Why be so Religious? (6 reasons)

בעזרת השם, clearly what we're speaking about is through the medium of תורה and מצוות. So the question is, if one is not yet observant, why change one's life so drastically? Why accept the responsibilities, the constraints which such a commitment involves? And the same question can be raised for one who's already observant: why maintain that observance? Wouldn't life be a lot easier without the responsibilities and constrictions of observance? Now, whenever we delve into such major questions, unless you begin literally from the beginning, we're obviously assuming certain beliefs, knowledge. What we're assuming is a belief, a knowledge of הקדוש ברוך הוא, of God. Clearly the issue we're raising overlaps with the issue of the transmission of תורה ultimately from סיני, but we can't deal with everything in one night. You certainly can't deal with everything in one night when you show up twenty minutes late, so we'll have to try to at least tackle the one issue. We're going to try to focus on this question of service of God, of עבודת השם. What should impel any one of us to His service? Now, just by way of just giving notification, we're going to discuss various perspectives. No one of them is in and of itself balanced. So even though I tend to lull people to sleep, try to stay awake for the whole time because a balanced picture will only emerge, please God, with the various perspectives taken together as one holistic unit. But perhaps before I begin, if any of you have any thoughts on it, I would certainly welcome, certainly like to hear the input. What should impel any one of us to devote our lives to the service of God? What consideration, what force should impel such a commitment? Purpose. I think it's human nature to look for some meaning to what you're doing in life. Okay, excellent. Anyone else? I guess in a similar vein, when one comes to the realization that this is the absolute truth, it just logically follows that you can't not follow any other path when you come to that realization. So in a word: truth. Right. Okay, if three more equally good comments, then I don't have to speak. We can call it a night. Maybe meaning to what you do in life? Similar to purpose, a feeling of purpose, feeling of meaning. Excellent. To bring משיח, to bring redemption, to perfect the world. To bring משיח, to bring redemption, okay, to perfect the world. Gratitude. I feel indebted to השם for creating me, providing for me, so I want to try to do something in return. Great, excellent. Okay, so let's basically review what everyone said. Maybe we'll begin with one perspective which wasn't mentioned, probably the most sobering of the various perspectives. The רמב"ם, Maimonides, tells us in his enumeration of the 613 מצוות of the תורה, one of the very first commandments that the רמב"ם enumerates in the section of the 248 positive commandments is the מצווה to fear God, to have a sense of fear of God. And specifically in this listing of the 613 commandments, the רמב"ם emphasizes... emphasizes the fear, I believe the phrase the Rambam uses is that we should fear the the accountability and the possible punishment that that we can incur for violating His capital A Will. And we know also from Pirkei Avos, Ethics of the Fathers, so the rabbis teach us that whether we like it or not, so ultimately we give an accounting for how we lived. We give God an accounting for how we lived. Now this is a true and essential perspective, but certainly, and this was one of the things which we were alluding to before, taken alone is totally inadequate. And the reason for that is that while fear of heaven occupies a central place within Judaism, Judaism isn't a religion of fear. Alongside the mitzvah of fearing God, there's also a mitzvah to love God. In the siddur, in our daily prayers, we accentuate Hakadosh Baruch Hu, God's love for us. We don't accentuate His intimidating practice. In the berakhah preceding the Shema in the morning, ahavah rabbah ahavtanu, a great profound love You have loved us, and at night אהבת עולם בית ישראל עמך אהבת, an eternal love for Your people, the Jewish people, You have loved. Nevertheless, a sense of fear is important and it is central. Reb Yisrael Salanter, the famous founder of the Mussar movement, said that before one can achieve higher levels in his or her service, it's necessary that a person have this sense of the fear of the accountability. Perhaps to give a mashal, an example, a parable as to why that is, I think many of us probably know of the situations, if not, it's easy enough to imagine, a person goes for a checkup to the doctor. Okay, so the doctor gives him the once-over, he takes out his hammer and pretends that he's checking his reflexes and beats him up a little bit and and maybe he does a little bit of blood work as part of the test. And then the blood tests come back and it turns out that he has high cholesterol. Okay, has high cholesterol and his blood pressure is a little bit too high than it should be. So the doctor tells him, you know, it's not healthy and you're a candidate, God forbid, for a heart attack or stroke. And really you have to, you know, you're going to have to give up the pizza and you're going to have to give up the steaks and the eggs and you're going to have to eat a more healthful diet and and follow a more not such a sedentary lifestyle, etcetera, etcetera. Doesn't really register. Doesn't