - ‘the Amorite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Canaanite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite... you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor act according to their ways.’ (23:23-24) But it is not enough merely to refrain from worshipping them; rather, ’מצבותיהם תשבר ושבר תהרסם הרס כי‘ - ‘you shall utterly demolish them and break their pillars to pieces.’ And if they do so, the Torah promises us: ’מקרבך מחלה והסירותי מימיך ואת לחמך את וברך אלוקיכם ’ה את ועבדתם‘ - ‘You shall serve Hashem, your G-d, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will remove illness from your midst.’ In other words, the promise is conditional—if Israel not only refrains from idol worship but also destroys their gods and shatters their monuments, then HaKadosh Baruch Hu will grant us a special blessing: that Israel will not have to struggle for sustenance, and He will also protect them from all illness.
In our generation, there are people who advocate the approach of ‘live and let live,’ or as some distort the posuk (Chabakuk 2:4) ’יחיה באמונתו צדיק‘ - ’The righteous shall live by his faith‘ and say, ‘Each person shall live by his own faith.‘ In other words, do what is comfortable for you and do not interfere with what others do. However, this is not correct, because, as is well known, the people of Israel are all one— בלב אחד כאיש‘ ’אחד- ’as one man with one heart.‘ If one person does something improper, it negatively affects everyone. And, of course, the opposite is also true—when a Jew performs a good deed, it has a positive influence on the collective, as ’לזה זה ערבים ישראל כל‘ - ’All of Israel are responsible for one another.‘ But what exactly is this referring to?
