Highlighting: “Aleinu: The Power and the Pride” by Yisroel Besser. Mesorah Publications Ltd. 2024. Hardcover. 240 pages. ISBN-13: 978-1422641767.
יַכִּֽירוּ וְיֵדְֿעוּ כָּל יוֹשְֿׁבֵי תֵבֵל. All the world’s inhabitants will recognize and know…
(Courtesy of Artscroll) The Mishnah (Avos 4:4) says that when it comes to the aveirah of chillul Hashem, a shogeig, one who sins inadvertently, is considered to be the same as a meizid, one who sins intentionally. Why should this be the case, in contrast to the rest of the Torah?
Rav Yitzchak Dovid Gutfarb would use a story to explain this, telling of a factory owner from Yerushalayim who dispatches a trusted employee to go pick up a new piece of equipment from the unloading docks in Haifa. The owner parts from his employee, wishing him a safe trip and telling him to send regards to his cousin who lives in Haifa.
The employee sets off spending his day in the coastal city. The next morning, he returns to work and the boss eagerly asks where the new item is. The employee explains that he didn’t get to pick it up from the dock because he got busy enjoying the sights while in Haifa.
“But don’t worry,” he says brightly, “I did get to give over regards to your cousin, so the trip was a success!”
The factory owner is incensed. “The purpose of your trip to Haifa was to pick up the equipment, and the regards to my cousin was just an afterthought because you were going there anyhow,” he tells his foolish employee. “Had you come back with the equipment and forgotten to give the regards, that would have been fine, but to come back with just the regards is to have totally missed the point!”
A person comes into this world for a purpose: to bring honor and glory to Hashem’s Name. That is the point of the mission, as the pasuk says: kol hanikrah vishmi vilichvodi birasiv yitzartiv af asisiv — Everyone who is called by My Name, and whom I have created for My glory, whom I have fashioned, even perfected “(Yeshayah 43:7).
To be in this world and use that opportunity to desecrate the Name of Hashem, even if it was b’shogeig, inadvertent, defeats the very purpose of Creation.
A Yid lives with a mission at every moment of every day, and that is to proclaim, with his every action, that there is a Creator in the world.
* Reprinted from Aleinu- The Power and the Pride by Yisroel Besser with permission from the copyright holder, ArtScroll Mesorah Publications.
