ועתה ישראל מה ה’ אלקיך שאל מעמך כי אם ליראה את ה’ אלקיך ללכת בכל דרכיו ולאהבה אתו ולעבד את ה’ אלהיך בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך: לשמר את מצות ה’ ואת חקתיו אשר אנכי מצוך היום לטוב לך.” (דברים י’, י”ב-י”ג)
רש”י: “ועתה ישראל – אף על פי שעשיתם כל זאת, עודנו רחמיו וחבתו עליכם, ומכל מה שחטאתם לפניו אינו שואל מכם כי אם ליראה וגו
Rashi: “And now Yisroel – even though you did all this, still His mercy and affection is for you, and after all that you have sinned before Him, He requests from you only to fear…”
No spiritual journey consists solely of continuous peaks. There are peaks, but there will be valleys as well. It can be disheartening to discover that you are on a lower level now than you were only several months ago, or that a prized maaleh is suddenly gone. In such situations, climbing back up “the mountain” often seems more daunting the second time around, and much more complicated.
Rashi addresses just such a situation: “even though you did all this, still His mercy and affection is for you, and after all that you have sinned before Him, He requests from you only to fear…” After a fall, our first instinct is to think that we must compensate for our missteps with grand, extraordinarily virtuous action: something so incredible that it will fix everything and make things just as they were before, or even better. But that is not what Hakadosh Baruch Hu asks from us: “He requests from you only to fear…”
“יראה”, or “fear”, in the pasuk is referring to Bechira— choice, as it is primarily יראה which guides us towards correct decisions. Thus, Rashi is telling us that the way “back”, the way we can make things right again, is not through extreme actions, but rather by making the correct choices given our current state.
As an illustration, we can borrow the Ramchal’s famous comparison of this world to a labyrinth— a garden where the foliage is fashioned into walls, thereby creating a giant maze. The goal is to reach a terrace found at the center of the garden, but if a participant simply aims for the end, he will never get there. The way to reach the end is by making the correct decision at each individual turn or fork in the road, not by making a mad dash for the center.
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This does not mean that we are giving up on the mountain. Even though Rashi writes that Hakadosh Baruch Hu requests from us only יראה, the pasuk actually lists a number of outstanding maalos: to walk in Hashem’s ways, to love Him and serve Him with our entire being, to perform His commandments, and to merit Olam Haba. But we achieve all of these lofty ambitions by way of יראה. Instead of trying to escape our circumstances, we accept them and focus on confronting the challenges of life as they present themselves to us at this moment; we strive to make the right decisions, with יראה, from here on in.