The first Bracha that the Kohanim give to the rest of the Jewish Nation says “Hashem should bless you, and protect you”. Why would protection be seperate from being blessed by Hashem ? There’s a posuk later on in Chumash, thats says “The Jews got fat and kicked” which means, because of the excesive good the Jews had,  they rebeled against Hashem.  Those with too many materialistic items have a tendency to rebel,  so thats whyit says “and protect you” , even when we have all this good of Hashem’s blessing, we should be protected from rebelling against Him.

Man was created and commanded to rule the world. To this end, G-d has bestowed within all of us the ability to affect changes in the world, whether they be good or bad. If we were to realize the true impact of our actions, it would be almost impossible to sin and affect the world negatively. We can realize the tremendous impact of our actions through learning Torah, which also open us up to the true workings of the world.

The Posuk in the end of Shema commands “you should not stray after your hearts and eyes” . “After your hearts”, refers to having completely no belief in G-d, its followed with, straying after your “eyes”, which is the prohibition of  inappropriate viewings, which many view as a lite sin (which its not).  This placement of “eyes” after it says “hearts” shows that even after a person attempts to sever their connection with Hashem, they are still held accountable for every transgression, from the whether it be “minor” or “major”.

In this week Parsha is the story of the rebellion of Korach, Dasan, and Avirum against Moshe. They maligned Moshe to assist in the rebellion, in an effort to end the quarrel Moshe sent out messengers to gather the men before him. Upon the request, all of the men responded with ridiculous statements blasting Moshe and refusing Moshe’s request for their presence. Moshe after hearing their response went out with his brother Aaron and the 70 Elders in an attempt to settle the conflict. We can learn from this, that if Moshe a man of such greatness was able to humble himself and reach out to those who had antagonized him in an effort to settle a quarrel, so too we can who are not as great as Moshe, and do not command the same honor can certainly humble ourselves to settle a conflict.

The Posuk in the end of Shema commands “you should not stray after your hearts and eyes” .Hashem tells us, if you give me your heart and give me your eyes, then i know that you are mine.  This is because, when you give your heart to Hashem, everything you do is for the sake of heaven, however the eyes are still required. If i am certain to keep my eyes where they belong and my heart where it belongs my actions and aspirations will certainly be for the sake of heaven.

The Cholah Halivavotzs speaks of the foolishness of one who does not believe that the world has a creator. When a person passes by a painting, they are not to think that this painting came about through happenstance , rather a person had intentionally painted the art in deliberate manners for specific reasons. When we look at the world, something infinitely more complex than a painting, it would be sensible to apply that same logic, that its intricacies and designs are not by happenstance.

At the splitting of the sea, the water split, the Jews walked through, the Egyptians came chasing after them and drowned in the sea. After witnessing the 10 plagues, which were open miracles, how were the Egyptains after seeing the sea split, able to convince themselves that going into the water after the Jews would work out well for them. The Egyptians were so blinded by their anger that they disregarded the obvious hazard, sealing their fate. We can see from this how foolish one can act when blinded by any number of factors, whether it be anger, greed, etc.

In Tehillim Ch 122 7-9, David prays for peace and in this blessing prayer he mentions peace twice, afterwhich he says “for it to be good”. Why would DOvis Hamelech need to say let it be good, after asking for peace twice, wouldn’t it be assumed that peace is good?  Peace is a wonderful thing, when people are doing good, but when people are not doing good peace is pointless and we would need to stand up for what is right even if it would disrupt the peace, so that it may be good peace.

The Torah commands us to take off from our dough a gift to the priests, which is called Challah. This is done after the Trumah and Maiser  (gifts given to the priests from the various produce). The question is asked, why must one first give off their grains, then their grains produce, the dough? Rabbi Lerner explains a reason behind this, being that everyone knows for the grain to grow and us to have water, Hashem is very much invloved. When we give off challah we show that at all stages even after the growing, while only needing to mix the flour and water and simply bake the bread, we still need Hashem.

In this weeks Parsha we read about the spies that Moshe sent to investigate the land of Israel. The Torah goes through the list of all of them , and says that each was a tremendous Tzaddik and a leader of the Jews.  How then is it possible that these great mean would sink to such a level to be called a “Rasha (evil person) ” by the Torah. The spies brought back evil reports about the land, so that the Jews should not go into the land of Israel.  They did this because currently they had a high level position in the leadership of the Jews, when they were to enter the land, they would lose that position and become one of the regular folk. Their desire for honor caused them to commit this sin. These Tzaddikim were men of tremendous stature and even they could be blinded by their desire for honor, so how much more so we must be careful in our pursuit of honor.