Tiyul in Tanya Part 7: Gaining Clarity

So picking up where we left off…

To understand all the aforesaid clearly an explanation is needed, as also to under-stand what Job said [Bava Batra, ch. i], “Lord of the universe, Thou hast created righteous men and Thou hast created wicked men,…” for it is not preordained whether a man will be righteous or wicked.

In order to understand how to properly classify(for the moment we are going to work within this illusion, granted it ultimately breaks down, as the Leshem, Rav Shimon Algasi and other major mekubalim write that even in the world to come we will still be beinonim with choice, avodah[service], aveira[sin], reward and punishment) each.  What is a Tzadik, what is a Beinoni, what is a Rasha?  How do those things exist?  In order to do that we need to examine a few more bits in order to get a full picture of what exactly we are talking about.  Then we can explore how all of those things touch upon our worship of Hashem, and the questions that they force us to ask of ourselves as we continue upon our path of service.

Job’s statement is also perplexing.  If the full piece in the Gemarra he is arguing, what is in his mind, the fundamental unfairness of creation.  An ox is born with cloven hooves, yet a donkey is not… thus they have no equality(seemingly) in the basest potential.  He makes the same argument about men claiming that some are compelled to sin by the status and circumstances of their birth, while others are born to be tzadikim.

However as the Baal HaTanya states that this is not true at all.  There is an aphorism in the Gemarra, אין חסיד עם הארץ “A Chasid is not an Am HaAretz.”  This applied in the Gemarra and it applies equally today to the study of Chassidut.  So surely you would know that on Niddah 16b is found the rest of the story.  There it says before a soul descends into a body Hashem decrees whether it will be wise or foolish, rich or poor, handsome or ugly ect.  However the Gemarra than asks if it decrees whether it will be righteous or wicked and says, “Everything is in the hands of heaven except for the fear of heaven.”

It is also necessary to understand the essential nature of the rank of the Inter¬mediate.

This is especially so since this is ultimately the place where we all fall out.  From the greatest Admur to the humblest Jew, each is according to his level a Beinoni.  Rav Kaduri ZTzUK”L used to call himself a beinoni.  How could this be?  It was a matter of perspective.  He told several mashalim(parables) explaining this.  One he said over to me was, “So you passed your Rabbanut Exam with Alef Alef… very nice, how do you compare with Rav Ovadia Yosef?”  His point was poignant and clear, whatever level you achieve, there is always another one(or 100) left to attain.  The Gemarra says that a man does not die with half of his desires in his hands, Rav Yaakov Hillel in his work Ascending the Path says this also applies to Torah and Righteousness.  The Gra in his biur on Mishle(chapter 16) says that a man is called a holek(walker) because his way is to constantly be moving, there is no standing still.  If he thinks he is standing still and enjoying some level that he has attained he is in fact falling backward.

Surely that cannot mean one whose deeds are half virtuous and half sinful, for if this were so, how could Rabbah err in classifying himself as a Benoni? For it is known that he never ceased studying [theTorah], so much so that the Angel of Death could not over¬power him; how, then, could he err to have half of his deeds sinful, G-d forbid?

The status of a Beinoni has very little to do with one’s deeds.  Quite obviously the Angel of Death had to trick Rabbah into wanting to sacrifice himself in order to be able to kill him(see Bava Metzia 86a).  Though, as the Baal HaTanya will point out, at times that label is given to such a person, in that case it is not discussing an actual Beinoni, but rather it is a colloquialism that is applied.  We run into such things throughout Torah literature.  Take the word Zonah for instance, it is applied, even in the Torah as a colloquialism for a prostitute, however, in halakhic terms, it has nearly nothing to do with prostitution.  In fact a woman could well be a prostitute, so long as she is properly selective in her clientele and never attain the status of a Zonah.

