Mentch Before Ruchnius?

I have read the idea "emotional health comes before spiritual growth" several times and have wondered about it.  Sometimes it's couched as "first he needs to become a mentch, then we can work on his ruchnius." It is in the context of those off the derech or those having personal problems.

I can see that if someone is an emotional mess, they are in no position to listen to a shiur.  But they could very well be encouraged to do a mitzvah!

In the book Incredible, the story is told of Yossi Gevili, an inmate in an Israeli prison who showed up at an Arachim seminar.  He was on furlough, only his second one in seven years because after he was allowed out the first time and got into a fight, they were hesitant about letting him out again.  This time, he figured the safest place for him was at an Arachim seminar.

Yossi Gevili had been one of the worst prisoners at the prison.  He did not get along with anyone, he argued constantly, was mean, and broke all the rules.  When he returned to the prison after the seminar, he was a different person, polite, and he started using a siddur.  Four days at the Arachim seminar made him into a baal teshuva and model citizen.

Arachim personnel found him a job when he was released and gave him the support he needed to stay on track. He married and settled down and gave his mother nachas.

So here was a man who was difficult inmate in a prison who did not first undergo therapy or any sort of program to address his emotional state of being, his obnoxious behavior, and his anger.  He was exposed to Torah lectures and this changed his life.

It's Just Too Hard

R' Daniel Gross spoke in Yiddish at the Keiravtuni Shabbaton.  He said he saw a bunch of guys hanging out, drop-outs.
 

One of them said, it's a pity I was born a Jew.

If I was born a goy I would have only 7 mitzvos.  Taryag mitzvos are a pressure for me, I always have a guilty conscience.

A goy gets olam haba for doing his seven.

***
So it's not the kid did not believe. He believed and wanted olam haba, but felt it was just too hard.  A friend of mine thinks this comes from "affluenza," which includes the idea that life should be easy.

R' Gross presented the issue to chassidishe bachurim, of why be a yid, what's good about it.  The best answer they could come up with was olam haba.  They viewed Torah and mitzvos as an ol (burden), and saw the point as just olam haba.

It's a great essay topic to assign 12th graders.  Describe the scene, repeat what the guy said about it being a shame he was born a Jew and why, and ask them to write their response.

 

It's About Having a Relationship. Oh!

I was reading a paragraph in a new Feldheim book which said, "He [Hashem] gave us the mitzvos in order to afford us the opportunity to ________________ ." Now how do you think the sentence ended?

I would have expected it to end with "earn the World to Come" or some similar way of putting getting a reward.  Instead, the sentence surprisingly ended, "develop a relationship with Him."

It seems to me that something has drastically changed.  It's hard to keep tabs on things like this, on how many times this comes up in books, articles, and speeches.  My impression is that I am reading a lot lately about cultivating a relationship with G-d, when previously, the emphasis was on reward in Olam Haba.

Life Must Go On

A woman described her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor who was the only survivor of a very large family.  She had one child who died at age 40:

"My grandmother is very bitter about losing her entire family in the Holocaust and then her only child dying.  She often talks about her father who was a great talmid chacham.  She is very angry at Hashem.  She keeps Shabbos and a strictly kosher home.  She goes to shul every Shabbos but does not daven.  She says, 'I can't get myself to praise Hashem after what happened to me, so I say nothing.'  She says, 'I don't bentch.  If I were to thank Hashem for the food, I also must scold Him for what He did.'"

What an amazing approach to life! It's like what they teach kallos, that even when upset with your husband, the routine of life must go on.  There is supper and mikva.  This woman has a genuine relationship with Hashem and she is mad at Him.  She stills keeps Shabbos and kosher and even goes to shul, but to praise Him? That's going too far. 

I'd love for her to speak to disenfranchised teens and adults and tell them about her life and her attitude toward serving Hashem.  Perhaps all those who walk away from Shabbos and kashrus will be touched by her story and ashamed when they compare their grievances to the life this woman has led, and hear how she still maintains the routine of Jewish life, because - just because you're upset, doesn't mean you walk away from it all.

