Eat your dinner, for Heaven's sake!

One of the least discussed teachings in Avot today is that of Rabbi Yose HaKohen (Avot 2:17): “Let all your actions be for the sake of Heaven”.  The reason why it attracts little attention is easy to see. It is so general that it strikes us as being obvious and we take it for granted. If we believe in God and try to keep to all the do’s and don’t’s of Jewish religious observance, is not everything we do done for the sake of Heaven?

There is another way we can look at this teaching which makes it far more meaningful for us today: we can take it to mean that we should do things for the sake of Heaven even when we are doing them for other motives as well. In other words, we should add a touch of “for Heaven’s sake” to things that are not usually or necessarily thought to be so.

This idea sprung into my mind after I spotted this in R’ Chaim Friedlander’s Siftei Chaim: Middot veAvodat Hashem (1, at p 64). R’ Friedlander comments that it’s just as well that God in His kindness has implanted urges and desires in us because we can’t manage with Heavenly aspirations alone. As he graphically puts it, if we hadn’t been imbued with a real passion to eat and God had simply left us to act “for the sake of Heaven”, we would all be dead by now.

So next time you sink your teeth greedily into that burger or whatever else is your object of gastronomical desire, do make an effort to feel that you are doing it for God’s sake too. And when you get to Yom Kippur and the mega-fast that so many people fear and dread, bear in mind that you are doing that for Heaven’s sake alone.