Leveraging Elul

Don’t sit with your back to the door of Elul because Tishrei’s on the other side, and the only way to get to and through Tishrei in good order is to walk through that door.

Trying to negotiate Tishrei by any other route is like going to court without a lawyer.

Elul is not something to be finessed or gotten around as if it were Tachnun in search of a bris or Rebbishe yahrzeit.  It’s about being honest with oneself.  It’s about exposing your fault line and going eyeball to eyeball with the spiritual rot of your existence, one peeled off layer at a time, because an introspective and wrenching Elul is the breeding ground for a confident and articulate Tishrei that will bring a good kvittel in its train.

Last year, as Elul rolled in we endeavored to place it in its proper perspective, with proper perspective meaning that while a kavanadike Elul will take one's spiritual horizons to the max for the ensuing year, those horizons will only be reached by means of those Elul kavanas permeating Shevat.

As we said in EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva (2), In Elul you are what you want to be.  You are the sum total of all the aspirations and kavanas you have for growth in the ensuing year.  During the rest of the year, however, you are what you do on a daily basis, with the reality check of what you aspired to in Elul being what you do on a daily basis in Shevat.  If your growth was real enough to take root then it will still be around to blossom in Shevat.

We also mentioned the credit of Rabbeinu Yona. 

In EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva we said in the name of Rabbeinu Yona that once you have seriously accepted upon yourself to make a real Teshuva, it is accounted to you as if you already did it.  You have activated something that will carry you forward.

There is, however, a catch.

Just as one has to pay off the credit charges that he piled up as they come due, so too here.  That boost you got up front vis á vis your Tishrei resume presumes that the “bill” will be paid in the course of the coming year.

The problem is that a year is a long time, and in terms of the Teshuva resolves that we take on in Elul, a year may be too long, because as was pointed out in EmunahSpeak: Whence the Real Deal Teshuva (2)?, here we are in Nissan already, and my Elul Do List is still in mint condition, finger print free, and I probably could sell it to a collector on eBay.  The way things are going I may well be spared writing a new one for this coming Elul.

And it wasn’t like I put it into a drawer or something.  I had it right on my desk next to my laptop along with sundry reminders scotch taped to my desk lamp and my laptop so that it has been in my face since Elul.

So what happened?  The same thing that happens every year:

Nothing.

And after giving it some serious thought I think I understand why.  For one to take on to improve in any number of given areas over the course of the coming year is like deciding to do something between now and the rest of one’s life.

A year is simply too long.

And as we said there, with the finish line so far off into the distance of next Elul/Tishrei we tend to space out as to the immediacy of it all, and with all the time in the world to get started we never do.

The solution, as such, consists of reducing the year to a month, which forces us to start now, not then.  And the month I chose was Cheshvan because Tishrei was to busy a time to make a serious start on our Elul kavanas.

It all comes down to this:

Make sure that by Cheshvan the latest, you can put something significant on the table for all the aspirations and kavanas you had for growth in the heady days of Elul.  It has to be serious enough for the remainder of your Elul vision to work its way into reality in cruise control mode over the remainder of the year as opposed to swimming against the tide.

But then again why even settle for this, a big improvement though it may be?

Why not simply take Rabbeinu Yona’s Elul credit and turn it into cash and carry by actually effectuating the Teshuva in Elul instead of promising to?

Come Tishrei you’ll be a cash customer, and who wouldn’t prefer to deal with a cash customer rather than to extend credit?

The Radio

The Last Frontier of Innocence Lost

In light of the justified concern that is presently being voiced over the spiritual pitfalls inherent in the Internet, a kasha needs to be asked:

What about radio?

And we further ask:

How many of those attending the Asifa at Citi Field listen to radio in the house or car?

There was a time when this medium was thought to be rather harmless.  Even in places like NewSquare, which from the get-go wisely banned television, radio was permitted.  In those days, the worst one could hear on the radio was the early stages of rock and roll.  Most yeshiva boys and Bais Yaakov girls didn’t bother with it, and those that did bend an ear in that direction heard nothing more than much of what passes today for popular Jewish music, r”l.  As for adults, rock and roll and other such nonsense simply didn’t exist.

With the advent of the all-news stations in the1960s, Jews representing the entire spectrum of Torah Jewry were drawn to radio in greater numbers, and with good reason.  For a 22 minute investment while driving to one's office or working in the kitchen, 1010 WINS AM promised the world.

The station’s format, which was later followed in large part by 880 CBS AM, was headline oriented straight news without the de rigueur left wing spin of all too many news outlets both then and now.  It didn’t boast the broadness and depth of the Sunday New York Times, but it served a purpose for those who required no more than a lick and a shmeck as to what was taking place outside their daled amos.

A little further down the road a number of talk and opinion shows that proved to be popular in our communities were introduced into the programming mix.  Their popularity derived from the fact that the views aired on them seemed to be on the same page with the political opinions held by many in the Torah Camp.

So what happened?

At first glance, nothing.  To those old enough to remember, 1010 WINS AM sounds no different today than it did way back when.  The background sound effects are the same, as are some of the reporters.  And one can chap-arein the news while otherwise engaged.  For the most part, the all-news stations continue to “grace” our homes and cars with the bare bones recital of the facts without the spin, at least as compared to the left wing press, CNN, NPR, and the national TV networks.

What changed was the news.

What was once a window to the world morphed into a pipeline from the sewer.

Almost twenty years ago, Yated Ne’eman published an essay on the dangers inherent in listening to radio.  I quote:

Then one day society went crazy, and as the last wall crumbled we were left exposed with America in our face.  One can almost put a finger on the exact moment that the American dream became rated X.

