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days of repentance: 13 Elul

 “you shall not see the ox of your brother or his sheep or goat cast off and hide yourself from them;

you shall surely return them to your brother . . . you will be unable to hide yourself”

R’ Avraham Shaag asks the obvious question of this phrase from this week’s parsha (Devarim 21:22-23): why the odd near repetition of the phrase about hiding yourself? he answers his question by explaining that even someone born with negative character traits (ie, laziness, tendency to complain, stubbornness, etc) can acquire good traits in their place. it is done by “answering a call, either from their heart, or from their knowledge” and behaving contrary to one’s natural tendencies. in this case, if your tendency is not to get involved–but you know in your heart you should, or you remember this mitzvah from Torah study, or your mother would be soooo disappointed in you–break it by going out of your way to do this mitzvah……repeatedly if necessary.

that last part, the repeatedly if necessary, is learned from Chazal. they learn from the phrase “you shall surely return them to your brother” that you must return a lost thing EVEN IF THE OWNER HAS LOST IT BEFORE AND YOU HAVE ALREADY RETURNED IT….100 TIMES BEFORE!

the mitzvah is alive in every moment, so too is the obligation to do it alive in every instance. there is no such thing as “habitual mitzvot”…though there certainly can be mechanical repetition in frequently repeated “everyday” mitzvot in those who do not yet live in the moment. but repetition serves to ingrain the doing in you. it will become as natural to you as breathing.

R’ Shaag uses this verse to point out that this is how you change your tendencies. what’s more, we should look for like opportunities to ingrain better behavior in ourselves during Elul. we should stop our indifference to others, remove all hatred from our hearts, put aside preening arrogance, stomp out lashon hara, and stop doing the errors for which we are atoning now. then maybe by the time Yom Kippur has passed, the new good behavior will have become second nature for us (D’rashot haRash, I, #25).

thus, you will be unable to hide yourself.

t’shuvah can also mean “response” or “answer”. there are many people who will turn toward G’d in moments of great crisis or fear, or in the face of enormous personal loss.they seek answers in response to hardship. their questions will often be deep seated and challenging, and they may not always be ready for the answers. no light is as bright as that which comes out of the darkness.

but it is always possible also to find opportunities around you in the most humdrum aspects of life and in the light, not the dark. and they also can exert a powerful call…and answers that will break your ways beyond what you would have thought possible. the opportunities will be deeply concealed in your habits, or in your everyday reactions to the people around you, or the world around you, or in your underlying assumptions.  the problem is that you have to find it out. and it is hidden to you by its everyday nature…and yourself  may now be hidden in it.

the parshah gives you a hint. what are the routine goods you do now? 100s or 1000s of times? and what are the things you know you should do, but shirk? you know your deeds…you know your “routines”. what is their to answer?

ketiva v’chatima tova

days of repentance: 8 Elul

“all the ways of man are straight in his eyes”

we learn this insight in Proverbs 21:2. but all the ways of humans are not straight in G’d’s eyes. some miss the mark, which is the root of the most common word for sin in Torah, namely, chet….as in the High Holy Day prayer, Al Chet (“for the sin..”). we recite this prayer, with its list of  “sins we have committed before You [G’d]” by doing or being in many different ways out of step in our walk with haShem. we repeat it a minyan of times…10 times during the course of Yom Kippur. each way of sin is a descriptor of a missing the mark, eg, “by foolish talk”, “by improper thoughts”, “by running to do evil”, “by casting off the yoke of heaven, etc. there must be about 50 ways to step away from your G’d. some go beyond “mere” misalignment and describe a deliberate crossing over a boundary, an aveirah, which shares the root not only of avar (the past) but also of “overing” , crossing a boundary with deliberation.

to do a mitzvah is to align and connect with the intention of haShem. when a person in a military force accepts an order, that one aligns herself with a superior officer, but also with the rest of the forces working to achieve a mission. it is all about alignment and connection for more effective results. mitzvot in Torah are not fundamentally different. when we accept them, and understand them, we act in concert with the other doers of tikkun olam (repair of the world).

so in a fundamental sense, every chet, every misstep, is an anti-mitzvah.

chet is being out of step, or out of line…fundamentally to walk Torah crookedly or from a distance. aveirah is to deliberately set out on a wrong route, perhaps not recognizing that the route is wrong, but going off course and out of bounds deliberately.  to disconnect from the corps is to stretch your spiritual supply lines, or to go off the grid entirely, and to get increasingly out of earshot of subsequent mitzvot….eventually, you will simply drop all calls.

the Midrash Rabbah relates that all levels of chet are expressions of a temporary state of heresy. chet is not an absence of G’d , but an internal failing of an assumption about G’d…perhaps that G’d is not intimately concerned with Creation, or that G’d has better, bigger things to do then to pay attention to some small peccadillo, or, more seriously, to believe that G’d does not exist. when these heretical attitudes take root, even temporarily, we are no longer in clear touch with our ultimate soul source….though we think our path is straight and well considered, we are operating with ever diverging gps data. and the way back becomes increasingly difficult to discern, even if we suddenly realize we are off course. eventually we all realize that we are lost. but up until that time, it is easier to ride the horse in the direction it is going. we can all harden our hearts in such a way.

