Bechukosai

After the Torah tells us all the great things that will happen to us if we toil in Torah & perform the Mitzvos, it proceeds to tell us what will happen if we don't keep the Mitzvos. ואם לא תשמעו לי ולא תעשו את כל המצות האלה , but if you don't listen to Me and will not perform all these commandments. The Torah then goes on to enumerate many ways that Hashem will abandon us just as we abandon Him and He will leave us to our enemies.


Rashi explains that not listening means not toiling in Torah; if one is not learning the Torah, he will come to not performing the Mitzvos too. The אור החיים explains that if one would experience the sweetness of Torah, he would abandon the greatest worldly pleasures just to fulfill one Mitzva. Therefore, the only way one could come to not performing the Mitzvos is if one wouldn't toil in Torah.


Chazal tell us that originally the Yetzer Hara is like a thin strand & in the end it’s like a thick rope, for as a person gets caught up in sin he finds it so much harder to battle with the Yetzer Hara & it gets stronger & stronger. That's the way the Yetzer Hara works; first he starts with little things; as the person fails, he gets him to do more & more until one is totally in his control.  

There's an interesting  story told by הגר"ח פלאג'י זצ"ל that once the בעל שם טוב was in deep concentration walking in the forest. After a while, he realized that he was far from where he started out in a vast forest all alone. As he was wandering, a huge frog came out of the swamp & approached him. The בעל שם טוב asked the frog who he was & was answered that he was a former Torah scholar who was reincarnated into this frog and has been this way for five hundred years. While the famous אר"י ז"ל had rectified all the reincarnated souls, this man was so bad that even the אר"י ז"ל was unable to help him. He was put into this forest where no people ever go, where he would have no chance at being rectified. The בעש"ט asked him what did he do that was so wrong?

He answered that it all started when he had once belittled the Mitzva of נטילת ידים and didn't wash properly. The Satan went to prosecute him in the heavenly court & was told that for just this one sin they couldn't prosecute. However, if you could get him to do more sins, then you could prosecute for this one too. The Satan went to work & pushed me. I did another sin & then another in a downward spiral until I had done every sin in the book. I became a drunk & never had a chance to do teshuva. Since all this was initiated by my laxity in נטילת ידים , I was sent back as a frog to live in the water.


Whether this story is actual or allegorical, it brings out a very important point. Sometimes we think that certain mitzvos are archaic & no longer relevant, so we brush them aside. However, we don't know what effect that has in heaven; if it gives a green light for the Satan to test us or it makes us more lax in general. Once you're lax in one thing, other opportunities will follow. This is the message of toiling in Torah. If you toil in it & appreciate it, then everything - even the so called archaic Mitzvos - will have more meaning & you will never come to falter!