really register. He feels good, feels fine. Doesn't really register. Then one night he's at home and all of a sudden he feels this tightness, this constriction in his chest. And he gets terrified, he runs to the emergency room, turns out maybe it was only angina or maybe it was a mild heart attack. All of a sudden all these habits that he felt that he didn't have the willpower to break, that he didn't have the willpower to overcome, so all of a sudden he finds the willpower, he finds the strength and the determination to overcome. Why? Because now what the doctor said became real. As long as it wasn't real to him, so then it's hard to factor it into decisions. The mitzvah of having a sense of fear of God is that it's to counteract our weakness. We are weakness, again, to we don't see it in front of us, so the mitzvah is no, the same way one reacts, God forbid, to the angina, so that's what the role that this mitzvah plays and given the human frailty and our propensity to try to dismiss what we don't think is imminent and what's not right immediately in front of us, it's that which this mitzvah comes to counter. But there's another reason why this mitzvah despite the fact that again that Judaism by no stretch of the imagination is a religion of fear, there's another reason why. understanding of what fear means, more of the sense of awe than of mortal fear. We have descriptions which have come down to us in the 18th century, the towering personality of Jewish history was the Gaon of Vilna, the Vilna Gaon. His prime disciple was Rabbi Chaim from Volozhin, the one who founded the famous Volozhin yeshiva, the forerunner of all modern yeshivas. So we have a description of how Rav Chaim Volozhiner looked and felt before he would go in and have an audience with his master the Vilna Gaon. His son tells us, his son Rav Itzele, Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s son tells us how once he told his father he wants to come also to the Gaon. As they got closer to Vilna, his father began to turn pale, turn white. As they got closer and closer to the Gaon, he began to shake, to literally shake. And at each stage he would turn to his son and say to him, "You too want to go in to the Rebbe?" Why was Rav Chaim Volozhiner, why was he shaking so? Why was he so overcome? The Gaon was gonna yell at him? The Gaon was? No, but in the presence of holiness, in the presence of such awesome holiness, so then there has to be a sense of awe and fear. Not fear of necessarily of what he's going to do to me, but a sense of awe in the presence of something so great and so holy. That's the second reason why again, despite the fact that Judaism isn't a religion of fear, but there certainly is a mitzvah of fear of heaven which does occupy a central place. Okay, so that's our first perhaps motivation, our first impulse to devote ourselves, to dedicate ourselves to the service of God is because when our time is up, we're going to be asked to give an accounting for what we did and how we lived our lives. The second perspective, the one which Rabbi Orlian mentioned, the truth is that the question with which we raised was hardly an original question, but I assume everyone knew that and certainly one of the first people to address it systematically was one of the earliest medieval Jewish philosophers, the author of the work called Chovos HaLevavos, known as רבנו בחיי אבן פקודה. Rabbeinu Bachya the son of Paquda. So he in his work Chovos HaLevavos, he speaks about this sense of indebtedness and gratitude that a person is supposed to have to Hashem. He says it's for most if not all people, I think he assumes that this is something universal, it's understood that if someone does you a favor, someone does you a good turn, so you have to express your appreciation. If you're ever in a position to reciprocate, so then you have to reciprocate that kindness. Despite the fact Rabbeinu Bachya says that you're not necessarily totally dependent upon this person, despite the fact that this person's motivations may really involve a mixture of altruism and some subtle form of selfishness and nevertheless we all intuitively feel that one should feel a sense of indebtedness and that that indebtedness has to translate into something. So how much more so says Rabbeinu Bachya when we're indebted to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for everything, we're indebted to Hakadosh Baruch Hu for God for everything, everything he gives is done purely altruistically, there's no such mixture of selfish and altruistic considerations by Hakadosh Baruch Hu by God, so how much more so that we should have a sense of Hakaris Hatov, a sense of gratitude. And this sense of gratitude is again, if he gives us life and he sustains us. So how can we then say, well we're not really interested in your code of behavior for how we should live that life that you give us, that you provide us and everything that you sustain us. A similar, a similar idea is developed in, in several hundred years later in, in the classic work Mesillas Yesharim by, by the Ramchal. It's interesting Rabbeinu Bachya in the Chovos HaLevavos, listen carefully, has a fascinating idea. He says not only do we have to be grateful to God for creating us, giving us life and sustaining us, but he also created us in such a way that we tend to think of ourselves as basically self-sufficient. The truth is that we're very, very vulnerable. Rabbeinu