english NITZAVIM 2013
A BAAL TESHUVA FROM CHELM
The Masters of Mussar teach us that Teshuva does not mean to be better. It means to be different. The fellow who discovers that he got on the wrong train cannot just get up and sit in the opposite seat, facing the direction in which he wants to be going. He’s got to get off the train. Find where he went wrong. And start on a new track. When people discover that they have gotten themselves into a habit that does them no good, the solution is never on the same plateau as the problem. Only uprooting and starting again can make the difference.
This we find in the words of Rabbeinu Yonah in his Iggeret Hateshuva. There is only one way to do Teshuva: It is by seeing yourself as a new person and starting afresh. Getting into the “now” and making sure that you do your best that any past mistake will not be repeated. It is not to live in the past and in regret. Regret is an acutely painful feeling, and one that has its very specific time and place. Regret can be effective only AFTER a person has changed. Despite the fact that Teshuva is a combination of חרטה and קבלה על העתיד, Regret for the past and Accepting a new path for the future, Teshuva does not start with regret. (This may be the reason why G-d made Rosh Hashana before Yom Kippur: to teach us that before we work on atonement, scrubbing the sins of the past by means of regret, we must initiate a new beginning.) And most people get so busy with regret that they just never do teshuva, no matter how much they try.
This is true about most things for which we would like to do teshuva. We usually attempt teshuva on things that we feel bad about. And then, we get so busy feeling bad about them that we get sidetracked and end up not rectifying them. Regret, says R’ Yonah, should be reserved for after change. When someone recognizes faulty behavior in himself, he should first figure out what new habits need to be adopted. He should put the new behavior into practice, and only then, after he has already effected a change, can he go through the hell of regret. Why in this order? R’ Hutner writes that the Mitzvah of Teshuva is a Mitzvah Temidit, a constant mitzvah that can and should be done at any time, in any place. We learn this from the words of King David וחטאתי נגדי תמיד . Even so, this refers to the part of Teshuva that involves making changes for the future, not to regret. Regret, in its deepest essence, has its root in anger, in not accepting one’s past self or behaviors, and is a close cousin to rebuke. The word rebuke is usually understood by us as reprimanding others. R’ Hutner points out that regret is actually rebuking oneself. And, says R’ Hutner, just as rebuke is a mitzvah, so is regret. The problem is that just as rebuke is something that most people are not capable of doing properly,(especially nowadays) so, too, is having regret for sin. Although regret is necessary, it must be approached and felt in the proper way, with caution. It is very hard to rebuke others properly, and no less difficult to rebuke oneself. It’s also hard to recognize one’s personal strengths, while regretting actions that resulted from the opposite: from personal weakness. Therefore, says R’ Hutner, regret cannot be a Mitzah Temiddit. This is ironic, because most people who want to do Teshuva for something in the past just cannot seem to get the regret out of their head, making it somewhat Temidi. That is the only part that should not be Temidi.
The town of Chełm decided to build a new synagogue. So, some strong, able-bodied men were sent to a mountaintop to chop down trees for long beams to build the holy building. The men put the logs on their shoulders, four at a time, and trudged down the mountain to the town below. When they arrived, the town chief yelled, “Foolish men! You should have rolled the logs down the mountain!” The chief went up to the top of the mountain and kicked the last log. The log rolled down the hill very smoothly. The men agreed this was an excellent idea. So they trudged back up the mountain with the heavy logs still on their shoulders, and rolled them back down again.
Let the mistakes of the past be the lessons for the future, but don’t waste the future feeling bad about mistakes of the past. We might even lose our creativity to change our behavior due to our feelings of inadequacy, due to our feelings of regret over slips and foolish mistakes that have been made. We need that creativity to find a new way, to plan a different path for the future. It is hard to plan a new direction, to figure out where you want to go, when you are looking out of your rear view mirror.
On a similar note, I have found the following to be very true while coaching people. When a person tries to break a negative habit, many times he finds himself in a losing a battle. His conscious and rational decisions lose to habit and the subconscious. “Stop smoking! Stop eating unhealthy or fattening foods! Stop thinking negative or improper thoughts!” None of these commands seems to work. Neither does “Stop being afraid! Stop spacing out! Stop feeling down! Stop laughing ! Stop crying! ” When one tells himself what not to do, or, better yet, makes a negative command to the subconscious, it disobeys. Why? The subconscious accepts only suggestions of what to do: not commands of what to “stop” doing or “don’t do”. It simply deletes the “don’t”, and carries on with the rest….
In Elul, there are two ways to do teshuva. Stop sinning!. Stop gossiping!. Stop! Or start doing something else. The subconscious knows how to get a person to continue doing something, even though he has made a rational decision to stop that behavior. So, instead of telling your body to stop a certain habit or obsession, thought process or emotion, tell yourself something to do, think or believe. The fellow who is on a diet, who is hungry, should not say to himself stop desiring the caramel dream chocolate cream and peanut butter whatever, rather reach for a carrot instead. The cigarette smoker should not tell himself smoking kills, you will die younger, or anything else that implies desisting and has not helped him stop smoking until now. Instead, he should chew on a pencil, or something else. The person who has a fear does not stop being afraid when he tells himself to stop being afraid. (Eventually one starts to worry that he cannot control his worries.) But if he asks himself rational questions, “What are the chances of this happening ? What are the advantages of having such a fear?” then there is a better chance that he will deal more effectively with the fear. Why ? because the subconscious does not listen to commands so easily. But it will learn from a new way of behavior, answering an effective question, new body language (posture/physiology) or action. It will listen to a positive suggestion, where there is no resistance or habit.
If we stay in regret, if we stay at the stop sign, we will never change. If we want change, we must come up with new behaviors, new thoughts, new tactics and new beliefs .
BLASTING THROUGH TO OUR TRUE SELF
I’d like to present three puzzling teachings of our Sages concerning the shofar we blow on Rosh HaShanah, and explain how they can all be understood through one fundamental concept.
First of all, why do we use a ram’s horn, and not the horn of some other animal? The Sages tells us that this “brings up before G-d the memory of Isaac bound on the altar, prepared to be offered up as a sacrifice.” G-d then promises to view us as if we prepared ourselves as a sacrifice before Him” (Rosh HaShanah 16b). Now, we might wonder, does G-d really need symbolic reminders of Isaac’s self-sacrifice? The moments of history lay before Him like the words on a paper before the eyes of the reader. G-d does not need a symbolic horn to recall Isaac bound on the altar, and the ram which ultimately substituted for him.
Another puzzle: Our Sages explain that we sound the shofar blasts twice on Rosh HaShanah – once while congregants are seated and then again while they are standing in prayer – in order to “confuse the Satan.” It will cause him to fear that the Final Redemption has arrived, and that his career is over. We want to confuse the Satan so that he does not testify against us during these crucial moments of judgment. Now, again, we might wonder about this: How can a ram’s horn confuse an angel – especially the angel who specialized in confusing us all year round! Hasn’t he learnt already from thousands of previous Rosh Hashanahs that this is not the shofar of the Final Redemption, but rather just the shofar of the Jews in the synagogue on the Day of Judgment?
One more question. In the Mussaf prayers on Rosh Hashanah, we speak of G-d this way: כי שומע קול שופר אתה ומאזין תרועה ואין דומה לך because you are One who listens to the sounds of the shofar, and you hear the Teruah sound, and there is none like You… This seems to imply that G-d has a special ability to hear something in the sounding of the Shofar that no one else can. What can this possibly be?
The key to all three of these puzzles is the unique capacity of the shofar to wake us up spiritually and put us in touch with our core desire to act in accordance with the will of the King of Kings, and to serve Him with our entire being like our Patriarch Yitzchak. This desire is deeper that any personal desire, will, or want. Although we may not have been fully cognizant of it (in ourselves or others) during the year, it is still deep within us. It is an unspoken emotion, one that can only be awakened and expressed through the sound of the shofar – a sound that emanates from the soul itself. Not everyone can hear this, and no-one can hear it like G-d. At the crucial moments when G-d judges us in accordance with who we are then and there, we want more than anything to reconnect to this core emotion and will.
We may have been oblivious to the secret of the shofar during the entire year. We may have acted in a manner that was not in accord with this core will. But it is there. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov would say that a Jew is like an onion. The more you peel, the more tears come out. We Jews may have many levels that cover our true identity. But the shofar peels them away. On Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, when we wish we would have been able to be better, more real, more spiritual – and we feel a tear roll down onto the Machzor – that is an expression of our true self. And that is exactly how we want G-d to see us when He comes to judge us.
The Satan works overtime all year long to ensure that this does not happen. His mission is to confuse us so that we get out of touch with our true self. When he sees that the core of the Jew is pure and impenetrable to him – an inner will that bursts forth on Rosh HaShanah – he becomes frightened, thinking that he is finished. He knows that if we uncover this level of our true identity, then we will ultimately see the Final Redemption accompanied by the powerful blasts of the great ram’s horn.
In the large coatroom of the well-attended synagogue where I occasionally pray, I recently noticed the following sign: “Beware of pickpockets!” A few days later, another sign went up: “Dear thief! The bag you took contains knives and stones that have great value to me, but absolutely no value to you. Please return the bag to its place!” I figured that the owner must be a shochet. For some reason, I could not get this sign out of my head.
I finally realized that this is the kind of message we should all be conveying to our Evil Inclination during these days leading up to Rosh HaShanah. He stole from us our precious inner identity – what we really are deep inside. Indeed, the Evil Inclination’s worst crime is to make each one of us feel like “just another person.” Lowering our sense of self-worth and, consequently, our expectations of ourselves, caused us to feel that we are just fine the way we are. These days especially, we should force the Yetzer Hara to give us back our true identity – which is more valuable than anything else in the world!
