By the Grace of G-d
Dear Friend,
If you are like many people I know, you don’t really feel comfortable asking someone for ‘free gift’.
Likely, you even feel uncomfortable receiving a free gift.
The Talmud goes so far as to say that if someone gave a gift to someone else, there is a resemblance to a ‘sale’ of sorts. To use the Talmudic language ‘if he (the recipient of the gift) would not have done something nice to the giver of the gift, the grantor of the gift would not have given the gift’.
It’s almost to be assumed that there are no truly ‘free’ gifts given.
This does not mean to say that gifts are always a direct ‘payment’ for something nice you did, but it does give the general context from within which giving and receiving takes place.
Allow me to clarify via example.
If someone you didn’t know at all, were to show up on your doorstep on with a bottle of orange juice on Wednesday afternoon and say ‘happy Wednesday’ and hand you the juice you would probably get suspicious and reject it. ‘What do they want?’ you would think.
If however you invited someone for a Shabbat dinner, even someone you don’t know well, and they deliver that same bottle of wine on Friday afternoon with a Shabbat Shalom note, you would accept it graciously.
The difference between the two is that what prompted the wine on Friday, is the good feeling that the host generated for the guest by inviting them. The host feels that this is a reciprocity for his future hospitality. He If one wouldn’t even feel comfortable receiving a free gift, how much more so asking for a free gift.
Again an example.
Imagine you are stuck somewhere with no option to help yourself through whatever predicament you are in. You have two options to reach out for help. A company that provides a paid service. Or a stranger whom you ask for their graciousness and undeserved assistance.
Many people I know, if they can afford it, will ask for help only from someone whom they can reimburse.
Sometimes however, we are put into situations where there is no choice but to ask for and be a recipient of a ‘free gift’. Sometimes the help we got was so major that there is no amount of money that can ever repay the kindness.
The feelings of appreciation in this case are extraordinary.
Infants ask for ‘unearned gifts’ naturally.
They cry till their parents fulfil their needs. Regardless of whether they did something cute that day or not.
Do they think about whether they ‘deserve’ it like a teenager who thinks carefully before asking for a gift? No. they simply ask, cry and cause a tumult till they get what they need.
On the side of the grantor, do the parents think about whether the infant ‘deserves’ it or not as they would when their teenagers asks for something extraordinary? No. the infant is given whatever they need. No questions asked. No deservingness measured.
With children and spouses there are a lot of other details to take into account, but in general relationships between adults in society I think we can safely say that we ask for what we think we ‘deserve’ and we give what think we ‘owe’.
We complain, sometimes vociferously, if we didn’t get service that we feel we paid for. We thank profusely for getting something that we know we didn’t pay for or deserve.
Moshe asks G-d in this weeks Parsha for a ‘free gift’. Moshe wants to go into Israel and prays numerous prayers beseeching G-d for that wish to be granted. The language used in the request ‘Vaetchanan’ denotes asking for ‘matnat chinam’ a free gift.
In other words, Moshe does not ‘call in his chips’ so to speak. He doesn’t come to G-d and say ‘I DESERVE to be allowed my most fervent wish of going into Israel…’. Why not? Why doesn’t he ‘demand’ it based on his years of impeccable service of G-d.
Who would be more deserving than Moshe? A Tzadik of the highest caliber. A ‘servant’ of G-d who did anything and everything on behalf of the Almighty in his role of shepherding the Jewish people. He suffered much indignity from the complaining and sometimes rebellious people he was tasked with leading. He had never looked for the job of leader. It was G-d who didn’t accept Moshe’s reluctance to be a leader. Hashem told Moshe that although he was trying to stay away from a leadership position, this was a mission that G-d absolutely needed him to fulfil.
After all of that sacrifice, you would think that Moshe would be able to ask for his wishes to be fulfilled based on his credentials and his forty years of uninterrupted leadership of G-d’s people.
