Moshe Rabbeinu warns us not to forget G-d when we enter the land of Israel but to keep His laws and stay loyal to Him. If we do so then we will inherit not only Israel but a pleasant existence:
“You shall surely keep the commandments of the Lord, your G-d, as well as the testimonies and laws He commanded you. And you shall do that which is upright and good in the eyes of G-d, so that it will be good for you. And you shall go up and inherit the good land that G-d promises to your fathers” (Deut. 6:17-18).
We must perform the commandments with the intent to that which is right and good in the eyes of G-d. The Ramban’s comments here are required reading for any aspiring Torah personality. He cites and explains an important teaching from our Sages:
Our Sages have a beautiful teaching regarding this. They said that this (refers to) compromise (in judgment) and going beyond the letter of the letter. The meaning in this is that, at the outset, you must perform His commandments, testimonies, and statutes that He commanded you. And now it is said that even in that which He did not command you, put it to your mind to do that which is good and upright in His eyes, because He loves that which is good and upright.
And this is a key principle because it’s impossible to record in the Torah every action a man must take with his neighbors and friends, every give and take and rule for the good of the public and the state. But after many have been recorded – such as do not go about as a talebearer, do not take revenge or bear a grudge, do not stand by the blood of your friend, do not curse the deaf, rise before the elderly, and the like – the Torah shifts to say a general rule that one should do that which is good and upright in all things, until he undertakes through this compromise and going beyond the letter of the law.
An example of this is what they taught regarding the law of adjoined property (that the owner of the neighboring property has first rights to land which is for sale). And also regarding this concept, the Sages said that (one who acts this way will cause others to say), “His (Torah) study is pleasant, he speaks in a gentle manner with others… until he comes to be called in all matters wholesome and upright.”
There is a lot here the Ramban teaches us that we must take note of.
First: Torah is not confined to the rules that we find on the books. In fact, the import of his words is that so many of the rules in the Torah are illustrative! We learn of helping others, forgiving our grudges, standing up before those senior in years and wisdom, and these laws help us understand what unwritten rules of behavior must bind us. If we successfully refrain from taking revenge or holding on to negative feelings, what can we do next? What laws and habits should govern our interactions and mold our hearts? The proper rules of behavior are infinite and shape-shifting, so that they cannot all be written. But they are no less binding for it.
Second: We should allow, as Rabbi Soloveitchik famously said, halacha to be the floor and not the ceiling. We know it is forbidden to cut corners in matters of business. But here, we also learn not to cut corners even in our basic social interactions. When with friends, strangers, family, and even people whose company we do not seek out, we should go beyond being civil to being pleasant and friendly. When we fight, we should compromise; when we compromise we should do so graciously; and when others are not gracious with us, we should be silent. We should go beyond the letter of the law in that which we give and we should demand less than that which the law affords us.
Third: We cannot leave the plain sense of the verse without sensing the imminence of G-d’s judgment. He looks on, investigating whether we do what is right in His eyes, whether we make the grade. It is fascinating to consider that, though He looks at us always, He does not seem too often to intervene, He does not punish or reward us in obvious ways. The Ramban explains in his commentary to the episode of the Spies that G-d mostly deals with human beings through the natural order that He created. Except for the exceptionally righteous and the exceptionally evil, we do not often merit specific providence. We should not expect to be struck with lightning this coming year, nor to win the lottery because we are so spiritually stupendous.
So when He looks at us, it is not to punish us. It is then, we submit, only because G-d loves His creations and wishes for us to succeed that He studies us always. Will we live up to our potential today? Will we differentiate between wrong, right, and pious? Will G-d be the One who says of us, “His (Torah) study is pleasant, he speaks in a gentle manner with others… he is in all matters wholesome and upright?”
The Torah calls upon us to do what is right and good, to meet our potential, to be wholesome in all ways, to be the pleasant and desired emissaries of G-d in this world. The many laws and customs of our Torah can shape us, if we see what they are really there for. Not so much a list of dos and don’ts, but a spiritual ladder toward pleasantness in the eyes of our Creator.
We cannot make due with being the spiritual version of the couch potato who, all the neighbors lament, had such potential. The Yamim Noraim are almost upon us, our histories are being written, and the One above us looks to us to do His will and meet our potential. In this period, so pregnant with spiritual possibility, we must raise our own standard to better match His own.
