Sunday, August 3, 2008

Walking with God

The holy Yismach Yisrael (Vayigash) cites a teaching of our holy rebbe, the holy elder of Worke, regarding the baraita at the end of Berachot that “whoever reviews halachot every day is assured a place in the world-to-come, and the verse states of him, ‘His are the pathways of the world.’”

This is speaking of a person who attains Torah and clings to God, so that he does not make even the slightest motion with any limb without it being solely for the sake of God. Everything that he does is called halachah, which means walking—i.e., he walks in the ways of God.

And that is the meaning of this baraita: “whoever reviews halachot every day”—i.e., everything that he does the entire day is only walking in this fashion.

“And the verse states of him, ‘His are the pathways of the world.’”

That is to say, the entire world was created only to join together with this person, who with his deeds satisfies the Holy One, blessed be He, and His Shechinah.

When a person merits to be on such a level, so that all of his deeds, movements and feelings are solely for the sake of God and not for any other purpose, he clings to the Torah constantly. Then all of his deeds are the Torah of Hashem.

And this is the intent of the Torah: that a person should cling to God. And all of the 613 commandments are aids to attain that level.

And he said that (in this sense) the holy tzaddik R. Dovid of Lelov reviewed halachot every day.

Esser Zechuyot

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is a beautiful piece! and to conclude it by mentioning the holy tzadik david of lelov, wow! thanks so much for posting! this piece is a chizuk! bH, yasher koach yaacov david.

Yaacov David Shulman said...

Baruch tihyeh! Thanks for your kind words.