If there is an (American)English speaking ben or bas Torah (of that gerneration) who has not heard of William Kennedy Smith, Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill, Gennifer Flowers, Amy Fisher, the Rainbow Curriculum, and a certain product that is being distributed free of charge in New York City’s public high schools for the purpose of slowing the spread of AIDS, then he or she NEVER listens to the radio.  And many of the handful that actually were radio free heard about these things from those who weren’t.

This writer was certainly on to something, but he wasn’t a Navi.  As dire as the situation may have appeared in 1992-93, he never fathomed the depth of the black hole into which he was looking.  The bottom simply wasn’t on his screen.

And then the Clintons came to town.

From the Satan’s point of view, one could reasonably argue that the situation on the ground took a marked turn for the better.

Query:  How many of our grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, and granddaughters (and the rest of us) old enough to have listened to the radio during the years 1998-2000 were spared the knowledge that Bill Clinton was not makpid on yichud in the Oval Office?

I quote again from the same essay:

For those of us who are old enough to be familiar with at least some of these news stories, the shmutz that we have internalized by way of our ears has left an indelible stain on our neshamos that will be there for life.

We have stored in our collective subconscious images that until recently were beyond the comprehension of a majority of Middle America.  The situation is such that a simple recitation of the societal facts life in 2012 America is a greater danger to the neshama than the ravings of sensationalist writers of but a generation ago.

How are we supposed to live in a city or a country where the discussion of a presidential primary or a Supreme Court confirmation hearing is not fit for the ears of construction workers, much less our own.

And that was pre-Clinton.  What would that writer say now?  What should we say? 

But even Bill Clinton didn’t hit bottom.  After all, radio’s faithful recitations of the Clinton stroll in the gutter were pre-Michael Jackson and those that came after him.

And so it goes without an end in sight.

In the Mesivta d’Rakiya it may well be that our dor will be known as the generation that guarded its tongue, and in some quarters at least, even attempted to guard its eyes.

But what will they say about our ears?

The Most Serious Character Flaw

Iggeres HaRamban

Having already told us in EmunahSpeak: The Proteksia of Gentle Speech that gentle speech will protect one from anger, the Ramban then explains the importance of that piece of advice by explaining that anger is a most serious character flaw which causes one to sin.

While there are myriad reasons why this is so, Rabbi Yisroel Brog tells us that probably the most important of them is that when a person gets angry he loses his connection with reality, and having done so, even after he calms down he will still be disconnected from Hashem.  Not only is he, as Chazal tell us, like one who is considered to have worshipped idols, and therefore as one who has no G-d, but he is also like one who has no self.

There are other character flaws, such as gaiva, that the Ramban could have warned us against.

Why dafka anger (ka'as)?

A Jew has to be able to contemplate, and ka'as disrupts the inner quietude upon which contemplation thrives.  And it does it to such an extent that a Jew’s very essence atrophies. 

In addition, ka'as is more than just an aveira.  It’s a middah ra’ah that is the source of many of the worst aveiros such as gezel, loshon hora, sinas chinom, and machlokes to name but a few.  The truth is that when Chazal said, if you never come to anger, you’ll never come to sin they were letting us hear loud and clear that ka'as is inherently a potential launching pad for every single aveira in the Torah.

The Rambam, for one, was listening because while it’s well known that he holds that people should avoid personality extremes by always seeking the middle way, the always was subject to one very big exception, the exception being ka'as, because when it comes to ka'as there simply is no middle way.

An individual who is trying to shake himself of ka'as should pull himself to the opposite extreme in which he will not get angry even in situations in which it would be justifiable for him to do so.  And the result of this is as the Ramban tells us a little further along in the Iggeres, where he says once you have distanced yourself from ka'as, the quality of humility will enter your heart.

As can be seen, the further away we get from ka'as, which is the most serious character flaw, the closer we get to anavah (humility) which is the very best character trait one can posses.  And the closer we get to humility the closer we get to Moshe Rabbeinu who was the most humble person that ever lived, which logically should have put him the furthest away from ka'as of any person that ever lived, and yet, Rabbi Dovid Miller reminds us that ka'as was the only point of weakness that gave Hashem cause to complain against him which resulted in Moshe being prevented from entering Eretz Yisroel.

Such is the power of ka'as, the most serious character flaw, that it could even affect Moshe Rabbeinu, the most humble person who ever lived.

The Proteksia of Gentle Speech

Iggeres HaRamban

As we said in EmunahSpeak: Gently Speaking, The actual mussar of the Iggeres HaRamban opens with the Ramban’s admonishment to his son that he should accustom himself (yourself) to speak gently to all people at all times.

The Ramban then reveals that this admonition is something more than a nice middah to incorporate into one’s character toolbox.

With the words, gentle speech will protect you from anger, the Ramban moves us from the realm of stam menchlikeit to one of self preservation.

And how exactly will gentle speech save you from anger?

There is no mysterious process at work here.  In fact, it is quite the opposite because it’s about as close to common sense as one can get in that there is a direct causal connection between how one speaks and how one reacts to outside stimuli, a.k.a. aggravation.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer takes it a step further and tells us that a calm response can even turn away anger that already exists.  By speaking softly the anger gets no outlet with which to express itself.

And even on those occasions when it does have an outlet to express itself, Rabbi Yisroel Brog informs us that if you take the Ramban’s advice to accustom yourself to speaking gently, the anger will be toned down.  And the reason that it will be toned down (which is also the reason that gentle speech will protect you from anger in the first place) is because speaking b’nachas (softly) is a mechanism that will help you control your anger. And it also carries with it some not so incidental benefits vis à vis self control because one’s self control over himself is directly related to how he controls his anger.

And that bit of sports wisdom that declares a good offense to be the best defense is no less applicable to protecting oneself from anger because as Rabbi Brog tells us, any time you see that you’re going to get upset you should defuse the incipient anger by speaking b’nachas with everyone.

