(The joke doesn’t work with Ashkenazi pronunciation where the parsha is called Bechukosai.” Oh well. Sigh?)

There is much in this parsha, a lot of it emotionally fraught. The section known as the tochechah – “the rebuke” – offers an escalating series of calamities that are sure to befall the people if they persist in separating themselves from sincere service to God and they fail to walk in God’s ways. The details are graphic, but they can be summarized as:

• Fear, panic, and insecurity

• Environmental and economic collapse

• Wild animals and social disruption

• War and plague

• Famine and starvation

• Destruction and exile

What is extraordinary about this ominous list is not the terrible aspects themselves but that the primary behaviour that the Torah says will bring on these terrifying events is designated by the Hebrew wordקרי (keri) (Leviticus 26).

Rashi defines the term keri, saying that it refers to happenstance, accident, or an unplanned occurrence or, to sum it up in one word, casualness. The message is that when we treat our spiritual life with a casual attitude, we are on the path to disaster.

The Mussar teachers teach us that keri is not merely an event. It is a worldview. It is the spiritual danger of living as though life is random and doesn’t call for much deliberate commitment or engagement. All we need to do is drift along with a casual attitude and we put ourselves on the slope to catastrophe.

The Torah’s list of negative outcomes is horrific – subjugation, loss, war, collapse, terror, and even abominable things like being driven by starvation to eat your own children. And to think that all that is being linked to living a very casual life that does not recognize true priorities!

The graphic lesson for us is that living in a casual way is spiritually corrosive and an affront to life. Every encounter, challenge, interruption, and disappointment carries the potential of growth and divine encounter. Living with an attitude of keri undermines that awareness. It encourages passivity instead of responsibility. A person says, “Things just happen. It doesn’t mean anything,” rather than asking, “What is this moment asking of me? Or teaching me? Or offering me?”

The great Mussar teacher of the mid-20^th century, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, emphasizes that spiritual decline rarely begins with open rebellion. More often it begins with indifference. A practice becomes mechanical. Prayer becomes habit without conscious intention. Moral failures are dismissed as insignificant. This emotional numbness is the essence of keri.

In our era, keri has become so pervasive that it actually characterizes the dominant culture. We are invited and induced to live in perpetual distraction. Things of no consequence are elevated to major (though fleeting) significance. What was it she wore on the red carpet? Did his statistics beat what he got last year? The bombardment of constant stimulation leads to what the Alter of Novardok called pizzur ha’nefesh – a scattered soul. He was writing in the late 19^th century. He had no idea of the extent to which social media could scatter the inner life of the majority of people, for whom it is now the normal way to live, though deeply unsatisfying.

And, when you review the list of disasters that the Torah says keri will bring about, it is a pretty accurate reflection of our broken world.

Overcoming a disastrous life of distraction and casual living begins by cultivating the opposite quality: awakened intentionality. Nothing should be approached casually. Eating, speaking, working, studying and even playing are all arenas where we can work to refine our inner beings and move ourselves closer to wholeness and, ultimately, holiness. Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the 19^th century Mussar movement in eastern Europe, taught that the smallest action can reveal the deepest truths about a person’s character. Treating life casually casts us into a spiritual slumber. But when we live with reflection and discipline, we see clearly that every moment is laden with spiritual opportunities.

Yet Mussar never views the human condition with despair. The recognition of keri is itself the beginning of transformation. To cite Rabbi Yisrael Salanter again, he designated the first steps on the path of Mussar as hergesh, which means “feeling.”

If you notice your own feelings of numbness, distraction, or moral laziness, then you are already on the path to awaken from your own state of keri. On the Mussar path, we don’t seek instant enlightenment, quick-fixes or leaps to the peak of holiness, but only small acts of renewed consciousness: pausing before speaking, giving charity thoughtfully, listening carefully, blessing with attention, restraining anger. These are the sorts of acts that reflect a life led with purpose and intention. These are the steps that respond to the tochecha and that counter a casual lifestyle. There is no other path to wholeness or holiness.

Does the state of keri need some attention in your spiritual curriculum?

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That’s no longer the case. That came clear to me this past week when, adjacent to my book touring that took me through Connecticut and on to Minneapolis, I recorded two podcasts, though only one is ready to share with you at this time. That one captures me in conversation with Ryan Lambert on his podcast, Bridge Builders Forum.

As that organization says about itself, “The Bridge Builders Forum Podcast aims to help Jews and Christians better understand their faith, the Bible, and each other.”

Frankly, when Ryan first contacted me, I was skeptical. I’m very alert to missionizing and I had never heard of Bridge Builders. In the recent past I was in touch with someone from The Mussar Center in Jerusalem, which says on its webpage, “If you could trade five or ten minutes a day to feel truly alive, happy, and free, would you do it? That’s exactly what this ancient Biblical path of inner work, character development, and healing will do for you.”

Sounds good, no? You have to dig hard to find out that one of the goals of this organization is to bring Jews to Jesus. When I confronted its leader on this buried fact, he answered that he was not a missionary. “I’m non-binary,” he said.

But the website of Bridge Builders was reassuring. They repeat there many of the ideas that exist in the Christian world about Jews, and then say, “These divisive ideas are not only polarizing. They are incorrect both historically and theologically.” And I happened to run into a professor of Jewish Studies who vouched for them. So, I agreed.

Then when I met Ryan and did the podcast, I was completely reassured. He had done his homework, was sincere in his questioning, and was genuinely interested in my work. He truly is a bridge builder.

See for yourself. You can watch the show here:

YouTube:

Apple:

After that, my book tour took me to Minneapolis where I was the guest of Julie Dean, who I knew had started an organization in that city called “Living Mussar.” That much I knew, but nothing beyond. So, it came as a big and pleasant surprise to find myself addressing over 200 people and signing 150 books in events co-sponsored by six local synagogues.

Turns out that Julie and her team have been very busy over the last few years. In 2024, they founded Living Mussar “to reflect what we had become: a vibrant, growing community dedicated to bringing Mussar to life wherever people are seeking meaning. Today, Living Mussar offers small groups, facilitator training, educational partnerships, and resources that open the door for anyone to walk this timeless Jewish path.”

I’ll share the link to the podcast I did with Julie when it becomes available.

Ryan’s interest in Mussar and the expanding network of Living Mussar activities in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area were two points on a map that has been taking shape in my mind as I tour with The Shabbat Effect.

I have to add more points for Buffalo, NY, Bloomfield, NJ, and West Palm Beach, FL, where stops on my tour revealed vibrant communities of Jewish (and some non-Jewish) seekers who were sincerely pursuing spiritual growth in an authentically Jewish way. I am sure this will be how it is elsewhere as well.

This is a very encouraging development because what it says to me is that Mussar has developed a life of its own within the Jewish world. There were only sparks of Mussar when I began my own journey on this path, and now there are steady fires burning in many places.

On the Living Mussar webpage it says, “Mussar is more than study—it is practice. It is not only about who we are, but who we are becoming. At Living Mussar, we are committed to walking this path together: deepening our connection with Judaism, nurturing our souls, and becoming builders of a better world, one choice at a time.”

What I have discovered – to my delighted surprise – is that there are many people in many places who have not only come out to join in this journey, but who have been independently contributing to the formation and growth of a modern Mussar movement. May we all go from strength to strength and may our varied efforts bring more light and wisdom to ourselves and to our world.

When my wife and I were in our late 20s, we were among the founders of an organization called Seva Foundation that is still going strong today providing an enormous amount of service and leadership in the area of blindness treatment and prevention.

One of Seva’s other founders was an ophthalmologist from Michigan, who, when she turned 50, joined an order of Catholic nuns that maintains constant silence. As far as I know, and if she has been true to her vows, our old friend has not uttered a single word since she entered her convent over 25 years ago.

There is no such practice in Judaism. From a Mussar perspective, anything that aligns us with an extreme pole in our behaviour is seen as unbalanced and a distortion of our human natures. That’s not to say that the Jewish tradition does not recognize and value silence. Elie Weisel affirms: “Judaism is full of silences … but we don’t talk about them.”

But even more deeply than that, one of the things I have observed in my years of study and teaching is that Judaism has been sustained not by a king or a pope or a high priest or even a single dogma but by dynamic tensions built into the structure of the tradition.

One principle pulls against another and the point is not to have our gevurah [strength] defeat our chesed[lovingkindness] or our chesed win out over our gevurah, nor for our spontaneous prayer to be our sole form at the expense of formal, fixed prayer, nor vice versa, nor for religious practice to take precedence over spirituality, or spirituality to rule over religion, but for the two opposed forces to pull against one another within us, and instead of canceling each other out, their interaction actually creates movement, growth, balance and long term stability.

This principle applies to speech and silence.

In our generation, our inner realm is flooded with a tsunami of speech that leaves no room whatsoever for silence. That speech is often loud, bombastic, deceitful, offensive and corrupt, and we are challenged time and again to know how to respond, whether with more speech or with silence.

This then becomes an issue in the bein adam l’atzmo sphere – that is, between you and yourself.

There is obviously a difference between own capacity to speak and to be silent, but we should wonder whether that difference holds any significance. Maybe these two modalities are just two alternating aspects of one process, no different than seeing darkness as an absence of light. Is it maybe just like seeing dryness as an absence of wetness?

What triggered my thought about this issue is something that Onkelos said when he translated the Torah into Aramaic, where he does not give what seems the most literal translation to the verse in the Torah that refers to the creation of Primordial Adam. The verse (Genesis 2:7) says:

And the Lord God formed the human from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living soul.

Onkelos translates “and the human became a living soul” as “and the human became a speaking spirit.”

The implication of Onkelos’s translation is that the words we generate come out of and represent our origins as a creature brought to life by the breath of God, and since we are the only creature that practices sophisticated speech, speech becomes the defining feature of our species, and that seems to make a silence no more than the shadow of speech.

