[Avodah] Only if Hashem is Elokeinu to a man

[Yitzchok Levine]

RSRH makes some very interesting comments on 
Bereishis 28: 20 - 22. I have put these at 
http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/bereshis_28_19_22.pdf

A sampling is given below.

Ever since the gates of Paradise were closed, the establishment of
an independent household involves so many difficulties, hinges on circumstances
and situations so complex, that a person needs special help
from God so as not to forfeit the whole of his better self in gaining that
piece of bread. Who can count the people who were morally pure before
they set out on “the path to bread and clothing,” but who subsequently,
for the sake of making a living and attaining social status, denied God,
spurned morality, were inconsiderate of their neighbor and of his human
dignity, and so on.

Only if Hashem is Elokeinu to man can man’s house become a house of God.
The crooked and perverse generations, which pride themselves in their
temples of God, will pervert this truth, too. They will build, as the
prophet puts it, sepom es sepe, “their threshold next to My threshold”
(Yechezkel 43:8), their house next to My House — everything in its own
separate domain. “God, too, is to have a House,” they say, “but let not
our house be His House! We will visit God in His House, but He must
not enter our house; His Presence and His demands would only inconvenience
us!”
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