If there will be a man who hates his fellow, and ambushes him, and rises up against him and strikes him mortally…[2]
We picture the hater in this pasuk as an unsavory man of violence, who long harbors murderous intentions towards his neighbor. Something that started with a Hatfields-and-McCoys feud. Not so Chazal.[3] They plot a different route that ends in homicide. “If a person violates a lesser mitzvah, in the end he will violate a more grievous one. If he violates the commandment to love his fellow as himself, [4] he will in turn violate the prohibitions against revenge[5]and hating another Jew.[6] Ultimately, he will be the hater who rises up against his fellow and kills him.”
This is quite remarkable. We are familiar with the idea that one aveirah leads to another. In this passage, we learn that it is not only the commission of a lesser aveirah that can lead to a greater one, but that even refraining from an affirmative obligation, like loving a fellow Jews, and begin a slide that canculminate in the spilling of blood.
This idea is sourced in a verse in Tehillim.[7] “Because he never remembered to do chessed, and pursued the poor and destitute man, and the brokenhearted, to kill him.” Refraining from performing chessed results in killing the downtrodden? Well, yes! Opening the slightest crack for the yetzer hora can lead to violating the cardinal sins of the Torah.
This long, slippery slope to oblivion was apparently the undoing of Menashe. We recall him as one of the most evil of all our kings. Yet Chazal[8] don’t see him as a sociopath from childhood. Rather, they see his career in lawlessness beginning with what looks like a victimless crime: deriving lessons from Torah texts that have nothing to do with the Torah’s intent. Here, too, a relatively small infraction provided Menashe with the impetus to hugely expand his portfolio of sin.
The principle that we’ve uncovered is also at the root of another teaching of Chazal:[9] “Run to an easy mitzvah, and flee from aveirah. For one mitzvah drags along another, and an aveirah drags another aveirah. For the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and that of an aveirah is another aveirah.” Rav Ovadia MiBartenura explains that this happens in two ways. First, is simply a fact of life that performing one mitzvah makes it easier for us to do the next one. Second, Hashem facilitates that the mitzvah-performer will have other opportunities to add to his mitzvah accomplishment.
We could add that this doesn’t happen as a “reward” in the conventional sense. Rather Hashem designed the world in such a way that a natural consequence of doing mitzvos is that they drag along others in their wake. Regretably, this happens with aveiros as well. This may be the reason why Chazal urge us to run to perform a mitzvah. In other words, not only should we perform mitzvos with alacrity when they present themselves to us, but we should run towards them in anticipation – because there is no more effective way to fleeing from aveirah than running towards a mitzvah!
This may be Chazal’s intent (in the passage cited above) when they warn us “If a person violates a lesser mitzvah, in the end he will violate a more grievous one.” The “lesser mitzvah” is running after mitzvah opportunities! Failing to be more protective of his spiritual state, and passing up the chance to flee from aveirah by running towards mitzvos, is itself a chink in his spiritual armor that can, in time, lead him to ruination.
Ramchal[10] explains the two types of examination and inspection (yefashfesh/yemashesh) Chazal[11] instruct us to conduct regularly. One is to ensure that we are acting properly. The other is to ferret out imperfections within the mitzvos that we do! Are they done fully l’shem Shomayim, or have other considerations intruded?
Perhaps the running towards a mitzvah is the way to guarantee that the performance itself will not be marred by imperfections.
- Adapted from Be’er Moshe, by the Ozherover Rebbe zt”l ↑
- Devarim 19:11 ↑
- Sifrei loc. cit. ↑
- Vayikra 19:18 ↑
- Ibid. ↑
- Vayikra 19:17 ↑
- Tehillim 109:16 ↑
- Sanhedrin 99b ↑
- Avos 2:4 ↑
- Mesilas Yesharim chap. 3 ↑
- Eruvin 13b ↑