Va'etchanan

How to Love God

Adapted from Chabad Online Network - Commentary by the Ba'al Shem Tov

Va'etchanan includes the Shema, proclaiming the oneness of God; and the V'ahavta, instructing us to love God in all times and places, teach the next generation, write a mezuzah, and wrap tefillin. The Ba'al Shem Tov sees in the parashah instructions about loving, seeking, and exemplifying godliness.

You, O God, have begun to show Your servant Your greatness (Deuteronomy/Devarim 3:24). Moshe was God's faithful servant, greatest of the prophets, recipient of the Torah from God. Yet after 120 years of the most Godly life ever lived, he sees himself as only having begun in his relationship with God!

And from there you will seek God your God, and you will find God (4:29). God is to be found everywhere, and every corner of God's creation can serve as the vehicle to reach God. If divine providence has dispatched you to a certain place and life, your surest path to God is from there.

And you shall bind them for a sign upon your arm, and they shall be as tefillin between your eyes (6:8). God's tefillin, the people of Israel, also consist of a hand-tefillin and head-tefillin. There are the head-Jews, the scholars and thinkers, and the hand-Jews, the doers. Both are precious to our Heavenly Parent, both are integral to the role of God's people. But when God ties the divine tefillin to reaffirm God's bond with God's people, God gives precedence to the "simple" deed, cherishing it above all else.

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