When you go

THE BIG IDEA

This weekend is an excellent time to (re) establish your relationship with the Torahs’ 613 spiritual councils. Do your best to see the mitzvot as a set of advices designed to guide you through the changing circumstances and unconscious moral pressures on your daily life. 

For example, When you go to war (Ki Teizai ) as any Israeli soldier or their family will tell you - you don't come back the same. 

Take time to appreciate that returning from war unconsciously changes the soldier and with him/her- the ethical fabric of an entire society.  This week’s 74 spiritual councils, the most to consider in any single week, might seem random and irrelevant — but they speak to the dis-regulation that comes as a result of war, and any of life’s harsh realities. Pressures that effect everything in a society ranging from marriage, parental respect, the treatment of property and animals, business and farming practices, divorce, and even sexual violations.

The final advice is the spiritual requirement to COMPLETELY ERADICATE the memory of our mortal enemy AMALEK - pure irredeemable evil in the world - that we must never forget what they did and vow to completely remove them from our midst. 

Ethical does not mean soft and fuzzy. Morally aligned people sometimes go to war and have to kill.

What makes the practitioners of Moses’ Torah special is the humility to admit that our “morals” are subject to influence - offering concrete advices to help you stay aligned with the path of light in moments and times we are blinded by the opacity of evil and spiritual gunk.