Bachya describes how if you look at human children versus animal young, the animal young become independent much more quickly. The animals even as they grow are less vulnerable than we are and that God created us to be very vulnerable. Why did he create us with such vulnerability? So he says that too is something for which we have to be profoundly grateful because by creating us with such vulnerability, the slightest thing goes wrong inside the body, it's such a delicate balance, the slightest thing goes wrong, so God forbid, a blockage, this, that. So why did God create us that way? Because that serves us, that serves for us as a constant reminder of our need for him. So it's almost as if, it sounds a little bit circular but it's not, that the sense of gratitude that we have which impels us to serve God, part of that sense of gratitude is that he himself gives us reminders and he himself gives us pointers along that way. So so far we've suggested two and again, the idea is to balance all of these perspectives. Two perspectives, one is simply the accountability that we ultimately have and that's one reason, that's one impulse to devote ourselves to the service of God. Another impulse to devote ourselves to the service of God is this sense of gratitude and indebtedness to God. And the third is similar to the first and that is that everyone has a very, very powerful instinct for life. Everyone wants to live. Everyone wants to live. You can have a person who God forbid is depressed and unless it's really, really, really the worst, worst type of depression, that person, I forget who gave this example, it's not mine, let's say he's going down, what do you call the big hills when you go skiing, the slopes? So there was a word for the biggest one? Black diamonds. Black diamonds. He's going down the black diamonds. So life is a lot more interesting if you plant all these trees on the slopes so that you can kill yourself if you don't make the exact turn. So it makes life a lot more interesting than if they wouldn't have those trees there. So they have all these big trees planted along the way on the slope. And he's headed right towards the tree. So everyone, other than God forbid, the person who's so, so sick mentally, even if he's troubled and even if he's unhappy, he's going to turn away and he's going to instinctively avoid that tree. We have a powerful, powerful, it's one of the most powerful instincts a human being has is for life. We want to live. When we're young, so we sort of feel emotionally, we know that it's irrational, but we sort of feel emotionally, we feel strong and vibrant, so we sort of feel like we'll live forever in the present state. And as we get older, so then reason, emotion catches up with reason and we realize that we're not going to live forever in the present state. We feel our bodies slowing down. We feel the aging process unfolding. But the instinct, the desire to live is just as strong and just as great. Another impulse for service of God is the desire for eternal life which again is just a projection. Now each of these three perspectives is obviously somewhat self-centered, whether we're talking about accountability, whether we're talking about a sense of gratitude, because after all even a sense of gratitude is well you did this for me and certainly if it's the desire for eternity, but there's certainly nothing wrong with that being a launching pad for one's service of God, because initially what's most real to a person, what's most real to a person, what's the most real thing in the world to any person, certainly initially, is himself. What's most real to a person and this isn't there's nothing egotistical about this, this is by definition because one's framework, one's existence is coterminous with one's self-consciousness and one's self-awareness. So to find impulses within oneself again which again are somewhat self-serving and self-centered is actually a powerful impulse the service of God and is something again it's certainly not the ultimate, it's not the ultimate level to which we strive, but it certainly is a very important stage. Now the fourth perspective, again, the first one is accountability, the middat fear of God and ultimate reckoning, the second is the sense of gratitude, the third is the desire to live, the quest for eternity, the fourth which was mentioned before is a sense is discovering the Torah is true and that a person wants to live a true life. A person wants to live a real life. A person doesn't want to live a lie. A person looks in the Torah, looks in the prophets and the scriptures, he sees how the Torah says that God told us prior to revelation at Mount Sinai that we were to be the chosen people. He reads later in the books of prophets, the prophet Malachi says in the name of God, אני ה' לא שניתי ואתם בני יעקב לא כליתם, that just as I, this is astounding, just as I God am eternal, unchanging, so too you, the Jewish people, will also endure forever. He sees that and then a person looks at the miraculous course of Jewish history, a course of Jewish history which even gentile historians have acknowledged defies all natural historical categories of explanation, that the Roman Empire rose and fell and the only thing that's left of it are three volumes from Gibbon and nothing else is left of it, and so many other powerful empires and this, this people, persecuted, hated, survives, thrives, flourishes