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Jewish World Review Sept. 30, 2003 / 4 Tishrei, 5764 Counterintuitive repentance By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg
http://www.jewishworldreview.com |
We all know about the low end of spirituality: I failed, and I know it. Or others say I failed, and they have the proof. Guilt, remorse or denial — this is the low end of spirituality.
This column is about something else — the high end of spirituality.
We all have a finer side. It's the side that rarely gets talked about on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The holidays' emphasis on judgment stresses the centrality of a critical eye. Of seeing, admitting, where we failed — of owning up.
And changing.
This is the common task on the ten days of repentance, and, let me hasten to add, correctly so.
But there is another side, too.
Equally important.
It concerns not our worst parts, our grudgingly admitted failings. It concerns all that we do right — the high end of spirituality.
Have you ever been surprised when the finest people you know seem, uncharacteristically, ungenerous?
Their ungenerosity follows a pattern. For example, take one of those rare souls who is always helping others. Sometimes the help is with money, sometimes with advice, sometimes with hospitality.
Sometimes, it's just a piece of the person's character — always to be concerned, ready to offer whatever is needed, from a sympathetic ear to a concrete favor.
Most (perhaps all) of us have run across one of these rare souls in our lives, somebody who's genuinely altruistic. A tzaddik.
Then, there's this dissonance. It is a strange failing, an ungenerosity peculiar to the truly elevated individual. His or her failing is not a slippage in all the good that he or she does. It's not what might typically be called a failing, what might typically be paid attention to on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Not: I always seem to do a certain mitzvah, religious duty, but a few times I failed — and I need to correct that. No, not that. Rather: A comment that a kind, generous person lets drop about someone else who does not share his own generosity of spirit. A comment about how someone else could help, too.
This inconsistent unkindness sticks out precisely because it is uncharacteristic. Have you found it hard to explain this?
Say an individual is a phenomenal host, always taking in the lonely, the destitute, or friends and relatives. She'll keep doing it no matter what anyone else does or does not do. But once in a while, she'll let a comment drop: Why doesn't so-and-so help out too? Why doesn't so-and-so also take in a guest once in a while?
Again, the hospitable person is not going to decrease her hospitality for lack of help from others. Nor is her comment about others necessarily bitter. It can stem from perplexity: Here, I extend all this hospitality repeatedly, and I manage it; in fact I love it. Truly, what is the big deal for someone else, who seems unable to be hospitable even once in awhile?
The late Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetsky, ZT"L made a perceptive observation about Abraham's prayer for the sinners in Sodom and Gomorrah.
The famous dialogue with G-d is found in the fourth Torah portion in Genesis. G-d is about to destroy the two cities that have since become a metaphor for the epitome of evil. Abraham our Father cannot bear the prospect of their destruction. Maybe there are 50 righteous people (tzaddikim) in the city, he pleads with G-d; will you destroy the righteous with the wicked?
Rabbi Kaminetsky observed: Abraham was the last person to be expected to pray for Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham is identified by G-d as the epitome of kindness (chesed), of doing for others. The two cities were the epitome of the opposite of kindness, selfish in the extreme, even cruel.
Here were people whom Abraham would have been repulsed by! They were not only "wrong"; that's a dry, objective, legal perspective. They went against everything Abraham was. That's an emotional, subjective, psychological perspective. Abraham's innermost character should have been at peace with the extirpation of wrongdoing.
But no. He prayed for these sinners. He went up against G-d, so to speak, on their behalf.
He was kind, they were cruel, yet his heart burned against their Divinely mandated fate: destruction.
The point is this: Abraham did not suffer from the common malady of the high end of spirituality. Abraham's generosity of spirit did not exclude those who did not share his values. Abraham did not comment, even out of sheer perplexity: Why aren't the Sodomites different? Why can't they see the rewards in helping others? Abraham did not concur with G-d. He did not say: The Sodomites deserve to be punished. Their record is clear and objective. Their sins reach to the Heavens. They are unsalvageable.
Abraham did not say this.
Abraham's level was high indeed. Contrast it to the perfect hostess who is uncharacteristically ungenerous on rare occasion. Contrast it to anyone who is numbered — rightly — among the finest people we know.
Contrast it, for example, to the person who is a paragon of charity. There is no cause he does not support, no indignity he ever inflicts on any needy supplicant. Just one thing: He cannot grasp someone else who does not live up to his own charity (tzedakah) obligations.
Contrast it to the immigrant who made good. This person once wondered where his next meal would come from. From sheer dint of will, hard work and discipline, he pulled himself up by his bootstraps. Now that he has "made it," he shares his bounty. He is not condescending, not arrogant. There's not a trace of superiority in him. He is understanding of everyone. Just one thing: He recoils from the beggar in the street. There's something in the beggar that makes the man who made it think: I could do it, why can't he?
Or take the genuine penitent (ba'al teshuvah). He did not grow up in a Jewishly observant home. By his own struggle, he grasped the beauties and sanctities of the Torah. Now, genuinely, he fulfills the commandments, including those that teach humility. Just one thing: Those who are opposite him — those who do not struggle to observe the Torah — leave him uncharacteristically unempathetic. I could do it, why couldn't they?
In the best of people, there can be a constriction of sensibility toward those who are not, objectively speaking, as good as they. Abraham taught: Those who are opposite you — opposite your truly best characteristics — deserve your generosity, too.
This lesson is relevant for the High Holy Days because all of us have at least one best characteristic. At least something we do right. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our job is not only to peer into the deepest depths: all those failings we know we have, and should work hard to correct. Abraham teaches that we must also peer into our successes, our characteristics that make us shine.
Abraham taught: That by which we truly distinguish ourselves must also be brought under the scalpel of introspection. Abraham's piety was one notch higher. He was a paragon of kindness not only because it came naturally, or because it felt good. If that were all it was, Abraham would have rejoiced at the prospective fall of the Sodomites. Their defeat would have represented a success for his way of life — for the way of kindness.
But no.
Abraham embodied kindness not just for psychological reasons, not just because it felt right. If such feelings exhausted Abraham's stature, he too would have let slip a negative comment about selfish people. Abraham didn't, because his piety was more than a psychological habit. It was a philosophical commitment, based on a Divine command.
When one is committed philosophically, one is committed even to those who represent the opposite of one's best values. One prays for them. Hopes for them. Helps them.
Even them.
This, too, we need to keep in mind during our soul-work on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. JWR contributor Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is Executive Editor of the Intermountain Jewish News. Comment by clicking here.
© 2003, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg |
