Are there really siblings without rivalry? Well, there are books that claim this can be possible, but I find these sibling squabbles all but inevitable. After a week at his grandmother’s, my oldest son returned home to find that certain diminutive member of his family had seized possession of all of his toys, and the younger ones had to return their prizes to their original owner. I reminded them that returning lost objects is a mitzvah outlined in this week’s Torah portion. While the five year old, the owner of the toys, seemed to comprehend this well, the younger one (not surprisingly) took some time before putting this mitzvah into action, and not without resistance (but Baruch Hashem, we finally encouraged him to succeed).
I was thinking about how these battles and challenges in childhood is similar to our physical and spiritual journey in this world. The Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches the first line of this week’s Torah portion of Ki Teize “When you go forth to battle with your enemies,” is like the soul’s task in this world. The source of the neshama, or the Jewish soul, transcends creation and exists in perfect unity with G-d. When a soul leaves this exalted place and has to enter a body and be burdened with physical existence, the process is like a battle against one’s enemies in a foreign land.
Eventually, though, the soul can find peace in this world and a reminder of its former ideal state through doing mitzvahs, or commandments. Holiness is found even in the most ordinary objects, and when a Jew uses an object for a mitzvah, the true essence of the object is revealed. The booty in this “war” is the process of compiling mitzvahs and reaching higher and higher spiritual levels within this world. What follows is the soul’s building a true home in this world, (it is said the whole purpose of creation is that a person should build a dwelling place for G-d in this world), as expressed in the beginning words of next week’s parsha, Ki Tavo “When you come into the Land the L-rd your G-d gave you as an inheritance.” When all of Israel will return to the Holy Land with Moshiach (the Messiah), and will perform all of the mitzvos with the building of the Beis Hamikdash, then the soul will experience the unity with G-d that existed in the higher worlds.
Greeting this era of Moshaich is like being born and growing up. In fact, our children can teach us these lessons through example. In a baby’s cry is the soul’s discomfort with the physical condition. When toddlers fight over toys, they are not waging war with each other, but with themselves and their own desires that need constant patience (Hashem give me this patience!) and instruction to tame. It is like the children instinctively know that on a higher level, they are all part of one soul, the collective soul of Israel, but the newness of the burden of the physical condition makes fights over $1 plastic toys made in Taiwan all the more desperate. They are not only burdened with physical things, having been nothing but pure souls just a few years earlier, they are also overwhelmed by the strength of their desires and perhaps, on an unconscious soul level, upset at this. Just another reminder of the patience and compassion needed for raising children (and the constant need to develop this compassion and patience, which comes naturally only to a gifted few).
When we teach children mitzvos, like returning “lost” objects, we give then tools to deal with their overwhelming physical condition. We introduce the essence of what their souls remember; a unity with each other and a unity with G-d. While the “animal soul” might initally resist these instructions, the child knows, in the depth of his soul, that the mitzvah is what he truly craves, and this is how a mitzvah can be taught as something we know the children, in essence, really want to do. Simply, because, given the nature of his soul, he does.
As we help our children and ourselves connect to our spiritual source through a life of Torah and mitzvos, we can bring a personal return of our souls to their heavenly source, and redemption to the whole world.