Off the Bus, in the Snow

We sat in front of the fireplace, eleven men who had never met before, wondering what was in store for us over the weekend. Somberly, a man approached us one by one and told us to go upstairs. Someone would meet us at the top of the steps. It seemed very mysterious; even ominous.
When my turn came I headed upstairs. At the first landing I was met by a strangely dressed Middle Eastern man. He nodded at me and told me to continue up the steps. At the second landing I was met by a man with a distinctively Russian accent. He too nodded and told me to continue. By now I was wondering if I had wandered into some sort of international intrigue.
At the top of the steps I was met by a Chassidic garb. He told me to proceed into the room and find a chair with my name on it. I was instructed to remain silent after taking my seat. Indeed, the first set on instructions given to us when we were all seated, was that we were to remain silent for the entire weekend unless given permission to speak. We were not to use cell-phones, nor were we to be busy with email during our spare time, of which there was none anyway.
Thus began the most fascinating weekend of my life. As the Great Blizzard of 2010 raged outside, inside eleven men tried to learn from eleven staff members how to transform their lives for the better. Over the course of a decade a group of men in Baltimore gathered weekly to learn how to become better people. From both a Torah, as well as psychological, perspective the more one is in touch with his inner self, the greater understanding one has of who he is, the healthier he will be in his relationships and ability to cope with life. But how does one come to this point?
Eventually, they felt they had developed tools for moving closer to emotional well being that could be shared with others. To do so, they formed an organization called Call of the Shofar. Led by Rabbi Simcha Frischling, weekend retreats dedicated to self-transformation are held several times a year in the United States and Israel. For those who take full advantage of the opportunity it can truly be a life-changing event.
There is no way to put the three-day experience into words. Rabbi Frischling tried to explain it to me a year ago. He couldn’t do justice. It is an emotionally charged experience that dry words cannot capture. But I will try.
Are you a man who ever feels insecure, that no one loves you, that you are a failure? Do you find yourself getting angry, and wish you weren’t? Do you frequently find yourself making decisions not on the basis of what you know to be right or wrong, but on the basis of what others will think of your actions? Or of what you think they will think of your actions? Do you feel that you could or should be doing much more with your life, but aren’t? Have you tried all sorts of techniques to deal with these issues and found that they didn’t work?
Have you ever wondered why you feel the way you do? Do you have negative thought patterns that you can’t seem to get rid of that turn into self-fulfilling prophecies?
We worked on exercises to recognize how we feel when we are ignored or spoken to in an insensitive manner. We shared with each other the areas in which we knew we were lacking. And we bonded.
Have you ever had a desire to open up to someone else about a personal issue but were afraid to? Were you scared of what they might think of you after you shared your deepest fears or sins? Were you worried that others might find out about your shortcomings? The most beautiful part of the weekend was the creation of a trusting and loving atmosphere in which every man knew he could share whatever he chose to and would be met by love, compassion and support.
From the yeshiva bachur year-old to the zaidy, from the man wearing a kippah sruga to the man who wears a shtriemel, from the farmer to the doctor, from the college student to the rebbe, everyone was together in love and harmony. Men who had never cried before, or at least not in front of others, were opening up and allowing light to shine on their darkest places. Together we talked, we danced, we exercised, we ate, we learned, we sang, we screamed, we breathed, we shared, and we grew.
Every man had a chance to probe deep into his psyche to figure out why and where his insecurities were born. He was given a chance to go back to the roots and fight his demons. He was allowed to plot a course for a future of well-being, and how to take what he learned to help another person.
We learned how each of us has busses of negativity that we tend to ride on every now and then. Busses that take us on a ride through all the negative thought processes that have plagued our lives. We were given the chance to recognize those busses for what they were, and take the opportunity to get off at the next stop and continue our lives from a more positive standpoint.
A closer bond between 22 men cannot possibly form any faster than it did over the weekend. The deeper the snow got, the deeper our relationships became and the deeper we probed into our minds and hearts. By the time we had to part from each other, we were resolved to remain in touch. Many of us would be meeting weekly at follow-up groups to take the beginning steps we had made and firm them into a lifetime of healthier relationships.
As we went home we each knew that we were a better person than we were before the weekend had begun. If you don’t believe me, ask my wife.

If you would like more information about this program, please contact me.

Back to the Simple Man and the Wise Man

Rebbe Nachman goes on to tell how the Wise Man was given by the king a precious diamond to shape. He made a slight error as he was working on it. It created a flaw that no one other than he would ever be aware off. But he was beside himself. He could not bear the fact that he had made a mistake. He was less than perfect.

