T orah P ortion
What Do You Do When You Don’t Care?
BY RABBI MOISHE MAYIR VOGEL
Parshat Behar-Bechukotai
PEOPL E A R E OF TEN
shocked by their own indif-
ference to right and wrong.

Men and women who have
always preached morality and
justice might find themselves
on the wrong end of a string
of misfortunes or disappoint-
ments and find themselves just
too tired to care.

Right, wrong, what’s the
difference anyway?
People sometimes feel this
way as a result of persistent
poverty. Unable to climb
out of what they feel is a pit
of failures, they give up not
only on success, but on being
right. It doesn’t seem to matter
anymore. Others fall into this trap
as a result of chronic illness,
or loneliness, or an endless
stream of depressing news.

Having always believed that
doing good is the surest path to
living well, such well-meaning
people, when they suffer
disappointments, may find
themselves terribly discouraged
and despairing of the benefits of
doing the right thing.

What is a person to do at
that point?
G-d declares in the Torah this
week, “If you follow in my ways ...”
and a shower of blessings follows
that opening. The Talmud illumi-
nates the verse and explains,
“In this case, ‘if’ means ‘if only.’
Almighty G-d is imploring us to
follow in His ways.”
A deeper look reveals an
astonishing truth: Far more
than we depend on G-d to
provide our needs, G-d needs
us to provide His needs. And
what are divine needs? The
performance of the mitzvot;
the choice of right over wrong.

G-d has too often been
portrayed as the supreme
drill sergeant in the sky,
barking orders, setting the
bar, demanding performance
and handing out penalties to
those who misbehave. As if
the commandments He issues
are for your benefit and your
benefit only, He is perfect and
isn’t really depending on your
success. As if He would love
you if you found purpose in
your life, but His perfection
has no need for your petty life
lived right.

Literally, nothing could
be further from the truth.

The shining quality of G-d’s
perfection is His ability to be
vulnerable to us. He created
us, we didn’t create Him. This
whole universe was His idea,
not ours. Morality and living
right and not wrong — that’s
all Him.

The mitzvot are His dearest
wishes, and He entrusts them
only to us. Not to the celestial
angels, not to the natural world;
only to us, His cherished, dear,
mere mortals.

The truest reason to make
the right choices in life is
not because that’s how you
get ahead but because that’s
how you fulfill the purpose of
your life. You are needed —
urgently, indescribably needed
CAN DL E L IGHTIN G
May 7
May 14
— with an eternal need coming
straight from the creator of
the universe Himself, and
the mitzvot are what you
are needed for. G-d got the
world started in the six days of
creation, but He’s been looking
for partners ever since then.

We are His partners. Full,
comprehensive partners. Our
decisions affect Him and His
plans exactly as His decisions
affect us and ours. He prays
for us to do the right thing
just as we pray for Him to do
what we (imagine we) need
Him to do.

With the same intensity that
a person might yearn for divine
intervention in the midst of a
crisis, G-d yearns for our inter-
vention where we can make a
difference. The only distinc-
tion is that G-d’s yearning is
infinite. Our very existence is the
biggest compliment. The fact
that G-d put us here and keeps
us here is His way of saying, “I
need you.”
Hard times can put a damper
7:44 p.m.

7:50 p.m.

on our energy and darken our
moods. Tough times can be
discouraging to our enthu-
siasm for doing what’s right
and for sacrificing for a higher
purpose. But knowing that the
urgency of our lives and our
choices comes not from our
needs but from G-d’s, means
that it never changes. Our
self-worth comes from G-d’s
faith in us, not from our own
self-importance. If G-d in Heaven, in front
of the watchful eyes of all the
angels, is imploring us to run
our little corner of His world
with kindness and wisdom,
this means one thing: All the
hard times, foul moods and
bitter disappointments in the
world can not diminish the
glorious purpose of our days,
our stories and the choices
we make to write their most
triumphant chapters. l
Rabbi Moishe Mayir Vogel is
executive director of The Aleph
Institute — North East Region in
Pittsburgh. Be heard.

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MAY 6, 2021
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