When I attended the Mesivta of Eastern Parkway many years ago I had a wonderful English principal Rabbi Judah Cohen a Torah scholar and master math teacher. In order to help prevent inventive yeshivah boys from raciously sharing information with each other during his tests he arranged a system wherein no student sat next to someone taking the same test. As he often told us for him Gan Eden would have been a different test for every  student.

The truth is that this is exactly Hashem’s method in examining His subjects.

No two tests are the same.

In fact this concept has a name in the annals of the Mussar movement the nekudas habechirah (“the point where free will is tested”). Rav Eliyahu Dessler in many places in his Michtav MeEliyahu (e.g. vol. 1 p. 113; vol. 5 p. 275) explains in the following way:

Life is one great test. However no two people take the same exam and no one takes the exact same test twice. Some spiritual levels are above one’s testing range some below. At the moment our good and evil inclinations meet on an even  playing field the examination has begun. That point of contact constitutes a valid fair and efficacious test.

Let us update Rav Dessler’s prototype for our contemporary times. Imagine someone born into an average Orthodox Jewish home what we call today “frum from birth ” or FFB. He walks by a McDonald’s the aroma of cheeseburgers wafting into his innocent nostrils. Sorry no temptation; no test; no reward. This is below an FFB’s nekudas habechirah. On the other hand neither is he tested on whether or not to leave his job and join a kollel. That is far above his “pay grade” and is not on his testing radar screen at all.

However we may conjure up a very recent baal teshuvah who has until recently enjoyed the world’s most delectable cuisine. He passes by his favorite gastronomical temple and the aroma is now in his nostrils. He too walks away but there has been a struggle. His nekudas habechirah has been found and probed and it has triumphed. At that magical moment the point shifts and the testing range has been elevated. Our sages refer to this as mitzvah
goreres mitzvah — “one good deed generates another” (Avos 4:2). Although the conventional understanding of this statement is that one good deed results in another Rav Dessler explains that something much more profound is happening. Actually every nisayon — Divine test — places the examinee on a new level sometimes higher sometimes lower. But we are never the same after our point of free will has been altered.

It is interesting that science has begun to notice this phenomenon of varying thresholds. In a series of studies in the relatively new field of neuroscience multidisciplinary specialists using fMRI brain scans and PET scans have tried to analyze some of the classic sins of sloth pride greed envy and others. To their surprise the scientists discovered that people’s thresholds of evil differ. For instance in trying to provoke the sin of wrath researchers
discovered that “some of us are more easily enraged than others…. The medial prefrontal cortex …quickly lit up in angry brooders.” More docile subjects barely reacted to the identical stimuli (Kathleen McGowan “I Didn’t Sin — It Was My Brain ” Discover Magazine Sept 5 2009).

Elsewhere in his Michtav MeEliyahu (vol. 3 p. 155) Rav Dessler describes a similar dynamic to the holy Avos themselves. They too were tested only in areas in which they were vulnerable. Thus for example Avraham Avinu the very embodiment of chesed — kindness — is tested for his ability to follow the Divine command to perform seemingly the cruelest of acts sending a helpless mother and her delirious son into the hazardous desert and the apparently merciless murder of a much-beloved son.

In the world of Chassidus we discover an additional approach to the testing process. Rav Tzaddok HaKohein of Lublin (Tzidkas HaTzadik No. 46) writes somewhat cryptically: “Even as someone is failing a test he should know that this can become preparation to be used for later self-improvement. If he is fortunate at that moment he can rise to an incredible height. The more evil the sin into which he has been seduced the greater the opportunity to ascend. The more powerful was his desire for iniquity all the greater the ability to transform it into virtue.”

For Rav Tzaddok it is not so much the result of the test that is most important as is the sinner’s immediate attitude toward what has happened. He can harness to his advantage the anguish he feels after sinning. Once the energy  for evil has been generated it can be channeled for goodness.

My rebbi Rav Yitzchok Hutner ztz”l also forcefully advocates this approach. In an earlier column we quoted from his letter to a young man being buffeted by spiritual struggles. The rosh yeshivah reminded the forlorn student that  all great people had to wage their personal battles of the spirit although others only get to see the successful results not the scaffolding and struggles which made those results possible.

The rosh yeshivah (Pachad Yitzchak Igros page 217) added another piece in that classic missive. Quoting Mishlei 24:16 — “The tzaddik (righteous one) may fall seven times but he will arise” — Rav Hutner pithily comments that “only fools think this means even though the tzaddik falls he will arise. The wise know very well that this means the very essence of the tzaddik’s ascent is because of his ‘seven setbacks.”

Rav Hutner goes on to point out that this is reflected in the very beginning of the Torah itself. The Torah states “Hashem saw all that He had created and it was very good.” Our sages teach that this refers to both the good and the bad inclinations (Bereishis Rabbah 9). This means that the human process of failure and then triumph is ineluctable. It is as much a part of the adult process of learning right from wrong as the toddler’s learning to walk by falling down.

This recalls the famous story of the Gerrer Rebbe the Beis Yisrael. A long line of recent entries into the religious world were waiting to receive the Rebbe’s blessings. A young ben Torah from a mainstream yeshivah who ended up just behind this group was embarrassed for the Rebbe to think that he too had just become frum.

“I am not a baal teshuvah” he hastened to inform the Rebbe.

The Beis Yisrael however smiled and retorted with a sharp query “Farvos nisht? — Why not?”

As the Rebbe so succinctly taught us we are indeed all baalei teshuvah hopefully growing daily from each test whether we pass or fail. Sometimes we pass the test thus growing from the experience. Yet when we fail but seize the moment of mortification as an opportunity it speaks even more eloquently about our deep spiritual yearnings.

Rav Chaim Shmulevitz ztz”l (Sichos Mussar 5732 No. 37 page 137) cites a number of dramatic examples of this amazing process of renewal. The Navi Micha (7:8) tells us: “Though I fell I will rise. Though I sit in the darkness Hashem is a light unto me.” Our sages (Yalkut Tehillim 628) comment “If I had not fallen I would not have risen. Had I not sat in darkness Hashem would not be my light.”

Rav Chaim explains “Falling and sitting in darkness lead a person to see the truth. It is only through darkness that one can appreciate the light.”

Among the numerous sources Rav Chaim uses to illuminate this concept is the tragic but uplifting story of Yosef Me’shita. When the Romans approached the Beis HaMikdash they were afraid to trespass into the sanctuary. Instead they looked for a Jew who would enter before them. They enticed Yosef by promising that he could take anything he wanted. Yosef entered emerging with the golden Menorah. However even the Romans understood that this was not an appropriate item for an individual. They ordered him to return it and remove something else. Yosef refused and declared that he had angered G-d enough. The Romans tortured him mercilessly but he remained firm crying out “woe to me for I have infuriated my Creator.”

Rav Chaim asks a simple question: What happened here? When this tragic incident began Yosef was on a level beneath the Romans. They hesitated to enter the Beis HaMikdash but he had little problem doing so. He removed the Menorah yet they perceived instantly that this object was too sacred for any one individual. Yet the moment he was asked to reenter he was transformed into a giant of incredible spiritual stature. How did this happen?

Rav Chaim teaches us the astonishing secret. Yosef would never have achieved these heights of heroic self-sacrifice had he not fallen so precipitously. Even when he cried out in pain it was because he felt that he had disappointed Hashem so profoundly. These astonishing levels of spiritual accomplishments come only from gazing into the deep abyss of one’s imminent spiritual destruction. It is the perception of this horror that provides its own redemption.

It would be best if we passed all our tests. But let us remember that if we G-d forbid fail the test was tailor-made for us. Failure can become triumph just as going back to the drawing board can produce a beautiful new picture.

Rabbi Cohen was right after all. A test for each person is Gan Eden on earth.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 376)