For someone who is seeking to protect himself against the plague of anger, neither a rich uncle nor a contact in City Hall will avail.  For such a person, the proteksia of gentle speech is the only game in town for as Rabbi Brog lets us hear, gentle speech is not a way to protect oneself from anger.

It’s the only way.

The Baal Nefesh

We are told by Rabbi Mordechai Swiatycki that according to the Chazon Ish, Emunah is an expression of a soul that is delicate/refined, and one has to be a Baal Nefesh to be zoche to it.

Rabbi Swiatycki explains that the Baal Nefesh oozes anavah from every pore in addition to being makker tov for any good he has received.  On this point he may even be secular but nevertheless he has a sensitive soul.

It is also necessary for a Baal Nefesh’s soul to be holding by a certain tranquility.  And finally, a Baal Nefesh is not driven by an intense hunger for taiva.

He then says that if any of these three elements are missing, a person’s road to proper emunah, by way of being a Baal Nefesh, will be washed away because he will forever be without the requisite capacity to hit the high note emunah wise.

As should be obvious, we’re not hard wired for these elements, and as a consequence they’re not our default position. 

It’s all in the software.

And as such, it’s incumbent upon us to program ourselves accordingly so as to be as one with these three elements in order to enable us to reach the madreiga of the Baal Nefesh.

And a Baal Nefesh on such a trajectory is a man of science.

Given the complexity of this world, it’s nothing less than amazing how the supposedly scientific oriented secular world has obliterated what one would expect to be natural curiosity as to what life and the world around us are all about. 

That’s at first glance.  If we take a second peek it becomes a little less amazing, if not down right understandable.

In one of life’s ironies, ironical enough to have made it into the Irony Hall of Fame, if there would be such a place, the players in the game of Faith vs. Science are in actuality wearing the uniform of the opposing team.

Truth be told, there’s absolutely nothing that one can see with the naked eye, the most powerful telescope, or the most advanced electron microscope that will contravene in the slightest detail Toras Hashem.

That’s science.

And as we bring the second peek that was referenced above into proper focus we see that the truncated curiosity of secular society is driven, not by apprehension as to the unknown, but rather by a fear of the known.  In spite of their protestations to the contrary, the denizens of that world know, be it consciously in some quarters or sub-consciously in others, and because they know they avert their eyes from what should consume even a moderately inquisitive mind.

They eschew scientific inquiry for Ani Maamin.

They are the ones who live by a corrupted faith which, in essence, holds that despite the fact that every aspect of the physical world, without exception, scientifically testifies that it was created with plan and purpose, they believe with a perfect faith that all of it simply just happened.

The all encompassing force of their denial is such that even a sensitive soul who is astounded by the perplexity of this world is incapable of asking questions about this perplexity unless he is a Baal Nefesh.  It’s as if he were frozen into inaction by the modern day equivalent of the tumult of Rome.

In contradistinction to a secular world that sees no truth, hears no truth, and most certainly speaks no truth, the Baal Nefesh will go through fire and water to get the answers to what this world is all about because the Baal Nefesh, who is not imprisoned by his taiva and gaiva, can see far enough past himself so as to able to discern that there is a Hand guiding the world.

The Yesod of Teshuva

In EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva we said that, Teshuva is not a once a year spiritual form of Pesach cleaning or something to be pulled out of the bull pen on the ruchniyas equivalent of rainy days, to level out the speed bumps that we invariably hit as we navigate our way through the minefield of life’s challenges.

Although, by all rights Teshuva should be part and parcel of our daily routine no less than negel vasser, the sad truth is that for most of us it has become seasonal, with opening day being Rosh Chodesh Elul.

But unless one digs down deep, foundation wise in Av, the how, what, and why of the mechanics of Teshuva that will dominate one’s thinking hours in Elul will be anchored in something less than solid bedrock.  For as we explained in EmunahSpeak: A Real Deal Teshuva-part two, if you build a roof in Elul in lieu of a foundation, instead of growth you’ll end up with a levitation act which will predictably succumb to the laws of spiritual gravity.

The hardest thing in this world is to change.  Everyone has a defense or justification for maintaining the status quo ante, and as Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz lets us hear, it should therefore come as no surprise that the biggest impediment to Teshuva is probably self-justification.

To do Teshuva you have to strip away all of the excuses.  So say goodbye to all of the ifs, buts, and maybes, as you take yourself down to your spiritual socks.

Rabbi Malinowitz tells us in the name of the Chovos Halevovos that to properly develop a yesod for your Teshuva you must look at yourself in the mirror and open your spiritual eyes wide enough to see that you need to change things.  And that takes Knia (humility), because the only way to see what needs to be seen in that mirror is to mevatal yourself to the extent that you break down your ego.  Then and only then can you discern the disconnect between what you should be and what you have become.

And accordingly, the Chovos Halevovos places Sha’ar HaKnia just before Sha’ar HaTeshuva because Knia is the stepping stone to Teshuva.  It’s so foundational that without this yesod of Knia, the most intense and sincere Teshuva will lack the capacity to affect the gut-rehab level of change that’s needed to present yourself anew to Hashem.

A Unique Mission

Who are You Anyway?

It’s quite common for a person to feel that he’s no more than a cog in a wheel or even worse, an interchangeable part that can be shunted from one task to the next with neither identity nor relevance, be it economic or one’s standing as an individual.  Such a person is oblivious to the essence of who he is and where he’s going.  And we’re not necessarily talking about assembly line workers here.  In the fast pace, computerized, number crunching society that is ours, even professional people have been sucked into the great abyss of the unknown as it pertains to the who of who am I(?).

Rabbi Yonoson Rosenblum suggests that all this indicates that we have lost our conception of self.  We, in effect, live in a virtual missing persons bureau of the soul in which we don’t know who we are.  And if one doesn’t know himself then how can he even begin to know anything outside himself?

