Part II. Loyalty to Hashem
Mussar for Middos
Now, everyone will tell you “middos, middos, middos”—everyone knows that’s the most important thing. And it is! That’s why the Gemara is full of that subject. It’s full of admonitions against anger. The Gemara is full of admonitions against stinginess, full of admonitions against envy, against arrogance. That’s why it’s important to learn these Gemaras. You know, I don’t agree with what they do in some places, they skip these Gemaras. They shouldn’t, it’s important!
Also to learn Mishlei, to learn the Menoras Hamaor, other mussar seforim. Certainly you have to learn them too. Everyone understands that. And so the importance of middos, that’s not the chiddush here. Absolutely. How can you deal with people if your middos are crooked?
But we’re learning now that there’s a bigger problem! How can you deal with Hashem if your middos are crooked?! Our entire relationship with Hashem is based on our character traits. That’s the bigger problem!
Dead Cows and Middos
Now, in order to follow this line of thought, we’ll listen to the Chovos Halevavos. He tells a story of a chassid, a pious man who was walking with his disciple and he saw lying in the street a neveilah, a dead cow. Now it was summertime and the carcass had been ripening for some time. It was putrefying in the summer sun and it had a very unpleasant odor.
And so the disciple when he saw the carcass he made a remark about the odor: “how foul this neveilah smells.” But his master, the chassid, rebuked him. “Why don't you say, ‘How white are the teeth of the beheimah’? Why speak badly about the cow?”
Now, we don’t understand that criticism because what does it matter if you speak unfriendly words about a dead cow? A dead cow doesn’t have feelings.
The answer is that you have feelings! It’s not the cow we’re worried about—it’s you. And if you’ll get into the habit of looking for faults, of criticizing, so that’s what you’ll become—a criticizer and a fault finder. Once you get in the habit of belittling even inanimate objects, it becomes a habit, and that’s what you become. If you like to knock things—even dead cows—you're eventually going to knock people too. That's how it is. It's human nature. You can’t separate who you are.
Keep Our Mouths Shut Tight
And so the frum Jew doesn’t talk lashon hara on goyim. There's no lav; it says The lav is only to say lashon hara against a fellow Jew. However, if you have a habit of speaking bad about a goy unnecessarily, then you're developing a middah of speaking hurtful words. And so once you get into the habit of slandering cows and humans, you’re going to commit the sin and slander Jews too.
And the Gemara (Arachin 15b) says even more. It says there that once you become a big mouth, a slanderer, you’ll slander Hakadosh Baruch Hu too. Do you know why a person’s tongue is wagging against Heaven? Because their tongues formerly walked around on the earth.
Their tongues used to take big tours. They used to sit, let's say, in their homes at a melaveh malkah and they talked about everybody, lambasting this one and that one. They walked through Boro Park and Queens with their tongues. They even walked in Eretz Yisroel and talked about gedolim and Jews in Eretz Yisroel.
And as a result, they talk against Hakadosh Baruch Hu too eventually! You hear that chiddush? If you knock people, you'll come to knock Hakadosh Baruch Hu. It can’t be helped because when the tongue gets trained to speak against people, eventually that same tongue will speak against Shamayim too.
Lashon Hara on Hashem
Don’t we see, again and again, people who are criticizing Hashem and belittling Him?
You don’t believe me? Walk outside in the wintertime, you’ll find two old ladies standing and talking. “What nasty weather! All that dirty snow!” Those are wicked words against Hakadosh Baruch Hu!
You know what snow is? Snow turns into water and water turns into fruits. Because all of the moisture of the slowly melting snow goes into the earth. The farmers say that when there’s not enough snow, the crops will not grow well next summer because the earth needs moisture and it’s the snow of winter that stores up moisture in the ground. Is that something to complain about? But that’s how it is, if you’re a complainer, you’ll complain about everything.
And even if he may not say it—he may be afraid to say it but in his mind, he’s full of dissatisfaction with everything that Hashem did for him. He thinks in lashon hara against Him: “Why did this happen to me?” he says. “Why didn’t I have more success? Why did I lose money in this-and-this transaction?” And he feels that the blame falls on Hakadosh Baruch Hu. He won’t say it, but you have to know subconsciously, he is blaming Hashem.
Two’s a Crowd
Arrogance too. If someone is a baal gaavah towards people so he’s arrogant towards Hashem too. You realize that when a person is arrogant, he wants things his way. And other people, they’re just crowding in on him, getting in his way. But actually it’s a thousand times worse than that, because really he feels that the world is too crowded for him and Hakadosh Baruch Hu together!
“An arrogant person,’ Hashem says, “he and I cannot live together in one world” (Sotah 5a). It means that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is actually making it crowded for him in this universe.
Of course, he would ridicule that if he heard it. “I would try to push Hakadosh Baruch Hu out of the universe? Chas v’shalom! Just in my home I’m arrogant, between me and my wife. At work or in the synagogue, that’s where I want it my way. But what’s that have to do with Hashem?”
No Kings
The answer is he wants to have what’s inside the four walls of his house or the synagogue exactly as he wishes because that’s all he’s capable of right now. He’s limiting himself to those four walls because right now he doesn't see it expedient to talk otherwise. But he'd like to push the four walls apart until it takes over the whole block. And the globe too. He wants to push out into the furthermost orbit of Saturn and Jupiter and if he discovered some way of getting further out, he'd take in all the galaxies too. Because once he’s arrogant, that’s who he is.
And so, when he talks to Hakadosh Baruch Hu—even when he’s davening and shaking—it’s also with the wrong crooked middos. “I’m what matters here, not You.” No matter what he’s going to tell you! He’ll deny it but no matter. It’s a false denial. He’s arrogant to Hashem too.
Ahavas Hashem Starts at Home
It's like the bochur who says he loves Hakadosh Baruch Hu. “Oy, I love Hashem,” he says.
So we tell him, “Let's first see how much you love your physical creators, your father and mother’.
Ohhhh, that's already a bitter test, to love your parents.
Comparing Apples and Oranges
And that’s exactly what it means when it says the honor of parents is compared to the honor of Hakadosh Baruch Hu (Sanhedrin 50a). Compared?! How can you compare such a thing? Flesh and blood parents to Hashem?!
The answer is that only when you’re capable of giving honor to your flesh and blood progenitors who created you, then you’re ready to give honor to the real Creator. And if not, if you’re not able to honor your father and mother, then it’s not sincere. You’re deceiving yourself when you say that you honor Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
That’s why the Gemara says that when a man honors his father and mother, Hakadosh Baruch Hu says He considers it, as if I dwelt between both of them, and the son honored Me (Kiddushin 30b).
Rent-Controlled Geneivah
And so that’s the test of somebody who claims he loves Hashem. We think that in order to find favor in the eyes of Hakadosh Baruch Hu we have to be devoted to Him; we have to love Hakadosh Baruch Hu with all our heart and that settles it. No; let's see how he loves his wife or his neighbors, how he loves his employer and his employees. Even his landlord.
Here is a man who has a landlord. Now, this man considers himself a paragon of virtue, but I know that he's trying his best to kill his
