THE ONLY WAY TO KNOW
In this week’s Parsha, Yisro, Hakadosh baruch Hu gives us His Ten Commandments. The first of these commandments is to Know HaShem is our Guide, Who took us out of the land of Egypt.
Our Sages teach that this mitzvah is among the mitzvos that can be fulfilled on a constant basis. One is able to perform this mitzvah 24/7. The question is how does one perform this mitzvah. Once you know this fact, it is performed. What more can be done? Imagine if it were a mitzvah to know that gravity exists. It would certainly be a fulfillment of this mitzvah to study physics and understand the nature of gravity to gain a deeper insight of its existence. However, once that is accomplished what more is there to do?
The Torah’s usage of the word “knowledge” is not limited to a simple awareness of something or someone. Knowledge in the Torah’s parlance means to have an inti-mate knowledge of something or someone. Take the surgeon, who after a stressful surgery has to take a puff. He knows that smoking is hazardous to his health, never-theless, he justifies in his mind that one cigarette will not kill him. After many years of this behavior, he has a major heart attack which is identified as a consequence of his habit. If he survives that heart attack, chances are great that he will not touch a cigarette ever again. Why? because now he “knows” that smoking is hazardous to his health. There is heightened level of knowledge, it is a knowledge that is based upon personal experience. The implication of this level of knowledge is of much greater import than his original level of knowledge.
If HaShem wants us to “know” Him, this means that He expects us to deepen our awareness of His Existence. This can only be accomplished through personal experience. How do we do this? What personal experience can grant us this awareness? How often can one generate such an experience?
As we travel through the maze of life we often encounter situations which seem insurmountable. We will feel threatened by the challenge and do not know how we will overcome it. Nevertheless, with the help of HaShem we do overcome it. The next time a similar challenge comes our way we do not feel as threatened as we did the first time. We experienced success in over-coming it and have developed a sense of confidence with that knowledge.
Overcoming “insurmountable” challenges breeds a sense of confidence knowing that if we can do it once we can do it again. If, at the time we overcome that first challenge, we credit our success to HaShem’s guidance then we have increased our knowledge of HaShem and His guidance. Every time we encounter another challenge, we increase our knowledge of HaShem as we see His special guidance in helping us overcome it. With eve-ry personal experience our knowledge of HaShem deepens.
We can spend our entire day, 24/7, in constant experiences of HaShem’s involvement in our every moment of life! If we focus our attention on all of our encounters as being carefully designed by HaShem, we will develop a greater and deeper knowledge of Him as well as a greater confidence in relying upon Him. We will be able to deal with life’s “failures” and “successes” with perfect equanimity.
All of life becomes one ongoing personal experience of knowing HaShem.
Have a wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind