english – VAYECHI

RUNNING LIKE WATER

The  other day, I found a book with sayings from the Rebbe of Kotzk at a street book sale. He was known for his quotes, for the way he would make his point sharper than the point of a needle. When the idea sinks in, a person can only say , “Ouch!, I was not aware of that!” So , I flipped through the pages, and looked around for a quote that I could meditate on, one that I could “stick in deep”. I do not know why, but I just could not get the following one out of my mind. אין סכנה כסכנת ההרגל  “There is no danger like the danger of habit”.  It did not mean that much to me when I first read it, for we find this concept in other places . But still, I could not get the words of the Kotsker out of my head. He said it differently from everyone else, There is no danger like the danger of habit. Not Hurricane Sandy. Not a Nazi Germany. But “habit”.

What are habits?  Habit is a repeated behavior that is more or less automatic, having been programmed through prior experience.  Such subconscious action can be most useful in many areas of life, enabling us to do tasks efficiently, as we need not devote contemplation or thinking what we are about to do. So how could the Kotsker say that habit is the greatest danger for humanity?

In this week’s parasha, we find how Yaakov “blessed Reuven” פחז כמים אל תותר כי עלית משכבי אביך  Hasty like water , not deserving of reward, for you have gone up onto your father’s couch… Reuven was under rebuke for having been hasty. But why did Yaakov connect haste to water? Water flows; that’s it! It is not the “hastiest” thing on earth. As a matter of fact, water does not have any speed on its own. So why use the metaphor of water?

There are basically two human states. The preplanned state. And the planning state. Successful people always plan ahead, for when we are preprogrammed, we work the best. But, on the other side of the coin, when we forget to plan ahead and we are running on “preprogrammed mode” for too long without being aware of how things are going, we are in great danger. We are unaware of where we are, how we are behaving. We are then just like water that flows through a mold. Water is unique in this sense; it is the only thing in the universe that runs without making a conscious decision to do so. Our actions and decisions are like the water. Our routine is our mold. And the water, our actions and decisions, flows through the mold of our routine, as if we were robotic. People who do things with haste in life are usually running according to a mold they made for themselves. Then, life can flow by without meaning. Just missing the whole point. Accepting things in our mold, because we just got used to it being there. The water just glides through it.

New drivers are those who are developing habits of how to drive. Until then, they are very cautious. Once new drivers get into the stage that coaches call “unconscious competence”, they fiddle with the radio and do other things while driving. The problem is when they get so used to such habits, so dependent on them, that they just do not remember that you cannot drive safely while texting or searching someone’s number. The result? Car accidents are from the highest causes of death. אין סכנה כסכנת ההרגל  There is no greater danger than the danger of habit. Habit may be the greatest thing for human performance and productivity, but it is the most dangerous as well.

There are so many types of day- in, day- out habits. There are learning habits, thinking habits, eating habits, and religious habits. Coming late to prayers. This is a result of how we habitually go to sleep, without schedule, not turning on the alarm clock the night before. We then wonder why we have trouble concentrating in our prayers.

Let us zero in on thinking habits. I was coaching a boy who wanted to improve on his Chassidus; he wanted to be able to learn Tanya with clarity. So, for the first time in my life, I studied the works of the founder of Chabbad. We opened the sefer to where he was up to, and I could not believe what I saw on the page. “A human is split in two , Knowledge(חכמה בינה ודעת) and Middot (behavior/ characteristics). The Knowledge is the Mother and the way one behaves is the outcome of the knowledge he has.” At the bottom of the page, there is the following explanation: If we want to fear G-d, to love G-d, the Rambam tells us that we have to look at the Creation and “think”- ויתבונן. When we realize how amazing the Creation is, when we are in constant awareness of its grandeur, we remain awestruck . We are in an ongoing state of love.

The way to change the way we feel, the way to change the way we act is to change the way we think.  The thought is the Mother, and our perspective, feelings and behavior are the outcome. We have thinking habits; they will determine the way we feel. Let us take the example of depressed people. Depressed people are those who have habits of depressed thinking. Depressed people generally have a habit of looking at the world as being “all or nothing”. If I do not have a lot of friends- I have no friends. If I do not have the greatest job I know – it is better to be unemployed. If I am not going to be the best guy in the beit midrash-  better that I  not come at all. All the thoughts of this person flow like water through the all or nothing “mold”. The thoughts go so fast, he doesn’t  even notice that he has thoughts that are self-destructive.  He doesn’t know why he is feeling unhappy and defeated.   This is habit of thought. And there is no greater danger than the danger of habit.