Yet, our Sages point out, Moshe beseeches G-d for a ‘free gift’. Moshe does not feel he deserves what he is asking. He simply asks G-d as the source of all Kindness and Benevolence to grant him this deepest wish of his, notwithstanding that he doesn’t deserve it and hasn’t ‘earned’ it.
Our Sages went further and said that this is the standard template of the way our great saintly Tzadikim prayed. They didn’t come with the surety and self-assuredness of someone demanding something that is owed them.
The great people who are truly ‘deserving’, turn to Hashem with humility and ask for compassion and kindness from G-d even though in their own eyes they are underserving.
The Sages go further and tell us, regular people, that this is the way we ought to come to G-d as well. Asking for His kindness that we don’t feel deserving of.
There is a great gift in turning to G-d from this context.
If you are new to this concept, it may sound a bit limiting. Isn’t it more powerful to ask for something you deserve?
Actually, there is a great liberty when one is not limited to asking for what one deserves. The parameters are endless.
You see, when in society you ask someone for something, there are limits as to what is asked, and what is given. Usually, the limits are based on what you feel you deserve or owe.
Lets go back to children. In our society many of us are blessed to raise our children to adulthood, even putting them through an educational system until they have the skills to navigate life.
Parents feel obligated to support their children with their needs till that stage.
Children thus grow up feeling that they are entitled to be fed and educated.
This is why mostly we don’t give our parents or expect form our children a humungous thank you when we provide or are provided with the basic needs like room and board.
However, when a child asks for something that they want but don’t ‘need’, something that is totally unnecessary they don’t demand it in the same way that they would ask for food if it was not provided. If they are a ‘mentsch’ they will give extra special thanks for the gift they were given.
In teaching Bar Mitzvah kids I found out that most of them were in the process of negotiating for ‘play station’ computer games with their parents. I found three different versions. Some children got their parents to pay for their computer game as a bar mitzvah gift. Some parents wouldn’t but their kids a game like that, they did provide them with opportunities to earn money though, so they could pay for it themselves. One child told me that he had a deal with his parents that he would pay half and they would pay half. This was interesting to me and I asked him, a sensitive young man that I know him to be, how did he arrive at that ‘deal. He told me that some kids get it fully paid for by their parents, but he feels that it is not right for his parents to pay fully. It is not a requisite like paying for his schooling let’s say. I then asked him why did he think that his parents should chip in fifty percent in buying the play station. To this he responded that since ‘everybody has it’ he feels that he does deserve to get his parents support of at least fifty percent.
The point I gleaned from this, is that when you ask for something you are ‘entitled’ to you can only ask to the point that you feel deserving of.
This limitation does not at all exist when asking for something you don’t deserve. If you are asking for G-d’s compassion for no reason other than G-d is the ultimate of benevolence, you can ask for everything you want.
It works that way with G-d responding to our prayers as well.
When the grantor is giving only what you deserve, there is a measurement and a formula to decide how much to dole out.
When the grantor is giving a totally unearned gift, he wants to give the best gift he can. No need to be limited to the ‘deservingness’ of the recipient.
I think you hear my point.
Turning to G-d and asking for undeserved compassion and kindness from Him, means that on the one hand the prayer is made with humility for you don’t feel deserving. On the other hand, one can ask for everything one truly needs and desires if one is asking for an unearned gift.
You may be asking, how do I truly put myself into the mindset that I am undeserving. You have a good question there. You indeed have done many good deeds. By the way, I have not yet met a person, who has not done many good things. It usually doesn’t take more than a few minutes of discussion with someone, if you ask the right questions, to find out about the many good deeds they have done.
Are we then truly undeserving? We surely are not instructed to just pay lip service and pretend that we feel undeserving when really feeling entitled. The Torah is certainly not telling us to just put on a show.
Let me first explain the following verse In Tehilim (Psalms). It says ‘You, Almighty have compassion, for you pay everyone according to their deeds’.
How does make sense? If G-d ‘pays’ according to ‘deeds’ then why is that compassionate. Isn’t that simply transactional? Like a kid that gets pocket money for doing chores?. Benevolence would be to give pocket money without linking it to helping out in the household.