And more importantly, how can he know Hashem?

The good news is that while this outlook may be quite common, it’s about as close as one can get to a 180 from reality because we are reminded by Rabbi Rosenblum that each of us is born with a unique mission in life to which no one else has been assigned, and Hashem gives us the necessary ability to bring our unique mission to fruition.  No one but you can bring your strengths, your challenges, and your perspective on life to the table for the task at hand.

In the same way that no two sets of fingerprints are the same or that no two people have the same DNA coding, Hashem doesn’t delegate the same task to more than one person, which by definition means that if you don’t dig down deep enough within, deep enough to hear the niggun of your tachliss in this world, it simply won’t get done because that certain task that was given over to you was given over to the contextual you. It’s about you and you only, so if it can’t be done by you it can’t be done at all.

This concept of our singular uniqueness means nothing less than if it were theoretically possible for someone NOT to have something unique to contribute to Hashem’s world, he simply wouldn’t be here.

To take it even a step further, Rabbi Rosenblum informs us in the name of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz z”l, that a person will be judged on how he handles the unique commission that was his and his alone in the same way that the Beis Din in Shomayim will judge the tog taiglach of his very existence as a Jew vis á vis his mitzvah observance and his hashkafas.

The truth is that there are actually two separate concepts in play here.  One is the G-d given talents that are ours and the other is the unique task that each of us was given. 

The Chovos Halevovos teaches in the Shaar HaBitachon that if a person finds his heart drawn in a certain direction, be it music, art, mathematics, carpentry, mechanics or any other skill that might serve as cover for making a living, then he should hearken to that voice within and seek his parnossa accordingly.  And what’s good for parnossa is certainly no less appropriate for executing the special charge with which each of us has been blessed.

As per the Chovos Halevovos, we have to ferret out our special strengths and inclinations from our weaknesses and leverage them to successfully fulfill our purpose in this world.  More often than not, those strengths and inclinations will dictate the direction in which we will go. And if we dutifully follow them we will eventually leave our imprint on this world in one form or another, be it in neon or invisible ink.

But Rabbi Rosenblum tells us that there will be times where a second step will manifest itself. 

You saw something that needs fixing?  Maybe you have an insight into a way out of the shidduchim crisis.  No one else does.

And it doesn’t matter a whit if you’re exactly one day back from seminary and you grew up in house without brothers or you’ve never married off any of your children and you presently have five girls in the parsha with the youngest being thirty.

If you saw something then maybe it’s your task.  Maybe you’re Hager and no one sees the well but you.  And maybe if you saw something, Hashem let you see it because he’s sending it your way.

And He’s sending it your way because you’re unique, you have a mission, and you have something important to do on your sojourn in this world.

Gently Speaking

Iggeres HaRamban

The actual mussar of the Iggeres HaRamban opens with the Ramban’s admonishment to his son that he should accustom himself (yourself) to speak gently to all people at all times.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer tells us that there is no deep meaning here that we have to ferret out because the Ramban’s words are to be taken literally, as in all words, (whatever comes out of your mouth), to all people (even those below you), and at all times (whenever and wherever you are).  And he adds that this general principle to always speak gently may be the most important rule in the entire Iggeres.

The what of this we understand, but what of the why?

Koheles teaches us that the words of the wise are heard when they are gentle.  And as Rabbi Hauer puts it, locks don’t work by force and neither do the words of the wise. The chacham anticipates certain situations and makes his words heard when things are calm, before a crisis hits the fan.  In addition, the chacham deliberates in calmness so that everything will be focused.

Clarity comes with confidence and confidence comes with calmness.  Rabbi Hauer lets us know that the more we’re able to bring a certain calmness to a situation before it becomes stressful the better we will be able to ride out the storm.  And the only sure way to bring that certain calmness into whatever it is that’s going on is to talk the talk as per the Ramban’s dictum.

Many people hear good things.  Some hear it on a constant basis and others even hear it over the course of many years, but it has little if any impact on their lives because they don’t internalize it.  And the reason that they don’t internalize the mussar that they have heard is because from the outset they never set their mind to be mekabel (to accept).

Unlike mere listening which is passive, being mekabel is an active response that requires a person to fully engage himself in order to acquire that which he is being taught.

Rabbi Yisroel Brog tells us that in order to effectively be mekabel the thought that the Ramban is trying to convey with the words accustom yourself, a mentch has to take on a new minhag.

Taking on a minhag in the context of accustom yourself to speak gently means making up your mind to speak in a certain way all of the time.  You can’t change your speech depending on who you’re talking to.

It has to be something immutable.

You have to speak all of your words gently without exception, meaning that you speak the same way to your wife as you do to your chavrusa, as you do to your children, as you do to your employees, as you do to the cleaning lady, as you do to the cab drivers in Yerushalayim, and as you do to the illegal Mexicans who cut your lawn.

In order to accustom yourself to speak gently to all people at all times you’ll have to accustom yourself to be the new you to all people at all times because the old you simply won’t cut it.

Heed, My Son…

Iggeres HaRamban

…the discipline of your father and do not forsake the guidance of your mother.  And so begins the Iggeres HaRamban with this quote from Sefer Mishlei.

The Rabbeinu Yona in his sefer, Shaarei Teshuva, introduces us to a person who shuts himself off from mussar, which is the spiritual equivalent of shutting oneself off from oxygen and then some, because whereas the lack of oxygen will only impact on a person’s life in this world, the lack of mussar will also severely circumscribe his breathing in the next.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer tells us that if you're your own rebbe you're in big trouble because a person is incapable of seeing his weaknesses.  A good friend doesn’t look at you through rose tinted glasses.  He gives it to you over the head if need be.