Or is it? As I said earlier, Judaism has been sustained not by political leadership or a single dogma but by dynamic tensions. Speech may define us but at the same time, we need to search for the ways in which we are also defined by silence.

About speech, we know how important that is because the story of Creation says over and over that God created this and that by speaking it into existence. Creation was generated by speech. From that perspective, speech is generative, in the sense that it has the power to generate an impact in the world.

It’s interesting that modern linguistics also finds language to be generative. We know that some other animals do communicate verbally, but linguists point out that only human language is highly complex and infinitely expressive, and those characteristics are what allows us to produce and understand sentences we have never heard before.

Without this power of generativity, it would be impossible to build cities, send humans to the moon, develop mRNA vaccines, and find soothing meaning in lullabies.

Calling speech creative or generative expresses no value judgment about whether what comes out of our mouths has benefit or does harm. Jewish tradition explicitly recognizes that the great generative power of speech can be applied to doing great good but equally, to the cause of enormous destruction.

In the Book of Proverbs (18:21), we read: “Life and death are in the power of the tongue.” Words possess this dual power; they can heal, encourage, and create and, at the same time, they can wound, kill and destroy.

Judaism deals with this dual power in a typically Jewish way, which is by establishing a code of conduct. In the 19^th century, Rabbi Yisrael Meir haKohen Kagan, known as the Chofetz Chaim, produced a book called Shmirat HaLashon, literally, “Guarding the Tongue,” in which he codified the Jewish laws of speech.

There are grounds for saying that speech defines us as human beings, but silence is also a defining feature of humanity. We find many references to silence in our sources, though not so many as to speech. In Pirkei Avot 1:17, for example, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel says:

All my days I grew up among the sages and did not find anything better for the body than silence.

And in Pirkei Avot (3:13) we find “Silence is a protective fence for wisdom.”

And there are more.

We can look around and see that human speech far exceeds the capacity of any other type of animal and so can be given the status of being a defining feature of our species. But when it comes to silence, every species has this capability. What makes it an especially human quality?

Rav Kook, (1865–1935; the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel) points out that “Some silence means cessation of speech.” That’s the dimension of silence we share with other species. A human can stop talking and a rooster stops crowing and a dog does not bark all the time. We have no special claim in that area.

But Rav Kook goes on to say: “Another silence means cessation of thought” and with that comment he is pointing out the ability we humans have to make free-will choices about what goes on in our minds.

Mostly, we don’t. Mostly, we let the choo-choo train of thought roar down the tracks with green lights flashing and our inner awareness filled with an unrelenting babbling of words, ideas and judgments.

But it is not necessarily so. To demonstrate, if you hold yourself perfectly still, you can call a halt to the flow of thoughts, and you can direct your inner awareness to be filled with direct sensory perceptions, if only momentarily. Even if the experience is fleeting, it informs you that it is possible to be present, awake and aware without any thinking taking place.

Great. So now you have had a glimpse of what it is like to be in a coma. But no, that’s not it at all.

Rav Kook keeps going, “That silence,” he says, referring to cessation of thought, “arrives together with the most hidden, beautiful, and exalted thought.”

Cessation of thought, or inner silence, is not just a blank space. My teacher, Rabbi Perr, zt”l, said something similar. “If you are never silent,” he said, “you will never hear the thoughts that come min ha’shomayim – from heaven.”

We learn from this that a stream of exalted wisdom is flowing in our direction. But we will only be able to pick up what is being broadcast by opening the inner receiver, which we do by interrupting the inner discourse and becoming silent within.

Having a direct connection between our inner beings and the divine wisdom is also a defining feature of our humanity. In one way, it may be even more defining than speech. How so? Because not every human being can speak, maybe because they are an infant, or injured, or disabled, or demented. But everyone can be silent.

And if silence is a capability of every human being, then each of us has the ability to tap into the constant flow of divine wisdom that permeates the universe. All we need to do is to stop filling our inner receiver with our own noise, to quiet to the point of stillness, and to listen.

If my contention is correct, that the dynamic pull between opposite forces is a deep structure of Judaism, then silence and speech and the tension between them is not something we should seek to resolve. Neither is the defining feature of our species and we need them both.

And the central challenge that we face in this area is knowing when to let each of these forces exert just the right pull on our thought, words and deeds, so that the tension in the cables holds up the bridge, rather than pulling it down.

By way of conclusion, I want to point to the fact that the first recorded usage of the term “mussar” shows up at the very beginning of the biblical Book of Proverbs, which opens with the words:

The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel; to know chochma u’mussar [wisdom and Mussar].

Why both? Why did King Solomon, who is known as “the wisest of all people,” not just come to teach us wisdom? And the answer is that you cannot teach wisdom. Wisdom is something you can develop, but no one can teach it to you.

As a result, we need something in addition to wisdom that will serve as a path that leads to wisdom, and for that, Shlomo says, we have Mussar.

Following the path of Mussar brings about the development of wisdom.

And wisdom is what tells us when to speak and when to remain silent

How does speech or silence emerge in your spiritual curriculum?

Yesterday, as I pulled up to the airport, I got a text that my flight was cancelled. Of course, I stepped in to find a very long line of people at customer service. I was marooned at the airport for 4 hours until the next flight.

Today, I had my eye on his map and watched as the Uber driver made a wrong turn, making it much tighter for me to make my train. I jumped out of the car, ran through a train station unexpectedly (to me!) under redevelopment, and arrived on the platform to find that the train was an hour late.

These are just the daily realities that are showing up in front of me because I happen to be on a book tour. If I were settled at home, the anecdotes would be about the grocery store and the package delivery, or the boss and the deadline. This is what the ups and downs of mundane life are like.

Of course, all of it is a rich opportunity to work on myself. I watch the driver make the wrong turn and immediately the projected arrival time at the train station jumps from 10:55 to 11:02 and the train is scheduled to depart at 11:23, and I think to myself, here is where the middah of bitachon, trust, comes into play. It’s not that I trust that I am sure to make the train, it’s more that I know there will be another train and I will arrive how and when I can. It is my obligation to muster the best possible effort on my own behalf, but I need to recognize that I am not in charge of the show and it is not within my power to control the outcome.

And sometimes, on my travels, an experience takes me beyond my narrow focus on my own plans, delays and achievements.

The Uber I was sitting in when I got word that my flight was cancelled was being driven by a woman who answered my question about her place of origin by saying, “Iran.” The war in Iran has been raging and so my immediate response was to ask if she had family there. Yes, she answered, her mother and her father and siblings. But then, she added, they are not so important as the 11-year-old daughter she left behind when she emigrated three years ago.

“I’m so worried about my daughter in Tehran,” she said. And then she began to cry.

I’ve been worried about a flight that was cancelled by an airline that has 8 daily flights on that same route. Call that a problem? She, on the other hand, described what her parents had to do to get her daughter out of Tehran to a place in the countryside that was much less likely to be bombed.

And here I find myself in another situation that is pointing toward a middah. My heart is brimming with unquestioned empathy and compassion for this woman; there is no Mussar issue there. No, the middah that I find coming into sharper focus is discernment / tevunah. This human being, who happens to be driving an Uber that is taking me to the airport, is crying. And I struggle to discern for myself, is it ok to offer a hug to an Uber driver? Or even to put a comforting hand on her hand that is holding the steering wheel?

These are a few incidents from my recent days that bring into high relief the opportunity that exists in every encounter, every endeavour, every moment. Each situation is not just something that calls for action to solve the problem it contains; it is also an opportunity to learn something about myself and to put that lesson into practice in relation to the middah that I have come to see is implicated in the situation.

Have you run into any situations recently that summoned you to recognize and work on a middah that you could see was being challenged in that situation?

The debt we share is enormous.

One day, when I was hoping to spend some time with Rabbi Perr, our meeting was delayed because he wanted to visit some bereaved people who were sitting shiva. I was waiting for him when he returned, and he told me that when he hears of someone who had passed away, his practice was to consider that person’s middot (character – or soul – traits) to see if he could identify any middah in which that person excelled beyond his own level.

Once he had identified a quality in which the deceased outshone him, he undertook to practice that trait for a period of time. That way, even though the person had died, their superlative characteristic would continue to live on in the world, now in the person of Rabbi Perr.

When I adopt that practice in regard to Rabbi Perr, there are many middot that fit the bill, but to highlight one that everyone who knew him remarked on, it was that he was endlessly curious, far beyond my level of that trait.

His curiosity (Hebrew סַקרָנוּת /sakranut) led him to enjoy fixing clocks because he was enthralled by their movements.

He once asked me, “Do you know how many stars there are?” and when I confessed that I didn’t, he said, “Billions of billions.”

Once when I joined him at the wedding of a nephew on his wife’s side, we were sitting together at a table, watching the bearded men in their black hats dancing joyfully. He leaned over so I could hear him over the din and asked, “Do you recognize that song?” I listened and realized that the dance band was playing a Mexican love song, “Besame mucho,” which begins with the words “Kiss me now, kiss me with passion — kiss me as if this were to be our very last night.” We both laughed out loud as we watched the Orthodox men twirl to the tune, and through the laughter he sputtered, “They think it’s a Chassidische niggun.”

And then I thought to myself, how do you know that song? He loved music and this was proof that he listened to all kinds of it.

When my wife and I went out to Far Rockaway to visit the Perr family after Rabbi Perr had died, one of his daughters told us that she had been his computer operator. He would call her and say, “Tzipporah, ask the computer …” and he would be curious to know how many eyes an ant had, or if the stripes on all zebras are identical. She told me that Rabbi Perr had no objection to using the internet; he had her do his searching only because he was well aware how curious he was and he was certain that once he started, he would get good and lost in the tangled, endless byways of the web.

Just last month, I made a trip out to Far Rockaway to give some dear people there copies of my book on Shabbat. One went to Rebbetzin Perr and another to Rabbi Shayah Kohn, the executive director of the yeshiva.

