In this week’s sedrah the Torah reminds us about the unique privilege and responsibility that mankind has above all of creation: Hakadosh Baruch Hu says החיים והמות נתתי לפניך – “I am putting before you the choice between life and death” (Devarim 30:19).
Now life and death in the words of the Torah mean more than just saving your life or preserving yourself from death. It means to live forever. You have the choice of becoming worthy of חיים, of living forever, or והמות – you have the other choice too. And because no choice we have is as consequential as this one, Hakadosh Baruch Hu is commanding us, even imploring us, ובחרת בחיים – “My children, I beg of you, choose life” (ibid.).
“I'm giving you this one-time opportunity to make something from yourself,” He says, “and therefore these two words, ‘Choose Life’ should be your guiding principle all the days of your life. Let them resonate always in your thoughts, reminding you about your life function, your purpose in this world – to choose wisely and gather up as many diamonds as possible while you’re here.”
Big Choices
Of course it can mean choosing big things. If you choose to fill your mind with Bava Kama that’s a very, very great wealth. If you learn all Bava Kama, a big mazal tov is owing to you. “Mazel tov! You chose well.” If you’ll choose Bava Metzia too, even better. A double mazel tov!
And the truth is that ובחרת בחיים can mean even more than that because a person can turn his entire life around with one choice. Sometimes he might choose to leave college and go into the kollel; It happens. Or better yet, he might move from a small town in the Midwest to Yerushalayim. I knew a story like that; a boy who came from the Midwest, an irreligious family, and he arrived in our shul. He came with all his worldly possessions and now he’s here. Why did he come to New York? He read Rejoice O’ Youth and now he’s looking for the Torah. A true story. And today he’s wearing a big beard in a kollel in Yerushalayim somewhere. So absolutely, when he got onto that train and left his hometown to come to Flatbush, that’s called choosing life.
But we shouldn’t make the mistake that that’s all it is. Oh no! ובחרת בחיים means choosing small things too and it’s an important subject because actually nothing is small when it comes to choosing what’s right. We could title today’s discussion ‘The Importance of Little Things’; and it has to be discussed at length because mankind today is accustomed to measure everything by weight and size. You know in America everything comes in three sizes; whatever you buy it’s a choice – colossal, jumbo or giant. Actually when you buy it, it fits in a thimble but for American heads it has to be so advertised because that’s how we think; when we see small objects we disregard them, we despise them.
And unfortunately it’s not only when we buy tissue paper; it’s an attitude we have. And therefore when it comes to mitzvos too, people imagine that good deeds, if they’re going to mean something, they have to come in carloads, in big sizes.
Don’t Scorn the Little Things
However, it’s not so. We should remember at all times what Pirkei Avos tells us. He says there, אל תהי מפליג לכל דבר – don’t push away anything; even the smallest thing you shouldn’t scorn (4:3). Now, on a certain level we understand that. Because let’s say you get a scratch; you were working in the garage with some rusty nails or tools and you got a scratch. So he says אל תהי מפליג לכל דבר – don’t neglect that small cut. Go straight into the house and bathe it with peroxide or with iodine. If you don’t have that, take some brandy and wash it and put a bandaid over it.
So somebody will say, is that really what the Pirkei Avos means? He’s speaking about scratches? And the answer is: certainly it means that. It means more than that but it certainly means that too. And yet we have to know that this subject is much broader than the matter of rusty nails and little cuts. Because the matter of small mitzvos, of not neglecting, not despising the smallest of good deeds, that’s a much more important subject.
A Unique Pushkah
Now, in order to understand this fully we’re going to study what our Sages say about a small mitzvah. In Mesechta Avodah Zarah (17b) we are told as follows: לארנקי של צדקה אל יטיל אדם פרוטה – A man shouldn’t drop a penny into a charity box, אלא אם כן ממונה עליו כרבי חנינא בן תרדיון – unless the gabbai in charge of the pushka is somebody like Rabbi Chanina ben Tradyon. Rabbi Chanina ben Tradyon was a big tzaddik and a talmid chacham and he knew best how to handle tzedakah money. He knew the halachos of charity, who gets first, who gets more, who less. He was also a perspicacious fellow, a good judge of character. And therefore with him you knew your penny was going to go to good use.
Now sometimes you have to put a penny even to places that aren’t worth it. If you’re on the subway, let’s say, and into your car comes a man collecting money, a white man with a red nose. On a colored man you can't see that he has a red nose so I'm talking about a white Irishman with a red nose. Now, a red nose you have to know, costs money to maintain. It's very expensive to keep a red nose going; he has to be going into the liquor store very often. So if you give him a penny, you can be sure it’s a 100% waste of money.