The key to Teshuva, as the Rabbeinu Yona has made clear, is to be open to guidance.  A person has to be mekabel, and he acquires this trait by training himself to be a shomaya (one who hears),  and it’s with this fundamental yesod that the Ramban begins the Iggeres with the words Shema beni (Heed, my son).

Shema beni is a clarion call to open oneself up to guidance, and who is the most basic person to give guidance/mussar if not a parent?

But as Rabbi Hauer explains it, it’s really a two way street because while the child most definitely has to bend an ear in the right direction, in one way or the other it’s incumbent upon the parent to create the circumstances in which the child will be inclined to bend that ear and open up and pay attention.

And exactly how does a parent go about creating an environment in which his child will be motivated to absorb that which he is striving to give over?

Rabbi Hauer lets us know that the best way to influence someone is to be a role model that the person would want to emulate, and that probably counts double for kids.  Today we often refer to this as mentoring but the Ramban was ahead of the curve on this more than seven hundred years before mentoring found its way into a dictionary.

And this is the big key to Shema beni, because before the Ramban actually gets into the mussar that permeates the Iggeres he introduces himself as the conveyor of that mussar.  He is both the parent and the role model par excellance, and as such he is a unique position to focus his son’s attention on the content of the Iggeres.

But he wasn’t the only game in town.  In fact, he wasn’t in town altogether because he had been exiled by the King of Spain, and he chose to go to Eretz Yisroel, and it was from there, in Acco that wrote the Iggeres.  In light of this reality, the Ramban puts down one more contextual marker so as to further lay the ground work for the ultimate acceptance of his words.

The Ramban didn’t jumpstart the Iggeres with half a verse.  After opening with Heed, my son, the discipline of your father he finished off the verse with and do not forsake the guidance of your mother.

Rabbi Hauer enlightens us with the fact that with the second half of the verse the Ramban put the idea of co-parenting on the table with both parents being in sync with a common language and a common approach.

The Ramban’s lead into the body of the Iggeres proclaims to his son that he should pay close attention because he has something important to say.  And then he follows with the words and do not forsake the guidance of your mother, thereby signaling to him that if he should ever be in need of direction he should seek out his mother because whatever she will tell him in his father’s absence is part and parcel of their common Torah. 

The Ramban was not only speaking to his reality that was compromised by geographical separation, he was also speaking to ours in which the father of the house sets the instructional tone and the mother imparts it on a daily basis.

If You Feel Blessed (2)

In EmunahSpeak: If You Feel Blessed, we learned from the Chovos Halevovos that: …if you feel that Hashem has bestowed you with extra tov you should feel obligated to pay back a little more by adding something to your avoda, be it an extra twenty minutes of learning, a little more kavana in davening, or perhaps resolving to put more effort into doing chesed.

This principle also works on a national level.

Can anyone deny that Hashem has given his people, the Am Segula, more than He has given any other nation in the world?  Just to recite what Hashem has done for us as recorded in Dayenu, which is one of the Haggadah highlights of every Pesach Seder for both frum and not yet frum Jews alike, would already be way beyond the scope of this piece.

And that’s just from the get go.

Are we not the only member of the ancient nations club that answers present at the roll call of 2012?  Where did the rest pack out to?  Most of them have disappeared without a trace while we can practically trace every route we’ve taken on our long march through history.

And yes, even in this two thousand year most recent golus, with all of its expulsions and persecution, Hashem has still dealt us a better hand.  Rav Miller z”l was wont to point out that throughout the length and breadth of the this bitterer golus, with the exception of the local aristocracy which in any case was a miniscule percentage of the overall population, the Jews always lived better than the goyim amongst who they dwelt.

Therefore, we have to do better than the other nations of the world towards Hashem because He has given us more and continues to do so.  Moreover, the fact that we are members of this exalted group means that we have to factor our national/group identification into the personal hakoras hatov that we owe to Hashem.

What price tag do you put on the honor you have every day of saying Blessed are You, Hashem…., Who did not make me a Goy?  For that alone we should feel obligated to bump up our Avodas Hashem.

But the Chovos Halevovos is not finished with us just yet.  Having already taught us that if you get more in this world in one form or the other you should feel the need to ratchet up the practical level of your gratitude, it now comes to close the circle.

Let’s say that you married off your last daughter in the midst of a shidduchim crisis without so much as breaking a sweat or you have never had to give any thought as to where you would get money for Pesach, even though you are of modest means, and you took stock of your situation, relative to those similarly situated, and did the right thing by Hashem by increasing your avodah in which ever way you deemed appropriate.

What goes around, comes around is not just merely a saying.  It’s a Divine Attribute because the Chovos Halevovos promises that if you met Hashem’s gaze by responding in kind to the beneficence He is bestowing upon you then Hashem will continue to shower upon you that special shefa that distinguished your lot from that of others.

And He will even add to it.

If You Feel Blessed

One of the major foundation principles of the Chovos Halevovos is that we owe everything to Hashem.  The problem is that there is nothing we can do for Him.  The closest we can get to doing something is to acknowledge that he has given us everything and, as a consequence thereof, being makker tov to Hashem should be the focus of our lives.

Our whole Avodas Hashem, as per the Chovos Halevovos, is predicated on the concept of paying back something of what we owe.  

Rabbi Chaim Malinowitz fleshes out the Chovos Halevovos and lets us hear a very big chiddush in its name.  To whit, if you feel that Hashem has bestowed you with extra tov you should feel obligated to pay back a little more by adding something to your avoda, be it an extra twenty minutes of learning, a little more kavana in davening, or perhaps resolving to put more effort into doing chesed.

The more you get the more you give.