When I met with Rabbi Kohn, I asked him how the transition to the new rosh yeshiva had been going – the elder Rabbi Perr having been succeeded by his son, Rabbi Yisroel Moshe Perr. Among the many things Rabbi Kohn told me, he was emphatic that the new rosh yeshiva was a better fundraiser than his father had been. He described the difference:

Rabbi Perr the younger is focused and efficient. Equipped with some intelligence on what a person might be inclined to donate, he made a clear request for that amount and it usually did not take more than 20 minutes to conclude a meeting, most often successfully.

And his father? Rabbi Kohn would make sure the elder Rabbi Perr had the same sort of information as he now provided to prepare his son, but when they would walk into the prospective donor’s home or office, there was every possibility that the rosh yeshiva’s eye would be caught by some painting on the wall – “the play of light and shadow on the face is so expressive!” – or a bottle of wine on the table – “what’s distinctive about that vintage? – or he would ask about something else that sparked his interest, so that they were very likely to be leaving the meeting two hours later without him ever getting around to making the ask!

I can easily understand why the executive director of the yeshiva, who is responsible for the $3-4 million annual budget, would praise the executive skills of his new fundraising partner, but from my perspective, Rabbi Perr’s boundless curiosity was an admirable virtue.

Rabbi Perr wanted to know everything he could learn about the world around him. And he was equally – if not more – curious about the workings of the inner life. He was fascinated by human nature and was always probing to discover what it would take to cause a person to grow and blossom.

His curiosity led him to question me about everything I said to him, to ferret out the truth within the statement, or the question behind the question. That’s the place where I met him most intimately and that’s where he had the greatest impact on my life, and where I miss him most. In his memory, I will ask more questions.

And so I am curious: When you think about someone who was close to you who has passed away, is there one middah in which they excelled beyond your level of that trait that you could undertake to practice? What might that middah be, and how will you practice it?

Yet Pesach is also always a challenge for me. That’s because I am the only person on any side of my family who observes this holiday in a formal way. Yes, the families gather for two Seders, and people come from long distances to attend – this year from Boston, New York, Montreal and Regina, Saskatchewan – which tells me that it must be meaningful for them. But I am the only one who goes to synagogue on the festival, and both Seders begin at the usual dinner time, not according to the turning of the new day on the Jewish calendar, which this year happened at 8:33 pm here in Toronto.

Bev and I manage that by having a table in a room adjacent to the dining room, and when I get back from synagogue, we begin our own Seder. Family come in and out, and we continue to the end.

It’s not ideal, but it’s the kind of solution that doesn’t force anyone to capitulate to anyone else, and it does keep the family together.

The first Seder this year was held at Bev’s brother’s house. He lives in a Jewish neighbourhood, and there is a warm and welcoming synagogue about a 20-minute walk from his house that I attend on occasions like this. After the conclusion of the evening service that brought in Pesach, I walked the cold and windy streets from the synagogue to Bev’s brother’s house.

It seems that most families in that part of town were like mine in starting their Seders earlier than indicated by sunset (and Jewish law). I know that because as I walked along, I passed many houses where I could look into illuminated dining rooms where assortments of people sat around tables, candles burning, yarmulkes on some heads. Sometimes, the house would be dark, and I figured either those people were not Jewish, or they were having the Seder at someone else’s house this night.

As I walked along, unabashedly peeping into people’s dining room gatherings, it struck me that no one had drawn their curtains. The Seders were being celebrated in full view of the street. I found that remarkable. I read and hear so much concern about antisemitism these days, but at the domestic level, no one in this neighbourhood seemed concerned enough to hide their celebration of the holiday from public attention.

This gave me pause to consider. Surely there is more open antisemitism than we have encountered in many years, but despite the blaring headlines and enraged leaders, life for Jews is still very good. Very few of us are touched directly or even indirectly by the events we read about. House after house, no one felt they had to conceal their Seder behind closed curtains.

I’m glad and grateful for the organizations that rise up to counter every antisemitic incident that happens, but I’m not going to adopt their single-minded vehemence. The term the Mussar teachers use for gratitude is not usually hoda’ah, which literally means “thanks,” but rather hakarat ha’tov, which means “recognizing the good.”

Without minimizing that there are problems in the world, and a special set of problems for Jews, I’m not going to allow that to get in the way of recognizing that there are also abundant gifts and goodness that we get to enjoy in our lives. In fact, the more we invest in gratitude for what we have and the more we bring that into the center of our lives, the more each of us will thrive as people and as Jews, and the more the Jewish community will thrive. Doing that not only enriches our personal and communal life, but it is also a vibrant and effective response to antisemitism.

So let me ask you: What good do you recognize in your life right now that you feel called to shout out?

LOS ANGELES, March 25 (Reuters) - A Los Angeles jury found Alphabet’s Google and Meta liable for$3m in compensatory damages and an additional $3m punitive damages on Wednesday in a landmark social media addiction lawsuit.

I have been following this case closely, not so much because I am concerned about the social responsibility of the social media giants as for objective confirmation that social media is addictive. In truth, that’s hardly a surprise finding. All you have to do is sit in an airport departure lounge or stand in a supermarket lineup to see that almost everyone fills every uncommitted moment of the day with a glance at their phones.

The court case focused on the negative impact addiction to social media has on teens. My view takes in a larger field. I’m concerned with the impact addiction to cell phones has on our ability to tune into the holy dimension of life. The luminous presence of the holy is there – in every moment of every day, but we have no access to that radiant light of the divine when our eyes are filled with the glow of the screen in our hands.

That’s especially an issue on Shabbat. Or, should I say, on the holy Shabbat. Because when God created the seventh day, the verse says, “And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.”

Shabbat is holy by its nature from creation, whether or not we acknowledge that or tune into it. But it also comes around every week and presents us with a recurring opportunity to tune into the holy. And in my experience, for that to happen, I need to tune out everything else that draws my attention to the more superficial level of the reality I inhabit.

And there in my hand is something designed to grab and hold my attention – I need to shut out the compellingly loud, coarse, colourful, flashing, base world that leaps out and grabs me from my screen in order that I can gather my attention to focus on a different dimension of life, one that is as delicate and beautiful as a butterfly’s wing.

Just like AA says about other forms of addiction, we need to acknowledge the carefully crafted power of the phone to demand our attention, along with our addiction to it. Of course, having made such a blanket statement, I need to acknowledge that there are some exceptional individuals who can take or leave their phones, but they are very much in the minority.

In my book and in the talks I have been doing based on it, I lean heavily on a medrash from the 5^th century (in Bereishit Rabbah) that says that the mitzvot were given in order to provide human beings with a way to refine ourselves. I respond intuitively and positively to the notion of “refinement” and have written about that in regard to the traditional Jewish concept captured in the Yiddish word “erlichkeit.”

And so I was surprised when I encountered pushback on the idea of “refinement.” As someone said to me, “When I hear the word refinement, I see very cultured English ladies with long white gloves sipping tea from fine china.”

Needless to say, that is not what our rabbis had in mind when they said that purpose of themitzvot is l’tzoref a person. That Hebrew word – l’tzoref – actually refers to smelting, and specifically to separating precious metals like silver or gold from impurities in the ore. You can see why it’s a good metaphor for personal refinement, though the pleasure of eating crustless mini-sandwiches does not come into it.

The 16^th century Mussar book Orchot Tzaddikim invokes a different metaphor that says basically the same thing. It refers to “throwing aside the husk and taking the fine flour.”

This is one of the subtleties of the Mussar tradition. Christians have a notion of “Seven deadly sins” but there is no such thing in the Mussar view. All traits are seen to be neutral in and of themselves. They only become positive or negative according to how they are put into play in our lives. As I have pointed out many times, you can do great harm with generosity (like when you spoil a child, or enable someone’s destructive behaviour) and, equally, make excellent use of a trait like envy (as a motivator).

That’s why I find refinement the right word for what a Mussar student does when they work on themselves. It is a process of cultivating traits so that the gold and silver is all that remains, because the dross has been purified out. Or to use the other metaphor, the fine flour is in hand, and the coarse husks have been blown away by the wind.

The Book of Proverbs (17:3) teaches: “Matzref lakesef ve’kur la’zahav ve’ish le’fi mahalalo,” which means, “The refining pot is for silver and the furnace for gold, and people are tested by their praise.” Rabbeinu Yonah explains that we can only assess the value of the gold and silver by smelting them, and in regard to people, we can gauge their “value” by observing what a person praises. A person’s choice of words, topics of conversation, and activities all reveal the state of their character. And, conversely, what we pay attention to, how we think and act, all have their effect on character.

Which brings us back to cell phones and social media. Anyone who is drawn to the notion of the holy, who is moved by the Torah’s insistent encouragement that we make holiness the north star of our lives, who understands that the world will not be redeemed except by our own acts of redemption, and who appreciates that the Jewish people will thrive only when individual Jews pursue their own thriving, will see the need to clear a period in their life that can be a receptacle for that holiness. Such is Shabbat.

Can social media be tamed? Will the court case cause changes of policy? Is a $6 penalty something the media giants will even notice? None of that is my primary concern. Rather, the conviction itself is cautionary. I encourage you to do your soul a favour and tune out, at least this one day a week, so that the vessel is prepared and ready to receive something totally different, something rare and precious, something paradoxically central yet seemingly alien to our world.

As you make Shabbat a vessel for the holy, so do you become a vessel for the holy.

For today’s blog post, I have invited a friend and student to share her experiences of a Shabbat – spent with me!! I think you’ll find what she has to say interesting, written from a perspective different from where I stand when I write these posts. Thank you, Diana!

