Tikkun Hamiddos and Yom Hadin
Prior to Rosh Hashanah we read the curses of Ki Savo, and prior to Shavuos those of Be'Chukosai, in accord with the decree of Ezra "so that the year and its curses should end." The Ramban links the curses of Ki Savo with the destruction of the second Beis HaMikdash, and those of Be'Chukosai with the destruction of the first.
The curses of Be'Chukosai are followed by prophecies of the eventual return of the Jewish People, consistent with the end of the exile after the destruction of the First Temple. No similar verses of consolation are found in Ki Savo. The current galus has extended nearly two millennia, and we do not know when it will end.
At one level, the sins for which the First Temple was destroyed were more severe, including the cardinal sins of idol worship, promiscuity, and murder. The Second Temple was destroyed on account of causeless hatred (Yoma 9b).
Yet despite the severity of the sins that caused the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish People did not lose their essential tzuras ha'adam. At the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, they did. That too is hinted to in the verses of Ki Savo, which describe the most refined and soft-hearted eating their own flesh and blood. The curses end with a description of Jews being returned to be sold in the slave markets of Egypt. But there are no buyers. So despised and lowly has the Jew become that no one will purchase him, even as a slave.
The work of restoring the Bais HaMikdash in our day is one of restoring the proper tzuros ha'adam – in other words,tikkun hamiddos (repair of our character). As one of the deepest thinkers of our generation put it recently, "Torah and mitzvos abound today. Yet there is nobody who genuinely works of correcting his middos." Yet the Vilna Gaon writes in his commentary on Mishlei (4:13), "a person lives only to break those bad middos that he has not succeeded in breaking until now, and therefore he must constantly strengthen himself [in this area] for if not, why is he living."
The Gaon has pointed us towards our primary preparation for the Yom HaDin.
THIS PAST WEEK I had the honor of speaking with Rabbi Naftali Weinberg, someone who takes seriously the Vilna Gaon's emphasis on middos tovos and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro, and has sought to make those topics part of the basic education in every school in Israel.
Rabbi Weinberg made aliyah from the United States in 1971 together with his great teacher Rabbi Yisroel Zev Gustman, when the latter established Yeshivat Netzach Yisrael in Jerusalem's Rechavia neighborhood. From the time that he arrived in Eretz Yisrael, he was bothered by the extreme divisiveness in Israeli society – not just between the various sectors of the society, but even within the Torah world itself. Only with Rabbi Gustman's passing in 1991, however, did he start thinking seriously about how to address the problem.
After Rabbi Gustman's petirah, Rabbi Weinberg went to a number of the greatest Torah figures in Jerusalem to discuss the rampant strife in Israeli society, which he attributed, in large part, to bad middos, in particular a concern with "me" and an inability to consider the needs or viewpoints of others. When he spoke to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv about the matter, and discussed his theories, the former told him, "You are 100% correct. Go and make a change." Rabbi Pinchas Sheinberg told him to focus his efforts on the youth.
Around the same time that he received the encouragement from gedolei Yisrael, someone whom he knew only slightly approached Rabbi Weinberg and told him that he had heard the he was interested in doing something to address the constant machlokes in Israeli society. This man had just inherited a significant sum of money, and out of the blue offered Rabbi Weinberg the seed money to start an institute for instilling good middos.
Thus was born Machon Ahavas Emes – the Center for Deepening the Value of Love of One's Fellow Man. The Machon has two major projects. The first is a four-page flyer, Ish Le'Rayeihu, distributed weekly in shuls in Israel and sent electronically to thousands around the globe. The flyers are meant primarily to stimulate discussion at the Shabbos table of middos and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro. That for parashas Nitzavim preceding Rosh Hashanah, for instance, contains a dvar Torah on being ma'avir al midosav – not insisting on one's rights and the strict letter of the law – as the best means of ensuring that Hashem will not judge us according to the strict din.
But by far the biggest project of Machon Ahavas Emes is the development of a curriculum for teaching good middos and derech eretz in schools. To date, the Machon has produced seven attractive workbooks, with lesson plans for a weekly shiur on middos tovos, derech eretz, and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro. The workbooks are replete with stories of gedolei Yisrael, but also of real life situations relevant to the talmidim. Each topic covered includes dilemmas for discussion to get the students involved so that the topic is not merely academic.
So far the program is in seventy chadorim around Israel. But Rabbi Weinberg confesses that he is disappointed that it is not in more. For instance, it is not offered in Bais Yaakov because the principals said they have no funding for an hour per week of instruction in derech eretz. And some cheder principals are loathe to take time away from the traditional Chumash and Gemara learning.
But those principals who have introduced the curriculum are effusive in their praise about how it changes the entire atmosphere in the cheder – in recess, on the school bus, and in class. One veteran rebbi told Rabbi Weinberg that he felt totally burned out after 28 years of teaching and was planning on quitting. Then one day, a student jumped off the school bus and rushed back to the classroom to tell his rebbi, "Toda Rabba." He had taken to heart the curriculum's emphasis on hakaras hatov towards one's teachers. The rebbi's plan to quit was quickly shelved.
Another time, Rabbi Weinberg was standing in the ezras nashim of a shul, when someone gave a klop on thebimah, and announced that according to what he had just read in Ish Le'Rayeihu, he was obligated to seek public forgiveness from a fellow shul member and he now wished to do so.
Rabbi Weinberg's great dream is to have the curricular material adapted for use in national religious and secular schools. Mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro has consistently been shown to be one of the most effective ways of introducing non-religious Jews to the beauty of Torah, in terms that they can readily grasp. He would also like to see the material translated in English for use throughout the Jewish world.
As we parted, Rabbi Weinberg offered a story of the benefits of good middos not just for our judgment in the beis din shel ma'ala, but also in this world. A group of shochtim in Brazil noticed that one of their member was missing as they gathered outside of the plant after work. They asked the gentile guard if he had seen their colleague, and the guard assured them that he had not left the plant because every day he stopped and said good-bye to him before leaving. Eventually, they found their colleague locked in a huge freezer that could only be opened from the outside. The daily courtesy to the gentile guard saved his life.
________________________________________________________________________
Can tzedakah giving be made more rational?
It's that time of the year again when our mailboxes are filled with pre-Chagim appeals and every five minutes seems to bring another phone call from an organization seeking funds for needy families prior to the holidays.
I do not doubt that each one of these organizations is doing valuable and important work, especially in light of the recent draconian budget cuts. But I cannot tell one from another: How many families are reached? How much food do the families receive? What is the organization's annual budget? Overhead? All these are relevant questions, but beyond the capacity of an operator manning a phone bank to know; and beyond my capacity to ascertain without investing more time and energy than I care to.
I wonder whether some families are not on the lists of four or five organizations, while others no less needy fall between the cracks because they don't know how to find those who can help. The former does not really bother me, as I assume that any family receiving food baskets has needs beyond what any single organization is supplying. But the latter does.
My real question is: Is there a way to make the collection of money for essentially the same purpose more rational. Rather than having a dozen or more organizations collecting for food distribution, would it not make more sense to have a single Tomchei Shabbos for a city or at least neighborhood, as do many communities in the United States? Shouldn't we have a centralized bureau collecting information on various families' needs?
The way I have posed the question may seem to imply an obvious answer. But I'm not sure I'm right. Perhaps the competition between chesed organizations is a good thing, and results in more money being collected than would otherwise. Perhaps each one serves a slightly different type of community, and those communities would be disadvantaged in a single communal drive. Some may wish, for instance, to donate primarily to avreichim. Others to their closest neighbors.
I'd be interested in hear from readers whether they think this is an area for communal planning or whether the seemingly inefficient present system represents the working of Hashgacha?