(If there are kids reading this, let me advise you that in some households, helping out at home is considered basic human decency and is expected, just as mommy providing dinner is a basic expectation. So don’t go telling your parents that the Rabbi said they have to get pocket money for helping out at home…).
Here is what the verse in Tehilim means.
The fact that G-d created a system whereby He asks for something to be done and considers it so valuable that he provides a reward, this very system is a product of G-d’s benevolence.
There are two parts to feeling undeserving.
Stage one.
Imagine telling your kid that you will pay him for every childish picture he makes. Pictures that have no market value, yet you will pay him handsomely.
Then the kid brings you a childish scribble and starts demanding Picasso top of the line art antique prices. Daddy meant paying handsomely he didn’t say he would pay the unusually high prices that famous rare pieces of art fetch. The kid is misguided in this case when he expects overinflated payment.
This is one level of what it means to feel undeserving. To realize that the kindness G-d has given us already exceeds the usual ‘payment’ and reward for the good deeds we did.
It would be like paying for one loaf of bread and getting one extra for free. If you were hungry the next day and didn’t have money you would not ask for a loaf of bread based on yesterday’s payment. Yesterday’s money was used. You would have to ask for the compassion of the baker to help sustain you.
In that scenario its quite simple to understand why we should be humble and non-entitled. We’ve simply ‘withdrawn’ more than we ‘deposited’.
But wouldn’t the Tzadikim have enough merits to get them whatever they want?
A timely analogy may be the billionaires who have enough money to get themselves to outer space. For us, it’s a great enough blessing to have money for air travel. Not everybody has that luxury. Some though, have the gift from G-d of wealth and there is nothing in this physical word in terms of objects that they cannot buy.
The truly righteous are billionaires so to speak in good deeds. Surely they would have enough merits to ask G-d for their prayers to be fulfilled based on entitlement. How and why to they ask for ‘free gifts’ in their prayers.
Get ready for a transformational perspective here.
From an objective reality way of looking, we are so infinitesimally nonexistent before the unlimited energy of G-d that anything we do is pithy and insignificant. Before the vastness and the infinite greatness of G-d we are simply not even as significant as a speck of dust compared to the entire cosmos.
Can our deeds then ever truly entitle us to His attention and kindness?
Yes they can. Because He chose to care about our deeds. If we look at things the way they are according to the ‘rules’ He set forth in the world that He created during he six days of creation, He asked us for our limited human input by doing mitzvahs. And He promised to reward us for those efforts even if they are objectively truly unremarkable human achievements compared to let’s say the celestial holiness of angelic beings.
So as we turn to G-d in prayer, It would behoove us to be soberly mindful of the fact that most of us are probably ‘running on empty’ in terms of what He ‘owes’ us. This should not cause us angst or worry though. Simply it should cause us to come to G-d with our requests with the humility of someone who is asking for something they don’t deserve.
If we take a deeper look, we truly are undeserving. For however much we did, and however well we did it, we are still truly asking G-d for something that we don’t really deserve.
Because the fact that we can talk about deserving or not deserving is as stated in the above verse in Tehilim, a product of His ‘Chessed’ compassionate benevolence and kindness.
This should not make you feel uncomfortable.
This is the way Hashem created our world. As a newborn expects that his mother will nurture him, even as a sheep knows that his shepherd with feed him, we too are dependent on G-ds benevolence. And since He is unlimited and omnipotent, we are in the only truly reliable hands.
See here my Facebook clip this week about how ‘Hashem runs His world’. Part 1 Part 2
And most importantly let us make sure that our levels of gratitude are very high!!! We thank the Almighty for His kindness and compassion of granting us ‘free gifts’ both the ‘natural’ things in life the we grow to get used to and expect, and for the amazing visible miracles that dot our way along our journey in life. Gifts that we don’t deserve, gifts for which we are blessedly and humbly eternally grateful.
With blessings of Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Yosef Kantor