Musar zu Bereschit 26:5

How pleasant is the Musar of Love. Anyone whom Hashem loves, God brings down upon them suffering. You find three good gifts that God gave to Israel; and they were only given by way of suffering. These are them: Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come.

Now, when these three powers are gathered within a man, his soul is drawn by its very nature to love the Creator, blessed be He. When he loves Him, his service will be completely perfect. For from that love there will come fear, for whomsoever a man loves, he also fears. It is also possible for a man to fear someone he does not love. Therefore, I say that fear is contained within love, but love is not contained within fear. Now, we have found that the service of our father, Abraham, peace be upon him, was completely perfect, for it says concerning him (Genesis 18:19), “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord.” This is clear proof of his great righteousness. Moreover, the Creator, blessed be He, testified concerning him after his death, when he said (ibid., 26:5), “Because Abraham hearkened to My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws,”.

Rashi tells us in Genesis 26,5, that the term חק is used in the Torah when the legislation is such that it offers Satan an opportunity to challenge its logic. He quotes the prohibition of eating pork as an additional example.

We are taught in Chulin 91a that the choice of that word, i.e. אבק, dust, indicates that the dust stirred up during this struggle rose all the way to the throne of Glory -which is not complete, as we shall set out to show. The meaning of the word "he touched," is similar to the English "he touched a sore point." Samael had found something in Jacob's lifestyle which he thought he could turn into an accusation against him. This was the fact that Jacob had married two sisters while both were alive. He should not have done so, since the patriarchs had accepted for themselves the laws of the Torah which had not yet been officially formulated. Nachmanides writes about this at length in his commentary on Genesis 26, 5 where the Torah credits Abraham with having observed all of G–d's statutes. According to Nachmanides the patriarchs assumed this obligation as valid only while they resided in the land of Israel; the word מפשט used in the verse is by definition legislation that varies from country to country. G–d's משפטים apply only in G–d's country, ארץ ישראל. When Jacob married two sisters he did not live in the land of Israel. Samael's accusation was by necessity based on the yardsticks that Jacob claimed to live by. He argued that a man of Jacob's stature whose features were engraved on G–d's throne should not have taken advantage of the fact that technically he was allowed to marry two sisters, for did he not carry the atmosphere of ארץ ישראל with him wherever he went? We are familiar with such expressions as אבק רבית, something not actually an interest payment but nonetheless giving the impression that someone rendered a service for free which would have been charged for had the recipient of the service not been a lender to the person rendering the service. We have a similar expression when dealing with the laws of לשון הרע, evil gossip. The Tosephta Avodah Zarah 1, 10 describes four areas in which the term אבק is used halachically. All of them are not transgressions that are dealt with by the Courts, but are matters of individual piety. When the Talmud described the "dust" of the struggle between Jacob and the guardian angel of Esau as having risen to the throne of G–d, what is meant is that the issue was such a paralegal impropriety committed by Jacob as marrying two sisters outside the boundaries of ארץ ישראל.

This is the meaning of: ושמרתם את המצות, אל תקרי המצות אלא המצוות. This statement is not a suggestion to read the text differently, but when reading this verse, not to restrict its meaning to the particular מצוה of unleavened bread, but to use the example of how we fulfil this מצוה as a model for the way we relate to all מצוות.

The overwhelming number of מצות recorded in this portion of the Torah do not apply in our times and can be fulfilled only during periods when the Temple is functioning. Even such commandments as פתוח תפתח, "keep opening your hand, to the poor," can only be fulfilled by people who are economically capable. A person who hardly has enough to get by cannot even fulfill this commandment. Even when the Temple was standing one could not fulfill the directive to give tithes and consume the second tithe in Jerusalem unless one owned a farm and grew crops. How then can a person attain his perfection when we have said that fulfillment of the 613 commandments of the Torah is the key to such perfection? When the Torah begins this portion by saying in 11,32: "Observe all these statutes and social laws which I place before you this day," and goes on to say in the same breath: "These are the statutes, etc., which you are to observe to do in the land," the Torah clues us in to the answer. In 11,32 the Torah mentions first שמירה and עשיה of the respective statutes and social laws, whereas in 12,1 the Torah mentions the statutes and social laws before the directive to observe and perform them. This is similar to the way the Torah (Genesis 26,5) describes Abraham as having observed G–d's various types of commandments. Clearly, Abraham could not have done this (in the form of fulfilling an obligation) as the commandments had not yet been revealed.

The word שמירה has two meanings. One is that one "keeps" i.e. observes commandments which have been given. The second meaning is "waiting." One is constantly looking forward to a certain event occurring. Abraham waited for an opportunity to observe these various מצות, The expression ושמרתם לעשות means that a person should be in a frame of mind where he looks forward to fulfilling the various commandments which he has not yet had an opportunity to fulfill. In the meantime, he observes those commandments which he has found an opportunity to observe. When he relates to all of G–d's commandments in this way, the Torah promises him an equal reward for the commandments which he has not had an opportunity to fulfill. Chapter 11,32 refers to the commandments which can be fulfilled, whereas 13,1 refers to all those that cannot yet be fulfilled for one reason or another.

Since a man occupies himself with the Torah for its own sake, and troubles himself and exhausts himself for the sake of Heaven, his two kidneys (his very vitals) will be like two fountains, and he will bring forth meanings and new laws from within himself — truths which he never learned from another and which were not given even to Moses at Sinai. As we find in the case of Abraham, our father (Gen. Rabbah 95:3), that he never studied in the presence of any man (who served as his teacher), but he himself would sit and think about the commandments, and he learned from his own heart all of the Torah and the commandments, until Scripture testified of him, "And (he) kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My Law (Gen. 26:5). And our Sages, of blessed memory, said that Abraham knew even the laws of Eruvei Tavshilin.^** The laws governing the preparation of food for the Sabbath on a holiday which falls on Friday. And our Sages also said, "Abraham our father learned four hundred chapters, and who was there to teach him all of this? It must therefore be that his two kidneys became like two fountains, and flowed forth bringing to him wisdom and Torah.

The reason that the wine saved from גן עדן is called משומר, is that its dregs, its yeast has been removed. When Eve squeezed the grapes and gave her husband to drink she had not removed those dregs first. The Torah (Numbers 18,8) writes of Aaron, who was the rehabilitation of Adam, that he was to be the recipient of what G–d calls משמרת תרומתי, "The residue of My gifts." It is also said of Abraham (Genesis 26,5) וישמר משמרתי. Some of our sages interpret the repetition of the expression שמר in this verse as meaning that Abraham introduced "fences," preventive measures around G–d's laws so as to ensure that the laws themselves could not easily be violated. This would be similar to the Mishnah in Shabbat 20,1 permitting the suspension of a sieve i.e. meshameret on the holiday in order to catch the shemarim, sediments, yeast, of the wine.