Re'eh Make it you

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.