Ki Savo - Pillars

The world stands on three pillars: Torah, avodah, and Gemilus Chassadim. (Avos, 1:2)

Foundations.

Ki Savo tells us the secret to living.

Bring the choicest. The first fruits. Your pride and glory. The edge of your strength.

Rambam writes, “Anything designated for Hashem should be from the finest.” (Mishna Torah, Issurei Hamizbeach 7:11)

The finest.

For the farmer, that meant the first ripened figs. Not what’s left at the end.

For me, it’s the first hour of the day.

Tefilah, Torah, a thought I write before the world floods in.

If I don’t seize it for Him, something else will take it.

If the pillars are fed scraps, the house trembles.

I know this; I know you know this. I waste an hour, and more than an hour is lost. A part of my soul is atrophied.

Do you even wonder why a day can be lost even though you only wasted a bit of it?

Torah given in your dullest hours, half awake, distracted, leaves the pillar weak.

Avodah, mumbled at the end of the day, if at all, shakes under its own weight.

Gemilus Chassadim, done only when convenient, cracks in the middle.

You feel it when the foundations shift. The world wobbles under your feet.

The farmer took his best fruit to the Beis Hamikdash.

That is what steadied the earth beneath him.

So too with us.

First strength, first thought, first coin given up, and the world holds firm.

If your first actions are selfish, your world will shake.

If your first actions are to take and not give, you have nothing to stand on.

If, first thing in the morning, you grab your phone to imbibe and to drink from the fountain of death, the rest of your day is spent reeling in the aftermath, like a hangover that won’t go away.

This is the reason for the curses.

The world cannot stand when you weaken the pillars.

A Gibor knows his first fruits and his self-worth, and he activates his world.

He activates his Torah, his Avodah, and his Chessed.

He braces them with his edge.

Because the house we live in is not safe unless the foundations are strong.