to this very day. Person sees the Torah is true. A person sees how everything revolves around the small land of Israel. A person sees the beauty of the Torah's moral teachings, Rabbi Soloveitchik zecher tzadik livracha, just to give one example, used to highlight the fact how the Torah's concept of charity, of tzedakah, is different than the Western concept. To the Western mind, charity, tzedakah, is something which by definition can't be required. It's something where a person is going beyond the letter of the law. After all, what's mine is mine. No one has any claim to my money. He's poor, he's unfortunate, okay, well, if I want to go beyond what I have to do, so I'll put my hand in my pocket and I'll give him a few dollars. And the Torah comes and teaches us, no, there's an obligation. Person has an obligation to share whatever bounty God has given him. A person sees these teachings, a person recognizes, the truth resonates. Truth is discernible, truth resonates and person recognizes the truth. Person wants to live a true life. Person recognizes the Torah with its mitzvot, we can understand enough of it that sustains us even for those details that we don't necessarily understand. A person wants to live a true life. Okay, so so far, right and that's how we refer to Torah, right when one gets an aliyah so the bracha which one makes after the reading from the Torah we describe אשר נתן לנו תורת אמת that that God bestowed upon us the Torah of of truth. Those of the Sefardic extraction who have the Sefardic heritage so before they say that bracha so they'll say Emet Toratenu HaKedosha that our our holy Torah is is truth. That's the way we refer to Torah, Torah is truth. A person realizes this. What the Torah says, it's it's discernible, it's recognizable. A person wants to live a true life. A person wants to live, he wants to be real. Everything we've discussed so far, I think is true and yet something's missing. Something very basic is missing. What's missing? Well, everything we've discussed until now has basically been rational answers. The approaches have been rational. And this is entirely appropriate because we're we're rational beings. But we're also spiritual and those two are not entirely synonymous. A person is not only a rational being, but because of the soul within us, a person is also spiritual. As rational beings, we need answers that speak to the intellect that can that will address us rigorously in rational discourse. But as spiritual beings, we also need answers and perspectives that speak to the soul. Our minds reason and weigh arguments logically, our souls intuit and feel. One of the Psalms which is part of the Shabbos morning extended prelude to the actual davening so the the second verse of the Psalm reads as follows: השמים מספרים כבוד אל ומעשה ידיו מגיד הרקיע the heavens tell the story of of God's glory and the the earth, the firmament speaks of his handiwork. And the the psalmist continues to describe the power of experience of just looking out into God's world. When we look out into Hashem's world, there's again, it's I'm not sure if it's not so much a logical analysis as it is a spiritual intuition that there's something very great and transcendent beyond the world that we want to connect to. We realize that that what we're seeing is is a reflection, what we're seeing isn't self-sufficient but it's a reflection of something far greater, something far more vast, something transcendent. Rav Soloveitchik explains that when we when we recite blessings, whether it's blessings before eating, whether it's blessings on natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning and the like, it's not simply thanking God for providing me with this cup of water, but it's because what triggers the blessing is that one sees a reflection of God in that event. When one hears the thunder, sees the lightning, one recites a bracha because one sees a reflection of of of God in the in the universe. That, that arouses within a person a desire to connect, to know more and to be able to connect. How do you connect? משל למה הדבר דומה let's say you have someone who Who's the chief of intelligence. He's the chief of intelligence. Because of that he has to live underground because there's always there's always a price on his head and there's no way that security could be adequate enough so he lives incognito and underground. Okay. So let's say he's ready to meet you. He's ready to grant you an audience. Okay. So he begins to give you directions. And you say, no, I don't need the directions. I have my GPS. Thank you. I have my GPS. I'll punch it in and I'll punch in chief of security and if that doesn't work I'll Google it and if that doesn't work I'll I don't know what I'll do. I'll go to CompUSA and buy some other gadget. I'll get there. I don't need your directions. Okay. But no one knows where he lives. No one knows where he lives. So you can GPS it and you can Google it, but you're not going to get there. You're not going to get there. So again in the Shabbas repetition of the Shmoneh Esrei, so we of course as we do in every repetition of the Shmoneh Esrei during the daytime we insert between the second and third brachos the Kedusha and we quote how the angels turn one to another. This is in the repetition of the Musaf Shmoneh Esrei and they say Ayeh mekom kevodo. Where's the place of God's glory? What's his address? And what's the answer? Once