At the beginning of this week’s Parasha “Eikev” (It will be,? If you heed the seemingly insignificant parts of these laws, and safeguard them and carry them out…. (7:12)).
Rashi in his commentary says that although the Hebrew text may be taken to signify “if you hear the heel (Eikev). The heel is the strongest part of the body, and nobody ever acknowledges it. Also it is the part of the body that gives a person support. If the heel breaks you cannot stand up. Seemingly this connotation of the heel is telling us that just as the smaller Mitzvahs we tread on with our heels or in other words we tent to treat them lightly because we see them as unimportant. For example a person could think “what does G-d care if I turn the switch of the light on or off on Shabbat. Doesn’t He have more important things to take care off? And this doesn’t make me a good or bad person.”
But here in this Parasha G-d is telling us that there is no such thing as a big or small Mitzvah, in G-d’s realm everything is the same.
Rabbi Aaron Moss from Australia once received an email from someone complaining that he had sent him an email a few months ago asking him why should we worry with the nuances of small Mitzvahs, like the order in which we put our shoes and tie them up (if you are right handed first you put the right, then the left and then you tie first the left and then the right. If you are a lefty you do it the other way around.)He complained that he never got a response. Rabbi Moss answered back “Ohhh I’m so sorry, I did send you a response, but now I realize I never put the dot in the email. Who would guess that an insignificant dot would be the reason the message was not received.” With this response he answered his question.
Although this “minor” Mitzvahs would seem like the lowest Avodah (work) in our service to G-d in reality they are the ones that allow us to bring G-d into our lives in the most mundane ways.
Live a little higher
