Rabbi Akiva says; ‘love your fellow as yourself is the foundation of the entire Torah’.
I was speaking to someone this week about the importance of commitment. When you are committed to others, even at the expense of your own spiritual service, you look like you are falling behind, but in actuality, you are the closest to G-dliness. If you can’t help others because you are trapped in self-indulgence, even spiritual self-indulgence, you are missing the main ingredients of spirituality; commitment and love for your fellow.
When we do things because we understand them, we remain limited, because understanding itself is limited. However, when the only reason we do something is because it is what we are committed to, then we tap into the infinite.
In this week’s Parsha (and when Moshe gives blessings), Asher is blessed by his father with an abundance of oil, so much so that it says that he will immerse his feet in oil.
Oil always floats to the top. Feet are on the bottom.
When the Jewish people travelled in the dessert, the tribe of Asher trekked at the back of the camp with Dan and Naftali. Asher was the middle tribe, while Dan served as the “lost and found”, collecting what others dropped along the way.
The other tribes traveled closer to the tabernacle. They represented the people who are higher on the spiritual totem pole. Yet they lost things. Dan picked them up and returned them with humility. Dan, traveling the farthest from the spiritual center, aka the tabernacle, was, counterintuitively, the most humble and dedicated. They didn’t have their spiritual hang-ups to lead them astray. Dan taught the power of true humility by example.
Because Asher was in the middle of the “Dan camp”, they embodied both dimensions. They were blessed with abundant joy, health, and beauty, yet traveled with the camp of Dan, at the back of the nation.
The Torah says Asher put their feet in oil. Feet are the lowest part of the body. Asher was blessed because they were humble; helping others and doing the hard and quiet work. Only after they were committed to do what is right, did they enjoy the physical comforts of the world.
Asher was special because although blessed with abundant material wealth, inner joy, health, and beauty, these were used not for power, but to sustain the spiritual life of the entire Jewish people.
If you want to get to the top, if you want to be rich, start at the bottom. The foundation must be absolute commitment to Hashem, even when we don’t understand. A.K.A. humility.
Have a humble Shabbos.
Rabbi Kushi Schusterman