I have the answer then then then I just plug it into my GPS. Well the answer is ברוך כבוד השם ממקומו. No God's glory emanates from his place. Sort of that's the question, right? So I can't I can't plug it into the GPS. If I want to connect, but the only one who knows the route is is God then he's going to have to give me the driving directions. He's going to have to give me the driving instructions. Yet a second spiritual impulse, again we mentioned four rational impulses, yet a second spiritual impulse to devote to dedicate one's life to the service of God is also truth, but truth in a different sense than we meant it before. Before we were talking about truth that a person is intellectually convinced, has an intellectual conviction of the truth of Torah. But there's another way of sensing the truth of Torah. A person observes a Shabbas. A person observes a Shabbas the way Shabbas is really intended to be observed. Doesn't doesn't doesn't doesn't sleep 14 hours out of the 24 plus hours of Shabbas, doesn't doesn't spend the day in idle chatter, but spends the day sitting at a beautiful Shabbas table singing zmiros, exchanging words of Torah, going to shul and davening. And a person feels something. Person feels the sanctity of Shabbas. That that spiritual antenna tells them, no, my soul is is attuned to that. Now we know of course we have a tradition that there are 613 commandments in the Torah. 248 positive commandments, 365 negative commandments. And what does that correspond to? So we know that that corresponds to that we also have a tradition that there are 248 limbs in the body and 365 sinews or however you pronounce the word. Why should the number of mitzvos, number of commandments in the Torah correspond to how many limbs which I have in my body? So the the the star pupil of the famous kabbalist the Arizal explains that there's a much deeper significance to that. And he explains as follows. Let's say a person's going to buy a suit. I'm going to go to buy a suit. I'm not exactly sure what my size is. So I go over to the go over to the salesman and he takes takes out his takes out his tape measure and he measures my shoulders and then he measures my waist and then he offers to sell me the latest diet book and then he measures my the the length of my of what the the trousers should be and then he tells me this this is your size. Okay why does he have to take such careful measurements to give me my size? Because if I'm gonna wear a suit and it's gonna fit well so then it has to be it has to be built to the dimensions of my body. Says Rav Chaim Vital listen carefully. He says our body clothes our neshama clothes our soul. Right, the same way we think accurately of our clothing as clothing our body and because of that our clothing has to be has to be cut to size so too the body clothes our soul. And there are 248 and 365 again spiritual limbs and sinews which the physical ones correspond to. And the real significance of this numeric correlation between the number of commandments in the Torah and the human body the real correlation is between the Torah and the soul. And that's why it will happen that a person can sit down at a Shabbos table and just feel something. The same way you you you put on a suit okay sometimes if a person has never ever worn a suit before it's gonna take him a while until he realizes how good it feels on him and sometimes just right away if if it's if it's too tight it's too tight but if he if he if he has the right suit just right away it's a natural fit. It's a perfect fit. Torah was designed Torah was designed that's the significance of the numerical correlation Torah was designed for the Jewish soul and because of that the Jewish soul is attuned to Torah. And that's another way of sensing the truth of Torah there's the intellectual conviction but there's also that spiritual experience and and spiritual resonance the same thing happens with in in it can happen in in tasting a Shabbos it can happen through the study of Torah it can happen through through prayer it can happen through various media within mitzvos but it resonates with us and there's a spiritual intuition that this is true that this is what my soul is is attuned to. So just to summarize the the perspectives we suggested perhaps four under the rational heading and two under the spiritual heading under the rational heading again the sense of accountability that ultimately we have to give a reckoning the sense of gratitude indebtedness which has to be translated which has to be expressed the desire to live the desire for for eternity truth in the sense of intellectual conviction of truth and then on the spiritual level that we sense within the world we sense a great majestic transcendent presence השמים מספרים כבוד אל the heavens tell the story of God's glory and it's something that again that we feel naturally this impulse that we want to connect to we need the directions which the GPS can't provide and finally the fact again another appeal to truth but truth not so much discovered through intellectual inquiry and resulting in intellectual conviction but truth discovered through spiritual intuition and resulting in in a spiritual certitude. So I hope that we should be able to to to dig into and draw from from the wells of Torah from all these perspectives and more and we should all be able to to devote our lives to to the service of God. Thank you very much.