Parshas Ki Seitzei. The parsha is laden with mitzvos, and Chazal here frame the whole inyan of mitzvos, in two ma’amarim.
The first is on a passuk in Mishlei אורח חיים פן תפלס — talking about someone who doesn’t weigh the path of life – Chazal explain it as we should not measure mitzvos.
: אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא לא תהא יושב ומשקיל במצוותיה של תורה. אמר רבי אבא בר כהנא
See Midrash Tanchuma, Eikev 2
Don't weigh the mitzvos. And Chazal give a mashal: a king hired workers for his pardes and didn't tell them the wage per tree. At the end, he paid some more and some less, depending on the trees. The workers protested “why didn’t you tell us, we would have chosen the higher-paying trees? The king answered had I told you the apple tree pays more, everyone would have run to do apple trees and I'd have no pardes.
Lechora this is very strange. It's k'ilu Hakadosh Baruch Hu is, chas v'shalom, tricking us — He knows that if He revealed the matan schar we'd chase the more valuable mitzvos and neglect the lesser ones, so He hid it. Where's the yosher in that?
And there's a stira in this Chazal. The reisha says the schar is hidden because mitzvos differ in weight. But the seifa says Hakadosh Baruch Hu did reveal the schar of two mitzvos — the most chamur, kibbud av v'em, and the most kal, shiluach haken — and for both the matan schar is arichus yamim. If the whole point was that mitzvos carry different schar, why do the chamur and the kal give the reward?
And ha gufa — in what sense is kibbud av v'em the chamur sheba'chamurim and kan tzipor the kal sheba'kalim? By difficulty? Can’t be. kan tzipor means climbing a ladder, chasing a bird, catching the right moment — is that easier than tzitzis, where for a few perutos a person is wrapped in a mitzvah? The Gra cried at his petirah that he'd miss so kal a mitzvah as tzitzis. So what’s the kal or chomer?
The second Chazal is on another passuk in Misheli כי לוית חן הם לראשך וענקים לגרגרותיך — mitzvos are an adornment on the head. Chazal hear in the word “livyas chein” the following:
בכל מקום שתלך המצוות מלוות אותך. Anywhere you go, the mitzvos accompany you. Build a house — there’s ma'akeh. Hang a door — there’s mezuzah. Get dressed — lo silbash shatnez. And אפילו אי אתה עוסק בדבר אלא מהלך בדרך המצוות מלוות אותך. מניין שנאמר כי יקרא קן ציפור לפניך — even stam walking down the road, kan tzipor is melaveh you.
I want to be medayeik the word melaveh. Livuy is not pegia. To bump into something. livuy is not bumping into the mitzvah. It means the mitzvah was sent to accompany you. What is this nekuda of livuy in mitzvos?
The Gra is masbir that pasuk in Mishlei like this: כי לוית חן הם לראשך וענקים לגרגרותיך, There were two kinds of tachshitin women were given: a headpiece and a necklace. And these tachshitin correspond to two spiritual ma’alos: Torah and Mitzvos, respectivley. The gemara says Rebbi Akiva’s wife was given a Yerushalayim shel Zahav, a type of crown, for her mesiras nefesh for his Torah. This headpiece sits on the head, obviously, and just as the head is, k’nireh, a miksha achas, one piece, the crown is one piece. The necklace however is pieces, pieces. It sits on the neck which is made up of pieces, pieces – vertebrae on the back side, and the front has the rings of the trachea. The neck is the haschala of the person’s guf, it’s the makom where the rosh meets the guf and branches off into the klei Asiya — the realm of mitzvos.
But the Gra is not stam matching jewelry to virtues. He’s pointing out a mehalech that HKBH established in the briya. Hakadosh Baruch Hu is echad. Yet, His Achdus, when it enters the world, it splits into pieces, pieces —asarah ma'amaros, seven days, myriad pieces.
Take a businessman: mitzad himself there is one clear picture — this is the idea, this is what he wants. But Mitzad hama'aseh it takes a thousand different inyanim, trades, moves, people. The idea is echad; the execution is pratim.
The rosh, the beginning of Hakadosh Baruch Hu's engagement with the world is Torah — it’s Machshavto Yisbarach. And Torah, though it has many masechtos, and many sugyos, it’s b'etzem one inyan. There's a gemara in Sanhedrin, about what order should a Rebbi answer talmidim when they ask questions? One man d'amar says the inyan that they're holding in gets priority over an inyan they're not holding in. But Rebbi Yehuda says כל התורה כולה עניין אחד. All of Torah is one inyan. you can ask a kasha from anywhere because at their shoresh, they are connected.
Similarly, a Gemara in Taanis discusses what degree of knowledge makes a talmid chacham? And the answer is, if you ask him in masechta Kallah and he knows it – that is a talmid chacham. The Rishonim argue what this means. One shitta is maseches Kallah is not normally learned, so someone whose learning is so broad that he knows everything including mesechas kallah, that’s a talmid chacham. But there’s a second man d'amar: even if he knows only masechta Kallah, that’s also considered a talmid chacham! Now, how’s that shaycih? We can understand first man d’amar, but who are we kidding with the 2nd man d’amar that only knowing mesechas kallah is enough? The teretz is that once a person has a tfisa in even one small, peripheral cheilek of Torah, he has a yad in kol hatorah koola. That one chelek is a point of access to the miksha achas of Torah. It’s like someone who learned one area of math but from that one area he can unlock and unpack other areas, because there is a tzad hashaveh running through every tchum. Mimaila has a shaychus to all of it.
