Parshah Ha'Azinu: Focus Your Heart

By Rabbi Yosef Serebryanski

(Deuteronomy 32:46,47) “Focus your hearts to all the matters that I testify exist in you today, that you connect it with your children, to guard, to perform all the words of this Torah. It is not an empty matter for you, since it is your life, and in this matter, you will have lengthy days on the land that you are passing over the Jordan, there to inherit.” In Samuel 1, 12:5 Hashem is witness to his fully serving the Creator.

Rav Shimson Rafael Hirsch explains, “set your heart steadily and earnestly devoting the entire depth of one’s mind to grasping a certain matter.” Rashi writes that this is similar to (Ezekiel 40:4) “Son of man, see with your eyes and hear with your ears and set your heart to all that I am showing you.” (Ezekiel 44:5) “Set your heart and see with your eyes, hear with your ears, all that I am saying to you about the laws of the Temple of Hashem and all His guidance and set your heart to the ways of coming to the House with all the goings (exits) of the Sanctuary.”

“See with your eyes” also refers to the light of the letters of Torah.” The letters of the Torah reflected the souls of the people of that generation. It is this connection that needs to be passed down to all future generations. The verse in Deuteronomy, only states the issue of setting or focusing your heart. This means that the focus of the heart is the main element in serving our Creator.

With regards to Channukah we also find (Haggai 1:5,8; 2: 15, 18) “Focus your heart.” The Jerusalem Talmud (Kelaim 1:7) states that olives cannot be grafted and that is the soul aspect of oil that remains pure in every person. This needs to spread among all the limbs of a person. That is what “focus your heart” is telling us to do.

Some people do things in order to receive a reward; other people do things because they have a personal agenda. The verse is telling us to serve our Creator from the pure depths of our heart. One must make a conscious choice to focus on serving the Creator with all of one’s heart.

With the chaos in today’s world, we need to stay focused on what our Creator desires of us. Now more than ever we must be acutely aware that we are required to have proper focus. Doing so will allow us to achieve what is required of us. In this way we successfully arrive at the place that Hashem wants us to inherit.