Just a little love in return

And now, O Israel, what does the Lord, your G-d, ask of you? Only to fear the Lord, your G-d, to walk in all His ways and to love Him, and to worship the Lord, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul, to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes, which I command you this day, for your good. [Deuteronomy 10:12-13]

The great late bluesman B.B. King once complained to his father that a friend was no longer talking to him. The junior King had lent his friend money and now the latter was avoiding him.

Daddy King, who spent most of his life driving either a mule or a tractor in the Deep South, told his son the facts of life: “Your friend is keeping away because he can’t pay back the money and he’s ashamed to admit it. Next time a friend asks you for a loan, just give him the money without any strings attached.”

In this week’s Torah portion, Eikev, Moses recounts the miracles and other gifts G-d gave His people. The enemies of the Jews are gone; the Chosen Ones are the picture of health, and soon they will enter a land flowing with milk and honey.

How do you repay the Almighty? You can’t, and so, like B.B.’s friend, the Children of Israel avoided G-d, perhaps out of shame or even resentment. The arrogant among them even dared to say, “We did it all.”

Except unlike B.B., G-d’s gifts were not a loan. Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, or Rashi, says Moses is telling his people: “G-d demands nothing of you, except to fear Him.”

How do you fear G-d? Is it like fearing the Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, one of the most violent gangs in the world and in control of much of downtown Los Angeles? Is it like being one of the 300 Italians living near Stromboli, the volcano that has been erupting for more than 2,000 years?

Not really. Fear of G-d begins with humility. Physically, man is no more than a speck in G-d’s universe. We recite this every morning, “What are we; what are our lives; what is our grace; what is our righteousness; what is our salvation, what is our strength, what is our heroism?”

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev writes in his tract Kedushat Levi that one must be humble in every aspect of his life. The exception is when he is serving G-d. Then, that person must believe that his faith and service make G-d happy. In other words, the actions of man are central to the Almighty. Dismissing that amounts to blasphemy.

Levi Yitzhak lived in one of the most cataclysmic of times for the Jewish people. At the end of the 18th Century, Napoleon Bonaparte was sweeping through Europe and the Middle East, conquering countries in the name of France. Formally, he abolished religious persecution, and several times promised Jews their first freedom since the destruction of the Second Temple more than 1,700 years earlier. The French general was quoted as even promising to return the Jews to the Land of Israel.

Levi Yitzhak’s colleagues in Russia were divided. Some of them, particularly the hasidic rabbis Yisrael Hopstein and Mendel of Ryminov, cheered Napoleon and prayed that he would defeat Moscow. But Shneyer Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Lubavitch, warned that Napoleon was more dangerous than the Jew-hating Czar Alexander. For all his talk of liberty and equality, the Frenchman made it clear that he wanted the Jews to lose their religion, which soon would make them disappear. Alexander was oppressive, but at least he believed in a higher being. Napoleon believed only in himself.

Sometimes a powerful man can effect change merely by his behavior rather than his actions. George H.W. Bush seemed pale compared to his predecessor Ronald Reagan, the great Cold War warrior and Hollywood veteran. But Bush tried to remain low-key, taught by his mother not to be a braggart.

The irony was that within months Bush achieved what Reagan and his predecessors hadn’t done in more than 40 years. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down; the Warsaw Pact disintegrated; East Germany faded into oblivion. Bush hadn’t lifted a finger.

Still, the president was urged by aides and friends to take credit, to declare this an American victory. The Stars and Stripes had whipped the Hammer and Sickle. The communist threat was over. This called for a celebration.

Bush refused. Unlike his colleagues, he did not believe in legacy. Moreover, he was intent on negotiating with his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, and knew that “dancing on the wall,” as he put it, would end all prospects of cooperation with the Kremlin, which still possessed 30,000 nuclear weapons.

“Just think if we had done something to exhort Eastern Europe to go to the barricades and…manifest freedom in the way we thought best,” Bush, a former CIA director, wrote in his diary. “You would’ve had chaos, and the danger of military action, bloodshed, just to make a few critics feel good.”

Humility also allows man to appreciate G-d’s gifts. The Talmud says the only thing man can attain is fear of the Almighty. Any other achievement is illusory. Still, says Rashi, the observance of the Torah goes beyond achievement or even obedience: It is meant to help the Jew.

It is not for nothing, rather for your own good, that you should receive a reward.

But G-d doesn’t want you to stop there. From fear, He wants you to love Him. Chaim Bin Attar, known as the Or Hachayim, puts it this way: “Fear is the entrance to the gate of love.”

G-d loves those who fear Him and wants that love to be mutual. And why not? Doesn’t He give man his daily bread, family, comfort and everything that goes with it? And there’s no bill at the end, just a reminder that He’d like some love as well.