בס''ד
With
those immortal words “We will do and we will listen” the Jewish people are said
to have elevated themselves to the level of the Angels, uttering a secret
unbeknownst to mere humans until this time.
The acceptance of the Torah in this manner caused the Jewish people to
transcend beyond anything they had achieved up until that moment and it is a
phrase that has echoed throughout all of Jewish history as the epitome of our
unlimited willingness to follow Hashem.
Now it just remains to understand what it is exactly that we were
saying, what profundity lay within these words and what secret we had
unearthed!
A
desire to fulfil the wishes of our Creator can be realised in two ways. The first is those who when commanded by G-d
to perform a specific action or desist from a particular act, will choose to do
exactly that since this is what they were instructed to do. The second, more sublime level, consists of
those people who at all times consider what it is Hashem would want them to be
accomplishing at that very moment.
Whether that is an explicit directive in the Torah or whether it is
based on an understanding of what Hashem requires us to do in any given
situation, this level poses the question at every instant of our lives, “what
would Hashem want me to do now?”. The
Nesivos Sholom explains that this exceptionally high level of commitment was
what was being expressed by the Jewish people.
We will do whatever we believe Hashem wants in any given situation, even
before any command has been heard. This level
of total devotion to Hashem was the secret that up until that point was
exhibited only by those celestial beings that resided in the loftiest realms of
creation. That was how far the Jewish
people had come.
To
be a person that performs all of the Torah’s commandments is already a
tremendously high level. But our
ultimate aim is even more than that. Not
just asking what mitzvos am I meant to be performing but asking at every point
in our lives, what does Hashem want from me here? How am I moving one step closer to being the
person He wants me to be? How is my life
moving in the direction that will lead me to the destination I truly believe He
has set for me? These are lofty
aspirations that require a constant connection with G-d, but true faith in
Hashem and His Torah demands no less and should be our enduring goal.
*May the sanctity of Shabbos purify
our every step*
לעילוי נשמת לאה בת אברהם
לרפואה שלימה: שרה יעל בת
ברכה אסתר
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