Your First Investment 

Translated from Rabbi Arush’s feature article in the weekly Chut shel Chessed newsletter. The articles focus on his main message: “Loving others as yourself” and emuna. 

Oops, We Forgot Something… 

Immediately after the engagement, the happy couple set out on a shopping spree: from the biggest items to the smallest details, from electrical appliances to furniture, from clothes to linens, from lighting fixtures to pictures and plants. As the wedding date approached, the shopping list got shorter and shorter, and the excitement increased. 

So excited were the bride and groom, that they forgot one small detail: They didn’t yet have an apartment…  

They had everything, absolutely everything, everything that is needed to set up a Jewish home – except for…  the house itself! 

The Gemara tells us about Rabbi Yanai who would announce: “My heart breaks when I think of someone who has no abode but buys a door.” That was precisely the sad state of our couple.  

In life there must be priorities. There are things that come before everything else. Only if you have those, can you move on.  

And why is the apartment the first thing that should be dealt with? Because we all need solid ground under our feet, a safe harbor.  

And just like in material matters, so it is and even more so in spiritual matters, because the spiritual world of a person starts with solid ground.  

What is the solid ground of spirituality? True, we have a long “shopping list” in spiritual matters as well, but what is the first thing? What is the biggest and most central thing that we mustn’t lose sight of among the unending details? 

Before you continue to read, stop a moment and try to think: What answer would you give to that question? 

The Spiritual “Apartment” 

This might surprise you: The first thing in spirituality is the trait of bitachon (trust)! 

The vessel that contains all the spiritual and material blessings is the midah (trait) of bitachon. Bitachon is not just a nice addition to the house. Bitachon is the house itself. It is not a luxury item, nor is it something that adds prestige; it is not even an important item like a refrigerator. Bitachon is the base. Like an apartment.  

When you have a home, everything that you purchase and add to it will add to the home, and in the end, you will have a beautiful and perfect home. Because the purpose of all the other purchases is to have a beautiful, pleasant home that adds to your good feeling, full of precious and pleasant things, which will be a perfect place for peace and love and Shechinah (Divine Presence) and raising children.  

So too, exactly, when it comes to the spiritual home, which is the midah of bitachon. When you have bitachon, everything you will do in your avodat Hashem (service of Hashem), and everything spiritual you will achieve will contribute to and decorate and beautify your bitachon, until it will become perfect.  

And indeed, exactly like a beautiful home – perfect bitachon is the purpose of all avodat Hashem. 

Bitachon is not only a level fit for special people! rather, it is the goal of each and every Jew! A Jew without bitachon is like a homeless couple.  

The Purpose of the Purpose! 

Even a learned person, a talmid chacham, might think mistakenly: “I am supposed to learn Torah and observe the mitzvahs – and that’s it. More bitachon or less bitachon – all of that doesn’t matter…” 

This is a very serious mistake. How serious is it? 

We will bring one sentence from the commentary of the Vilna Gaon on the book of Mishlei that says something so clear and definite that there is no room for deliberation: 

“The main point of giving the Torah to the Jews is so that they place their trust (bitachon) in Hashem etc., because the main thing is complete bitachon and that includes all the mitzvahs.”¹ 

And the person saying this is the Vilna Gaon, who knew the entire Torah, and every word of his was carefully chosen. If he tells us that bitachon includes everything, and that it is the purpose of the Giving of the Torah – this should change our entire focus on life, our direction in life, our aspirations! 

We are in the middle of the Sefira, approaching Matan Torah (Giving of the Torah, Shavuot), looking forward to and yearning to receive the Torah again, anew. This is the time to ask ourselves: what does Hashem want from us? Hashem is giving us the precious, hidden Torah, which is supposed to carry us to a certain destination. What is this destination? 

The Vilna Gaon says to us: The destination is to live with complete bitachon in Hashem yitbarach. 

A New Answer to a Famous Question 

And so, we find here a wonderful answer to Rashi’s famous question – perhaps his most famous question – at the beginning of parshat Behar: 

Almost all the mitzvahs start with: “Hashem said to Moshe” with slight variations. The mitzvah of shmittah is presented differently: “Hashem said to Moshe at Mount Sinai…”² Rashi mentions that this is a superfluous emphasis – after all, all the mitzvahs were given to Moshe on Mount Sinai. And Rashi asks: “What is the connection between shmittah and Mount Sinai?” 

But, knowing what the Vilna Gaon says, we can provide a wonderful explanation: 

Usually, the Torah commands us to make the necessary efforts and not rely on miracles. The mitzvah of shmittah is a very unique: The Torah demands from every Jew, even the simplest one, to abandon all his fields for an entire year! He “loses” an entire year’s crop; he can’t even harvest a crop that has grown by itself! Sometimes even for two years running!! 

Imagine that you are renting a house to someone and you are supposed to forfeit a year’s rent – tens of thousands of shekels! And here it’s much more than that, because it is an entire year’s salary! This is a very difficult demand in terms of one’s complete bitachon in Hashem, who Himself promised: “I will send My blessing… and it (the sixth year) will yield three years’ harvest.”³ 

That is why the Torah emphasizes particularly in this mitzvah the words “at Mount Sinai”. In other words, this is the purpose of the entire revelation at Har Sinai and the Giving of the Torah – that you should achieve complete bitachon. True, this is a very difficult demand to make, but it is the purpose of the Giving of the Torah. It is impossible for us to observe the entire Torah without reaching the ultimate goal – complete trust in Hashem, which will enable us to abandon all we have and depend on Hashem completely for an entire year! 

Was What I Did So Bad?? 

According to this, the second parsha we will read this Shabbat, Parshat Bechukotai, can be understood: It brings in detail terrible curses that will come upon us because of not observing the mitzvah of shmittah. 

You might think this strange – for the harder a mitzvah is to do, the less one can make claims against the perpetrator. The Gemara says that one can compare this to a king who asked one of his slaves to give him a cheap seal made of mortar, and from another slave he asked to provide him with an expensive seal of gold. Both of them were lax in their duties and did not bring him the seals. Who is going to receive a bigger punishment? The Gemara says, certainly the slave who was commanded to bring the cheap seal, because being lax in performing an easy task is worse than being lax in a more difficult one.  

Shmittah is a very difficult mitzvah – why, then, are such harsh punishments decreed upon someone who doesn’t observe it? 

According to the Vilna Gaon it can be understood. Because the shmittah expresses complete bitachon in Hashem, and its goal is to bring a person to acquire this midah, “that a person should increase his bitachon in Hashem yitbarach,”⁴ as the Sefer Hachinuch says, and so, when the Jewish people observe the mitzvahs but don’t keep the shmittah correctly, they show that they are missing the whole point of the Torah. And therefore, the claim against them is so severe.  

Dear Jews, bring great blessing into your life, because a life with bitachon is a calm and sweet life; it contains much blessing and both material and spiritual abundance. 

Editor’s Notes: 

¹ Mishlei (Proverbs) 22:19 

² Vayikra (Leviticus) 25:1 

³ Vayikra (Leviticus) 25:21 

⁴ Sefer Hachinuch 4:2