My Rav, Rabbi Binyamin Marwick, gave an inspiring talk on Yom Kippur at our shul, Congregation Shomrei Emunah. He referred to a tragic event that occurred last year: Three mountain climbers died on a most daunting 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado called Capital Peak. They were experienced climbers: young, fit, and knowledgeable. And they did not die while climbing up the mountain. They had reached the peak and then fell and died on the way down. The local sheriff said their mistake was a common one of focusing exclusively on reaching the top: getting to the pinnacle and signing the register there. On the way down, they relaxed, they were less careful, and they fell to their deaths. Apparently, most serious mountaineering accidents happen that way – not on the way up but on the way down. People put all their energy into reaching the goal and then they relax; they become less careful. In the words of the sheriff, “This was somebody taking a shortcut off the mountain. And there are no shortcuts coming off that mountain. There is only one way down.”
“In life,” said Rabbi Marwick, “as in climbing, we often make the same mistake. We pour all our energy into reaching the top, striving for success and achievement. We put tremendous energy into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We neglect the recognition that what goes up must come down, that life, for the most part, isn’t lived on the heights and peaks but in the ordinary plains and plateaus and sometimes in the dark and narrow valleys. And it’s there, too, that we need to tread gently and carefully and watch our step.”
The transition back to the post-Yamim Nora’im world happens abruptly. Rabbi Marwick noted that we return to saying “Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuso” in a hushed tone in Maariv immediately after Yom Kippur, while we are still wearing our kittels. We have not had time to do anything to lessen our status, so why the transition? I heard once that the critical difference is the direction we are moving. While it is still Yom Kippur, we are praying and trying to come closer to Hashem, to have our prayers rise, and be answered. Once Yom Kippur is over, we are headed back to everyday life. Its concerns of what we will eat to break the fast, what we’ve missed being without our cell phone communications for 25 hours, and other considerations invade our thinking. We are no longer at the level we were at when we were pointed up to Hashem; just the fact of returning to everyday life is enough to reduce our status.
We know that we have strong intentions to do teshuva, to reach Yom Kippur next year having fewer sins to confess, but we also know that this is a difficult battle and is often not achieved. I would like to address here some thoughts to help continue to do teshuva and improve ourselves in the year to come.
- Start small. In Alei Shur (vol. 2, pp 189-190), brought to my attention by a recent article by Rabbi Boruch Leff in The Jewish Press 9/21/18, Rav Wolbe describes that after the Yom Kippur War, he flew to Egypt in order to give chizuk to the Israeli soldiers still stationed there. When the plane entered Egyptian air space, he noticed that they were flying very low, just a few meters above the ground. The pilot explained to Rav Wolbe that they were flying below the height detectable by radar so they should not be noticed. Rav Wolbe extended this to doing teshuva. We can minimize interference from our yetzer hara desiring to rebel by making small resolutions, and taking small steps.
- Don’t despair if there are no rapid changes. In his book, Missing Letters, Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser presented a new interpretation of the familiar saying, Teshu’as Hashem keheref ayin. This is commonly understood to mean that Hashem’s salvation can come as rapidly as the blink of an eye. But Rabbi Goldwasser gave a different interpretation. Blinks of the eye occur, but they are not noticed, not perceived by the individual. There can be subtle changes that are going on yet the person may not even detect them initially. Do not lose hope that change can be made, but it is often a gradual and incremental process.
- The bad trait may be part of your identity and self-image. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his book, Celebrating Life, points out an unappreciated difficulty of changing. He was making a television documentary on the family, and interviewed a speech therapist who worked to help children with stammering. Her view was that one had to look and work on the relationships within the family to do this. He writes:
Working with the parents, she had to find a way of making them realize the difficulty a child faced in breaking a habit. To do this, she made them undergo an experiment. First she told the parents to visualize and describes the object that was most precious to them. Some chose family heirlooms, others their wedding rings. Then she told them to imagine that they had just lost that object and to describe their feelings. They spoke of panic, anger, sadness…Then she said, “Now you know what your child will feel like if it loses its stammer.” …What none of them had realized until then was that the defect had become part of their personalities. They had learned to cope. So it was painful for them to change, even though they knew that it would be better for them if they did. We cling to the familiar, even when we know it to be damaging or self-destructive.
Thus, eradicating a bad habit may involve unexpected adaptations affecting other parts of the person’s identity.
- You have to feel you are a worthy person. Rav Tzadok notes that a person has to believe in himself in order to trust that Hashem will accept his teshuva and that he can change. Eliyahu Ki Tov, in his Sefer HaParshiyos, notes that there are significant similarities between Adam’s sin of eating from the forbidden tree and Bnei Yisrael’s sin of the golden calf at Mount Sinai. He asks why it is that Moshe could ask Hashem for forgiveness on behalf of Bnei Yisrael, while Adam did not ask for forgiveness for himself. Adam no longer felt like a worthy person; he did not feel he could change. He thereby lost the opportunity of gaining forgiveness and restoring everlasting life to the world.
- Choose your battles carefully. Rav Dessler, in his Kunteris HaBechira, The Discourse on Free Will, compares making free will choices with armies on a battlefield. There are targets that are way behind enemy lines and are not accessible to attack and conquer. One must choose targets at the battlefront, and gradually move forward. If you work on something unattainable, you may be banging your head against the wall and not accomplishing anything. As an example from the world of eating/dieting, I know from years of experience that once I start eating at night I cannot stop. So that target is too far behind enemy lines. Maybe I can get myself not to start eating, and that is something I can gradually conquer over time. Addressing a target for teshuva is similar.
- Write it down. The best way to keep track of how you are doing and what progress you’re making is to do a cheshbon hanefesh (accounting), daily, if possible, and write down the progress you’ve made, what you are working on, what has to be changed, etc. Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato, in Mesillas Yesharim emphasizes the need to make these accountings and determine where you need improvement.
Rejoining the post-Tishrei world and still preserving a goal of doing teshuva and improving in the year to come is not simple. But if we have a way of really looking at ourselves and tracking our progress, perhaps with some of the suggestions above, we may arrive at Rosh Hashanah next year at a new level.
Janet Sunness is medical director of the Richard E. Hoover Low Vision Rehabilitation Services at the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. She gives classes and talks on a variety of topics in the Baltimore area for the Women’s Institute of Torah and Cong. Shomrei Emunah. She can be reached at jsunness@gmail.com. © Janet Sunness 2018
