Friday, August 1, 2008

Gittin Daf 23

The Gemara describes the reason that a non-jew cannot write a Get "Leshmah" for its sake, even if there is a jew standing over him, is because "oved kochavid ledaatay denafshey kaavid" he only does things for himself.
We can learn a lesson from this that as a jew we should strive to serve G-d "leshmah" for G-d's sake, and not focus on doing things just for oursleves. We constantly have to ask ourselves before we do anything "is this something G-d would want me to do or not?"

2 comments:

Heshy said...

Does this mean that a Jew has the option of doing things 'leshmah' whereas a non-Jew does not have this option?

Ohr Hanegev said...

I think it means that to a certain degree Jewish people have a greater ability to do things even when they are not self serving.