Tikkun Hamiddos and Yom Hadin
Prior to Rosh Hashanah we read the curses of Ki Savo, and prior to Shavuos those of Be'Chukosai, in accord with the decree of Ezra "so that the year and its curses should end." The Ramban links the curses of Ki Savo with the destruction of the second Beis HaMikdash, and those of Be'Chukosai with the destruction of the first.
The curses of Be'Chukosai are followed by prophecies of the eventual return of the Jewish People, consistent with the end of the exile after the destruction of the First Temple. No similar verses of consolation are found in Ki Savo. The current galus has extended nearly two millennia, and we do not know when it will end.
At one level, the sins for which the First Temple was destroyed were more severe, including the cardinal sins of idol worship, promiscuity, and murder. The Second Temple was destroyed on account of causeless hatred (Yoma 9b).
Yet despite the severity of the sins that caused the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish People did not lose their essential tzuras ha'adam. At the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, they did. That too is hinted to in the verses of Ki Savo, which describe the most refined and soft-hearted eating their own flesh and blood. The curses end with a description of Jews being returned to be sold in the slave markets of Egypt. But there are no buyers. So despised and lowly has the Jew become that no one will purchase him, even as a slave.
The work of restoring the Bais HaMikdash in our day is one of restoring the proper tzuros ha'adam – in other words,tikkun hamiddos (repair of our character). As one of the deepest thinkers of our generation put it recently, "Torah and mitzvos abound today. Yet there is nobody who genuinely works of correcting his middos." Yet the Vilna Gaon writes in his commentary on Mishlei (4:13), "a person lives only to break those bad middos that he has not succeeded in breaking until now, and therefore he must constantly strengthen himself [in this area] for if not, why is he living."
The Gaon has pointed us towards our primary preparation for the Yom HaDin.
THIS PAST WEEK I had the honor of speaking with Rabbi Naftali Weinberg, someone who takes seriously the Vilna Gaon's emphasis on middos tovos and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro, and has sought to make those topics part of the basic education in every school in Israel.
Rabbi Weinberg made aliyah from the United States in 1971 together with his great teacher Rabbi Yisroel Zev Gustman, when the latter established Yeshivat Netzach Yisrael in Jerusalem's Rechavia neighborhood. From the time that he arrived in Eretz Yisrael, he was bothered by the extreme divisiveness in Israeli society – not just between the various sectors of the society, but even within the Torah world itself. Only with Rabbi Gustman's passing in 1991, however, did he start thinking seriously about how to address the problem.
After Rabbi Gustman's petirah, Rabbi Weinberg went to a number of the greatest Torah figures in Jerusalem to discuss the rampant strife in Israeli society, which he attributed, in large part, to bad middos, in particular a concern with "me" and an inability to consider the needs or viewpoints of others. When he spoke to Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv about the matter, and discussed his theories, the former told him, "You are 100% correct. Go and make a change." Rabbi Pinchas Sheinberg told him to focus his efforts on the youth.
Around the same time that he received the encouragement from gedolei Yisrael, someone whom he knew only slightly approached Rabbi Weinberg and told him that he had heard the he was interested in doing something to address the constant machlokes in Israeli society. This man had just inherited a significant sum of money, and out of the blue offered Rabbi Weinberg the seed money to start an institute for instilling good middos.
Thus was born Machon Ahavas Emes – the Center for Deepening the Value of Love of One's Fellow Man. The Machon has two major projects. The first is a four-page flyer, Ish Le'Rayeihu, distributed weekly in shuls in Israel and sent electronically to thousands around the globe. The flyers are meant primarily to stimulate discussion at the Shabbos table of middos and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro. That for parashas Nitzavim preceding Rosh Hashanah, for instance, contains a dvar Torah on being ma'avir al midosav – not insisting on one's rights and the strict letter of the law – as the best means of ensuring that Hashem will not judge us according to the strict din.