And we’re not just talking gashmius here.  The Chovos Halevovos is telling us that our obligation to bump our avoda transcends the obvious scenarios such as windfall profits from a big deal in the midst of a recession, a big raise, or even a lottery winning.

If you are zoche to live in Eretz Yisroel and/or to learn in kollel your debit with Hashem is somewhat bigger than it otherwise might be.

Hashem placed you in an area which has a Bais Yaakov high school in addition to a yeshiva high school for boys, and therefore you don’t have to send your children out of town to board?  It matters not that everyone in your town is in the same position as you.  In relation to the thousands of Yidden living in areas that have no choice but to dorm their kids far away from home, you are the beneficiary of a little something extra.

How about the fact that we live in a dor (generation) that has ready to eat food and ready to wear clothes, not to mention the full gamut of modern conveniences such as refrigerators, washing machines, cars, and the like?  If you wouldn’t want to live in 1870 then how do you express your appreciation that you don’t?

The Chovos Halevovos divides our Avodas Hashem into two distinct approaches. The goal of a person in his life should be to discover Hashem on his own using his seichel.  For a number of reasons it is not possible to head straight for that goal so Hashem, in his great mercy, gave us rules (mitzvahs) of the Torah in order to level the playing field so as to give us a stepping stone or better yet, a jumping off point toward the higher level of Avodas Hashem based on our seichel.

These rules of the Torah train us to give thanks, by way of the mitzvahs, for everything Hashem did/does for us (Pesach/our freedom, Birkas HaMazon/for what Hashem just gave us to eat etc.).

Therefore, if Hashem gives us more, we understand from the structure of the mitzvahs that we are supposed to do more than we have heretofore done.

Or put another way, if you feel blessed you should be putting a little more on the table.

The Brocha of Achdus

And may it be good in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel, at every time and at every hour with Your peace.  Blessed are You, Hashem, Who blesses His people Israel with peace.

So ends the brocha of both Sim Shalom (Shacharis) and Shalom Rav (Mincha and Mariv), the nineteenth and last brocha of the Shemona Esray, and as with the other brochos the chasima (end) of this brocha is a microcosm of the thirty-four words that preceded it.

For every other brocha in the Shemona Esray, you are flying solo, be it in relation to the personal or communal requests that you are making from or the praises you are giving to Hashem.  If the guy next to you is not with the program, then it’s his wish list that will take a hit, not yours.  Or at the very worse, there will be one less vote counted for the rebuilding of Yerushalayim or the ingathering of the exiles.

The brocha of Sim Shalom is cut from different cloth because it’s the brocha of achdus and we’re all in it together.  On that score, Rabbi Yitzchok Kirzner z”l tells us that this is the only tefillah in the Shemona Esray in which we ask Hashem for something that depends upon our being united. 

Boruch Dayan HaEmes.  We’re doomed.

If we can’t get it together achdus wise, then what can we possibly bring to the table in the first part of the brocha, where we ask Hashem to shower a host of goodies such as peace, kindness etc., upon us and upon all Israel and then a few words later, when for good measure, we ask Him to bless all of us as one?

The good news is that we’re not collectively being held hostage to our inability to achieve even a minimal level of achdus in the world beyond Sim Shalom.  The truth is that the whole question of achdus, as it impacts on the blessings that we are attempting to invoke both upon ourselves and the Klal, near the beginning of Sim Shalom, is in each individual’s hand.  Even if the guy next to you is somewhat less than a team player, you can still push the envelope on achdus in the context of Sim Shalom.

We have on numerous occasions in a number of EmunahSpeak pieces decried both the lack of achdus in Klal Yisroel and the over hyping of certain situations and events as being paradigms of achdus, which in reality have nothing whatsoever to do with the subject.  And we did so because neither the fact of nor the lack of achdus is a group phenomenon.  It’s not quantitatively expressed by the size of the crowd at Citi Field or the head count at the Kletzky levayah.

And as we said in EmunahSpeak: Nu?:….when a family of Torah Jews is slaughtered in their beds or eight Yeshiva bochurim are gunned down in their Yeshiva we seem to be incapable of stepping outside of our label saturated existence long enough to attend the funeral.  It matters not a whit how many people show up because it’s not a numbers game.

It’s all about the mosaic of Torah Jewry.

In Shomayim, three hundred of EVERYBODY at a levayah will trump thirty thousand of only a certain SOMEBODY every time.

Reduced to its lowest common denominator, achdus is qualitative, and in the context of the brocha of Sim Shalom it’s brought to fruition by the power of one.

Notwithstanding the fact that it is Hashem that is being asked to give the actual blessing, Chazal have given us, by way of the chasima of this brocha, the awesome power to bless Klal Yisroel.  Given the wording of the chasima it’s as if each and every Yid actually invokes it while making Hashem his shaliach to carry it out.

So how do we score one for achdus by merely reciting the nineteen words at the end of Sim Shalom and what does it have to do with Hashem bestowing the manifestation of His finest attributes upon us, upon all Israel, and blessing all of us as one?

It’s all in how you say it and what you’re thinking at the time.

If you’re not blessing all as one, then how do you expect Hashem to do it when you ask Him earlier in the brocha to bless us, our Father, all of us as one.

You either have everyone in mind when you say the words, and may it be good in Your eyes to bless Your people Israel or you don’t.

You can't run, hide or try to dance your attitude under the radar.  And you also can't internally hold your nose because it’s only you and Hashem, and He's occupying more space in your head than what you're pleased to call your thoughts, so who are you kidding anyway?  Do you really think you can mentally exclude Lakewood, Satmar, or YU without rendering your effort a brocha levatola?

The bottom line achdus that’s going to unleash the power of Sim Shalom is in your head and the head of everyone who recites it.  The attitude, mindset, and kavana with which you massage those last nineteen words of the brocha will be the template that Hashem will apply to the first thirty-four.

