27/08/2026
This week's parsha opens up a new aspect of teshuvah. We generally associate teshuvah with regret, with remorse, making a heshbon hanefesh, a calculation of our soul, of all our mistakes, of all our shortcomings, of all our deficiencies.
But this week, the Torah tells us a part of the teshuvah processes is specifically to serve Hashem with great joy, with great simcha and to be able to perform our mitzvot also with great joy, with love and with emotions, and not just to be yotzei, to fulfill our obligation, not with superficiality, to do things as if by routine, but try to out our heart and soul into it.
וְהָיָה֙ כִּֽי־תָב֣וֹא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ
There’s another simcha, entering the Land of Israel. The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh says the greatest simcha in the world for the Jewish nation is only when we Jewish people are here in the physical land of Israel.
But there’s another simcha the Ohr HaChaim talks about -- v’samachta behol hatov -- rejoice in all the good that Hashem has given you, even when the situation is not complete on an external level and the geula is not revealed.
Still, we have a secret of the Torah, and the Torah brings a joy to a Jew. The Torah has in it an inner ingredient, an inner aspect that can bring simcha and completion and a soul expression to the Jewish people.
The Ohr HaChaim says if we would only know how sweet the Torah is, if we only had any idea and taste the sweetness and the pleasantness to the Torah, we would run after it more than any money in the world, more than any physical pleasure in the world and that would fill us and we would forget about all worldly things.
You should be privileged and zocheh this Shabbat, vesamachta behol hatov, to rejoice in the simcha of Torah, the simcha of eretz Yisrael.
And our children going back to school should find those teachers who make the Torah sweet and pleasant to them, who bring out the sweetness and the metikut of the Torah.
Shabbat Shalom.
