While not in the top ten most stressful situations, moving
is an acknowledged best of the rest. And
it is obvious why. It is hard to know where many of your things are. The simple things in life are suddenly not
so. It took my wife and me a day and a
half to find out how to turn on one of the lights. To be fair, the switch was
inside of a closet- who would have thought! However, I did witness a turning
point in all this among the morass of boxes and I was surprised that it made
such a significant difference, though, had I understood a perplexing point in
this week’s parsha, it shouldn’t have been.
While
wading through the sea of boxes, low on energy and high on stress, we found our
pictures and paintings wrapped in a neat bundle with translucent green
plastic. Perhaps, the one easy thing
about the move was that there were already nails in the wall at more or less
the right place so we could take our pictures and throw them up. Despite the fact that we were less than half
way done, a new motivation took hold. The mood lifted and our pace
hastened. What was behind this
psychological, yet really, spiritual boost?
Of the many subjects dealt with
in this week’s parsha, one of them is about a false prophet. This is a person
who comes with incredible signs and proofs that he is indeed correct, in
contrast to the dated Torah, and he tries to lead others towards ideologies
that are antithetical to Torah. G-d says this is just a test to see if you
really love Him. This is a strange
point, for if we are dealing with a person who comes and tells you interesting
information that seems to disprove Torah and you have other information that
seems to prove Torah and the proof of Torah is stronger, one should go with
that. But what does that have to do with
love? It should say that you should be
smart and hold on to your logic in the face of contradicting logic.
The
answer goes back to our move. When
something is intrinsic to your identity, when it’s you, you fight for it. Therefore, when it is boxes that need
unpacking for the sake of unpacking that is not so motivating. But when a house
becomes yours and it is a reflection of you, then it is easy to make it look
great. With our pictures on the wall, it
became our house and that is something that we want to improve. Similarly, love is when you take something
that was external and merge it with your own personal identity. That is the idea
of the verse. G-d doesn’t want us to believe in Him because of a proof based on
logic alone. That would be weak and
shift according to the information of the times. He wants us to connect because we have the
correct observation that our true eternal self is really a part of G-d. It is that self-identification that defeats
any proof against it because it is a bond that exists from a deeper place than
the intellect.