Subway Tzedakah
But you should do it anyhow because it's an investment in goodwill. Suppose someone comes up to you on the street and he holds a knife up against you, chas veshalom, and you take out a $1 or $5 bill and give it to him. It's a very good investment to foster the goodwill of a bum with a knife. And so if you give this red nose a penny, it’s also an investment. It's worth it. You're buying honor for the Jewish people. Everybody will look at you. “Ooh, a Jew with a beard is a man who has rachmanus. He dropped money in the man’s cup.”
So you drop a penny in his metal cup – don't let them see what you're giving, however – and make a big sound, a big clink, and then lean back virtuously to enjoy the admiring gazes of your fellow passengers. And so you see that sometimes you have to throw away money too. But in general we’re learning an important lesson. If you have a perutah, a penny, that you want to give to charity, make sure it’s going to a good place.
But A Penny?!
Now, we would agree with that idea in general – of course we want our tzedakah money to go to good use – but there’s something strange about this maamar. Because it says פרוטה אל יטיל, don’t be careless with even a penny. A penny? That seems to us like an exaggeration. Here’s a man who bought something at the Five and Dime and he was left with a penny change – and here’s a charity box. And he’s being warned, “Don’t drop that penny into that box unless you are absolutely sure that it’s going to be distributed properly. Watch that penny!”
Isn’t that a bit much? If it would say that a man shouldn’t put a maneh, a hundred dollars, in the kupah shel tzedakah unless he’s sure it will be distributed properly, ok, we’d understand that. But here it’s a little copper penny. What could you do with a penny?
An Expensive Penny
And the answer is that a penny is of the utmost importance because it’s a mitzvah. A mitzvah, because it’s the command of Hashem, is never small. It’s a tremendous investment. We don’t realize; we think a penny is nothing. Oh no, once it’s a mitzvah-penny so now it’s not a penny anymore. It’s a million dollars.
You know if a man would go out and buy up a whole block of huge apartment houses; let's say somebody was able to corner all the apartment houses on Ocean Parkway from one end to the other. It's not as great of an achievement as giving one penny to tzedakah! We don't even hesitate to make that statement! One penny that you put into the charity box, a good charity box, is more valuable than all the other accomplishments in material success.
Now, I understand that you don’t think so; you think I’m exaggerating. But that’s only because we don’t understand what a small mitzvah means; we’re far away from seeing things as they really are. If you want to understand, you should listen to the words of the Mesillas Yesharim when he speaks of the necessity of zehirus. Zehirus means being careful, being aware of what you're doing, and he introduces the subject by making a statement about minutiae. If you don’t know Latin, that means ‘little things’ and the Mesillas Yesharim is describing for the reader why minutiae are not really so.
He says as follows: וכל הפרש קטן – Every small difference; it means even the difference between doing a tiny mitzvah or forgetting about that tiny mitzvah and not doing it, תבחן תולדתו – its result is going to be revealed, בברור ודאי – with a clarity beyond any doubt, בהגיע זמן התכלית הנולד מקיבוץ כולם – when the time comes for the results of these small differences to be demonstrated.
One Minutiae Minute
You hear that? Even though you don’t see it now, the time will come – it means in the World to Come – when you're going to see what a big difference it was that you came to tefillah one minute earlier. Let’s say they announced that we’re going to pray in this and this synagogue at 8:30 and you came 8:29 – you came one minute earlier because you want to show that you have kavod for davening, kavod for the beis knesses. A minute? It’s a little thing, you think, like a copper penny. Oh no! You’ll find out one day that it wasn’t just a penny; you’ll see that it was a golden penny. And if you’ll learn something for that one minute you’ll find out that it was more than a golden penny. You’ll discover that it was worth more than a 1933 Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle.
You don’t know what that is? Ask someone who knows about rare coins; he’ll tell you. Same thing with mitzvos – you have to ask someone who knows. And the Mesillas Yesharim knows! And he’s telling you that you’re making a million dollar investment, not a penny.
Long Term Investments
And that’s why the Gemara says you have to be so careful even with a penny tzedakah who you give it to. Because a mitzvah, even the smallest one, is worth a million dollars. If you had a million dollars to buy stocks would you give it just to anybody who you meet? If a friend asks you, “Give me some business. I'm trying to sell stocks.” He’s hard up today, nobody’s buying stocks. So you might do him a favor; if you have plenty of money to spare, you'll buy maybe five hundred dollars worth of stocks from him. But you wouldn’t give him a million dollars to buy stocks.
A penny tzedakah, and every other small mitzvah, is like a million dollars. And that’s included in the great mitzvah of ובחרת בחיים. Choose even the smallest things, the smallest opportunities, because nothing is small when it comes to mitzvos. תבחן תולדתו – The results will be revealed one day and you’ll find out that the smallest one was of tremendous eternal value.
