""If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments and do them," the cantor's voice is heard during the Torah reading this morning. "And you will eat your bread to the full and dwell securely in your land..." The cantor reads the parasha in his voice - and memories of the mashgichi's conversations come flooding back. "If you walk in my statutes - that you will be laborers in the Torah," he would say in his voice. "When a young man sits and labors in the Torah, he receives an insurance certificate from the Creator of the world! 'And you will eat your bread to the full and dwell securely in your land' - if a person fulfills the commandments of God, he is guaranteed spiritual and material abundance, economic and security stability, all of which are earned through the labor of the Torah!""
I finished the prayer, and as I folded my tefillin, I pondered the meaning of the verses. The Creator of the world promises His children rain, livelihood, security, and stability in return for the labor of the Torah. Abundance is within reach. Security can be obtained with a simple effort: a minimal sacrifice of setting times for the Torah.
As if by perfect timing, as I got into the car, a festive advertisement came over the radio from the 'Kollel Avrechim', which is conducting a special and rare tidak on the day of the celebration of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai: "Waiting for a match? Want to be counted in the seed of a lasting one? Need complete healing? Call the Yeshuat Line today..."'
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If it weren't sad, it would be funny.
It's time to denounce greed.
But we got used to it. We got used to the commercialization of the festivities and the transformation of the great men of the generation into a marketing gimmick; we got used to the pictures of the rabbis that appear on fundraising flyers and the commercial marketing of 'Rivat Rabbi Ovadia' and 'Nerot Rabbi Kaduri'. We see it every day on billboards, listen to these announcements on the radio - and ignore it. But when someone on the street shouts 'blackmailers' at us, and when the people of Israel lose faith in the institution of the rabbinate, we never stop being indignant.
It's time to put an end to this. It's time to denounce within ourselves all those greedy and money-seeking people who blacken the face of Judaism, by commercializing 'virtues and salvations' to the highest bidder. It was so unfortunate to see Maran's picture appear in huge ads that 'sell' his 'miracle jam', while he renounced in his life his becoming a 'master of miracles'.
""This is only the power of the Torah," he would say, "I am not a miracle worker and I do not work salvation. This is all the power of the Torah.".
The true virtue is the work of the Torah.
""If you walk in my statutes - and you eat your bread to the full and dwell in your land in safety, and I will give peace in the land and you will lie down and no one will make you afraid, and I will multiply you and make you fruitful, and I will place my dwelling among you" - the true virtue is the work of the Torah, the original 'line of salvation' is directly to the Creator of the world through prayer from the bottom of the heart, and a true possessor of miracles is a person who works in the Torah and not a manipulative and uninhibited businessman.
If we remember this, if we believe this wholeheartedly, we will be able to influence our surroundings and the people in the fields who are lost and wandering after the miracle workers and the marketers of salvation.
If within ourselves we value and cherish the labors of the Torah, their light will rise and shine throughout the entire world.