But by far the biggest project of Machon Ahavas Emes is the development of a curriculum for teaching good middos and derech eretz in schools. To date, the Machon has produced seven attractive workbooks, with lesson plans for a weekly shiur on middos tovos, derech eretz, and mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro. The workbooks are replete with stories of gedolei Yisrael, but also of real life situations relevant to the talmidim. Each topic covered includes dilemmas for discussion to get the students involved so that the topic is not merely academic.
So far the program is in seventy chadorim around Israel. But Rabbi Weinberg confesses that he is disappointed that it is not in more. For instance, it is not offered in Bais Yaakov because the principals said they have no funding for an hour per week of instruction in derech eretz. And some cheder principals are loathe to take time away from the traditional Chumash and Gemara learning.
But those principals who have introduced the curriculum are effusive in their praise about how it changes the entire atmosphere in the cheder – in recess, on the school bus, and in class. One veteran rebbi told Rabbi Weinberg that he felt totally burned out after 28 years of teaching and was planning on quitting. Then one day, a student jumped off the school bus and rushed back to the classroom to tell his rebbi, "Toda Rabba." He had taken to heart the curriculum's emphasis on hakaras hatov towards one's teachers. The rebbi's plan to quit was quickly shelved.
Another time, Rabbi Weinberg was standing in the ezras nashim of a shul, when someone gave a klop on thebimah, and announced that according to what he had just read in Ish Le'Rayeihu, he was obligated to seek public forgiveness from a fellow shul member and he now wished to do so.
Rabbi Weinberg's great dream is to have the curricular material adapted for use in national religious and secular schools. Mitzvos bein adam l'chaveiro has consistently been shown to be one of the most effective ways of introducing non-religious Jews to the beauty of Torah, in terms that they can readily grasp. He would also like to see the material translated in English for use throughout the Jewish world.
As we parted, Rabbi Weinberg offered a story of the benefits of good middos not just for our judgment in the beis din shel ma'ala, but also in this world. A group of shochtim in Brazil noticed that one of their member was missing as they gathered outside of the plant after work. They asked the gentile guard if he had seen their colleague, and the guard assured them that he had not left the plant because every day he stopped and said good-bye to him before leaving. Eventually, they found their colleague locked in a huge freezer that could only be opened from the outside. The daily courtesy to the gentile guard saved his life.
________________________________________________________________________
Can tzedakah giving be made more rational?
It's that time of the year again when our mailboxes are filled with pre-Chagim appeals and every five minutes seems to bring another phone call from an organization seeking funds for needy families prior to the holidays.
I do not doubt that each one of these organizations is doing valuable and important work, especially in light of the recent draconian budget cuts. But I cannot tell one from another: How many families are reached? How much food do the families receive? What is the organization's annual budget? Overhead? All these are relevant questions, but beyond the capacity of an operator manning a phone bank to know; and beyond my capacity to ascertain without investing more time and energy than I care to.
I wonder whether some families are not on the lists of four or five organizations, while others no less needy fall between the cracks because they don't know how to find those who can help. The former does not really bother me, as I assume that any family receiving food baskets has needs beyond what any single organization is supplying. But the latter does.
My real question is: Is there a way to make the collection of money for essentially the same purpose more rational. Rather than having a dozen or more organizations collecting for food distribution, would it not make more sense to have a single Tomchei Shabbos for a city or at least neighborhood, as do many communities in the United States? Shouldn't we have a centralized bureau collecting information on various families' needs?
The way I have posed the question may seem to imply an obvious answer. But I'm not sure I'm right. Perhaps the competition between chesed organizations is a good thing, and results in more money being collected than would otherwise. Perhaps each one serves a slightly different type of community, and those communities would be disadvantaged in a single communal drive. Some may wish, for instance, to donate primarily to avreichim. Others to their closest neighbors.
I'd be interested in hear from readers whether they think this is an area for communal planning or whether the seemingly inefficient present system represents the working of Hashgacha?