Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Daily Advice. Here we go, with God’s help.
We are facing Yom HaDin, with God’s help, in three more days. In three days, we will have the Day of Judgment. Everyone is being told: repentance, prayer, and charity tear up the decree.
A person may ask, “What should I do repentance for? There are so many things—lighter and more serious sins, positive commandments, and negative commandments. I have no idea where to begin.” When you give a person a major goal or mission, and he has no idea how to accomplish it, he asks, “Where do I start?”
I would imagine that the best thing a person could do is tackle one sin—but choose one sin that, when removed from his account, makes a very significant deduction, a tremendous deduction. That sin is the sin of desecrating God’s Name.
Today, Moshe chose the topic of desecrating God’s Name. What does it mean to desecrate God’s Name? What does desecration mean? Why does the Torah say, “Do not make your words mundane”? A person has to understand that Judaism is not an ordinary religion. It is not. It is the religion of the Creator of the world. It is the religion in which a chosen person comes into the world. You were chosen to be a Jew. The Creator of the world chose your soul for a tremendous mission—a lofty mission, a mission of sanctity and holiness.
Therefore, when we act like people who desecrate God’s Name, we are saying that the entire religion is meaningless.
There is a gentleman who watches this class every day, and I think he passes it on to his family. He is a gentile; he is not Jewish. He watches Daily Advice every day. Yesterday, he was speaking with me. He came to ask me for advice about something, and I asked him, “May I ask you a question? What has your journey been? Why are you asking me a question? You ask me a question, and I will ask you a question. What has your journey been?”
He was born into a belief in other religions, not Judaism, so I asked him about that. He said that he had been raised as a Catholic, but that his family never truly believed in that religion. They always believed that God was the supreme divine Being, that He could not be divided, and that He did not have a son. They believed that the Torah is true.
What helps foster that belief? We do. When we, as Jews, act with integrity, kindness, and a good word, we are telling the world, “Look at the difference between other religions and our religion. Take a look.” We are the people of the Book.
There are also people in other religions who study books, including priests who study the history of the Torah, but there is no Torah like our Torah. Therefore, we have to demonstrate it: the way you behave while waiting in line at the grocery store, the way you behave in line at the gas station, the way you wait for a train, the way you behave in traffic, and the way you behave in front of your children.
There can be a desecration of God’s Name in front of your children. If you are a religious person but you are fake—if you curse when you become angry—you are showing your children that there are exceptions to religion. You are teaching them that there are times when you do not have to act like a religious person, that there are times when you are “on,” times when you are “off,” times when you are religious, and times when you take a vacation from religion. There is no such thing. That is a desecration of God’s Name.
It says here that this is the greatest sin in the Torah: the desecration of God’s Name. The greatest sin. Therefore, if a person wants to remove one large portion from the scale of his sins, he should make sure that he does not desecrate God’s Name.
This is not a positive commandment that you must actively perform. Rather, make sure that you do not desecrate God’s Name—not in front of gentiles. According to Rav Dessler, that is the least serious form of it; not in front of Jews, either. For example, a religious Jew sees another religious Jew and says, “Look at the way he parks. He blocked my driveway.” That is a desecration of God’s Name, my friends.
And it must not take place in your own eyes, either. In your own eyes, you have to recognize how wonderful the Torah is, how wonderful the Creator of the world is, how wonderful the religion is, and how wonderful you are.
If we do that, the Creator of the world will give us a sanctification of His Name. We will show the world how exclusive our club is. That will cause other people to appreciate not only us, but also the Torah and God. May that bring us a good and blessed year, and a truly wonderful day.