Volunteer for Hashem

Rav Ben Tzion served Hashem with a joy that was contagious and that shaped his halachic rulings and his advice. Once he was teaching the halacha that a Jew may not ask a gentile to extinguish a fire on Shabbos, even when all his possessions will burn. A student pictured himself in that situation and cried out that surely he was not meant to watch everything he owned go up in smoke.

“That is not what I said,” Rav Ben Tzion answered. What he meant, he explained, was that a person should dance and sing with joy at having the privilege of fulfilling the pasuk to love Hashem with all his heart, soul and might. The Sages explain that the word for might, me'odecha, includes one's possessions.

A newcomer to Torah once worried that the mitzvos would be too heavy a burden. Rav Ben Tzion told him there was no need to feel pressured. Each morning he should simply volunteer. Do not obligate yourself, he said, but volunteer, to put on tefillin, which is not so hard, and he showed him how. Then volunteer to daven, adding a little more each day. It is a privilege, he said, to serve in Hashem's volunteer corps.