By Diana Fisher

When I first ordered my copy of Everyday Holiness on Audible back on October 19, 2018, I knew very little about Judaism or how to live “Jewishly.” All I knew is that I was a Jew, and I knew this because my family and I had immigrated to the United States in the 1970’s as Jewish refugees from the former Soviet Union. And although I was raised without either the cup of a Jewish religious container or the wine of a Jewish spirituality (as described in last week’s post), I knew I was somehow part of a Jewish “us.” I knew I was part of an “us” because there was an antisemitic “them” in the world. So, instead of rooting my Jewish identity in all the beautiful values and traditions of my lineage, I learned to define my Jewishness primarily by who I was not. This left me very spiritually lonely, almost completely unaware of Torah, rituals, mitzvot, prayer, and all the rich teachings of Judaism. Luckily, not all was lost because I was somehow still exposed to the joys of pickled herring (we pickled everything), the delights of dancing to Yiddish music, and the core Jewish expectation that we should succeed and learn for our entire lives. This was a good thing and eventually led me here to this blog.

Although it was always hard for me to feel comfortable in synagogues or “at home” in formal Jewish settings, I often longed to be part of a Jewish community. And though I wasn’t even sure I believed in God, after years of “spiritual orphanhood” I began exploring Jewish writings. One day, I came across an online article that described the meaning of “tikkun middot” and a spiritual practice called Mussar. After reading about it a bit more extensively, I learned that “repair of the self” and calibrating and refining the measures of character is a process that should be undertaken before (or at the very least, alongside) our pursuit of “tikkun olam” or repair of the world. Even with my minimal knowledge of Judaism, this made sense because there were plenty of social justice advocates (including myself) who were angry, cynical, unkind, impatient, and self-absorbed. That’s when I started reading a few books by this author named Alan Morinis. Little did I know that Mussar would soon become my gateway into the Jewish tradition.

Almost eight years have passed since my first exposure to that article and Mussar, which has helped me stop thinking of myself as a spiritual orphan. I now spend quite a bit of time learning in va’adim, studying Torah and midrash, taking various courses at The Mussar Institute and other Jewish organizations, working closely with treasured chevruta partners, and learning how to more fully participate in rituals such as Counting the Omer, Elul, Passover, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. In so many ways, studying Mussar has slowly connected me to my rich Jewish heritage. In fact, just this last week I was preparing to have my very first formal Shabbat, ever! It would include Challah, wine, candles, kosher food, and blessings. And guess who was coming to dinner to help me do it? Well, the One Above certainly works in mysterious ways because Alan Morinis was promoting his new book in Los Angeles and he would soon be sitting at my table—no kidding!

Although I was nervous, I had just finished reading The Shabbat Effect and felt excited to put into practice what was suggested in the book. I was intrigued to see if, as Alan had suggested, observing Shabbat could really transform the rest of my week and slowly help shape my character in significant ways. But as the time for his visit approached, I panicked that I wasn’t prepared to do this. Did I have contraband foods in my house? Proper utensils? Candles that fit the candlesticks that were gifted to me by a dear chaver from Canada? Why didn’t I make some flash cards with the blessings?! Ugh. My Jewish imposter syndrome was acting up, but as time ticked closer to Alan’s arrival, I summoned the courage that I could do this. Besides, Alan wasn’t judgmental, knew I didn’t have a kosher kitchen, and said he would be bringing all the food. What could go wrong? No problemo!

Once Alan arrived, I suggested we should walk to the liquor store to buy kosher wine and then go to Target to get paper plates. Great plan, except Alan reminded me that we should stay mindful of sunset and work backwards to make sure that the potatoes and yams would have enough time to bake and dinner could be properly warmed up before the start of Shabbat. He also asked if I’d be willing to tape the little button in the fridge that controls the light so he could use the refrigerator that evening. Oh, wow, I hadn’t thought of that, but of course. No wonder chapter one was about awareness…now I was starting to catch on. I might be new to all this, I told Alan, but for sure we would get back on time to put everything together. As we walked back to my home, he asked me where the stairs are since I lived on the 4^th floor. “Oh, we have an elevator, don’t worry,” I said. “Ah, but I can’t use the elevator once Shabbat starts,” Alan calmly said. “Ohhhh, of course,” I uttered while secretly hoping that I had the right key that would open the stairwell. As we continued to discuss the various considerations of observing a mindful Shabbat practice, I received a panicked text message from my teenage daughter Sasha. It said: “Our fridge is dead! There’s no light coming on.” I had to laugh.

With an hour left before sunset, Alan pointed out that electric window coverings should also be lowered or raised to the desired place since those aren’t meant to be controlled on Shabbat. Why didn’t I anticipate that? He also needed to print out a few things that he needed before Shabbat, which included the walking directions to a local shul in the morning. What, no google maps on Shabbat? Yikes, I hadn’t thought of that either. There were so many little details to take notice of. I gulped, finally starting to understand why “awareness” is a perfect place to begin (and keep returning to) for those of us who live mostly on autopilot. I knew I was capable of being in “shining mind” as opposed to “dull mind,” but how often and for how long?

Just as I paused to consider this important question, I remembered that I should check on the potatoes that were baking in the oven. With Alan standing at the kitchen counter, I enthusiastically picked up my knife and jabbed a potato covered by aluminum foil. “Hmm,” I said, “I can’t tell if they’re done.” Alan simply smiled as I reached into the oven and grabbed another potato out of the oven. I was getting ready to jab the second potato when Alan looked at me and said, “The knife, Diana.” Oops, I had been using a non-kosher knife instead of a plastic one to poke the potato. After seeing the sheepish look on my face, Alan graciously said: “It’s quite okay as long as you don’t stab them all so I can have one too!” How embarrassing, I had just failed the potato test in front of Alan Morinis… but I was determined to keep things going as sunset was fast approaching. I had to move quickly. The butter! I forget to take out the butter, which Alan had asked for a few minutes ago. Without paying attention to what I was doing, I instinctively grabbed the tub of butter out of the refrigerator and came only a few inches away from inserting the same non-kosher knife for spreading before I heard Alan’s voice gently remind me: “Uhm, the knife again, Diana.” I’m sure I turned four shades of red at that moment. What was I thinking?? Or was I not doing much thinking at all….

Only later that night, after the candles stopped burning and the delicious babka was eaten, did I go back to Chapter 1, page 18 of The Shabbat Effect to read:

“Only when consciousness is brightly illuminated will we be in a position to be vigilant about our actions rather than governed by our habits or unconscious forces.”

Thank you for this teaching, Alan. How very true, and how much more work did I recognize was on my spiritual curriculum on my very first ritual observance of Shabbat. While it’s now back to basics for me, at least I remembered to cut our evening’s orange with a plastic knife and was able to reassure my daughter that our fridge was not dead but simply resting for Shabbat…and that we should slowly learn to do the same.

What’s on your Shabbat spiritual curriculum?

I’ve been speaking to audiences across the Jewish spectrum, and I admit that I do not give the same talks in Orthodox circles as I do in the liberal Jewish world. The talks I give to both those audiences are very related, and both the difference and the relationship are revealed in the symbolism of the cup and the wine that are the key symbols in the kiddush ritual we do to sanctify Shabbat.

In the liberal Jewish world, I am emphasizing the importance of having not just spirituality but a vessel to hold it, which is the religious dimension of Judaism. And in the more observant world, I am cautioning against having an empty cup – all structure, no content.

The spiritual and the religious are both integral to lifting the cup of wine to sanctify the seventh day and, to my mind, both are integral to living a spiritual life. I’ve been emphasizing everywhere I speak that there is a big difference between a spiritual experience and a spiritual life, and Judaism offers us a pathway that emphasizes the spiritual life. After all, the blessing to sanctify Shabbat is entirely about the wine; the poor cup, essential as it is, doesn’t even get a mention!

There is another point that I stress in all my talks and that is the notion of personal refinement, which in Yiddish is ehrlichkeit.

The liberal world has been so consumed with tikkun olam as to make that a synonym for Judaism. There is good in social action, and it is evident how much it is needed, but when one’s focus is entirely set on the outer world, it overlooks the parallel track of the inner work we are called to do.

I adapt the teaching of Rav Yerucham Levovitz here, who said that if you see a baker baking matza and you ask, “What is your work?” the baker should not say that “I am baking matza” but that “I am working on caution, patience, alacrity” or whatever inner traits that person sought to refine.

Similarly, a person engaged in tikkun olam activities who only sees the social need they are trying to meet is failing in their obligation to refine themselves. There, too, the answer should be “I am working on patience, compassion” or whatever inner traits that person knows to be on their personal spiritual curriculum.

This same message plays out in the Orthodox world in the form of a critique of frumkeit, a term literally meaning “piety” but used as a measure of a person’s adherence to the letter of Jewish law, and not just the minimum law, but increasingly an aspiration to add stringency upon stringency (chumros) to the legal requirements.

Of course, no one is advocating for breaches to halacha, but this is calling out a Judaism that is all action and no heart. There is a saying attributed to many sources that says, “Frum iz a Galach,” which means that being pious is for the priest. But Jews, “A Jew is not meant to be frum – a Jew is meant to be ehrlich” – refined.

Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe emphasized the same message. He pointed out that the word frumkeit is only one letter removed from krumkeit, a Yiddish word that means “warped,” “twisted,” or “crooked.”

You don’t hear the concept of ehrlichkeit / refinement being promoted in any corner of the Jewish world nearly to the extent you hear tikkun olam or frumkeit. I attribute that to the more general phenomenon that spirituality was pushed to the side everywhere in our Jewish world in the second half of the 20^thcentury, and so we who succeeded in finding our way to drink at the spiritual wells of our own tradition got there, for the most part, on a path of personal search and wandering. For us, the notion of being ehrlich is generally not intuitive. We must learn anew for our generation.

If you do a Google search of the words “ehrlich” and “ehrlichkeit” you will find, as I did, that the place they show up most commonly is in obituaries. Less than discussing refinement (which would be helpful to us), people get praised for having that quality (which is nice for them).

