Every Single day Should Be Like Day One: D’var Torah for Parshat Shoftim
In Parshat Shoftim, the Torah gives a commandment to a king:
“וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ עַל כִּסֵּא מַמְלַכְתּוֹ”
“And it shall come to pass when he is sitting on his throne”
During his reign, he must write a Sefer Torah. But the Ktav Sofer points out that the Torah should surely have said:
“וְהָיָה בִשִׁבְתּוֹ”
“And it shall come to pass when he sits on his throne”
and instead, it says:
“וְהָיָה כְשִׁבְתּוֹ”
“And it shall come to pass like when he sits on his throne”
So what is the message of the Torah? The Ktav Sofer answers: On every single day of the king’s reign, he should act like it is the first day on which he ascended.
At that moment he was filled with dreams, with aspirations, with intentions, with a sense of excitement. And he should never allow that to wane. And what applies to a king applies to all of us in whatever we are doing in life.
It’s so easy to become stale, to go through the humdrum of a daily existence, but rather what we need to do is to apply that same excitement and sense of enthusiasm that we had when we started the task. This also applies in marriage, that throughout the years of our married life, we should look back to the day of our wedding, our sense of excitement and all our aspirations and apply the same keenness, the same love, the same attention that we had at that time.
The Ktav Sofer adds that this passage starts with the word, “וְהָיָה” “and it shall come to pass”. Very often, the Torah says, “וַיְהִי”, which also means “and it shall come to pass”.
“וְהָיָה”, however, is for good news, and “וַיְהִי” is for bad news. If we apply ourselves to all of our tasks in this fashion, good news will come for us and for the people whom we are serving.
Shabbat Shalom.