Someone’s Knockin’

We live in a very fateful generation.  It’s a twilight generation, something akin to bein hashmashos.

The period of radiance has passed, and we already hear the sounds of what is to come.  Moreover, we are living in a period when even looking out the window can be dangerous.

Someone who is wise can already hear a voice calling out from Shomayim.

These are the words of Rav Shimshon Pincus z”l, and whether or not he had even heard of the Internet when he said them, he was already seeing past it.

In EmunahSpeak: The Call of the Hour, we quoted HaRav HaGaon Moshe Wolfson as saying that every generation has its mitzvah, and that ours is emunah.  This is where the battle lines will be drawn between every Jew as an individual and the Satan/Yetzer Hora in whatever form it chooses to manifest itself at any given time. 

And the main thrust of that piece was that it is not a coincidence that a number of very serious seforim on emunah in English have been published in the last few years by some very great people.  One of the common threads running through all of these works is the sensitivity of their authors to what they perceive to be the call of the hour.  All of them, including Rav Wolfson, as articulated in his shiurim on emunah, concur that the tenacity of the Satan’s thrust at the emunah infused jugular of every Jew will put us to the same challenges with which Hashem tested Avraham Aveinu.

They have independently come to the conclusion that it is a matter of pikuach nefesh for this last generation before Moshiach to seriously strengthen its emunah in order to stay the course for what’s coming our way.

Simply put, we’re headed for a very bumpy ride, and if we don’t buckle up with emunah we risk being thrown from this world.

We also noted in EmunahSpeak: Living With Hashem, that it’s also as close as we’ll ever get to Jewish body armor because a life with Emunah is a life that is not affected by death, by difficulty or by challenge.  There is always the knowledge that it’s with Hashem, and therefore it can’t be that bad.

Our tachlis, as seen through eyes of Emunah, is to turn into destiny the fate that is subsumed in what Rav Pincus z”l has referred to as this very fateful generation.

Hashem changes the times, and in consideration thereof Rav Pincus  held that we must be cognizant of what is going on around us so as to be able to devise corrective strategies.  

And he didn’t mean keeping on top of the news because he constantly spoke out against wasting time reading newspapers and such.

Being cognizant of what’s going on around us as per Rav Pincus refers to those times when Hashem shows His hand, be it ever so subtly.

As we also said in EmunahSpeak: Living With Hashem, Appearances aside, we are not stuck in situations, we are placed in them. We are where we need to be.  The question asked by the ba’al Emunah is not, why this is happening to me, but rather what should I do now that it is.

In other words, what are our marching orders?

It’s essential to ratchet up the staying power of our Emunah so as to brace ourselves to stand firm come what may, no matter how difficult the circumstances.  But it’s not enough.

We must go on offense.

Our marching orders, as per Rav Pincus z”l, are that we should do Teshuva and swing the whole world to the side of merit.

So why are we leaving Hashem out of the cheshbon?  

He reminds us that the foundation of Judaism that was laid down at the giving of the Torah was the creation of a relationship.  So why are we not leveraging that relationship by crying out to Hashem to morph difficult circumstances into something more benign?

From the words of Rav Pincus z”l, as recorded above, it is clear that he was looking into the same abyss, the only difference being that unlike the others who could feel the coming storm in their bones, he could already see it and hear it, and therefore his approach was more proactive because when Someone’s knocking one has to answer the door already.

The Darkness of Night

The Mesillas Yesharim quotes the following Gemara (Baba Metzia 83b):

You laid down darkness and it was night (Tehillim 104:20). This refers to a world that is similar to night.

If we hadn’t heard in the name of the Vilna Gaon that he didn’t find one superfluous word in the first eight chapters of Mesillas Yesharim we would suspect otherwise because just two sentences north of this quote the Ramchal says that the evil inclination literally blinds his eyes and he becomes as one who walks in the darkness where there are stumbling blocks before him which his eyes do not see.

And we would be wrong because the Mesillas Yesharim tells us that the darkness of night can cause two types of errors in relation to a man’s eye:

• It may either cover his eye so that he does not see what is before him at all (as in there are stumbling blocks before him which his eyes do not see) or
• It may deceive him so that a pillar appears to him as a man, or a man as a pillar.

The Ramchal tells us that the second error is the worse of the two because it stems from the distortion of their sight, so that they see evil as though it were goodness itself, and good as if it were evil, and because of this they strengthen themselves in clinging to their evil ways.

We are being told that everything in Olam Hazeh is total darkness. In a literal sense a blind man is better off because he is not susceptible to the second mistake.

With this teaching before us we can readily understand how hardcore Leftists, Islamists, and their like can see wickedness and sheker as goodness and truth.

And we also see that at the end of the day Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland was not an inversion of reality. The Mesillas Yesharim makes it very clear that the bottom line truth of this world is that due to the darkness of night things aren’t as they seem which describes Wonderland to a tee.

Our world is the real inversion of reality because it lets us think that things are what they appear to be. 

As we said in EmunahSpeak: So Who are You Relying on… That we live lives of misplaced reliance flows naturally from the fact that we have misplaced reality itself.

Over and above any improvement computers have brought to the lives of literally billions of people alive today and billions more who have passed this way in the last thirty years or so, they have also enriched our understanding of how Hashem runs His world.  The words virtual reality are more than simply a code name for the digital Potemkin village that holds forth on every computer screen only to vanish in a nano second with a flip of the switch.

Virtual reality is also an accurate description of what we carelessly refer to as the “real world,” the one we physically inhabit. 

This is the Ramchal’s darkness of night brought into the digital age.

So how does one make his way through the darkness of night with his neshama intact?

Night vision goggles!