What might be helpful to us is to note that the modern Hebrew word for “refine” is צֹרַף – to be refined, to be purified, to be cleansed – shares its root with the word for “jeweler,” i.e., someone who refines metals. That word shows up in Isaiah 41:7 and in discussing it, Rashi gives two interpretations:

1. The tzoref is the one who beat gold to form a vessel.

2. It refers Abraham, who refined people to draw them close to the divine.

Our world is so coarse. The trend toward debasement in outlook, speech and action seems to accelerate and reach new depths every day. Against that background, the call to refine ourselves takes on the proportions of a major challenge, one that gives meaning to our lives and hope for our future, as individuals, communities and a species.

Does someone come to your mind as an exemplar of the quality of ehrlichkeit / refinement as I’ve been discussing it here? I’d love to read your description of such a person, and I am sure others would as well.

The first step is to recognize that the inner emptiness is calling to be filled by holiness, not by food or celebrities or internet “friends.”

The second step is to prepare a space in your life where holiness can come to rest. This is the essence of Shabbat. When the Torah says that God sanctified Shabbat, I understand that to mean that the seventh day is designated as a place in time where the divine dimension in life comes to the fore.

God created the seventh day, and “then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it.” We are called upon to repeat that consecration every week. In the Kiddush blessing that we make over wine, we recite the verses that tell of the creation of the seventh day and its sanctification and in so doing, we align ourselves with that original consecration.

It’s not like we are casting a spell. We are stating an intention to guard and keep the holiness of the day in our thought, speech and deed. Practical actions are the only way to create the vessel that might hold the holiness.

Most of the things that are traditionally prohibited on Shabbat are the types of activities that will spring leaks in the time-vessel for holiness. In our generation, there is no bigger culprit than the cell phone.

Even when what is coming in through your phone is not completely defiled and abhorrent (ok, that takes care of 50% of the content), it draws your attention to the coarse here-and-now world and when you are looking that way, you are not looking toward the subtle realm of the holy.

Holiness requires a vessel and that container needs to have strong boundaries or else the holiness will leak away, and cell phones are boundary busters.

I wrote about that in a previous blog post, and when I did, I received an email from someone who protested because she said she had recently saved the life of a neighbour who called her in medical distress and since she answered her phone on Shabbat, she was able to call 911 and the person survived.

On the surface, that sounds compelling. Jewish law certainly prioritizes saving a life above all else, and there is no question that Shabbat observance is (as the rabbis say) “pushed off” when a life is at stake.

There is even a notion of a chasid shoteh, a pious fool. That’s the term given to someone who gets their priorities so wrong that they fail to save a life because they are so busy being religiously observant. The example in the Talmud is of a man who sees a woman drowning in the river and he does not jump in to save her because that will mean making physical contact with a strange woman. A pious fool, the rabbis say!

(The Orthodox Union categorizes someone who does not vaccinate their children for “religious reasons” as another variant on the chasid shoteh.)

I challenged myself to think through how she could have acted on her laudable good intentions to serve (and maybe save) her neighbour, but do so without using her cell phone on Shabbat. My first thought was that if she planned to shut off her phone, she would have to coach her neighbour in advance that in case of an emergency, she should call 911 directly.

That thought made me realize that even without taking Shabbat into account, that would have been a good thing to do. In a life-threatening situation, seconds can make all the difference and calling her rather than directly to 911 wasted precious time. If her neighbour was able to call her, then she obviously had the ability to call 911 and it would have been most helpful to have coached her in advance to do that, Shabbat or no.

That’s how Shabbat works. It doesn’t just happen; it requires preparation. And its effect is to teach us the benefit of preparation.

Clearing the space for the holy requires that you take steps in advance to prepare. “On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, etc.” (Exodus 16:5). The verse is not talking only about preparing cooked dishes for enjoying on Shabbat, it is talking about the need to think through and to take steps to prepare in advance so nothing will breach the vessel for holiness we are able to create for ourselves on Shabbat. In this case, had she taken those preparatory steps, it would have served both her Shabbat and her neighbour’s life.

One of the major inner traits that a Shabbat practice requires – and, in turn, cultivates – is trust in God [bitachon]. There is a whole chapter on that trait in my book, The Shabbat Effect. Am I so important that the world needs me to be on-call 24/7 to solve everyone’s problems? Or is there healthy humility in taking preparatory steps to be responsible, and then turning away from the screen on the device, and toward the radiance that is only visible when we draw open the curtains that hide it in our regular lives.

If you do not (yet!) shut off your phone on Shabbat, for what reasons do you feel you need it?

This calls to mind the famous Talmudic debate when the School of Shammai and the School of Hillel argued for two and a half years over whether it would have been better had humanity been or not been created in the first place. Shammai argued it would have been better had people not been created, while Hillel argued it was better to have been created.

Ultimately, the sages voted and the conclusion went with Shammai – that it would have been preferable had humanity never been created at all.

The Talmud gives no reason why each side took the positions they did in the debate, why Shammai thought it better had we never been created or why Hillel defended humanity’s existence.

This record of this debate is found in tractate Eruvin on page 13b. I always find it interesting to look at the context in which the rabbis chose to insert a particular piece of teaching, and the story of the debate between Hillel and Shammai about human beings being created comes immediately after this:

Anyone who humbles himself, the Holy Blessed One exalts him, and anyone who exalts himself, the Holy Blessed One humbles him. Anyone who seeks greatness, greatness flees from him, and anyone who flees from greatness, greatness seeks him out. And anyone who forces the moment [expending great effort to achieve a goal], the moment forces him [to fail]. And anyone who yields to the moment, the moment stands by him [and he succeeds].

What’s under discussion here is the human tendency to self-glorify. Even the idea of “forcing the moment” is a display of arrogance. Despite the fact that the moment is not right, the person pursues their will. The universe be damned; I want it now!

If this depiction were to be acted out, it would fit perfectly to the paradigm of the struggle between Moses and the Pharaoh. The king of Egypt fashioned himself a god-king, exalted as the earthly incarnation of the sky god Horus and serving as the absolute political ruler as well as the high priest of the religion. Moshe, on the other hand is the paragon of humility. The Torah names him as “the most humble person on the face of the earth,” and his conduct backs that up. When God offers to destroy the children of Israel and start a new nation from Moses, Moses turns down the offer and says that if that were to happen, he would want to be completely wiped out of the Torah – or “Your book,” as he says.

In fact, this contest between egotistical and humble models of leadership is explicit in the Torah. Just before the plague of locusts is initiated (Exodus 10:3), Moses says to Pharaoh, “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?”

Interesting to see the same paradigm showing up in the struggle between Haman and Mordechai that is the political axis of the Purim story. Haman is all about self-interest and power, while Mordechai is the servant of his people.

This archetypal paradigm helps us understand the difference between the view of Shammai and that of Hillel. Almost 2,000 years ago, Shammai assessed the world he was seeing and drew the conclusion that humanity, on balance, was arrogant and self-serving by nature and would always be so, while Hillel saw the good side of humanity as dominant.

Although Hillel and Shammai debated for two and a half years, and even though they resolved the question in a vote for the negative view, they did not call for the destruction of this wayward species. Instead, they showed us how we who bear the burden of ego should conduct ourselves. They said:

Now that the human has been created, one should examine the actions [they have already done]. And some say: One should scrutinize [future] actions.

Yes, said the Sages, arrogant, egotistical and self-interested by nature, but not without the possibility of redemption. All we have to do is examine and learn from the things we have done, and think hard and critically before we take the next step.

Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, in his 18^th century classic of the Mussar tradition, Mesillat Yesharim / Path of the Just (3:7) cites this Talmudic dictum and comments: “See how these two terms are two very good and beneficial instructions.”

He goes on: “This is analogous to feeling out a garment to ascertain whether it is good and strong or weak and frayed. So too, one should feel out their deeds to ascertain their nature through an absolutely thorough examination until they are left pure and clean.”

What do we learn? We can’t expect that our leaders will stop erecting monuments to themselves and trumpeting their own egos. So it is; so it has always been.

But what we can and should look for is the sense of conscience and introspection that would show that they are committed to the good of the populace, that they have the capacity to learn from their mistakes, and that they are thinking carefully and with consideration of public needs in plotting their next steps.

The leader who makes a mistake or is caught out in misbehaviour who then doubles down, blames others and takes no responsibility is the Pharaoh in thin disguise. The humble leader is a much rarer species.

And, of course, all the same questions apply to us. How do we act as leaders. How perfected is our own conscience and introspection? Are we ever guilty of “forcing the moment”? How often do we “feel out” our deeds so that we are more purified and cleaner in our actions?

I wonder how you would vote in the debate today…

Position 1: Human beings are by nature so selfish, egotistical and self-interested that it would have been better for all of creation had we never come into existence.

Position 2: Our ability to be humble, to scrutinize our actions past and present, and to cause ourselves to change for the better redeems our negative aspects.

I invite you to share more about your position by submitting a comment to this post.

Vote now!! And may all innocent people be safe.

The address emphasized that, in his view, what we need to do is stop letting our community be shaped and focused by the antisemites. Instead of persisting with its stance of self-defense, the community should shift priorities to focus on building, rather than just protecting, Jewish life, and instead should lean into Jewish values, culture, and community.

I agree with a lot of his critique of a Jewish community defined by those who hate us. But he never really gets to suggesting what it would take to create a Jewish community that thrives and flourishes. He calls for more funding for Jewish day schools but says nothing about any sort of investment in the adults of our community.

What I see is that his advocacy is based within the same paradigm that generated the priorities of the Jewish community that he argues against. As a result, his “solutions,” such as they are, are just more of the same of what the Jewish community has prioritized since the end of the Second World War, whereas thriving will only emerge if there is a paradigm shift.

If you have been listening to me or reading my writings you know that I hit hard on pointing out that the Jewish community in the second half of the 20^th century turned away for our own spiritual traditions in favour of assimilation, affluence, higher education, political engagement, tikkun olam, building palatial synagogues and the like.

