Musar su Deuteronomio 11:13

We find that his service was out of love and not out of fear and this is the highest service. The Creator, blessed be He, did not praise him for fearing Him, nor did he say, “The seed of Abraham who fears me or is terrified,” but he said (Isaiah 41:8), “The seed of Abraham, My friend.” We have already said that fear is contained in love. Know that the service of the Creator, blessed be He, out of fear is not the service of the truly pious, but it is the service of the wicked or the nations of the world, as He has said to the wicked (Jeremiah 5:22), “Fear ye not Me?”, and He says concerning the Egyptians (Exodus 9:20), “He that feared the word of the Lord,” for they were not doing His command out of love, but out of fear. But to the pious he says (Deuteronomy 6:5), “And thou shalt love the Lord, thy God,” and (ibid., 11:13), “To love the Lord your God.” But he says in Job (Job 1:8), “A wholehearted and an upright man, one that feareth God, and shunneth evil,” and He did not say concerning him, “a lover of God.” And similarly it is said (Psalms 34:10), “O fear the Lord, by His holy ones,” and this is said of the wicked. For when the wicked cleave to the service of God and sanctify and cleanse themselves from their uncleanliness, they are called “holy ones” as it is said (Numbers 11:18), “Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow.” Whereas of the pious ones, whose heart is pure from the first day of their existence, it is said (Psalms 31:24), “O love the Lord all ye His godly ones; the Lord preserveth the faithful.” And of Enoch, it is said (Genesis 5:22), “And Enoch walked with God,” and it is not said, “And Enoch feared God.” And concerning Noah it is said (Genesis 6:9), “Noah was in his generations a man righteous and whole-hearted.”¹⁷Job was regarded by Jewish tradition as a gentile, as were Enoch and Noah. The latter two lived prior to the time of Abraham, the founder of Judaism. Thus the service of God through fear is not like the service of God through love.

And I have hereby explained what we say each day in the second section of the Shema (Devarim 11:13): "And it shall be if you hearken… to love… (Ibid. 16): Pay heed unto yourselves… and you shall serve other gods, etc." For is it not the way that when a man exhorts his son to follow the right path, he does so in accordance with his [the son's nature]? If he [already] walks on that path, he exhorts him to summon up more strength and not depart from it; and if he walks waywardly according to the whims of his heart and desires to leave him, he commands him at the least not to depart from the way of the L-rd altogether, G-d forbid. And if he would do the reverse, and command his son who walks in the right path not to depart from the way of the L-rd and change his faith, G-d forbid, this would be neither to his honor nor to his son's. And here does the beginning of the section "And it shall be, etc." not speak of men who fear the L-rd and love His name with their whole heart and soul, as it is written "to love, etc."? How, then, can we understand "lest your heart be enticed, etc." And, furthermore, the phrase "and you turn astray" (vesartem) would seem to be superfluous.

There is an interesting comment by Yalkut Shimoni on 11,13 item 863. We note that the word כל is missing when the Torah speaks about our collective observance of its commandments. The Torah writes: והיה אם שמוע תשמעו אל מצותי אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם היום, "It will come to pass when you will surely listen to My commandments which I command to you this day." The Yalkut explains that the wording is designed to forestall our argument that we cannot fulfill all the commandments, that "its measure is longer than the earth" (Job 11,9). We may compare the situation to a king who possesses a deep pit, so deep that no one has probed its exact depth. He tells a member of his staff to hire workers to fill up the pit; he does so. One of the more foolish of the workers takes a look into the pit and asks: "Will I ever finish filling up this hole?" The intelligent worker relates quite differently to the task at hand He is not concerned with the time it may take to complete the task but reasons that, since he is a day laborer and gets paid for the amount of time he puts in, he is happy to have found work which may assure him of a continued livelihood for an indeterminate period. This is what G–d says here to the Jewish people. He tells us not to worry about the immensity of the task but to view ourselves as day laborers and to be happy that we will receive a reward for every day that we keep observing His commandments. Thus far the Yalkut. This Yalkut presents a difficulty. We can understand the comparison offered when we adopt the viewpoint expressed by Rabbi Yochanan in Sanhedrin 111 in connection with Isaiah 5,14: "Sheol has opened wide its gullet and parted its jaw in a measureless gap." Rabbi Yochanan differed from Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish; the latter applied this verse to the consignment to purgatory of people who have omitted only a single statute in their observance. Rabbi Yochanan did not agree that G–d is so demanding and therefore preferred the opposite interpretation, i.e. that observance of a single statute is enough to save a person from being consigned to purgatory. How can we reconcile the view of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish with that of the Yalkut?