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Biography of Yehuda Katz | Archives | This Week's Parsha

This Torah thought is being dedicated to my beloved father, Nachman Shimon ben Yehuda Meir Hakohan, Z"L.

VEETCHANON

"And you shall love Hashem , your G-d, with all your heart.........(6:5)

Rashi comments that when the verse says "with all your heart" , it means with both your good inclination and with your evil inclination.....................................

A question can be asked, how can one possibly "love G-d" with your evil inclination ? I would like to propose , Bezrat Hashem, the following original answer as follows: If a person were to analyze and disect the desires that exists in all of us, a person will find a tremendous amount of energy. This energy drives us tremendously at great expense to ourselves in the fufillment of these desires.......................................................................................... Often we might find ourselves lax and lazy when confronted with the performance of good deeds. This is a great paradox....................yet its often true. Therefore, when the Torah wants us to love Hashem with our "evil inclination", its telling us that we must learn from the "evil inclination" and the energy it has as an example of how much we must exert ourselves when serving Hashem. In essence our "evil inclination" is our teacher................................ We must some how translate the energy that we know in regard to our desires and transform it for good. We must "love" Hashem with the power of our good inclination and the tremendous energy of our "evil inclination". This is a very powerfull concept to fathom....................................yet it will help us use our "evil inclination" as a means to discover the neccesary energy that is needed for good. We find a very fascinating story in Kiddushin 81a as follows: "Certain captive women came to Nahardea, and were taken to the upper floor of R. Amram the Pious. The ladder that reached the upper level was removed......... At night R. Amram mistakenly saw one of the women and seized the ladder in which only 10 men could possibly carry by himself. R. Amram then proceeded to ascend the ladder ,when he cried out -" a fire at R. Amram" in order to prevent himself from sinning.......................(Please refer to Kiddushin 81a for further details) We see from this story the tremendous energy the "evil inclination" has in that it afforted R. Amram the strength of 10 men.................................... . R. Amram was a pious man......................yet he was almost overtaken by desire. If all of us could only transform the strength of our desires for good, we can then perhapes accomplish great feats in our love of G-d......................................Have a good Shabbos

 


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