The inner life of the individual got no attention and, in Bret Stephen’s perspective, shaped as it is by that very outlook I just catalogued, it still doesn’t. And yet can there be real flourishing without it being centered in the inner life of the individual? Can a community thrive without its members thriving? It’s significant that words like “soul,” “God,” “synagogue,” “prayer” and “holiness” do not get a single mention in his address. Neither does the word “Torah.”

It is valid to question whether money has been wasted trying to fight antisemitism in a way that maybe has no real effect. And while he calls for a refocusing, as a journalist and someone who is operating within the same secular paradigm as what he is critiquing, he has no creative ideas to offer in its place as a roadmap toward Jewish thriving.

In my view, the Jewish community will thrive when it returns to building the spiritual core that has been the central element of Jewish continuity for centuries and millennia, which has largely been abandoned across the spectrum of denominations. From the extreme dilution of Judaism at the far liberal anything-goes end of the spectrum, to the other end where we find an overemphasis on stringencies and frumkeit (meticulous observance of Jewish laws) – there is no significant focus on the inner life.

Historically, the core of the core of that spiritual life, the centre of centres, the holy of holies, has been practicing Shabbat (which also, by the way, does not get a mention in Stephens’ talk.) As the Yiddish writer Ahad Ha’Am astutely observed, “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

So, it turns out – surprise to me! – my new book has something to say on this issue. I wrote it to share my experience that observing a traditional Shabbat with its structures and boundaries has the potential to bring about a real inner transformation for the individual. But as I have thought about it more in the context of Stephen’s talk, I realize that the impact will not stop at the individual.

When one of us invests in creating a spiritual Shabbat, that shift will have a great impact on that person’s life. It will also have a small impact on the community because any change in a constituent element affects the whole. Are you familiar with what is called the Butterfly Effect – and does that idea apply here?

When two people make the changes that transform their personal lives, the impact on the community doubles.

When many of us consciously create a vessel in our week that is meant to hold holiness, rest, peace, joy, trust, satisfaction and the other qualities a Shabbat practice fosters – in other words, when we make it a practice to nourish our individual souls – then the combined force of the personal changes each individual brings about will elevate the spirit of the entire community. That is how we can bring about the thriving that is the ideal condition of a flourishing Jewish community.

** I could not find a full transcript of his talk online but Commentary magazine published an article adapted from his “State of World Jewry Address,” delivered on February 1, 2026, at the 92nd Street Y: https://www.commentary.org/articles/bret-stephens/jews-have-honor-of-being-hated/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

At that precise moment on Friday evening, my aspiration for the holy compels me to leave behind all the projects, responsibilities, cares and woes that have occupied me the previous six days of the week, and I step into a consecrated space.

Stepping over the line from the six days of doing to the seventh day of rest is often not an easy thing to do. We all tend to be deeply engaged and committed to the things that are on our plate, and we are firmly bound to those activities.

Maybe you are attached to what you have been working on because you are eager to see the fruits of that project. That’s desire.

Maybe the emotional bonds are from anxiety or even fear that something will go wrong with the thing you have been caring for. That’s worry.

Maybe your identity is so tied up in our worldly activities that it is scary to think of living without that familiar sense of self. That’s ego.

Maybe you are so used to being engaged with your worldly activities that a day without them just doesn’t appeal. That’s habit.

Maybe you are just dying to find out who won, or how it ended, or what someone said or did. That’s the thoroughly modern attachment of FOMO – fear of missing out.

When I was speaking to a group in Florida last month about FOMO and how things like that keep people glued to their phones when they would do themselves a big favour if they put them down for one day, a woman asked, “What about JOMO?”

I didn’t know what that was, so I asked her, and she replied, “The JOY of missing out.” She had a point. There is a kind of joy in detaching from the stuff that ordinarily fills our moments and our minds. We tend to get so wrapped up in what we do that we are almost enslaved to it. It may not be easy to say, “Let it go, come what may,” but if we empower ourselves to do just that, it can come to us as a liberation.

I am grateful to have tools that help me loosen the grip and set my burdens down on Friday evening, to free me up to welcome something different and more soulful into my space.

One tool that helps me is the ritual structures of Shabbat. Concerning the fact that Shabbat begins precisely 18 minutes before sunset, I wrote:

This concern for exact timing reflects a broader principle that shows up throughout Shabbat observance, which is that a structure with boundaries is extremely helpful, and, for most of us, essential, if we hope to achieve a spiritual day of rest. A web of precise lines we are meant to heed and not cross establishes the boundaries that distinguish and separate the holy from the mundane and thus serve to establish and protect the sanctity of the seventh day.

In Jerusalem, and even in Far Rockaway, NY, where I studied with my Mussar teachers, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Perr, and elsewhere as well, at the exact moment when Shabbat arrives, a loud siren sounds throughout the community.

Not a moment before, not a moment after. This is the moment.

Were it not for this precision, I know that the momentum I develop over the six days when I am doing the things I am attached to and identify with would keep me going well into Friday evening and likely beyond. There is always more to be done and a clear and loud announcement that I have come to a precise border helps me set down my incomplete burdens so that, unencumbered, I can cross over.

Truth is, the fact that there is a precise boundary, even one publicized as prominently as the start time of Shabbat, is no guarantee that we will be able to defy our attachments and put aside our labours even if that is our commitment. That marker is external to us, and while it is very helpful as we grapple with the internal dynamics that would have us checking the phone and continuing our efforts endlessly, it does not deal with those dynamics directly.

For that, we need Mussar. The Mussar teachers through the centuries have recognized that trust [bitachon] is one inner quality that is on everyone’s spiritual curriculum. I’ve joked that you don’t see any self-help guru offering workshops on how to worry. That’s because we are all already really good at worrying. But we are challenged to trust.

We tend to live as if we are fully in charge of our lives and all that happens within them, and we cling to control as if our life depended on it. But it is not true. What is true is that we are fully in control of very little that happens in our life.

Since Shabbat deprives us of the possibility of taking action to shape our world and its components, we are forced to live in a world in which it is explicit that we are not in charge. That quality of bitachon is the lever that pries open our hand so the weekday burdens can be set aside on Shabbat.

In the chapter on trust in The Shabbat Effect, I mention the story of the manna that fell from heaven to feed the Israelites in the desert. The Mussar teachers have seen this as the archetypal test of trust “because that God-given food could only be collected daily. If kept overnight, it rotted. Every day, the people had to put their trust in God that they would be fed. But on Friday, they needed to trust even more, because they were promised that they would be given an additional portion in order to be freed from the labor of collecting on the seventh day itself.”

Then I wrote that our test is even greater:

“If they went out to gather on Shabbat, they found that there was nothing to be had. We, on the other hand, could easily keep working, keep sending emails, go to the bank, go shopping to catch that item before it sold out, or before the sale ends, because in the society in which we live, Saturday is just another day.”

And the conclusion: “It takes a deliberately and purposefully chosen act of trust for us to be able to lay it all down.”

If you have read the chapter on the middah of bitachon in the book, I explore four explanations of what it means to trust God. I’d love to hear which of them lights up most for you, and maybe even why you think it does.

My concern is with the political statements in your recent blog post. I believe you are drawing conclusions based on sources that do not present a full or accurate picture of what is happening in the United States. The media landscape today is deeply polarized, and much of what is presented as fact is often incomplete, misleading, or simply untrue.

The comments in question from my last blog post went like this:

I am as concerned as anyone about the egotistical autocracy that has taken shape in Washington. And as a Canadian, the repeated threats to our sovereignty need to be taken as real because once raw power becomes the primary tool of diplomacy, the unthinkable becomes possible. ICE, the murder of American citizens followed by regime apologetics, rolling back all social justice and environmental initiatives.

As soon as I read his objections to my statements, even though they were couched in respectful terms, I felt my heart clench, as if through the politeness what I was hearing was, “You don’t know what you are talking about. I do.”

Despite feeling provoked, a little corner of my mind preserved just enough equanimity to tell me not to be reactive. Clearly, he had made an effort to be respectful, and he deserved the same. I took a breath and began a reply by thanking him for getting in touch, and then I explained why I disagreed with his positions.

He opened respectfully, I followed respectfully, and an email exchange followed that I am sharing with the permission of this other person. At one point I summarized it like this:

My views are closer to those of Bruce Springsteen and yours seem to me to align with the Trump administration.

My blog post had ventured into the realm of politics not with the agenda of advancing my own views on current issues but to explore how I see the spiritual intersecting with the everyday, and more specifically, how I justify investing in a Shabbat practice in the midst of a world that seems to need me much more as a social organizer or political activist than a seeker of the holy.

And so, when he wrote to me:

We are not going to see eye to eye on these issues. What I would respectfully suggest is that you avoid the subjects in your blog posts. And I know for you it is not going to be easy, but your news sources are simply biased. They are also unreliable. And I say that with 100% confidence,

I responded with:

My understanding of Mussar — and, in fact, of Judaism as a whole — is that there is no separation between the natural / social world and the spiritual world. They are one and the same. And if I am a spiritual seeker, then I must do my seeking in the midst of the regular world. Jews don’t have monks and monasteries. We live in society and pursue holiness within the world, not by stepping outside it.

And since he had 100% confidence that I was being misled by the media, I asked him a question that is of vital concern to me as a Canadian, regarding President Trump’s ongoing insult to the Canadian people and our leaders by consistently referring to Prime Minister Carney as “Governor” and laying claim to our country as the 51st state. I asked him: “Would you say that I am misled on that as well?”

His response was important to keeping our conversation going. He answered:

You are definitely correct that Trump disrespects Canada and again, his arrogance and attitude don’t do him any favors, or the country in general.

That was amazing to me. He held views opposite my own, but he was willing and able to concede that this was not a case of “I’m all right and you are all wrong.” He had not turned off his critical faculties for the sake of partisanship, as I believe so many people have.

