The Comforting Father

Do you ever want something from someone else? Something only they can give you? You have two choices when it comes to this request. A. You can rationalize why they should grant your request or B. beg or plead. I don’t really mean beg, more like calling on some inner part of your relationship with them that would evoke a response to respond to your request.

Which approach makes more sense? Well if you were Moses and had been nominated for a job you didn’t ask for or want (taking the Jews out of Egypt), then the job evolves (again without your consent) into a full time position (leading the Jews for the next 40 years), and the job isn’t a fun one (Jews kvetching all the time) it would seem that the right approach would be approach A above. Moses wants to go into the land of Israel just for a moment to see the land, to kiss the land and then to die. He lost the privilege because of the events surrounding the hitting of the rock. So, now Moses approaches G-d for one shot at having his life long dream fulfilled. But instead of demanding the obvious – that he is entitled to this one request – he pleads before G-d to give him a “free” gift. Free in this context means that it is given out of G-d’s compassion not out of an entitlement.

Why? Why does Moses take this approach?

This Shabbos is the recovery Shabbos from the three weeks, the period of time that we commemorate the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem and the beginning of the current exile. Our suffering throughout the ages, and the suffering of our brothers and sister in Israel entitles us to all the blessing that one can possibly imagine. And yet if we approach G-d with an argument of entitlement we would be missing out on the real opportunity.

In the realm of the rational, no matter how profound the rationale might be, the relationship goes only as deep as the intellect. Since the mind is finite, once you have maximized the intellect the relationship hits a short stop. When we approach G-d as Moses did, namely, ‘G-d give me a “free gift”, not because I deserve it, not because of anything that I have done for you, but simply because you are G-d and I am your child’, when we approach G-d in this manner we expose our very essence and connect with G-d’s very essence.

During this week as we experience Shabbos Nachamu – the Shabbos of comfort – we turn to G-d and ask Him to comfort us like a father comforts his child. Not because we deserve it, but because He is our father and what else would a father want other than to comfort his suffering child. How can a father refuse a request like that from his child?

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