Essentially what the Baal HaTanya is warning us here is to not conflate the colloquialism with the “halakhic” definition.  They are not necessarily the same.  Since his basic thesis will be, as it is spelled out over about 20 chapters, that we are all Beinonim, he wants up front to let us know that he is not giving us license to misbehave.  One cannot say, “well I am a Beinoni, so I’m expected to sin here and there.”  Rather a Beinoni, as he will say is one who still has an evil inclination, and again since as the Gemarra says, and the Arizal quotes at the start of Shaar Ruah HaKodesh, “There is no Tzadik that does only right and does not sin.”  We are all, from Moshe Rabbeinu, to the humblest Jew, a Beinoni.

Taking a Break…

I have a couple of posts set to auto-post next week, but other than that I’m take a one week hiatus(I don’t think it will be more than that but we will see).  I have an upcomming bechina for the Rabbanut Dayyanut program.  I have started teaching a chevra for Semikha and need to prepare out a ways.  I haven an upcoming exam for my Safrut Teuda, starting next week we go back to the Kavvanot of the Rashash.  Oh, did I mention that I have four kids and a wife that I need to devote time to?

I keep finding that internet life is just eating up too much of my time.  I’ve tried remaining positive on posts, and more importantly on comments on the posts of others, however, I find that the negativity is still getting to me and causes a distraction even when I am away from the internet.

In this way I think the Rabbanim who ran the internet asifa actually did have a point.  The internet can easily overwhelm our minds, but CNN already said that, and thus needs strong boundaries.  I am at a point right now where I need to be able to focus my mind like a laser, Dayyanut exams are no joke, and others relying on me to guide them to pass Rabbanut Semikha exams is also not joke.

So it would appear that for my 500th post(wow can you believe it has been that many already) that I am declaring a bit of a hiatus.  In practical terms posts will still go up, but I’m not going to be overly involved in the comments and I am not going to be commenting on the blogs of others.

Rav Morgenshtern on the Parasha

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Who Revealed this Secret to My Children: Rav Yaakov Hillel on Shavuot

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Bringing the Shechinah Closer: Rabbi Yaakov Hillel on the Parasha

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Chaya the Chassid, the Hassidic Feminist, and a Fink…

If by some miracle you have not heard about or read about this yet, a Chassidic woman by the name of Chaya wrote a beautiful article about her experience as a Chassidic woman and how she felt that it was an experience that the media all too often ignores.   Whether you’ve missed it because you simply haven’t paid attention to the FB and blog buzz or because it hasn’t reached whatever rock you may live under, I would suggest that you read it now.

One of the early responses was by Rabbi Eliyahu Fink.  In which Rabbi Fink once again does not miss an opportunity to denigrate Orthodoxy, while simultaneously claiming to be an Orthodox Rabbi.   He defended Deborah Feldman even when it was clearly demonstrated that the majority of her story was a lie, and claimed that her falsified experience was typical of the “insular Chassidim”.

Now he attacks Chaya and claims that she is falsely ascribing her fortunately, and apparently in his mind against the odds, positive Chassidic experience to those unfortunate “insular Chassidim” who don’t get to share her Chassidic by choice good feelings.  He has a problem with Chaya because she is a Baal Teshuva(gasp) and not only is she Baal Teshuva but she is Chabad Baal Teshuva(double gasp with a near swoon).  So this obviously invalidates her experience and views(according to him).

How an extremely modern(Orthodox?) Rabbi in Venice California believes he can talk definitively about a community that he is not and never was a part of is beyond me, especially one that he refers to as “insular.”  Insular, a word that comes from the Latin word insula meaning island, it typically applied to a people who have little to no outside contact and thus one would not know what goes on inside their communities.  In other words, if you have never lived on the island you can’t tell us the lay of the land on said island, and thus trying to invalidate an islander’s description of said island is condescending at best.

