Inspire Me
| March 5, 2014Some time ago my youngest daughter made a remark that brought happiness to my heart. She was going to be attending a program featuring a lineup of inspirational lectures and she was very much looking forward to attending. But she also wondered aloud whether the experience would be one of moving from one talk to the next with the net result being only an amorphous sense of inspiration lacking something concrete to help effect personal growth.
I was certainly supportive of her going to the program and more broadly I believe the very fact that these events fill the communal calendar reflects wonderfully on the level of moral striving in the Torah world of which I wrote here last week. The first words that come to mind upon contrasting the kinds of evenings and weekends that draw a Torah-observant audience with those on offer in secular society are Baruch hamavdil bein kodesh l’chol.
And yet.
When I wrote last week that there’s an important discussion to be had about “whether we are going about our moral education whether in schools or in programs for adults the right way or are there things we should be doing differently ” this is part of what I had in mind. In my contribution to the latest volume of the journal Dialogue I put the matter this way:
Are such talks truly the most effective way to engender personal growth and spiritual change? Does there not come a point at which a form of “inspiration overload” takes over triggering a spiritual analog to the economist’s law of diminishing returns? We must ask ourselves honestly whether it is perhaps the case that the many talks we’ve attended albeit edifying and enjoyable have not produced all that much in the way of lasting personal change — or perhaps have even inured us to our current spiritual levels.
I recently read a news item reporting on a talk on the topic of overcoming limitations and reaching one’s true potential. The dynamic presenter a person of substance and accomplishment who gives magnanimously of his time and talents to help his fellow Jews spoke about setting goals having role models and persevering in the face of failure. The reader has no idea who I’m referring to because my generic description of the speaker and his topics could have been taken from the pages of our community’s newspapers on almost any given week.
But what struck me was the report’s conclusion which noted that everyone left the talk filled with determination to use their G-d-given talents to reach their highest potential. And I don’t doubt for a moment that’s true and beautiful.
But let me share a story. Many readers are familiar with the episode in which the Chofetz Chaim removed a dybbuk from the person it had possessed which Rav Elchonon Wasserman would retell to his students in all its dramatic detail every year on Purim. A talmid of Radin later a rav in the Bronx was a part of the minyan present at that experience and along with everyone else there saw and heard all that transpired.
And years later reflecting on that time he said: “Do you think being present at that awesome moment had a lasting effect on me? For two weeks afterward I behaved like a malach and then I went right back to the way I’d been before.” Pointing to the wall next to him he said “It had an effect on me like it had on this wall.”
And so I too can only wonder what the attendees who left the aforementioned talk on an inspirational “high” might have said two weeks later about its lasting effects.
Do inspirational talks never help foster changes in people’s lives? Surely that’s not so. But the question is what approach given limited time and energy to devote to personal growth is most likely to help one succeed.
In my essay in Dialogue I wrote about “the power to be self-inspired and take responsibility for one’s own spiritual and ethical growth” through
… the study and practice [of the range of topics relating to self-improvement in bein adam l’Makom and bein adam l’chaveiro] that is: active not passive; regular not episodic; incremental and realistic not primarily emotion-driven; and involves repeated practical exercises to achieve measurable sustainable success…. In short everything that the masters of Mussar have identified as the path towards penetrating the unfeeling human heart and enlivening the deadened soul of succeeding at the project of Mussar as Rav Yisroel Salanter described it: “Enabling the heart to feel that which the mind knows.”
My daughter also made the simple suggestion for speakers to try to offer practical steps that their listeners might take to give expression to the inspiration they receive. But there’s no reason why opinion columnists ought to be exempt from doing so either and I invite readers to contact me to discuss practical ideas on how to implement what we’ve discussed here.
MY SON THE CRIMINAL Generations of American Jews kvelled at the opportunity to pronounce the words “my son the doctor.” But I’m much much more fortunate than they ever were because thanks to the gezeirah in Eretz Yisrael I’m now able to speak of “my son the criminal.”
That’s not a cute line by the way but precisely how I feel. The Gemara (Berachos 61b) relates that Papus ben Yehudah asked Rabi Akiva why he wasn’t afraid to flout the Roman decree against teaching Torah by continuing to do so in huge public assemblies. Rabi Akiva used the famous mashal of the fox and the fish to explain that Torah study is life itself and we’d no sooner abandon it than the fish would leave water for dry land. Not long after that exchange the Gemara continues Rabi Akiva was apprehended and imprisoned and Papus too landed in the cell next to his leading the latter to exclaim: “Fortunate are you Rabi Akiva that you were jailed for divrei Torah; woe to Papus who was jailed for trivialities.”
One has to be fortunate to be jailed for learning Torah. The Ribbono shel Olam gives us everything does everything for us and loves us with an everlasting love. We live such easy sacrifice-free lives. How can we possibly reciprocate His love? The very least we can do is be branded criminals and national pariahs for His sake and realize what an honor that is. It’s enough to make an American Jew like me want to make aliyah.
So much for who is fortunate. To whom is it woe? For this we have the statement that the Chazon Ish instructed Rav Shlomo Lorincz to include in his speech to the Knesset when Rav Yisroel Grossman rosh yeshivah of Pinsk-Karlin was jailed for procuring the signatures of gedolei Yisrael on the psak that the draft of girls was to be fought on pain of death: “To a rosh yeshivah it makes no difference where he is for he can learn anywhere but woe to the country that imprisons its rabbanim….”
It’s interesting to note that in his commentary to the aforementioned Gemara the Vilna Gaon writes (if I understand it correctly) that Papus was a very prominent even righteous person someone who even sacrificed himself for Klal Yisrael and he was imprisoned for tacitly assenting to Rabi Akiva’s response to him. Apparently even very good people who’ve done much for other Jews can fail to comprehend that Torah is life itself and must be embraced for dear life. And apparently as well such people can sometimes realize only too late that they too are in the crosshairs of the enemies of Torah and regret not having stood up for Torah when they were yet able to do so.
Of course one might protest there’s no comparison at all for that Gemara dealt with a decree of the unspeakably brutal Roman government destroyers of the Beis Hamikdash and murderers of millions of Jews. Point well taken there really is no comparison. The imprisonment of talmidei chachamim by Jews for the crime of learning Torah is an incomparably greater chillul Hashem and strike at the heart of the Jewish nation.
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