Don't Limit Him

In a pre-Rosh Hashana call to someone, I made reference to the idea that although I daven for certain things, Hashem knows better than me what to give me.  I have limited ideas and if I limit my prayers to just those items, I will be shortchanging myself. 

The person agreed and responded with two stories.  In the first story, a young man began coughing and when he had it checked out, was told the devastating news that there was a mass on his lungs.  They could not even biopsy it because of the fear that this would cause cancer cells to spread.

He went in for surgery and before long, the doctor came out beaming.  He said, you'll never believe this.  There is a gland called the thymus gland which is right underneath the breastbone.  At the onset of puberty it begins shrinking.  For some reason, in this 25 year old man it had not shrunk and that was the mass that they saw.  No threat to life whatsoever.

In the second story, a mammogram showed a lump.  Another mammogram was ordered.  It still looked problematic.  There is the prayer that it be benign.

Another test was ordered, a rather uncomfortable one.  As it was being done, the technician or doctor seemed to be experiencing difficulties.  What's the problem? Well, there is no lump there at all.

So we daven for surgery to go well instead of praying for no surgery; we daven that the lump be benign instead of no lump; we have kleine kep and we circumscribe G-d in a tiny box and ask for petty results.  G-d has no restrictions; let's not project our restrictions on Him.

Hashem as our Father

I read a moving article in which the author, a counselor in a Russian camp, described visiting day.  How saddened she was to see the family members, "estranged Yiddish parents, some of whom were descendents of chassidishe rabbonim and chashuve gedolim, others were children of simple erliche Yidden.  These neshamos were so cut off, so unfamiliar with their people's customs ..

"I suddenly felt the terrible feeling of a parent whose beloved child is off the derech.  The pain, the hurt, the broken heart.  It is almost unbearable.  I contemplated the immense suffering Hashem must feel, having so many wayward children ..."

What immediately comes to my mind is - what is the comparison? Do parents rip Yiddishkeit away from their children and then mourn their going off the derech? Or do they try to raise them in a wholesome, Jewish environment and, for whatever reasons, their chinuch efforts do not bear the expected results?

Hashem is the one who had the shuls, yeshivos and mikvaos close in Russia.  Hashem is the one who made life so miserable in Eastern Europe that poverty-stricken and persecuted Jews left for America in their millions.  Hashem made Hitler rise to power and annihilate most of European Jewry.  That most Jews today have not had a proper chinuch is not, for the most part, because parents withhold it from their children, but because Hashem set things up in such a way that most of His children are estranged. 

Why He chose to do this is inexplicable to us.  Maybe, contrary to Hashem feeling grief over His handiwork, He feels joy at every single mitzvah estranged Jews keep.  Because unlike a parent whose children has left the path, Hashem's children who never had the path, still feel a warmth toward Yiddishkeit.  The neshama still flickers.

All About Me

Aish is running a series on the Six Constant Mitzvos again.  This is the second year that one can subscribe to it during sefira.  It's a great idea to bring these mitzvos to people's attention and I read the emails and watch the videos. 

However, I am finding the angle they are using this year jarring.  In the desire to make this topic interesting and relevant and different than last year, these mitzvos are presented from the perspective of "how can I use them every single day to be more successful in everything that I do in my life."  In other words, they are taking the mitzvos that focus our attention on G-d, and twisting them into a focus on self!

Inconceivable!

What a medical oops this was! A woman underwent IVF only to be told that the baby she was carrying was not her own, but someone else's embryo! She sustained the pregnancy because she believes in the sanctity of life.  This was a tremendously difficult challenge since the baby wasn't hers and she wasn't going to keep it (although she would have loved to).  The baby went to its genetic parents immediately after it was born.  The book is appropriately named, Inconceivable.

The couple who tells the story, alternating between the husband's voice and the wife's voice, are Catholic.  They wanted a large family and they are devoted to the church, giving it their time, energy and resources.  Interestingly, they defied the Church's position on IVF which is that IVF is morally unacceptable. 

