A Love That Opens Doors
Could Avraham face a greater test than sacrificing his son Yitzchak? Yes – to give generously and without qualms to pay for Sarah’s burial place in Hevron. Why is this test harder than sacrificing his son, and what motivated his generosity?
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.
When the Heart Opens
You know what’s the worst trait a husband can have? What is the bad middah that is most destructive for peace at home? It is even more destructive than anger and strictness and all bad middot. What is it?
For years I have had the merit to guide Jews towards shalom bayit (harmony in the home) and I’ve seen this in countless couples. I also wrote about it in my book, The Garden of Peace.
The worst middah when it comes to shalom bayit is that of miserliness! A miserly husband will never experience shalom bayit.
Why? Because the wife must know and feel that her husband loves her, and love is expressed mainly in money. If you love – you bestow and give generously; if you don’t give, if you don’t bestow – there is no love. And even if you tell your wife all day long that you love her – your claim will not be accepted; it will not enter her heart, because there is no giving involved, and in this world giving is important. And that means that in reality there is no love. And if there is no love, how could there be shalom bayit?
This Shabbat we will be saying the blessing for the month of Kislev. True, Kislev is written with a vav (כסלו), but the darshanim say that the sound of the word reminds one of the two words: kis (כס – pocket) and lev (לב – heart – written with a beit). In this month we open our hearts and increase our feelings of love, and as a result we also open our pockets and increase the amount of tzedakah we give. Because the pocket and the heart are connected: If you don’t open your pocket and give to your wife, you don’t love her. Period.
The Peak of Love
And therefore, what is more appropriate for this Shabbat than the peak of Avraham Avinu’s service of Hashem, Avraham who is called “Avraham who loves Me”1. The climax of all his service and his greatest nisayon (trial) was particularly a trial involving money – giving freely.
In the previous parsha we read that Avraham Avinu was willing to sacrifice his beloved son. What can be higher than that? It becomes evident that there is a more difficult nisayon and that is the nisayon of money, and that is why Avraham, after passing the test of the Akeida (the binding of Yitzchak), must pass one more test – a test regarding money.
The Gemara says that the Heavenly beings were most impressed by his passing this test: “[The Satan] said before God: Master of the Universe, I have gone to and fro across the entire world and have not found anyone as faithful as your servant Abraham, to whom you said: ‘Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it to you’ (Bereishit 13:17). And when he wanted to bury Sarah, he could not find a place to bury her until he bought it for four hundred silver shekels, and yet he did not criticize Your ways.”2
So, we see that the nisayon of money is more difficult even than the Akeida!
According to this, it is possible to understand the order of the words in Kriyat Shema every day: “You shall love Hashem, your G-d, with all your heart and all your soul and all your might”. Chazal explain that “all your heart” refers to “both your inclinations” (yetzer hatov and yetzer hara – good and bad inclinations). Serving Hashem with the yetzer hara is not easy, and it demands an extremely high level of ahavat Hashem (love of Hashem).
But above it is “and all your soul” – which means “even if He is taking away your soul” – in other words, complete mesirut nefesh, being willing to give up your life for the sake of Hashem. This is already a much higher level of ahavat Hashem, and you would think there is nothing higher than it.
But here the Torah surprises us and says, “and with all your might”. And Chazal explain that it means “with all your money”, which is the highest level, even higher than giving up your life, and it is the peak of ahavat Hashem!
Rabbi Nachman says: How does one fulfill “and with all your might”? By giving one fifth of your money to tzedakah – twenty percent. This sounds like a huge sum. How can one do this? We will try to learn and reveal the secret of how to do it from Avraham Avinu.
Love with Emuna
In Kriyat Shema, as well as with Avraham Avinu, we see that emuna and ahavat Hashem (love of Hashem) go hand in hand. The first pasuk of Shema is a statement of belief that Hashem is One, and immediately in the next pasuk we are commanded to love Him. Avraham Avinu, as well, on one hand is called “Avraham who loves Me”1, for he achieved complete and full ahavat Hashem, and on the other hand, the passage in the Gemara we brought says about Avraham’s passing the test of money “I have not found anyone as faithful”2 – emuna.
And this is the foundation that we repeat again and again: True emuna in Hashem yitbarach is the belief that Hashem loves me, and when a Jew truly feels that Hashem loves him – he loves Hashem in return, because true emuna leads to love!
For how can one observe the mitzvah of loving Hashem? Can one be commanded to love? But the mitzvah is to know how much Hashem loves us, as we say in the prelude to Kriyat Shema: “You have loved us with eternal love” – and then we naturally mirror Hashem’s love to us by loving Him in return.
It is impossible to reach complete ahavat Hashem without complete emuna, because complete emuna is to know that Hashem loves me and loves each and every Jew personally, in every situation, because that is what causes the person to truly love Hashem!
The Secret of Avraham’s Generosity
Therefore, it is Avraham Avinu in particular who reached the peak of emuna – he was the one who reached the highest level of love of Hashem, and that is how he reached the optimal expression of love – to love Hashem with all his money.
As we see in our parsha, Avraham Avinu spends a lot of money freely, without any compunctions and without any haggling. And not only that – “He says little and does much”3 – he gives the best shekels. It is told about the Ari Hakadosh that when he would pay for a mitzvah, he would never try to bargain but would just put his moneybag in front of the seller and say to him: “Take as much as you want!”
Throughout the parashot that tell of Avraham Avinu we see his giving and his easy concession when it comes to money. How does one reach such a level of limitless giving, without any compunctions? One reaches it by the feeling of trust that is hinted to later on in our song: “Hashem yitbarach always loves me and I will have only good”. When a Jew knows that Hashem loves him, he trusts him wholeheartedly that He will always give and bestow upon him all the good in the world, because he knows that Hashem will give him everything that he will need, and he will not lack anything!
Only when a Jew knows that Hashem loves him and as such he lives the knowledge that Hashem will do only good to him and will give him and will bestow upon him anything that he lacks – only he can gird himself with ahavat Hashem and spend his money on mitzvahs and also give a full fifth of his profits to tzedakah without any fear. He will do everything out of a true love for Hashem yitbarach, making him the fulfillment of the pasuk “If a man offered all his wealth for love – they would laugh him to shame.”4
The Rectification of This Generation’s Avodah Zara
Our Sages cancelled the yetzer (inclination) for avodah zarah5, but one cannot cancel the angel of the avodah zarah. In our generation, the avodah zarah takes the form of love of money. Rabbeinu says that all the avodah zaras of the nations are connected to money. And just like emuna confronts avodah zarah, so too the zenith of emuna, which is the emuna that Hashem loves me and I will have only good, confronts the zenith of avodah zarah – the love of money. For the only true tool against the desire for money is the belief and the knowledge that Hashem loves me and I will always have only good and therefore I am not dependent at all on money, only on Hashem’s love and chessed (grace).
May Hashem give us the complete knowledge that He loves us personally, always, in every situation, and wants to give us only good, and then we will spend money with love on anything that is part of Hashem’s will and we will trust Him wholeheartedly to give us more and more and do us more and more good, and may we always have only good, Amen.
Editor’s Notes:
1 Yeshayahu (Isaiah) 41:8
2 Talmud, Baba Basra 15b
3 Mishnah, Tractate Avot 1:15
4 Shir HaShirim (Song of Songs) 8:7
5 Talmud, Yoma 69b and Sanhedrin 64a
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