ספר דברים

Deuteronomy 10,12. “and now, Israel, what dos the ‎Lord your G’d ask of you other than to revere and be in ‎awe?” It is a well known rule in Judaism that we must ‎each endeavour to be modest, humble, in all our aspirations as ‎well as in all our undertakings. In the event that someone were to ‎misinterpret this rule as extending also to the manner in which ‎we relate to serving the Lord, this would be a gross error; on the ‎contrary we must constantly remember that our deeds in terms ‎of serving the Lord are of the utmost importance to Him, and we ‎must therefore try to excel in that realm of our activities. Seeing ‎that our “service” provides Him with pleasure it is logical that we ‎must strive to provide Him with as much “pleasure” as it is ‎possible for us to do. If we were to extend the principle of ‎modesty and humility to the way in which we serve the Lord, and ‎present it as part of our modesty, this would in fact be akin to ‎blasphemy.‎Our sages have alluded to this subject in Sotah 5 where ‎the Talmud says that among people excommunicated there are ‎some that are haughty and others that are not. The Talmud had ‎previously recommended that Torah scholars must possess a ‎minimum of visible self respect known as sh’minit ‎be’shminit, (smallest unit of measuring devices) as otherwise ‎ordinary people, instead of revering them, would belittle them, ‎and if that were to happen they would in fact belittle the Torah ‎knowledge that such scholars represent. According to our author, ‎the very fact that we must provide G’d with “pleasure” through ‎our service implies that we ourselves will have some satisfaction ‎of having been the vehicle to cause G’d such “pleasure.” If we ‎were to be too modest, how could we feel privileged to have been ‎this vehicle of G’d’s “pleasure?”‎Our sages in Chagigah 7 are on record that the Israelites ‎provide G’d with His sustenance. Receiving one’s sustenance ‎certainly results in the recipient “enjoying” some pleasure from ‎the experience. This is what Moses had in mind when he asked ‎the rhetorical question: “what does the Lord your G’d ask of you? ‎The virtue of ‎יראת השם‎, “reverence for the Lord,” is none other ‎than the virtue of humility. Our sages in Chulin 89 dwell on ‎the relative humility and modesty of Avraham and Moses, ‎quoting various verses on the subject. They conclude that when ‎Moses said of himself and his brother Aaron: ‎ונחנו מה‎, “and what ‎do we amount to?” [omitting even the letter ‎א‎ from the ‎word ‎אנחנו‎ for “we,” Ed.] that this is the level of humility ‎that G’d expects of each of us. In other words, whereas ‎concerning all other attributes, humility must accompany them ‎in order for the owner to practice them optimally, when it comes ‎to reverence for the Lord, such considerations are ‎counterproductive; fear/reverence/awe of the Lord must be ‎maximized so as to provide the Lord with a maximal amount of ‎‎“pleasure.”‎