Rabbi Moshe Weinberger

Dying to Live

Rabbi Moshe Weinberger

Congregation Aish Kodesh, Woodmere

The Rav Kalonymus Kalman Halevi Epstein asks how the mitzvah to sanctify G-d’s name applies to us on a daily basis. We know that the Torah is eternal and speaks to every person, everywhere, at all times. He asks, “Is not the mitzvah of Shma constant? If so, when the Jewish people lived on their land, when no other nation ruled over them and there was no one to force them to violate their covenant, how did they fulfill the mitzvah to give up their lives?”

As children, we were taught that the mitzvah to sanctify G-d’s name primarily meant keeping our shirts tucked in and not misbehaving in front of non-Jewish people. But the mitzvah of sanctifying Hashem’s name in the world is so central to Yiddishkeit that it must mean more than that.

After the Baal Hatanya, zy’a, was released from prison, he stopped in the town of Prohbitsch, where he was visited by a tzadekes who was the widow of Rav Shalom Prohbitscher. She brought her two sons, ten-yearold Avraham and seven-year-old Srulik. Both boys would grow up to be tzadikim, but the younger son, Srulik, would one day be known as Rav Yisroel of Ruzhin, zy’a. Referring to the two boys, the Baal Hatanya would later say that “I saw two bright torches in Prohbitsch.”

When the widow of the Prohbitscher brought her two sons for a blessing from the Baal Hatanya, little Srulik asked, “I do not understand. When we say ‘Shma Yisroel Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad,’ we accept upon ourselves the yoke of Heaven to the extent that we are willing to give up our lives for G-d; to be annihilated and completely abdicate our own existence for Hashem. Yet our very next words are ‘Veahavta es Hashem Elokecha, And you shall love Hashem your G-d…’ One does not feel more alive than when he feels love. How can we be asked to completely nullify our own existence in one breath, and then affirm our own feeling of existence with the emotion of love in the next?”

The Baal Hatanya’s answer to Srulik’s question was very deep and he later wrote a long teaching to answer it. But we can take a simple approach to this very deep question. As it is explained in the fourteenth chapter of Tanya, every Jew has the inherent capacity to give up his life for G-d’s sake. Even those who were never religious and never knew what it meant to live for Hashem have the ability to die for Him rather than allow themselves to be separated from Him. That ability to give up everything for G-d is the foundation of Veahavta, our ability to live every moment of our lives for the sake of our love for G-d. Because of our love for G-d, we are willing to sentence our material desires to death dozens of times every single day.

That is what the Maor Vashemesh means when it says, “This is included in the Jewish people’s intentions when they say ‘Shma Yisroel” when they have illicit desires… Everything that happens to a person is a test from Hashem: Can he pass this test because he is a servant of G-d? It is therefore proper to think when saying Shma Yisroel: If Hashem tests me to see whether I am able to accept His service upon myself, then I am ready to accept His Divinity with great love and to remain attached to the Supernal Light.”

We, therefore, see that Shma Yisroel contains our acceptance of the yoke of Heaven and the willingness to give up our lives for G-d, as well as the commitment to dedicate each day to the love of G-d. But these two aspects are not contradictory. Living for G-d each day means giving up those things our external selves consider to be “life” for Him.

When the alarm goes off in the morning, our animal soul tells us that staying in bed just a little while longer is “life.” Yet because of our love for G-d we give up that “life” for Him. When we’re sitting in front of the Gemara and the animal soul tells us we must take another 15-minute bathroom break in order to stay alive, we sacrifice our lives and dive back into the pages which connect us to eternal life even though it feels like we will drown without the distractions of temporal life. That is why the Gemara (Brachos 63b) says, “The Torah is only established with one who kills himself for it.” The animal soul inside tells us we must look at every image our hearts desire displayed in our electronic devices or at every attractive form we encounter in the street. Yet because we love G-d, we turn away from that illusory “life” and toward the Source of eternal life.

Sanctifying G-d’s name is not limited to those hopefully rare instances when we are called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice. Rather, through

the combination of Shma Yisroel and Veahavta, it is something we can do in any place and at any time. That is why, in the context of the Shma Yisroel we say before Pesukei Dezimra, “A person should always be G-d fearing in private and in public.” We do not need a Nazi or an Inquisitor threatening us with a knife to sanctify G-d’s name. By allowing our bodily desires to die even when our animal souls tell us we need to fulfill them to “live,” we sanctify Hashem’s name every day by dying dozens of times because of our love for G-d. Living for G-d is more difficult than giving up one’s life for G-d in many ways. The Ohr Hachaim writes (on Bamidbar 23:10), “I have seen wicked people who told me explicitly that if they knew they could do teshuva and would immediately die, they would do it. But they know they cannot maintain their teshuva for a long time.” It is easier to die once for G-d than to do so multiple times a day when one still feels that truly “living” means giving in to his desires. But those who have made those daily sacrifices know that nothing makes a person feel more alive than surrendering one’s illicit bodily desires to G-d. It is scary to give up the indulgencies which initially feel are synonymous with life, but when we do so because of a feeling of Veahavta, our love of G-d, that is when we are truly alive. May we all merit to give up the indulgencies which superficially feel like life with the security and knowledge that doing so will connect us with the true Source of light, vitality, and life.