From what I read and hear, the sorts of polarized differences of opinion we were expressing usually devolve into mutual verbal assaults, but what I want to share with you is the hopeful message that this person and I were able to disagree at length on almost every point AND we were able to do it in a respectful way. As I said to him:

We are already accomplishing something that is almost miraculous in this world of ours, which is that we are disagreeing respectfully. That is not an achievement to be minimized. I wish more people could do that.

He was listening and was able to acknowledge some things, just as I was striving to listen and to acknowledge the truth, wherever it lay. As I said to him,

I am grateful to you because I take your comments as tough questions I need to ask myself. I can’t just dismiss you because I don’t agree with you. For my own sake, I need to formulate my thoughts so I am comfortable with the foundation on which they stand.

I signed off by saying:

“I am glad that you took the time and trouble to explain your perspectives. I value that. I now have a clearer understanding of where we agree and where we differ and that is valuable to me. It is such an unfortunate failing of contemporary “communications” that people are not listening to one another but rather trying to hammer other people with their ideas. Too often people are listening only to other people who echo their own views. What a loss. Pirkei Avot asks, “Who is wise?” And the answer is, “One who learns from every person.” I have a clear feeling that because we are communicating on a foundation of respect and with an intention to listen and learn, we would be able to talk about these ideas. And, who knows, maybe you would convince me of something or I might convince you! A Mussar student has to be open to learning and change.”

And he had the last word, adding: “This email exchange with you made me put into practice Mussar and I am thankful for that. So thank you.”

I think there is hope. Do you agree?

I am as concerned as anyone about the egotistical autocracy that has taken shape in Washington. And as a Canadian, the repeated threats to our sovereignty need to be taken as real because once raw power becomes the primary tool of diplomacy, the unthinkable becomes possible. ICE, the murder of American citizens followed by regime apologetics, rolling back all social justice and environmental initiatives.

I read recently that the granting organizations in Washington have been so diligent in weeding out projects that contain any mention of “diversity” that some research proposals on insects that contain that word have been targeted.

In my younger years, I worked in the World Health Organization campaign to eradicate smallpox. I watched children die and villages be decimated by a virus that had plagued humanity for millennia. And it was within my two years with that program that smallpox was eradicated in India and soon after, in the rest of the world. And that incredible achievement was done by means of vaccination. So, you can imagine how I feel about Robert Kennedy laying waste to the vaccination infrastructure at CDC. There is no doubt that infectious diseases we thought had been consigned to the past will return and wreak devastation that will dwarf the worst we saw from Covid.

And I have not yet mentioned Israel, Gaza, Palestinians, Ukraine, Uyghurs, Rohingas, the Congo, Sudan, Greenland, ….

I seriously ask myself, how can I keep writing and speaking about Shabbat when the world is teetering on the edge of global catastrophe?

And my learning and experience have taught me that it is precisely under circumstances like this that I need Shabbat. I feel deeply and hold my responsibility to make my contribution to alleviating those issues – six days a week. And I give one day over to bringing a different mission into focus in my life, which is the Torah’s directive to pursue holiness.

In fact, there is no contradiction between being involved in community and social actions and the pursuit of holiness. There is nowhere in life that we should consider devoid of the potential to elevate in the direction of holiness.

Rav Yerucham Levovitz identifies that “in everything you need, from financial matters to household management and body maintenance,” all are opportunities to refine and purify our inner beings, as is our mission.

That’s true, but what of Shabbat, when we withdraw from worldly life?

My friend, Rabbi Micha Berger, wrote a wonderful book called Widen Your Tent that unpacks and comments on the introduction written by Rabbi Shimon Shkop to his own book, Shaarei Yosher. Rabbi Shkop wrote (Micha translated and I tweaked):

All of our work and effort should constantly be sanctified to doing good for the community. We should not use any act, movement, or get benefit or enjoyment that does not have in it some element of helping another. And as understood, all holiness is being set apart for an honorable purpose – which is that a person straightens their path and strives constantly to make their lifestyle dedicated to the community. Then, anything one does even for oneself, for the health of body and soul, one also associates to the mitzvah of being holy, for through this one can also do good for the masses. Through the good one does for oneself, one can do good for the many who rely on him.

Rabbi Shkop is grappling with the fact that the Torah tells us to be holy because the Lord our God is holy, and he raises the question of how we can possibly aspire to such an aspiration, as if our puny virtue could be comparable in any way to God’s attribute. It’s by centering holiness on the intention to benefit others that we can become, in our own small way, comparable to God. As he wrote:

Just as … all God’s actions are sanctified to the good of others, so too is it God’s Will that our actions be constantly sanctified to the good of the community, and not personal benefit.

Rabbi Shkop forges a direct link between observing Shabbat and bearing the responsibility to be active in relieving suffering. I want to highlight what I quoted from him above: “anything one does even for oneself, for the health of body and soul, one also associates to the mitzvah of being holy, for through this one can also do good for the masses. Through the good one does for oneself, one can do good for the many who rely on him.”

The core idea of Shabbat is consecrated time. You might have thought – as so many people say – that a really deep rest on Shabbat restores your energy so you will be better able to engage with worldly affairs, but Rabbi Shkop is pointing in a very different direction.

If Shabbat is just a day to take it easy and rest up, or a time to get some peace by shutting off your phone, or to engage in any other kind of restorative activity, for your own benefit, nothing about those Shabbat-like activities is consecrated. What makes Shabbat holy for you is that you take your rest and enjoy your pleasures with the conscious intent to benefit others through these actions. Mere rest and restoration may feel good, and it may give you renewed energy, but it is not on the path to being holy and to making this world a holier place.

When we strip away the worldly activities that consume us 6 days of the week, we free ourselves to sharpen our awareness and renew our commitment to our purpose in this world: to be holy people who dedicate ourselves to the welfare of our community – to be holy people BECAUSE we dedicate ourselves to the welfare of the community.

So now let me ask, from your perspective: In what way(s) do you think the community needs you to observe Shabbat?

Last week I shared one question I got at a talk – if I had to give one message to teens today, what would it be? This week I got one that seemed to originate from a farther reach of the universe.

All my talks focus in one way or another on Shabbat, because Shabbat is the ostensible focus on my new book, The Shabbat Effect. I say “ostensible” because it only focuses on Shabbat at one level. At another level, what it is about is the intersection of religion and spirituality in Jewish thought and practice.

Shabbat is an excellent frame in which to explore that crucial subject because, on one hand, Shabbat is such an important commandment, taking a place in the all-time top ten, The Ten Commandments. But on the other hand, the intent of Shabbat is spiritual: rest, peace, pleasure, joy, connection, etc. What’s the relationship between the structure of the religious obligation and the spiritual goals it is meant to accomplish? That, too, is what the book is about.

In an earlier post I shared a metaphor that I wrote into the book, likening the structure to the cup we use to make kiddush and the wine to the spiritual contents that we bless to welcome Shabbat. Wine without a cup dribbles away; a cup without wine is nothing but an empty vessel.

Sometime after I published the book along with that metaphor, I was thinking about the fact that kiddush is actually not the first ritual we do to initiate Shabbat. That honour goes to lighting candles. And then it struck me that the symbolism of cup and wine actually extends to the candles as well, in the form of wax and flame.

If you have a candle and a flame but you do not bring them together, you can’t say the blessing, which explicitly calls out “l’hadlik ner” – kindling the candle.

In one hand what you have is a lump of wax and a piece of inert string. In the other, you have a match that is dancing with a volatile flame that will very soon expire. Only when we bring the solid matter to conjoin with the unstable, igniting power of the flame – form and spirit – are we entitled to say the blessing.

So we see the same identical symbolism is present in the ritual of lighting candles as we find in the ritual of sanctifying the wine. The symbolism reveals a deep and important paradigm of Jewish thought and practice. It calls on us to maintain a strong and solid structure, but we must not lose sight of the fact that what is most important and what is, in fact, the goal, is spiritual.

As I explained this paradigm, which I have come to appreciate in my own life as I have explored and experimented at the interface of the religious and the spiritual, someone sincerely asked a question:

“If I accept everything you are saying about the structure and the spirit and the way the two interact in the context of Shabbat, why do I need to create that space from Friday evening to Saturday evening? If it suited me, I could set up a very effective structure and pursue spiritual goals on Tuesday or Wednesday just as well as Friday-Saturday? What’s wrong with that?”

The audience laughed. The question seemed so absurd. But, in fact, it was a good question because it revealed another deep paradigm of Jewish spiritual practice: we don’t do it alone. We are not a people that developed a culture of monks and monasteries and ascetics in caves in the desert.

No sooner did I hear her question than I thought, and then replied, “What you would lose by doing all the activities of Shabbat on another day of the week is the connection to all the Jews, all the communities, all the history that is tied up in that 25 hour period that begins just before sundown on Friday and ends just after sundown on Saturday. You would be alone, and weaker for it.”

I pointed out that this, too, is a paradigm of Jewish practice that appears within the frame that encircles Shabbat. “Do not separate from the community” is the advice given to us by Hillel the Elder in Pirkei Avot (2:5), that wise guide to first principles for living.

“And this isn’t true only on the human plane. It was God who sanctified the seventh day and called on us to join in its consecration. You may get a good rest on Tuesday or Wednesday, but no way will it be Shabbat Kodesh—holy Shabbat.”

How much I appreciate someone who is willing to ask what others might think an absurd question, even if it makes everyone laugh. That off-the-wall question revealed a significant fact about Jewish practice that I had not mentioned – the role of the community in supporting individual practice. I am so grateful for that good question and the willing heart of the questioner.

I invite you to send me any of your Shabbat questions as a comment on this post. You’re probably not alone with your questions, so let’s share them together.

I admitted that as soon as I heard his question, about one hundred ideas flooded my mind. I made that admission to give me a few moments to sort through my thoughts, and the answer I settled on was: “Be idealistic. Don’t give way to cynicism.”