This is the tfisa of mitzvos. Be'etzem every mitzvah is a packaged piece of the whole olam haTorah. When a person grasps a mitzvah he is physically holding one inyan, one prat, but that one prat is a point of access to kol haTorah koola. There’s no prat that’s stam, with no shaychus.
If it was stam, with no shaychus, that would be mikra-dik. It’s just a detail, no shaychus to something larger. That’s not what mitzvos are. Mitzvos are an emissary from the great olam haTorah, that are designed to keep you connected to that shoresh-dikeh world.
That’s the deher of livuy in Mitzvos. Livuy is when someone is leaving, and you have a person accompany him. The Maharal says it nicely. The gemara says eglah arufah is an indictment against a tzibbur for not doing livui. But why? Because someone didn’t escort him daled amos? I have news for you, a mere daled amos of levaya will hardly keep a traveler alive against murderers. The Maharal answers that a man who is part of a tzibbur is safer than one who looks like a loner. In a herd it is the straggler, cut off from the group, that is attacked. But someone who appears as part of a tzibbur is safer. Had they been melaveh him, he would have appeared as joined to the tzibbur and been spared.
Livuy, then, is the base extending itself to stay with a person, something from the klal is mitztareif to the prat and keeps it going. This is exactly the nekuda of livuy in mitzvos: the mitzvah is an emissary from a complete olam haTorah. Your actions that you do are not stam, random ma’asim that HKBH decided to busy people with. The correct tfisa is that no chelek of your life is without an invitation to connect, or remain connected, to a lager, most shoresh-dik grasp of the world.
Kan Tzipur is the perfect dugma for livuy. The whole metzius of Kan Tzipor is it has to be mikradik. כי יקרא קן ציפור. Aderaba, if it wasn’t b’mikra, you couldn’t do kan tzippur. Something mikrad-dik doesn’t appear to have any shaychus to a lager mehalech. Why should I be able to discern a higher pattern from something mikra-dik? We can understand how things that are fixed features of a persons life – food, bayis, family – we can hear that the mitzvos in those categories give us a shaychus to the shoresh, because these things are shoreshdik to a person. But כי יקרא קן ציפור? How does something random connect me to a larger mehalech? The teretz is that, ein hachi nami, even Kan Tzippur also eminates from HKBH’s olam HaTorah, and connects you to the shoresh.
This is the kal vachomer of kan tzipor versus kibbud av v'em. Kan Tzippur is mikrah, Kibbud Av v’Eim is shoresh-dik. Think about the activities of this world from essential to peripheral. Without food, a person can live for a couple of days. Without air a person can only live a couple minutes; without parents, a person would never exist! Kibbud av v'em addresses the atzmius of the person, it’s the most shorashi — in that regard it’s the chamur sheba'chamurim. Kan tzipor is, fakhert, ki yikareh, it’s the least essential, most peripheral prat there is.
And the schar of both is arichus yamim — this is not the reward for an isolated deed. This is a statement that all your mitzvos – from the most essential to the most peripheral, add together and build a full havana of Torah. We’ve spoken about this before, that arichus, which means length, what it really means is the points add up to something. If I have dots that don’t connect, that adds up to nothing. But if my dots connect, I can have long line, because the pieces add up!
Chazal say that Elisha Ben Avuya – Acher – became an apikores when he saw a boy listen to his father, climb for shiluach haken — both mitzvos whose schar is arichus yamim — and fall to his death. Heichan arichus yamim? But Chazal say it must be talking about the yom shekulo aroch. It’s not satisfying because the pasuk spells out the reward. But, if you understand that arichus is where all the pieces connect together, that’s fusion is not in the outer world of ma’asim prati’im. It’s in the person’s inner world where his actions add up, they fuse together a create a miksha achas worldview. You won’t see that on the outer world. Only the inner.
This is pshat in the mashal of the pardes. There’s a reward for each isolated tree that was planted. But HKBH didn’t want them to have a perspective of isolated actions. He wanted them to see how each prat was really part of a bigger picture. The trees are not isolated pieces. They need to add up to a pardes! Imagine a person hired to build a watch. He spent time, effort, and completed 95% of the watch. What’s his reward? The answer is zero! It’s not a watch. It didn’t add up to a complete entity. So, HKBH wants to reorient our relationship with mitzvos. The mitzvos are part of a greater picture. Pursue the picture through the details. See the mitzvos as not just giving you isolated rewards but as rewarding you with a borader hekef of Machshavto Yisborach.
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In yeshiva, there are limudim of halachos and hanhagos, which are very important. You need to know the details of what to do. But the yichud of the Ben Torah, is he wants to see the miksha achas that lies beneath all the mitzvos. It appears as a daunting challenge – to do and to know everything. And it is! But, the approach is to start with one prat, one mitzvah, one meseches Kallah, which seems like a small isolated fragment, but which carries within in the mafte’ach to kol haTorah koola. כל התורה כולה עניין אחד Nothing is stam. Everything is rich.
And especially as we approach Rosh Hashana – Rosh Hashana which is the starting point, the shoresh of the year is within the Rosh. We should daven for broad inyanim, like chiyus, which is the broadest, it’s the starting point for everything else. But not just chiyus in it’s outer form of staying alive, but in it’s inner form too, of arichus yomim! A chaim that adds up to something and becomes a miksha achas. This chiyus is within each prat, each mitzvah. Each mitzvah is not just an isolated good deed, but a portal to access the source of all chiyus, the shoresh of the briya, Machshavto Yisborach, Good Shabbos!