Don’t Be Inferior

One of the biggest challenges we face in our quest to live Jewishly, is the feeling that we can’t measure up, that certain “levels” or accomplishments are just beyond us.

This is not a feeling that only a baal teshuvah might have. Many who are born and educated in even the most “religious” and/or spiritually dedicated homes feel inferior to someone who seems more gifted, privileged or just plain lucky. (”Mazeldik” is the technical term.) The feeling is real and too often is an impediment to becoming all the Jew you can be. What should you do to so that this feeling lifts you and doesn’t bury you?

First, ask a question that you should always ask any time you feel stuck in our Jewishness: Who says? Who says that just because I’ve bumped my head on the ceiling of my Jewishness that I can’t break through it? Asking this question requires two ingredients: chutzpah and ambition.

If you’re Jewish, you automatically have chutzpah. Ambition you may also have, but maybe not. And even if you do, you may not have exerted any of your ambition on growing as a Jew. If so, start now.

This question and this ambition show up in this week’s parsha. When everyone else was busy coming closer to Hashem by bringing the korban Pesach, a small group of Jews felt excluded. Heck! They were excluded. So they (respectfully) challenged Moshe Rabbeinu (Numbers 9:7). “OK, so there’s something seriously wrong with us. Does that mean we can’t move forward with the rest of our fellow Jews? Help us out!”

Their quest and question echoes that of Rachel Imeinu (our Matriarch). Hundreds of years earlier she was confronted by a very stark truth: her sister, Leah Imeinu, was privileged to build the Jewish people by bearing children to Yaakov Avinu (our Patriarch), but she, Rachel, was not. She was not to be denied though. It was her goal to be a builder of the Jewish people. What did she do? She prayed. And prayed. And she prayed some more and she prayed again and she continued to pray.

In order to equal her sister, to match her accomplishments, Rachel Imeinu was not only ambitious, but STUBBORN. She cried, she pleaded, she begged and screamed. And she remained barren, for years. Nothing. After trying for years and seeing no results whatsoever, normal human beings give up. But to build Judaism or Jewishness from the ground floor, you can’t be “normal,” you can’t accept spiritual defeat. (And you must realize, that your current level of Jewishness is the ground floor for your Jewishness yet to come.)

In what activity do we have to be the most stubborn? In tefilah, prayer. How stubborn? Reb Noson writes: “Even if you imagine that your words don’t help at all; even if you feel that you are a million light-years distant from your Jewish goal—after all, it’s years that you’ve been pleading with Hashem to achieve Jewish growth and nothing has happened—you must continue with ‘just because’ stubbornness.”

That’s right. You have to tell your inner-skeptic, “Yes, there is no good reason to continue praying for my goal, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Your success may be too small for you to measure, or may not satisfy you as much as you like. But keep at it, writes Reb Noson; you will ultimately be equal with your fellow Jews who are already tzaddikim.

Got Torah?

Although we’ve been given the Torah, even now God still has it. He’s the only one who knows the Torah’s core depth, its roads to be walked and how to instill Torah-living into humankind.

How much of the Torah any of us receives is directly related to how much he is willing to sacrifice for it. No pain, no gain. Effort, strain, sacrifice, late nights and early mornings in study. Going the extra mile to attend a minyan and to attend to someone in need.

The more you give of your time, money and body, the more of the Torah you receive and the longer it stays with you. How much do you want the Torah? How much do you want it when it’s going to cost you something? Something precious?

Shavuot is a festival. Enjoying it to rejoice in it is a mitzvah, a way of coming close to God. Celebrate your choseness, that God thinks you’re capable enough, clever enough and responsible enough to dance through life holding His Torah.

agut yom tov!

Chag sameach!

Chosen Person

We’re on the threshold of receiving the Torah, again. As we wrote earlier, one of the reasons we stay awake all Shavuot night to learn Torah, is to awaken our desire for living Torah, despite any obstacles we may face in life. And face obstacles we will.

Rebbe Nachman talks often of the desire to be a Jew, the desire to live Jewishly, the desire to actualize the desire to daven (pray) more/better, learn Torah more/better, be charitable and kind more/better, have stronger faith and love for God, etc. What’s the starting point for that desire? The starting point is to realize that not only are we Jews the Chosen People, but that you, in your Jewishness, are a Chosen Person. Without your having stood at Mount Sinai at the Revelation to receive the Torah, no Jew, not even Moshe Rabbeinu, would have the Torah.

You were chosen to be there and, like the rest of us, you accepted the invitation and the responsibility. And you’re going to fail. Not all the time, hopefully, but often enough to think about quitting or about moving the goalposts (i.e., lowering your standards of Judaism). But this misguided thinking is based on a lack of humility. Your failures—just like my failures and the other guy’s failures—should give you a clearer picture of what your currently capable of and where you need improvement. Your failures, and the humility they breed, should weaken neither your desire nor your resolve for Jewishness. On the contrary—they should strengthen them so much that your failures become stepping stones to Jewish success.

Have a beautiful yom tov. Don’t forget. Being happy that it’s yom tov is a mitzvah. Don’t get suckered into an argument or a funk because the cheesecake didn’t come out right or the rabbi’s class was too long.

Based on Likutey Halakhot, Hekhsher Keilim 4:18

Stay Awake!

Why don’t we sleep on the night of Shavuot? Reb Noson of Breslov, Rebbe Nachman’s foremost disciple, gives an answer.

