To Walk in His Ways

IFf you were to ask what is the source for the requirement to develop middos tovos and fulfill mitzvos bein adam l’chaveiro, most people would cite the pasuk, “v’ahavta lerei’acha kamocha.” This is obviously true, but it is incomplete. The mitzvah of “v’halachta b’drachav” is in some ways more far-reaching. We are commanded to love our friends as ourselves, but we are also commanded to go b’derech Hashem, to follow in Hashem’s ways. These are different mitzvos with different definitions and rationales.

The first perek of Tomer Devorah is a comprehensive explanation of the mitzvah of v’halachta b’drachav. This perek is uniquely important in that it explains the 13 middos of Hashem (by means of the pesukim in Michah) in greater detail and breadth than any other classical sefer, and it also spells out how to apply those middos in our personal lives. The baalei mussar viewed Tomer Devorah as the “Shulchan Aruch of middos,” and in Kelm it was studied every Shabbos (Mesores Eliyahu, pp. 46, 56, 114).

On the one hand, when Rav Moshe Cordevero (the Ramak) spelled out the applications of Hashem’s middos, he made the ideas more accessible than did other seforim kedoshim. But his clarification created its own complexities. The Ramak places heavy demands on his readers; he teaches that when a certain situation occurs, one must remember to apply a specific middah, a requirement made even more difficult given that many of the situations do not happen very often.

Obviously, the Ramak did not mean that his applications of the middos are the only correct ones; rather, they are simply the ideal ways, most true to the middah. (However, one could easily misunderstand him to mean that his specific pathways provide the only way to connect to the middos.)