Sharing the Load

"If you see your brother's donkey or his ox fallen, you must not ignore them. Rather, you should pick up the load with him."(Ki Teitzei 22:4)

As we've seen many times in the past, every verse in the Torah - every word - has an endless amount of deeper, underlying meanings and symbolism hidden within them. In a general sense, these levels of understanding can be divided into 4 levels, known as PaRDeS: Pshat, Remez, Drush, and Sod - The simple meaning, the hint or allusion, the midrashic meaning, and the hidden meaning. Let's take a look at the above verse, and discover some of the underlying messages behind the words.

On a simple level, of course, God is instructing us to help one another, even if you aren't very fond of your "brother." Why does the Torah add the words "(you should pick up the load) with him"? Our Sages explain, that if the owner of the ox looks to you to help and sits back expecting you to do it alone, because he knows you are commanded to help, you needn't help him. You must pick up the load with him. Let's now take a deeper look: If you see your brother's donkey: If you see your brother, a Jew, acting like a donkey, an unkosher animal -- Or his ox: or like an ox, a kosher animal, but an animal nonetheless-- Fallen: he has fallen from the behavior associated with an enlightened human being to the level more associated with animals-- You must not ignore them. Rather you should pick up the load with him. You should feel a brotherly responsibility to elevate and enlighten your fallen brother. It is precisely in order to assist him that you have been made aware of his spiritual descent. God would not have arranged for you to see him this way unless you were able to help him.

So far we have explained this verse's connection to our interpersonal relationships, both physically & spiritually. Now let's see what we can learn about ourselves from this verse. Each of us has an animal within, known as the animal soul, which lusts after the materiality and pleasure of the physical world, ignoring the spiritual and concealing the Divine soul which we possess as well. Throughout history, spiritual masters taught that the best & only way to subdue the animal within, was through knocking it down; subduing our passions and lust through fasting and self mortification. Then came the Baal Shem Tov, who taught that this wasn't the true path of Judaism. We have to engage the material world! But we have to help pick up the animal who has fallen, by educating it - showing our inner, passionate, animalistic nature that goodness & spirituality are actually even more desirable than pizza. We have to find God within the physical. Any beauty or pleasure we find in the world is in its source rooted in the spiritual realms and ultimately in God. So why connect to an offshoot when you can have the source?

As it's taught on the 1st page of the mystical work, derech mitzvotecha: "If you lived countless lifetimes as an all-powerful king, granted any & every desire you could possibly imagine all the days of your life, the pleasure you receive would not come close to the feeling of just one moment of pleasure in the next world, in the spiritual realms of gan eden."

May we help our brothers and sisters with the "loads" they bear, as well as elevating those around us. And may we educate ourselves as well, instilling greater appreciation of the tangible goodness found in the spiritual within every physical thing.

Shabbat Shalom!

-Daniel