Despite being religious people, they have ideas about G-d that are not what I would call "religious."  She says she does not believe "G-d only gives you what you can handle."  She does not believe G-d tests people.  She does not believe that G-d is in charge of His world, "that He sits up in heaven and decides who gets what tragedy or blessing."  She says, shockingly, "We are certain that G-d didn't do this to us.  We just know it happened."  And she doesn't believe in "gam zu l'tova," that something good will come of this. 

I don't know how widespread these beliefs are among Catholics or Christians in general.  I find it so surprising when these ideas are the bedrock of our emuna.  If she doesn't think G-d is running the world, what does she think G-d is about? That He created the world and retired? I don't want to get into Christian theology but I'd be interested in knowing whether this couple's belief system is shared by many church goers and what they think about reward and punishment. 

Reaction to Letter of Protest

I was recently told about a "Dear G-d" letter written by Rabbi Cardozo and I looked it up and found it here:

http://www.cardozoschool.org/show_article.asp?cat_id=1&cat_name=Jewish Thought and Philosophy&subcat_name=Man, God and the Torah&subcat_id=44&article_id=704&parent_id=1  

Rabbi Cardozo, as the website states, is a prominent lecturer and author .. a native of the Spanish-Portuguese Jewish community of Holland who holds a doctorate in philosophy.  He received semicha from from the yeshiva in Gateshead Talmudic College and studied in Israel at the Institute for Higher Rabbinical Studies of Chief Rabbi Unterman and at the Mir Yeshiva.

In his letter of protest, he expresses his anguish over the massacre of the Fogel family "and the death of at least ten thousand human beings due to a huge earthquake and tsunami that YOU, and nobody else, caused."  Why didn't G-d prevent the terrorists from perpetrating their heinous deed, he wants to know, and why did G-d allow the Japanese to suffer such devastation?

He wondered why nobody else seemed to be agonizing as he was, over these tremendous losses, and was amazed that people still showed up at shul to talk to G-d.  He could not understand how people were not preoccupied with this religious crisis and wonders whether something is lacking in them or perhaps in himself.

Rabbi Cardozo continues to believe in G-d even as he ponders these questions.

I am impressed if this letter truly reflects his emotions.  However, I find two things disturbing.  One, he does not differentiate with a "l'havdil" or otherwise, between the murders of the Fogels, our brothers and sisters, and the loss of life and chaos in Japan.  When I raised this point in discussion, someone vehemently disagreed with me and asked why the rabbis did not declare a day of fasting for the Japanese.  I was taken aback by this sentiment and asked whether, in our history, in our Torah, there is such a precedent.  This point was not well taken.  Although Hashem's mercy is al kol maasav, and so should ours be, our natural Jewish reaction should be different for our fellow Jews than for other human beings. 

Second, Rabbi Cardozo's reaction is based on the assumption that the Japanese were entirely innocent victims of an explicable massive tragedy.  Although he concedes that we cannot understand G-d, he is still torn between his intellectual understanding that G-d has His reasons and his emotional reaction to human suffering.  My reaction, by way of contrast, was to wonder why Japan? Why, of all countries which are idol worshipping and transgress other of the Seven Noahide Laws, did G-d pick Japan for this utter ruination?

Dear Father ...

Every morning, after saying Modeh Ani and washing her hands, she would go out on the porch.  She placed her hands behind her back and addressed Hashem: My Master, my Father, I cannot do anything without You!

That is how a Moroccan Jewish woman addressed Hashem every morning.  She was an isha peshuta (simple woman) who was illiterate, since they did not teach girls to read and write and yet she had a personal relationship with the Ribono shel olam, one which, sophisticated we, with our ability to read, write and surf and search the Internet, often lack. 

We read stories from yesteryear, of the simple folk whom the Baal Shem Tov extolled.  There are still some living amongst us.  They are precious Jews.

We have a hard task.  We cannot feign simplicity.  We are enjoined to learn and know, to the best of our abilities.  But even as we broaden our minds and knowledge, we need to retain the emuna peshuta (simple faith) of a child, of unlearned people.