Weekly Dvar Torah: Be Grounded, Have a Teacher, and Believe in Hashem

Three major events of the week:

1) The New Year of Trees.
2) G-d says, that witnessing G-d’ly revelation at Sinai, will cause faith in Moshe.
3) The Ten Commandments start with believing in Hashem (G-d), and end with warnings not to lust your fellow’s wife and belongings.

What’s the connection of trees to the giving of the Torah?

Why are the events of Sinai relevant to having faith in Moshe?

How is sensible behavior dependent on belief in Hashem?

How do they all connect?

Hashem came down from Heaven, and declared that He is the Supreme-being who took us out from Egypt, therefore we should worship no other G-d.

What should follow are details of how to believe in G-d, how to pray to Him, how to love of G-d and fear Him.

Instead the last six commandments are about murder, adultery and stealing, one wonders how is it that at a time of G-dly revelation, we are concerned about stooping to the lowermost adverse behavior?

This exactly is the point, Torah was given to humans coming from slavery in Egypt, an un-G-dly place, and at times the world can get very very dark, murder may be acceptable, family structure is not desirable, then we have a hard time relating to G-d.

Then again, these are commonsensical basic laws, not to murder and not to steal are ideas that keep a civil society, and we wonder what relevance is it if we believe in G-d or not, everybody agrees that we need to respect other people and their property.

Hashem teaches us, if you have no G-d you will have no civility, and we need not look too far, only 70 years ago the most civilized advanced country in the world, used their advanced culture and knowledge to wipe out a third of our people, and nobody said boo.

But one asks, what’s the connection?

How do I protect myself against sinking to such lows?

Who will guide me onto the proper path?

That’s why we started the week with celebrating the tree.

A tree must have strong roots, it must be grounded well, if the roots are not grounded, the tree can easily be uprooted.

A tree when planted has to be nurtured and well taken care of not to be affected by the elements, the slightest scratch will cause the tree to grow crooked and warped and ruin the fruits.

Therefore we must be well grounded, remember where we come from, and know our history.

Then Hashem says to Moshe, when the Jews will see Me, they will also see you, Moshe the teacher of the people, without a teacher one can easily lose the way, there is no such thing as a direct connection to G-d without a teacher to guide us.

Having a teacher is essential to our relationship with G-d.

Finally, we must remember that civil society if it has no G-d, will rationalize the most evil and barbaric behavior, if there is no moral compass, human minds can easily rationalize the craziest ideas.

Belief in a G-d is our moral compass to protect us against immoral dangerous behavior.

And in order to believe in G-d, we need a teacher to show us the miracles of exodus, etc., so that we know G-d in order to believe in Him, and then we never lose sight of the purpose of creation.

That’s why G-d instilled in us faith in Moshe.

And every generation has a Moshe, our holy Rebbe’s who keep us grounded, who teach us how to understand G-d, how to believe in Hashem, and how to keep connected to G-d.

Have a Rebbe, stay grounded, and live in a decent civil society, because you believe in Hashem.

Have a fruitful, faithful, and studious Shabbos,
Gut Shabbos

Rabbi Yosef Katzman