A Vort On Parshas Eikev: The Time Is Now!

00:15 In this week's Parsha, Moshe Rabbeinu tells the Jewish people like this. I'm gonna read the passage for you, okay? "Ve'ata Yisroel," and now, Jewish people. He's talking to the Jewish people. He says, "And now, Jewish people," What is Hashem asking of you? Not much. He's not asking of you much. Only, the only thing he wants from you, that you should be afraid of Hashem. Now, that's a little strange, isn't it? Doesn't Hashem want a lot more than just one thing from us? He wants us to daven, and learn Torah, and, and keep Shabbos, and keep kosher, and, and do mitzvahs. Why is Moshe Rabbeinu saying, "And now, Jewish people, just remember, all Hashem wants from you is only one thing, be afraid of Hashem"? What does he mean by that? So obviously, what does it mean to be afraid of Hashem? Are you afraid of Hashem because he's gonna give you a punishment? He's gonna punish you and make you feel bad? Of course not. That's not why we should be afraid of Hashem. Just imagine the Rebbe. The Rebbe shows up in your room, and you're just about to do something mischievous or something you shouldn't be doing, something that the Torah says is not a good thing for a Jew to do, and suddenly you see the Rebbe in front of you. How would you feel then? Would you be, feel afraid that the Rebbe's gonna punish you? Of course not. The Rebbe never punished anybody. But you'd be ashamed. You'd be embarrassed.

01:57 Such a great tzadik, a Rebbe, standing and watching and looking at me. How can I do something so terrible, right? It's the same thing. If a person is always aware that Hashem is always looking at you, and you're aware of that all the time, you'll never do an aveira. And this is what Moshe Rabbeinu's telling to the Jewish people. "And now, Jewish people, all Hashem wants from you is one thing. Be afraid of Hashem." What does that mean? Always remember that Hashem is looking at you the whole time. He's with you in the room, and he's looking at you, and he's seeing what you're doing. And if you only realize that, you'll never do any of the aveira, and you'll do all the mitzvahs properly. So it's the only thing Hashem is asking, is to be embarrassed and ashamed in front of Hashem to do the wrong thing. That means to be afraid of Hashem. But here's the other question. Why does it say, "Ve'ata"? And now, why does it have to say now? About tomorrow you shouldn't be afraid of Hashem? Why is Moshe Rabbeinu saying, "And now, Jewish people, what is Hashem asking of you? Only to be afraid." Now? Why now? Jewish people, remember, Hashem wants you to be afraid of him. Why does he s- start off by saying, "And now"? What, only now? So our Hakhamim say a very interesting thing. Whenever Moshe Rabbeinu uses the word "and now," he's, he's talking about teshuva. Not only should you be afraid

03:24 of Hashem, but even if, chas v'Shalom, you slipped for a moment and you forgot about Hashem looking at you, and you did an aveira. The yetzer hara came, made you do an aveira. So at that moment you didn't remember that Hashem was watching you, so you weren't ashamed, so you did the aveira. But how do you get back? How do you get back and realizing again that Hashem is watching you, and again not doing an aveira again? How do you do that? Ve'ata, now. A person, the yetzer hara is very, very clever. You know what the yetzer hara does? First, he makes the person do an aveira. First, he makes you forget, makes you forget that Hashem is standing right next to you and looking at you. Then once you forget that Hashem is standing next to you, he says, "Ah, now I'm gonna make him excited about the aveira." And when you get the excitement of the aveira, you know, it's so hard to say no, so you do the aveira. But then the yetzer hara doesn't stop there. He knows that as a beautiful, wonderful Jewish child with a neshamah, who has a special neshamah, you wanna do teshuva right away because you feel bad. "Why did I do this? How could I forget for one moment that Hashem is standing here?" So you wanna say sorry to Hashem. He says, "Yeah, yeah, you can say sorry, but you don't have to do it now. Wait till tomorrow, maybe the next day. Let's

04:44 take your time, you know. You don't have to rush." Says Moshe Rabbeinu, "No, no, no, no, no, no. The moment you realize I did a, a, made a, did a bad thing, and the moment you realize you have to say sorry to Hashem and do teshuva, do it now, and now. You should try now to fix what you have done because you forgot that Hashem is watching you, and then you'll be afraid of Hashem again right away, and it will never happen again." The yetzer hara wants you to wait till tomorrow, so in the meantime, he's gonna make you do another aveira, another aveira. You know, he's a, he's a very, very clever, mean guy. So I'll just tell you a quick story so that can help you understand this. In the time of the Baal Shem Tov, there was a story with a Jew. I think I told it to you on Klimovitch, the stories of Klimovitch. I think that story was on that, um, podcast. So but it's g- it's a good story to review. You know, there was two Jews. They were very close friends, and one Jew had a lot of money that he had put in his closet. You know, which he had made money in business. He had, um, earned a lot of money, so he put it in his closet. His friend, who was very close to him, and he could walk into his house anytime. They had keys to each other's houses because they were s- so

06:00 close, and they trusted each other. And the friend goes into his friend's house, and he sees that the closet is open, and there's a lot of money there, and he felt that his friend is not being responsible. You don't leave so much money lying in a closet unlocked. What if a ganav comes in? He can just take the money and run away. So he wanted to teach his friend a lesson, and he took the money out of the closet, and he hid it in his house. So when his friend comes back and sees the money is gone, he would say, "Oi, what did I do? I left the closet unlocked." And he'll be very upset. He'll learn a lesson, and he won't do this again, and then I'll give him back the money. I'll tell him, "It was just a lesson I tried to teach you. I took the money away because..." But what happened in the end? The friend came home, saw the closet was empty. Not only did he cry, he fainted. And the friend, when he saw that, oh, he said, "Oh my, I didn't think he's gonna faint. Now I'm gonna tell everybody that..." And the people came to the house to see why he fainted. A lot of people from the whole town came to see. And he says, "What am I gonna say now? Oh, I took the money? People will look at me very strange. You did this terrible thing. You took his money to teach him a

07:08 lesson? But look what you did. He fainted. You should never do such a thing. And I'll be so embarrassed in front of everyone." So he decided, "You know, I'll wait. I'll wait." And what happened? The yetzer hara made him wait. And then he felt again, "Oi, should I bring it back today?" The next day, and the next day. Every day he said, "Oh no, if I bring it back today, I'll feel so bad because he's gonna look at me and say, 'Why did you wait so long?'" So he kept putting it off and putting it off till he didn't know what to do, because the yetzer hara made it harder and harder and harder to do teshuva. In the end, what happened, if you remember the story well, the Baal Shem Tov met him on the road. I'm making the story short, but you remember the whole long story, right? Baal Shem Tov met him on the road one day and s- and called him over. Baal Shem Tov saw Baruch HaKodesh. What happened to this man? And this man felt so terrible. And then Baal Shem Tov says, "Don't worry. Just go back now and give him back his money." When you wanna do teshuva, don't wait, and don't worry that people are gonna look at you funny, that you did this terrible thing. The moment you can do teshuva, do it immediately, because if you wait another day and another day, yetzer hara's gonna drag on until you can never do it, can

08:16 never do it. That's his trick. Yetzer hara's trap. So don't do it. So that's V'ata Yisroel. Now say the chachamim in the Midrash, they say chacham. Now, if you're gonna do teshuva, do it now. Don't wait even one second. A good Shabbos.