We already received the Torah at Sinai. So what are we receiving each year on Shavuot? A little more revelation of penimiyut, the innerness/essence of the Torah. The Torah’s panim, face, shines on us a little more, so that each of us can awaken from his sleep. We can wake and look more carefully and honestly at our lives, so that we can evaluate how our day to day life is contributing—or not—to a positive destiny.

When the Torah smiles and reveals to us more of her essence, we realize how many obstacles there are that keep us away from her. We realize that she alone is the one who can awaken us to our destined greatness. Receiving on Shavuot this new appreciation of the Torah’s greatness—and ours—is this year’s revelation.

Coming to realize how far we are from actualizing our potential greatness; coming to realize how impermanent things, false visions and values, and other tricks played on our minds keep us away from the Torah which can bring us to our God and our greatness; these realizations are the Torah we receive on Shavuot.

Staying awake Shavuot night is a reaction to these revelations. It is an antidote to the all too common human reaction of giving up and crawling under the blanket, quitting on the Torah when life gets too hard for us to reach the greatness we know deep within that we can achieve. Staying awake Shavuot night is a cry: I want to be a greater Jew! I can be a greater Jew! Even if I cannot achieve my Jewish goals as swiftly as I hoped, I will never ever stop hoping, and trying, to reach them.

Based on Likutey Halakhot, Hekhsher Keilim 4:26

Behar-Bechukotai

Dvar Torah for Parshat Behar-Bechukotai 5773

All Beginnings Are Difficult

Well now. 148West’s maiden dvar Torah. Very exciting, for me at least. After writing “a weekly column” for someone else, I’m doing it for someone else—me. The exciting part is, that no longer working as “an official spokesman” for Breslov Research Institute (blessed be its name) and, by extension, Breslov, I can write about topics that an organization wouldn’t. To have that freedom is exciting.

It’s also a big responsibility. Those who know me, or of me, expect that what I say is Breslov, or defines Breslov, or is the consensus of Breslover chassidim. That’s a definite maybe. I try, in my personal life, to behave (and speak, and think) in accord with what I learn in Rebbe Nachman’s works. (When I say “Rebbe Nachman’s works” I mean also those of Reb Noson, in particular Likutey Halakhot.) Of course, no two Breslovers understand the Rebbe’s teachings in the same way—which is exactly how he intended it, and exactly the way it oughta be.

As I wrote there, on 148West’s home page, I’m not here to preach. I’m here to teach, to share, to probe, maybe even to provide answers. The point is—and I firmly believe it’s the baseline of Rebbe Nachman’s mission—to help anyone and everyone Be. More. Jewish.

Which leads us in to our dvar Torah. Actualizing potential is the major theme of Likutey Moharan Lesson #66. Let’s take a look at a small section of the lesson (the start of §2):

The final outcome starts in thought. For example, when a person wants to do something, to build a bayit (house, home), let’s say, he must first think and consider what his bayit will look like. When he has a clear picture of what his bayit will look like, he can begin to build it. In this way, the ultimate product starts in the mind. And until the potential is actualized, the potential [bayit] is bound to the germ of the idea.

Part of what makes Likutey Moharan so powerful is the perspective it gives us for viewing life, on a grand, sweeping historical scale, on a personal, microscopic scale, and everything in between. For example, the bayit the Rebbe refers to is not just a physical structure, a yurt or an igloo. He means your ultimate bayit, the place you will reside for eternity.

Before we go on, let’s think about this vague word, “eternity.” The Steipler Rov, Reb Yaakov Yisrael Kanievesky obm (1899–1985), gave the following analogy to give us an idea of “how long is eternity.” Imagine, Planet Earth covered around and around by a pile of sand 10 miles high. Now, once every 10,000 years a bird flies in and takes away a grain of sand. How long will it take for the bird to remove all the sand? Eternity is longer than that. Back to our topic.

Did you ever think what your bayit will look like? One room for emunah (faith), one for tefilah (prayer), another for your kindness to orphans and one for your kindness to widows, to the poor. Rooms for the various areas of Torah you studied and others for Torah that you taught. And how well-lit will your bayit be? There’s an old Yiddish expression applied to a person who has passed on: May he have a lichtege Gan Eden, a bright Garden of Eden. You don’t want a small light bulb, do you?

So we need to spend time thinking about our future bayit. We’ve got to think about how we’re going to build it, and get started.

There’s another bayit that needs to be built. Although it doesn’t make sense to talk of God “actualizing His potential,” the world He created needs to actualize its potential. God created the world in order to “dwell” in it, which is one of the reasons we were commanded to make a Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and build the Beit HaMikdash (Holy Temple) in Jerusalem. As we consider building our individual bayit, actualizing our personal potential, we should try our best to see how that fits with building God’s bayit, actualizing the potential of other people as well.

Because sometimes, I can develop and grow a good deal if I focus on myself. On the other hand, if I open myself to giving my time to others, I won’t get as far. but others will make progress that they couldn’t have without me. Some might make more progress than I ever could have made. And some may end up helping so many, many more people than I could ever have dreamed possible.

Thinking I’m making this up? Adam, the first human being, was to have lived for a thousand years. He didn’t keep them all for himself. He gave away 70 years of his life to King David, who was to have been stillborn. But by giving away his time—years, decades of his life!—Adam triggered a events that led to one person’s living a life in which he built the Kingdom of Israel, laid the foundation for the first Beit HaMikdash, wrote Tehillim (Psalms) and began the royal line that will lead to the Mashiach, may he come swiftly and soon, in our lifetime. Amen.

Based on Likutey Moharan I, Lesson #66

agutn Shabbos! Shabbat Shalom!

148 West

NEVER EVER DESPAIR!

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