That’s what Rabbi Avigdor Miller z”l, would say if he were still amongst us.  When he gave his aitza on how to navigate through the sheker laden darkness of the night of this world, night vision goggles weren’t known to the wider public so he used spectacles/glasses as a moshal (example) instead.

He taught us that the one and only way to exercise one’s bechira (free will) within the darkness of night that is this world, and land on one’s feet in the process was to see this world through the words of the seforim (with his two most favored being the Mesillas Yesharim and the Chovos Halevavos) as one looks through his eyeglasses. 

It’s the only game in town that isn’t rigged against you.

With merely one’s own eyes to rely on a person can figuratively go over a cliff, and not even realize it even after hitting the ground.

The irony of this world, which is enveloped in the darkness of night, is that to the extent that you think it's real, it's not real at all.  But if you see it, or rather see through it for what it actually is, then it’s very real indeed.

The darkness that is night is the very antithesis of the phrase, what you see is what you get.

Or maybe not.

Maybe what you see is what you get after all if what you see is actually something in your eyes, because if what you see in this world has substance in your eyes then that’s what may well pass for substance in terms of your portion in the next.

Protection Trumps Salvation

Two stops short of the finish line in Tehillim 145, which we recite thrice daily under the code name of Ashrei, in verses 19 and 20 to be exact, Dovid HaMelech reveals to us that we essentially write our own protekzia ticket vis á vis Hashem, in that the way He relates to us is dictated by the way we first relate to Him.

In verse 19, Dovid HaMelech tells us that He (Hashem) will do the will of those who fear Him and He will hear their cry and save them.

In the eyes of the Malbim, as brought to us by Rabbi Asher Boruch Wegbreit in his sefer on Ashrei, it works something like this: Hashem will hear their cry, and only then will He save them.  Or put another way, as long as the sun is out we’re flying solo, with Hashem not putting in an appearance, salvation wise, until it starts pouring.  Moreover, those who fear Hashem are only saved from their enemies.

What’s this business about only saving us?  How about whacking the bad guys while You’re at it?

This brings us to verse 20, where we hear that Hashem protects all who love Him and (that) He will destroy all of the wicked.

As can be seen, the first posuk speaks of fear which means fear of punishment.  And even though unstated in this particular case, the flipside of fear is always the expectation of reward.

Reward and punishment is no small thing mind you.  The Rambam includes it in his list (ani ma’amins) of 13 bedrock principles of Judaism.  And yet even so, as important and fundamental as it surely is, the fear of Hashem is but the handmaiden to the love of Hashem that is spoken of in verse 20.  And this is born out by the different ways in which Hashem takes care of us, as recorded in these two verses.

As we saw above, those who fear Hashem are only saved from those who would do them harm.

Verse 20 comes to tell us that Hashem does it one better for those who love Him by protecting them.  As Rabbi Wegbreit explains it, Hashem’s protection means that His loved ones (those that love Hashem) never encounter situations that would force them to cry out because Hashem shields them completely from the sources of distress.

In contradistinction to how Hashem deals with those who oppress the G-d fearing amongst us by merely extricating His People from the evil that they are enduring, when it comes to the enemies of those who love Hashem, He will zap them totally simply for the evil they intended to do but couldn’t, due to Hashem’s all encompassing protection of those who love Him.

Rabbi Wegbreit sums up the fear addressed in verse 19 and the love spoken of in verse 20 as follows:

If they fear Him, He saves them from the source of their fear.

If they love Him, He spares them from the fear itself.

A Soul Choice

The body wants to do what feels good.

The ego wants to do what looks good.

The soul wants to do what is good.

If you have ever felt like you were being pulled in several directions now you know why.

That the neshama wants to do what is good should come as no surprise.  After all, it’s part and parcel of the Ribbono shel Olam, so what should it want to do if not good, as that term is generally understood by those who don’t believe that the concept of good is relative?

And it’s also not what one would call a shocker to posit that the body wants to do what feels good.  Are not the cravings of the body the clock by which most of us mark our time in this world?  We want to eat, sleep, bathe, and indulge our eyes and ears now or at the earliest possible convenience for one reason and one reason only.  The myriad of sensations that come to us by way of our five senses on our terms make us feel good.

But when it comes to the ego it’s somewhat of a different story, and we would do well to let Dr. Dovid Lieberman tell it.

For starters he lets us know, as was mentioned above, that the ego wants to do what looks good, and then hits us with the fact that the ego is no less than the Yetzer Hora.  We are to understand from this that just as it would be risky to sit with our back to the door if the doorman was the Yetzer Hora, any aspect of our life that is driven by form as opposed to substance is being driven recklessly with the Yetzer Hora in the driver’s seat, or as Dovid Lieberman puts it, when we are motivated by ego we do things that we believe project the right image of ourselves.  These choices are not based on what is good but on what makes us look good.

For our purposes, the essential importance of the ego is in the context of the self-esteem/ego continuum.

The vast majority of us have internalized a distorted image of what the ego is all about.  We tend to think that a person with a healthy ego who projects an aurora of confidence is a poster boy for self-esteem.  As Dovid Lieberman tells us, nothing could be further from the truth.

We only gain self-esteem when we are able to make responsible choices and do what is right regardless of what we feel like doing or how it appears to others.  This is a soul choice. In turn we rise to a higher and healthier perspective, because self-esteem and the ego are inversely related; like a see-saw, when one goes up the other goes down.

In case you missed that, the point being made was that self-esteem comes from making good choices which by definition are soul choices because the soul, not so incidentally, is the Yetzer Tov.

Logic therefore dictates that if we are in control of ourselves and act responsibly, we can never be deeply bothered by anyone or anything (which translates into a healthy sense of self-esteem).  And then Dovid Lieberman adds that we are not a casualty of anyone or anything other than our own behavior because nothing affects us; we affect everything by virtue of our soul choices.