Really what this comes down to, is this.  By what right does one have to judge a community to which they have no affiliation?  All the more so when done over the objections of a member of that community.  Look I get saying that you don’t want to be a part Chabad, Gur, Chardal, DL, MO, Hasidei Beit El because it doesn’t appeal or you have hashkafic differences.  However, I don’t think that you can say,

 I respect your healthy exuberance for your Chabad lifestyle. I think it’s great. Share the love. By all means. But please do not generalize and use terms like “we” and “us” to describe your personal experience. Not only is it disingenuous, it actually harms the cause of those who are trying to advocate for women’s rights and opportunities in the chasidic and otherwise orthodox Jewish women. The future of orthodox Judaism will need to make adjustments to the way we deal with women issues.  Pretending it is perfect as it is, sets us backwards several decades.

When you are neither a woman nor have any sort of communal involvement.  To me especially it sounds strikingly familiar to the haskala emissaries that went into Baghdad to try to help those backward Arabic Jews that were so devoted to the Ben Ish Hai…

Asifa -My Thoughts…

I really was not going to write about this, mostly because I don’t see how it affects me, but since I got a long stream of emails asking me my thoughts, I’m going to take a swing at it. Essentially I think that the Internet, and thus the subsequent asifa is a great red-herring and scape goat rolled into one. Sure the internet is an issue that needs to be dealt with, it is a new technology after all. However it is by far not the greatest problem facing Judaism right now. In fact I wouldn’t even rank it in the top ten.

It is easy to blame everything from the Shidduch crisis to child molestation on the internet, and if truth be told, I am sure that the internet, and especially it’s misuse does contribute and conflate those preexisting problems, however it is not the problem.  One of my Martial Arts instructors likes to say, “Guns don’t kill people, I kill people.”  What can I say, he’s Russian and he likes it better his way.  However the point still stands, a gun or the internet is simply a tool in the hand of a user, each as a function that can be used for a variety of good or bad purposes, however in and of themselves that are purely neutral.

A new technology is always a great scape goat for the world’s problems, take this quote for example:

I was against the steam enginge train when they first appeared in Gur (Góra Kalwaria). I wasnt comfortable with the idea that my kids could now easily get to Warsaw and all the filth contained therein.In Gur we had the rebbe and the torah for 200 years and that was all we needed. But now the draw to something evil is strong and the train will corrupt our youth.

Then it was a train, now it is the internet, there will always be an excuse, there will always be something else that we can blame instead of looking inward and facing our own problems head on.

Here is a truth.  Pandora’s box of the internet has been opened, like it or not these Rabbis who want to exclude the internet from people’s lives are fighting a loosing battle.  Rabbis opposed the printing press, because academics and apikorsim would be offering up holy books upon it’s unholy alter(look it up if you don’t believe me).  Rabbis opposed the telegraph, and then it’s successor the Telephone.  Television(even viewers and VCR’s/DVD players).  Fax machines.  Cell phones.  Smart phones.  Now internet.

Like I said I know that there are problems with the internet.  The phenomenon called in this CNN article “popcorn brain” is undoubtedly what Rav Ephraim Wachsman was talking about when he said,

The webbed mind has to struggle to understand Torah. There are those who sit at home and click and click into oblivion.

However the answer is not going to be bans or blaming all of the world’s ills on the internet.  It is going to be engaging it and setting guidelines for holy usage.  While actually fighting the battles that need to be fought.  Unfortunately, mandatory attendance of school aged boys and their fathers in order to falsely inflate the number ect, make that unlikely to happen.

Hastening or Hindering the Redemption…

The following is a piece taken from the introduction to Eitz Haim, with my remarks in italics:

Rabbi  Yehoshua Ben Levi said, “Each and every day a heavenly voice from Mt Horeb and says woe to the people who insult the Torah.  Because without doubt they are studying the halakha and stories alone, so the Torah is dressed in the garments of a widow, covered is sackcloth and shame ect.”  Behold there is no greater insult to the Torah than this, and therefore woe to the people who insult the Torah by not studying the wisdom of Kabbalah(if they are able) which gives honor to the Torah, and they lengthen the exile(Galut) and bring all of the evil into the world ect…  Woe to the ears that can hear and woe to the eyes that can see the Blessed one testifies against them as it is written,   And I looked and there was no one helping, and I was astounded and there was no one supporting because everything depends upon learning this wisdom and refraining from its study causes the prevention and hindrance of every good thing. And in the Midrash on Mishle concerning the pasuk, Hashem will not starve the soul of the righteous and this is what it says, Rabbi Yishmael says Woe woe that such shame and disgraces comes to one who holds Mikra(Bible) in his hand ect.  That comes to one who has in his hand Mikra(Bible), Mishnah, Halakha, Aggada, Torat Kohanim, Talmud, saying to him, my son since you did not study Kabbalah and did not wait upon the Merkava and my greatness, since I have no pleasure in the world except when Torah scholars sit and study and peek into and see and meditate upon this study this is explained even in the words of the Mishnaic sages, that a man does only fulfills his obligation to study the literal meanings of Torah by studying with all of his ability the secrets of Torah and the workings of the chariot.

Rav Morgenshtern on the Parasha

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Remembering Reality: What Really Counts…

Part of living the introspective life of a would be mystic, is that you are constantly re-evaluating your priorities.  When I made my first ventures in the blogging world so many years ago, I had one infant/toddler, a much freer schedule, and few chips on my shoulder.  That was, if the archives are to be trusted four years ago(a little longer if you go back to when I started reading and commenting on blogs).  A lot has changed since then.  My career path has changed.  The number of offspring I have vying for my attention has changed, the economy has changed, and I have changed.

One of those changes is that I am re-evaluating my internet presence.  No I am not going to stop my blog or stop writing in general(sorry if that disappoints a few of you).  However, I was thinking recently after a senseless squabble that I allowed myself to get drawn into with an anonymous blog commenter on a different blog… Why?  Why do I give this person any authority in my life to dictate my emotions.  Why do I care what this person, who hides behind anonymity, has to say?  They don’t like my opinions… tough it’s a free country(mostly).

Really the internet should only ever be entertainment.  When I can’t just walk away from it, it has passed beyond a healthy boundary.  When I am distracted during those precious few hours I get with my children every day because of what some wing nut said on the internet, something needs to change.  Like hey, while we may be able to find some pockets of actual holiness on the internet, the internet is not reality.

This lead me down a further path of thought, to the issue of ikar and toful.  As in what is primary and what is secondary.  For instance normally if anything we are going to eat contains a wheat product we make the blessing regarding that wheat.  However, if there is something that is more important(and this is really subjective) to the wheat, to the point that the wheat is really just a container, we don’t make the blessing over the wheat, but that other item(don’t believe me?  Look it up.).  Life is the same way, it is full of things, and they are subjective(mostly) that are either ikar or toful.

For instance, if you are flying on a plane, are you going to take the chance of having some people scoff at you for putting on those tefillin and even possibly looking like a religious nut for a few minutes, or are you going to say, that their opinions don’t really matter, the important thing is Avodat HaShem.  Yes there is a right choice, but still the choice is yours, what is the ikar to you.

When San Francisco(and then even possibly all of California) was considering banning even Jewish circumcision as Rabbi friend called me and was complaining, saying that many mohelim don’t know what they are going to do, they fear going to jail ect.  I told him, with my wife’s approval, if they pass that law, I want to come there and do a Brit the day after it goes into effect.  His reply was that it was going to be a felony, I would go to jail, I would lose my right to vote(and few other inalienable rights that would suddenly become quite alienable apparently).  My response was, that’s Ok, the Torah says that this is the most important mitzvah, it is equal to all the 613 combined, I am willing to take a little heat to fight for it.

Funny but then on the other hand I have let various things that should be the toful become the ikar.  The Arizal writes that Shavuot has the power to remit one’s sins the same as Yom HaKippurim.  It is your second fresh start within the year.  As we approach this Shavuot, let’s be mindful of what needs to change, and make the change.