By Rabbi Moshe Pogrow
These parshiyos teach us how our forefathers lived during their 40 years in the wilderness. Their food was provided for each day, and everything else was also taken care of. Thus, meeting their basic needs was simple and easy, and did not take much of their time. They were not engaged most of the day in activities like labor, trade, and household chores that normally occupy the life of a people. So what did they do most of the time? They would come to Moshe, or—as parshas Yisro tells us—to his deputies, lidrosh Elokim.
Lidrosh Elokim means: to seek instruction and help from G-d. It encompasses all the ways we are to seek out G-d in all our activities in life, which we must do if we really believe He is our G-d.
The words of the navi Amos, “Dirshuni v’chiyu,” express the most comprehensive demand that G-d makes of us. To be included among the dorshei Hashem is a distinction to aspire to, the mission that devolves upon us from maturity until the return of our souls to their source. “To seek G-d” expresses the exhilarating truth that if we seek instruction and help from G-d, we will find G-d Himself. Our transient lives, with their petty concerns, will be lived in His Presence.
According to our Sages, Moshe in this parsha is told to teach klal Yisrael how to go about securing their livelihood and wellbeing. Most people seek only their own welfare. In the case of the Jewish people, however, not only are they to act with lovingkindness toward one another, but that lovingkindness is to be their purpose in seeking their own welfare. Everyone is to look out for himself for the sake of his neighbor.
Moreover, acting benevolently toward others takes precedence over safeguarding one’s own life (e.g. visiting the sick, even if there is danger of infection) and upholding one’s own prestige (e.g. attending to the dead without regard to one’s position or age).
A person who has not received the radiant light of the Torah will take the goal of his derech, of his way through life, to be strictly his own benefit and his own welfare. When you enlighten him, he will realize that his existence on earth is only for the sake of others; he will seek the derech to beis chayav in gemilus chesed, and through self-sacrifice will pursue this derech and devote himself to it with every fibre of his being: yelchu ba.
The years of their wandering through the wilderness were indeed the great training period for the Jewish people. The task of the Jewish people through all the centuries to come would be to spread the knowledge of Torah among all classes of the people. Here, “the people stood around Moshe from morning until evening,” their purpose “lidrosh Elokim.”
Based on the commentary of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l on Chumash, with permission from the publisher.
