13 Jun SHELACH: A YEAR PER DAY

The meraglim
spied on Eretz
Canaan for forty
days, and they were
punished that they must
remain forty years in the
desert. As it states (14:34),
“Like the number of days that you spied
out the land, forty days, a day for a year,
a day for a year…”
From this, Chazal (Chagigah 5:) say,
“Whoever sins even one day a year, it is
as if he sinned the entire year.”
There is a principle that “Hashem gives
kindness five hundred times more than
He punishes.”
The Chasam Sofer explains that if a
person spends a day performing mitzvos,
it will be counted as he performed
mitzvos for five hundred years. A day of
sin is counted as a year of sin, so a day of
mitzvos is considered like he served
Hashem for five hundred years.
His reward will be enormous.
The Chasam Sofer says that this is
hinted at in the words, “[Keep the
mitzvos…] so your days will be

lengthened…like heaven is above earth.”
The Gemara (Pesachim 94:) says heaven
is a five-hundred-year walk from the
earth. The Torah is saying that if you
keep the mitzvos, it will be like you lived
long. For each day you perform mitzvos,
it will be like you lived five hundred
years long.
This information gives us so much
encouragement. For every good deed,
we will be rewarded as if we served
Hashem for five hundred years.
This lesson also reminds us how careful
we must be with time. Every moment
can be counted like so much more. Each
good day is like five hundred years! Not
something worth wasting.
Early one morning, the Rebbe of
Radoshitz zt’l announced, “A special
guest has just arrived. This is his first and
only visit, so I want to honor him
properly. The guest is ‘today.’ It came
today and will never come back.”
Reb Eliyahu Lopian zt’l compared time
to a travel bag. If one packs his bag in an
orderly manner, there will be plenty of
space for all his belongings. But if one
throws in items haphazardly, the bag will

not have enough room for everything.
Time is similar. If one is cautious and
orderly with his time, he will find a lot of
time in his day. But if one is careless
with his time, the days pass by quickly,
leaving him without enough time to
accomplish what is needed.

A student asked Reb Shlomo Zalman
Aurbach zt’l how to organize his daily
Torah learning schedule. Reb Shlomo
Zalman advised him to set aside time
every day to review what he had
previously learned. The student replied
that he didn’t have enough time for that
On Reb Shlomo Zalman’s table was
a sefer that he had prepared to gift to
a bar mitzvah bachur. The sefer was
wrapped in decorative paper and held
together with a rubber band. Reb
Shlomo Zalman took off the rubber
band and said, “See how small it
became?” Reb Shlomo Zalman
explained that time is similar. It can
be short, but by stretching it, one
finds a lot of time.
Parashas Bechokosai states the
rewards for keeping the mitzvos. One
of the rewards is (Vayikra 26:9),
V’panisi Aleichem. The Chiddushei
HaRim zt’l explains, V’panisi comes
from the word panai ,which means
ample, extra time. The brachah is that
the tzaddikim are granted ample time
to accomplish a lot in avodas
Hashem.
(The Chiddushei HaRim would
often repeat this translation, for it is
indeed the greatest gift – to have time
to do everything one desires in his
avodas Hashem.)
Some have the custom of giving a
gold watch to a chasan. This is to
remind the chasan that time is
precious like gold.
The Lev Simchah zy’a added that
the gold is only the case that

surrounds the time.
The casing is always
less valuable than
what it holds. If the
casing is made of
gold, it tells us that
time is far more
valuable.

Time is precious. With
every moment, we can
achieve so much. We just
need to be vigilant not to
get sidetracked by all the
happenings of the world,
which serve to distract us
from Torah and mitzvos.
Someone was in
Switzerland, waiting for
a train, but when the train
arrived, he didn’t board
it. His friend asked him
why he wasn’t boarding.
The man replied, “This train is
uncomfortable. I am waiting for the next
train, where every passenger gets their
own table to eat on and bed to sleep in.”
“But that train won’t be here for many
hours.”
He replied, “That’s okay. It is worth the
wait.”
“Is your goal to travel in comfort or to
get to your destination?” the friend
asked. “If your goal is the destination,
you should board this train. It will get
where you need to be.”
“No. I need comfort, too. I’ll wait.”
The train finally arrived, and he boarded
it with joy. He enjoyed a good meal, and
then, exhausted from the heavy meal
(and from waiting in the sun for hours
until the train arrived), he lay down and
fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke,
he looked out of the window and
realized, to his horror, that he had
boarded the wrong train and was
traveling in the wrong direction!
It was almost Shabbos – too late to
catch a train to bring him home. He
didn’t even have Shabbos clothes to
wear or a place to stay!
This happened because he focused on
pleasure and forgot to focus on what was
essential. Similarly, in life, we must
focus on our destination. Olam Haba is
the goal, and Torah and
mitzvos are the means to bring us there.
We shouldn’t consider worldly pleasures
so vital until they distract us from where
we are headed.