English logo

Thursday

י"ח אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

Thursday
י"ח אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

חיפוש בארכיון

Chafetz Chaim / Intro., Positive Commandments, 12 – 126

A person should be careful not to get overly involved in making a living beyond the basic necessity. He should not listen to the evil inclination that tries to convince him that everything is essential. A person naturally feels indebted to someone who does him kindness, and the greater the kindness the more beholden and humbled he is. If the person is his employer, he will feel even more indebted and committed to his work. Unfortunately this is not true in spiritual matters, although we are all ‘employed’ by Hashem and required to serve him with all we have, the more Hashem is good to us we tend to be less committed to his service and more involved in improving our physical surroundings. We buy nice clothes, and furnish our houses with niceties, and reduce our learning time to expand the business and hire more workers until we can’t even find time to pray in a minyan. In physical issues the evil inclination always convinces us to go for the best, and in spiritual matters to feel that the bare minimum is sufficient and to behave like the poorest of the poor, until we will be embarrassed to show our scarce goods in the next world. We should check carefully through the lens of honesty what is truly essential, and exclude the rest.

“And the utterly undoubtable truth is that if the entire world, from one end to the other, would be absent of our engagement and delving into the Torah, even for one moment, literally, then all the worlds - both upper and lower - would be destroyed instantly, and would turn into utter chaos, chas v’shalom…” (Nefesh Hachaim)