Good morning, everybody, and welcome to Daily Advice. Today I chose to speak about performing commandments with our hands.
We know that God gave us everything we have for a purpose. God did not give a person anything for no reason. There is nothing extra. Do we have extra skin? Of course not. Do we have extra bones? Of course not. Everything God gave you was given so that you could serve Him. Everything God created was for His honor.
When you honor God, He does not need your honor. He wants you to become worthy of merit. Because God wants to give you merit and reward in the World to Come, He gave you beautiful commandments to perform.
You have hands for a reason. Why did God give you hands? Because He wants you to serve Him with your hands. This is very important. From now on, every time I walk around and have an opportunity to perform a commandment with my hands, I will make sure to do so.
Listen carefully. For example, right here, the Pele Yoetz—I had never seen this commandment before. I knew that people did it, but I never realized that it was a commandment: when you enter, you kiss the doorpost scroll. This is phenomenal. I had thought of it as a good practice, connected with the recitation of the Shema and love of God. But to say that kissing the doorpost scroll when you enter is itself a commandment—I had never seen that before. The Pele Yoetz was right: it is a commandment to kiss the doorpost scroll when you enter. Why? Because you should use your hands for commandments. It is beautiful.
Every time you take your phylacteries, wrap them, remove them, and put them away, that is also a commandment and an act of serving God. I am using my hands to serve God.
Listen carefully to the Chafetz Chaim. The Chafetz Chaim writes that just as every person has 248 limbs—you have 248 parts of the body—women, by the way, have 252 parts of the body, four more than we do, as the rabbi says, you also have 248 spiritual limbs. Your soul has spiritual limbs.
Therefore, when a person goes to the World to Come, he has these limbs. As the Ben Ish Chai writes, when a person ascends, the mouth does not really enjoy anything, but the nose does. How does a person smell in Heaven? We have said that what a person says can bring satisfaction in Heaven. What kind of smell is that? I would say that it is a spiritual smell, because a person has a spiritual nose.
How do you strengthen your nose? How do you strengthen your arms? In Heaven, do you lift weights and exercise? Do you bench-press and do curls? Whatever it is that you do, in Heaven it is accomplished through the commandments you perform. When a person performs a commandment, he strengthens the corresponding spiritual limb.
When God gives me arms, every commandment I perform strengthens my arm in Heaven. I would even venture to say—I hope I am right—that if your child performs a commandment with his arm, it strengthens your arm in Heaven as well. Why? Because he performed it with his arm. That is how it works.
My friends, when a person comes to perform a commandment, if he wants to give charity, he gives with his hand, and he strengthens his spiritual arm. When a person places his arm on another person's shoulder to say, “Everything is going to be okay,” he is strengthening that arm. When you pat someone on the back and say something encouraging, you are strengthening the arm.
We must realize that every commandment we perform with our hands is an investment in our spiritual future. So let us use our hands, and may God grant us eternity in our hands and eternity in our bodies, always, with God's help. Amen. Have a great day.