Shabbos Chazon – Seeing the Divine Will in the Mitzvos

Yeshayahu (Yeshayahu 28:10) castigated the Jewish people for serving Hashem, “Command by command, line by line, a little here, and a little there.” His rebuke was based on their failure to integrate the observance of all the mitzvos into a unified service of G-d. Just as Hashem is One, so, too, is His will one. He has one all-encompassing request of man. As the verse says, “What does the L-rd your G-d ask of you other than that you fear Him?” (Devarim 10:12). What Hashem demands from us is a constant awareness of His presence and of our obligation to emulate Him and act according to His will. All the 613 mitzvos are in fact expressions of emunah in Hashem (see Maharsha to Makkos 23b).

Since we are human beings in a physical world, we cannot relate to G-d’s will without it being broken down into segments that we can deal with individually. Imagine a globe of the world encased in a larger globe. In the outer globe, 613 small windows are cut, each window exposing a small portion of the surface of the enclosed globe. A composite picture from all the windows would yield a view of the globe within in. So, too, the individual mitzvos are merely partial manifestations of G-d’s one, all-inclusive will. Each mitzvah is a window through which we glimpse a portion of that will.

Thus there is more to leading a Torah life than merely observing 613 rules. The ultimate goal is to understand the implications of each mitzvah in the context of the overall Divine will that must shape our personality, outlook, and actions. In addition to shemiyah lekol Hashem — listening to G-d’s voice and obeying His commands — one must also have shemiyah bekol Hashem — listening into G-d’s voice, an understanding of the implications and meaning of those mitzvos in their broader context. Observance of the Torah rule by rule, without sensitivity to the aspects of Divine will revealed in each mitzvah, is inadequate.

That was the deficiency of the generation of the Churban (destruction). They kept the mitzvos and learned Torah, but did so perfunctorily. “…With their mouths and lips do they honor Me, but their hearts are far from Me, and their fear of Me is as a commandment of men learned by rote” (Yeshayahu 29:13).

Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz was once invited to be the guest of a certain individual for the Friday night seudah. Arriving home with his host, it was immediately obvious that the hostess had fallen asleep from an exhausting erev Shabbos and had failed to awaken on time to put the finishing touches to the table. Her embarrassed husband berated her for her failure to cover the challos. Reb Shraga Feivel thought to himself how absurd it was for the man to humiliate his wife for not having covered the challos — a minhag designed to keep the challos from being “embarrassed” during Kiddush and to teach us how sensitive we must be to another ‘s honor (we normally recite a beracha on bread before wine, but when there is kiddush we first make kiddush which includes the berachah on the wine). The host, in his concern for the minhag, had completely ignored its implications.
(Rabbi Zev Leff)