Rabbi Aroush contrasts this with the attitude of the Simple Man who was happy no matter what misfortune befell him, or what mistakes he had made. If the Simple Man's joy at all times was because he understood that all the happened to him was the will of Hashem, then it stands to reason that the lack of joy for the Wise Man was because he did not believe that what happened to him was the will of Hashem. He thought that being perfect was something over which he had control. Hashem was sending him messages to remind him that no one is perfect. As long as he thought he was, or could be, Hashem was going to show him in both his personal and professional life, that he wasn't.

"What good is all my wisdom," asked the Wise Man, "if I still make mistakes!" Here comes the self-recrimination. he is beating himself up because of his own haughtiness and lacks the ability to forgive himself at all. He has the ability to be perfect. He made a mistake. It is his fault that he erred. Why wasn't he successful?

He is castigating himself because he refuses to recognize that he is not the master of any of these things.

Continuing the Pursuit

I want to add to and emphasize what I wrote in my last blog.

Accepting my imperfections does not only mean accepting that others are becoming aware of my imperfections. That may actually be easier than accepting to myself that I am imperfect. How often was I able to do things that were improper yet somehow able to view myself as this perfectly behaved human being and ignore the more depraved side of myself?

We need to be able to look at ourselves in the mirror and say "you may not be perfect,, but that's fine." That is a lot healthier than either struggling to be perfect in an imperfect world, or being imperfect and not being honest with yourself.

The Pursuit of Imperfection

Shaul HaMelech (King Saul) was a man who spent his life without any wrongdoing. Our sages tell us that he was like a one-year old who had never done anything wrong. By contrast, Dovid HaMelech (King David) transgressed a number of sins in his time. The Talmud points out that whereas Dovid's several sins did not cause him to lose the monarchy, Shaul's one sin marked the end of his reign.

This seems unfair. Why should Shaul be punished so severely for just one sin, while Dovid commits several and is allowed to retain his position? The Sfas Emes explains that Shaul's entire standing was his perfection. Perfection does not allow room for any errors. As such, once he erred, even though it was just one time, he was no longer the perfect man. His standing and position were lost. Dovid on the other hand personifies the person who realizes that he is nothing without the help of Hashem. He is flawed and frail and must always turn to God for support. He completely nullifies himself before God. For such a person, one error, even many errors, does not represent the destruction of their entire standing.

So Shaul sinned, and his kingdom was lost. As time went on he entered into a downward spiral of anger, insanity, murder and other wrongdoing. Despite that, when he visited a necromancer on the night before his death, the prophet Shmuel told Shaul that tomorrow "you will be with me." Our sages understand that to mean that Shaul would have a place next to Shmuel in the World-to-Come. How did he merit that after all he had done wrong. How and where do we find him changing his behavior and meriting an eternal seat next to Shmuel?

The lies in Shaul's perfection; or in the flaw of his perfection. When Shmuel told him to kill out all the Amalekites Shaul demurred. He rationalized that God could not possibly want him to kill people he viewed as innocent and wantonly destroy all their belongings. He allowed his sense of righteous perfection to overrule the words of the prophet. The Talmud says that a voice came out from heaven and chastised him "Do not be overly righteous." His very pursuit of perfection had now become his downfall.

Even if he truly believed all of his rationalizations as to why he should not wipe out the Amalekites, even though he did not wish to sully his hands with the "sin" of killing them, he should have ignored his own feelings and heeded the Navi . But his own sense of perfection did not allow him to.

The only way he could now rectify that was by allowing himself to be less than perfect. He had to do something he knew was a sin, but do it anyway because he knew it was right. This is why on the night before his death he was left with no choice but to go to the necromancer. He sullied himself with sin, because he felt he needed some advice for the good of the nation and had no place else to turn. He had to give up his own sense of being without blemish, before he could become the perfectly righteous man before God.

Learning his lesson from his previous mistake he did so. He sinned, but for all the right reasons. He sacrificed his innocence on the altar of doing what was right. By doing so he merited a place next to Shmuel.

There is a lesson here for all of us. Or maybe I should just say that there is a lesson here for me. Too many times in my life I have been faced with the choice of retaining the appearance of being very righteous, or doing what was right. Too many times I chose the appearance, rather than what was truly right before God.

As Shmuel told Shaul, listening to God is better than a sacrifice; paying attention to God is better than the fat of rams on the altar. In a selfish pursuit of spirituality we may chose to engage in all sorts of spiritual activities, while ignoring what God really wants. Have we become more Godly, or have we just fed our own egos and enhanced our self-image?

Truly being Godly, as King David was, means not concerning ones self with how righteous ones is or isn't, or how righteously one is perceived by others. It is contingent on doing what is right before God, and nothing else.

This is a lesson that I need to remind myself about every single day of my life ...