May Hashem help us be aware of what we are doing. How we behave. And who we are.

THE G-D GIFTED ME

One never gets burned out from being himself. “Burn-out” happens when a person tries to be someone he is not, and then finds that it is impossible! The Hebrew word for stress is מתח. This word מתח  is also used when describing a stretched rope – מתוח. Stress is the outcome of someone stretching himself too much or too far and even then, not reaching his goal.

The best way to dissipate stress is to accept ourselves as we are and stop trying to be people we are not. The world today has become stressful as never before, with more tension than oxygen. So many people have convinced themselves that if they would only be rich, famous, good looking, humorous or like their successful sibling, popular colleague or assistant, then the good times would start. As we will soon see, that just may be when the good times are over.

Using  Chanukah as a springboard we might wonder concerning the fate of the Hashmonai family. After their victory, this family of Kohanim ascended the throne, assuming kingship over the Jewish people. For taking the throne, each of the four holy and pious sons of Mattityahu fell in war. The Talmud (B. Batra 3b) tells us how the Hashmonean rule ended, and how the Herodian period begun. The story is of Hordus, slave of the Hashmonai royal family. One day Hordus laid his eyes on one of the Hashmonai princesses. Soon after, he heard a Heavenly voice call out “Any servant who presently rebels will succeed”. Hordus took the opportunity to kill all of the Hashmonai family, leaving behind the princess he wanted to marry. Once the girl realized that the former slave, Hordus, wanted to make her his queen, she climbed to the rooftop and cried out- “Anyone who claims that he belongs to the house of  Hashmonai is nothing more than a servant, for all the Hashmonai kohanite family perished”. This girl, the last member of the Hashmonai family, then leaped to her death.

The Ramban in this weeks parasha (49,10) writes the reason for the punishment of the priestly family. On his death bed, Yaakov blessed Yehuda ”the royal staff should not be passed (to another) from Yehuda”. The Hashmonaim priests had an obligation to offer sacrifices in the Temple and not to sit on the royal throne. The throne is reserved for Yehuda, alone. Despite the holiness and piousness of such a family, they were not meant to rule the Jewish people.

R’ Chaim Chechik zt”l writes in regard to this Ramban, that every person has a place, mission, and plan custom tailored for him in this world. Once someone tries to be someone else who is seemingly “G-d gifted”, then he will not have Heavenly support or assistance in being that “someone else”.  Although the Torah we have today was preserved in the generation of the Hashmonaim solely in their merit, all four sons of Mattityahu, the Holy Priest, died tragically as a result of being who they were not supposed to be.

This mistake can and does happen to many people. A person who is, ostensibly, not trying to be someone else, and who denies wishing that he could have been a successful sibling or student instead of being himself, may blush during his denial.  How sad it is that a person considers that there is someone with greater importance than his own.  Who will be me in my place?  There is, after all, only one me, and no one else can be the real me.

We see this in the Ramban, concerning the explanation of the transgression of kilayim, crossbreeding.(Vayikra 19:19) The reason G-d forbade crossbreeding is because He created the species with genetic identity to exist till the End of Time. One who crossbreeds is ruining G-d’s Creation ; it is as if he thinks that G-d made (chas veshalom) an incomplete world. Each and every blade of grass has a Mazal in the Heavens that taps it and directs it to grow (Breishit Rabba 10; 6). The Universe is run with the utmost precision and Divine Intervention. By trying to be someone else we are in essence saying – (chas veshalom) G-d, your world isn’t perfect. You made a mistake with me.

R’ Yerucham Levovitz z’’l takes this a step further. If someone does succeed in being someone else, he may not survive. Fish need to reside in water at all times to live. Other animals would die in such conditions. And a fish on land would die if he had too much fresh air. This demonstrates that the source of life is neither air nor water. The true source is a Supernatural G-d. When someone tries to be like someone else, he is leaving his “source of support from Heaven”. This is not how G-d made him/her. They may never survive in such conditions. G-d created this feeling of stress for a person to help him discover if he is being himself or someone else.

It is so important to internalize at every spare moment G-d’s Divine Intervention and Care. Forgetting this can cause us much psychological damage. The outcome is a feeling of being left out, abandoned or forgotten. In the field of productivity, the results are even more destructive. We may never even notice in what we actually are “G-d gifted.”

THE CURSE OF A PATRIARCH