“humans do not commit transgressions unless a ruach shtut (spirit of folly/nonsense) enters”

so teach Chazal in Sotah 3a. think for a second about your last kashrut violation…exactly what made the particular food item so much more important than walking humbly with G’d?  what were you thinking?  probably not about Torah, yes? probably that it wouldn’t matter to G’d, right?  whatever would give a person such an idea?  ruach shtut. the problem is that each bad decision draws others after it. and bad decisions settle into habit, tossing free will into the dustbin, replacing it with a preconditioned way of acting, thinking, and being. once you accept an error as being a precendent, you are trapped in your past and no longer in a free moment.

the aspect of t’shuvah practice that is directed to this is to control what you take in. if you spend hours listening to music about wobbling breasts and booty, well, you are likely to start seeing the world in similar terms. if you restict such shtuyot (foolishness) you are less likely to see the world so. we are touched by what we entertain ourselves with. the very high and difficult ideal is to always have words of Torah in mind, and heart and ear. we learned in the 4th haftarah of comfort just this shabbat past (Isaiah 51:16):

“and I have put My words in your mouth, and I have covered you in the shadow of My Hand”

haYom sh’monah asar yom, sh’heim sh’nei shavuot v’arba’ah yomim, laOmer: netzach she b’tiferet

“there is no light as brilliant as that light that emerges from out of the darkness”

the Holy Zohar (vol 3, folio 47b) brings this teaching to illustrate the importance of challenging the obstacles that face all of us in rectifying our spiritual traits and in learning to walk more humbly with G’d. essentially, the more difficult the obstacle overcome, the more powerful the rectification…..it is the effort that matters and not simply the achievement (see Avot 5:26). the example given is none other that the power of G’d, who brought light to the tohu v’bohu, bringing it out of utter darkness and absence of light.

r’ Tarfon offers a variation on the theme of struggle, also in Pirkei Avot (2:20): “yours is not to finish the task, yet neither are you free to desist from it.”  it is the effort that matters most…..always walking humbly, never ceasing from the great task of doing the Way to repair the world.

netzach in tiferet is the courage to fight the good fight for compassion and the beauty it brings in truth. it is NOT easy to be compassionate to all always. anyone can find a situation or person or circumstance that is so personally revolting that we must struggle mightily to overcome loathing in order to do the compassionate good. i will never forget the scene in the film ‘Ben Hur’ in which Judah finally resolves to go deep into the dank, close cave in the valley of lepers to rescue his sister, going from disease-ridden, curtained shelter to shelter, viewing countless suffering in eaten away flesh and despair, and ultimately putting himself in direct contact with his nearly dead sister by lifting her and carrying her out of the cave. netzach came to me right then and there.

in netzach we channel our desire to risk-taking to rip off the husks that conceal the still burning embers of Divine Light. the compassion is all the greater for the force that must be brought to bear to make it happen in the world.

but few of us will face the valley of the lepers. most of us will have to battle a far more insidious enemy to strive to bring tiferet to all our waking moments: the world of distraction, convenience, conventional thinking, indolence, listlessness, ennui, inertia and habit. habit is the great enemy, for it is mindlessness reminding itself only of itself in an endless feedback loop of unthinking regularity and familiarity.

compassion withers in the face of this sort of wasting away to what is less than your soul-self. doing compassion takes effort and time. it is inconvenient almost always. it has to get in your way, get in your face. netzach is the courage of your compassion. the resolve to stay balanced, to persist,  and to make harmony where none is yet found. it is steel in the magnolia.

mussar for netzach she b’tiferet

netzach-tiferet with another….bein adam l’chaveiro    we love to argue, don’t we? try to find the truth (the tiferet) in opposing opinions within your familiy or with a friend or acquaintance.  s0metimes the compromise reached is its own new truth.

netzach-tiferet with yourself….bein adam l’atzmo    bring to mind 2 mitzvot: 1 that you already do, and 1 that you know you should do but dont. analyze the 1 you already do and understand why you do it. can you bring that understanding and make it bear upon the mitzvah you don’t yet do?  (yes, i said ‘yet’.)

kabbalah for netzach she b’tiferet

in assiyah….the world of doing/completion   humans are full of underused brainpower and undeveloped potentials…this is true in soul as well. netzach must be applied to get that indwelling couch potato nefesh up and moving in an unfamiliar direction. find something within you that you’ve expected/hoped you had, and plan a path to develop it.

in yetairah….the world of feeling/formation    remember a time when you had great clarity of purpose, and persistence of spirit to see some particular thing done. did it feel good? did you feel more powerful then? ambition is ok within spirit-driven ambition. remember that clear strong time, and enjoy the feeling again.

in b’riyah….the world of thought/creation    clarity and persistence sometimes happen by accident, but the spirit warrior will bring intention (‘kavanah’) to bear on potential and on power. apply cosmic intention to one of your best potentials or proven strengths and make it more. before you do the act next time, say that you are doing it to restore harmony of the Creation with the Creator…..and mean it.

in atzilut….the world of nearness to G’d/intuition    gravity continues to hold you to the surface of the earth. your electrons don’t just linger in some improbable positions. you wake up breathing, your heart still sending oxygen to the farthest corners of you being. there is netzach within and without you always…quietly persisting, driving. recreating. meditate on this.

kinyan 18 (am yisrael chai!) of 48 ways to acquire Torah

Miyut Sichah….Moderation in Speech.   sometimes it is just a matter of slowing it down. those of us who have overcome a stutter, or who still tend to stammer, have practiced for years to slow down our speech pattern to establish better breath control and to bring room for easing into sounds. how silly is it that we don’t ordinarily bring a similar discipline to the content of what we say and the frequency with which we say it?  if you wish to speak with soul deliberation, you will weigh your words on the scale of truth (tiferet) before you speak them at all.