I selected that message from among the dozens that competed for attention in my mind because, in the talk that had just ended, I had been speaking about kedusha (holiness). The book is about Shabbat (of course!) and when Shabbat was created, the Torah tells us (Genesis 2:2-3): “On the seventh day God had finished the work God had been doing; on the seventh day God rested from all God’s work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.”

We see that Shabbat was holy from the get-go. So when we are told “Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8) and then later, “Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy” (Deuteronomy 5:12), we have to wonder if Shabbat is in danger of losing its holiness if we don’t keep observing it and thereby assuring it remains in its consecrated state.

But what really concerned me was not whether Shabbat would revert to being just another day, but that WE would lose our opportunity to pursue holiness if we don’t keep observing and preserving it in its consecrated state.

I’m reminded of the words of the late 19^th-early 20^th century Hebrew journalist and essayist known as Ahad Ha’am, who said:

“More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

So, when the question came about a message for teens, where my mind came to focus was on the question of what might prevent a teen from embracing the pursuit of holiness in their own life?

I know. Holiness seems likely to be the last thing on the mind of a teen, but what can I do? When God delivers that keynote message “Kedoshim tihiyu” – You shall be holy, that’s actually not how the verse in Leviticus begins. God tells Moshe: “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: ‘You shall be holy.’”

Rashi tells us that this particular commandment needed to be heard by “the entire assembly of Israel because most of the fundamental teachings of the Torah are dependent on it.”

And Rabbi Levi (Vayikra Rabbah) says that everyone needed to hear the fundamental laws, not just the men, but also the women and children.

So, there you have it: teenagers are supposed to hear the message to be holy just like the adults.

And then I thought how difficult it can be for teens to hear that message because their psychic space is so cluttered with negative and depressing imagery. The words and emotions and actions that come out of real life political and social events these days can be just as corrosive mentally and spiritually as the violence, negative stereotypes, mis-information and fear-mongering that shows up on television and in films.

Adults must fight hard not to be dragged down by the dispiriting and demoralizing role models, images and messages coming our way. What resources do teens have to avoid that fate?

When I answered that question at the end of my talk, one of the thoughts that did not win out was to talk to teens about holiness. That’s such a lofty and ephemeral subject that most adults don’t know where to connect it to their lives, and that would be even more true of teens.

But a conversation about holiness becomes conceivable if a context has been developed that is characterized by idealism and an absence of cynicism. Fostering idealism and non-cynicism pushes back against the dominant negative influences teens are subjected to.

If we can nurture idealism and belief in life in teens – first, of course, starting with ourselves – we will have built the foundation that will make it possible to go deeper, to holiness.

I am prone to introduce some teaching by saying that when I teach Mussar, I am talking to myself and you are welcome to listen in. Here we go again.

At this moment, I am stuck in a situation that I have no power to resolve because it is not in my hands to do so. From a Mussar perspective, this is the classic definition of a situation that calls for savlanut [patience] and since this process is right in the forefront for me right now, I am sharing this experience

And I also have this topic in mind because since my book, “The Shabbat Effect,” was published in November, I’ve had Shabbat on my mind in every context and it turns out that Shabbat is a perfect time to practice patience. In fact, patience is an essential aspect of this day.

When we park our concerns and our activities at its threshold of the Sabbath on Friday evening, we are almost certain to find that the emotional concerns and anxieties we are so caught up with don’t cease just because we have stopped dealing with them in any practical way. It’s easier to close the file or shut off the computer than it is to stop thinking about something that is worrying or even threatening us. But how does that call for patience?

Our worries and concerns are strong feelings that make us very uncomfortable, and these sharp and often painful inner experiences prompt us to seek relief. How? By taking action immediately. But if we are honouring Shabbat, then we don’t have the means at our disposal to take those sorts of actions on that holy day, and so we find ourselves in a situation that is very parallel to being stuck in a car that is stopped at a railway crossing while an endless train slowly creeps past.

What to do? Stick your head out the window and yell at the train? Honk the horn? Yell at the person in the passenger seat that we should have gone the other way?

None of that is productive. Situations that force us to wait because the agenda is not in our control are calling on us to focus inward on the task of creating an inner vessel that can hold those feelings without having them push us into useless or even foolish action. In Hebrew, that sort of vessel is called a kli kibul, a receptacle. Forming that inner vessel is the practice of patience.

In Hebrew, the word for patience is savlanut. Its root, the three letters samech-lamed nun, refers to “suffering.” But the same root gives rise to the word sabal — a porter who carries heavy loads. We learn from bringing together these two meanings that patience is the act of building or strengthening an inner vessel that can carry a heavy emotional burden without a need to cast them off or act them out.

Like all the activities we take on in a Shabbat practice, building an inner vessel for patience serves the moment and much beyond. A situation that calls on us to practice patience strengthens that middah, and we find that we have earned a dividend of patience that pays off in many other areas of our lives as well.

One says: It would have been preferable had humans not been created than to have been created. And the other says: It is preferable for humans to have been created than not created.

Ultimately, they took a vote and concluded: It would have been preferable had humans not been created than to have been created.

The sages concluded that we make such a mess of everything that the best thing for the world would have been if we human beings had never been created in the first place.

But that’s not how the story went, and we are here now, and the sages recognized that. That section of the Talmud continues:

Now that the human has been created, one should yifashpesh his actions. And some say: One should yimashmesh his actions.

Rashi explains: yifashpesh – “a person should examine the actions he has already done and examine the transgressions he has committed.”

He contrasts that to yimashmesh, which he defines through examples as considering your actions before you take them.

In either case, what the sages are saying is that now that human beings like you and me are here on earth, we should examine the deeds we have done as well as the ones we are considering doing.

The implication is that we have something to learn from examining our own experience. This idea became a cornerstone of the teaching of Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, a leading Mussar teacher who died only in 2005 and was a bridge back to the pre-war Mussar yeshivas of eastern Europe.

Rav Wolbe called this introspective process hitlamdut, which means “teaching yourself.” He based this teaching on the famous saying in Pirkei Avot (4:1) in which Ben Zoma asks, “Who is wise?” And then he answers that a wise person is “One who learns from every person.”

As I have written about in a few earlier posts, we learn important lessons about life by paying close attention to our own experiences and also the experiences of every person we have access to. Rav Wolbe encouraged hitlamdut as a relentless effort to learn from your own experience as well as those you see in others. He says, quite remarkably:

On this foundation of hitlamdut, …in all one’s dealings, one will seek only to learn from the experience, and this is literally until one’s last day. When one reaches the day of death, you won’t be dying—you will be learning how to die.

I’d like to zero in on a classic lesson that is derived from the Talmud. We find that in the Torah, the section about the nazir [a person who vows to abstain from wine, hair cutting, and contact with the dead for a period of time] immediately follows the section about the sotah [the suspected adulteress]. The commentaries (starting with the Talmud, Sotah 2a) feel there is meaning in the fact that these two sections are juxtaposed, though the reasons vary.

At the most basic, the association of these two sections is meant to teach that when a person sees another person in a debased and humiliating situation, they should abstain from wine. It is understood that wine loosens inhibitions, and the rabbis see a lack of inhibition as the root cause of the terrible situation the other person finds themself.

You might have thought that hearing about or seeing the humiliation of another person would be enough to teach a lesson to the observer, but we learn here that that is not the case. An all-too-common response to another person’s fall is to be content to stand in judgment of that other person, and maybe even to join the mob and pile on in reviling them. The nazir’s abstention from wine is an action that the person does that is focused on themself, not the other person, and it is meant to drive into their own heart the lesson that they need to learn which is valuable for their own spiritual ascent.

The real lesson here is not just about the sotah nor the nazir. It has to do with encountering events in our lives that ought to impact us in a deep and transformative way because they have something to teach us. If we treat those events as just information or if we just indulge a reaction, then we are taking no steps to draw into ourselves the spiritual impact that is our potential. Resolving to do an action that sharpens the penetration of the lesson into our deep inner recesses is how we activate the lesson and make it transformative for ourselves.

I have no prescription as to what kind of action one can take to drive home a lesson from experiences, your own or those of others. There are too many variables to devise a generic practice. Even the abstention from wine isn’t universal because some people don’t drink wine in the first place! It’s up to you to hear the lesson and then create for yourself a concrete action you can do that will speak to your own heart, and instill the lesson there, at the depths of who you are.

Is there a concrete action that you’ve taken in the past that helped you integrate an important lesson?

I’m referring to recent difficult events in The Mussar Institute. We don’t need to dwell on the details to learn the lessons. In this post, I’ll explore one lesson that came into high relief for me, and in the next post, another.

The Mussar masters of the past emphasized that it is part of the blueprint of life that we get tested. They referred to these tests as nisyonos [nisyonot] and the paradigmatic example is Abraham, who confronted and passed ten tests in his life.

All of us face tests throughout our lives that are uniquely configured to our unique personal spiritual curriculum. What might be a test for me will be just commonplace behaviour for you. What makes the test a trial is not how difficult it is but it strikes at an inner quality where that person has unrealized potential to grow.

Looking at Abraham, he is well-known as the patriarch who exemplified chesed [lovingkindness]. It follows, then, that the tests he faced were focused at the other end of the middah spectrum, which is in regard to gevurah [strength]. Going out to do battle with kings, sending away Hagar and Ishmael, and ultimately being willing to sacrifice his beloved son all demanded enormous strength from a person whose inherent nature was soft-hearted and generous.

For the tests to be real, there needs to be actual potential to fail. You pass the test when you make a decision or take an action that pulls your behaviour closer to the ideal. If you abandon the ideal and indulge a desire or act egotistically or do harm to others for no just reason, you have failed the test.

This is consistent with the Ramban (Genesis 22:1), who says that the purpose of test is to reveal a person’s dormant abilities. How often people say, “I didn’t think I could do it.” But they did, and in that way the test gave them an opportunity to grow.

When a person is confronted by a situation that is open to a variety of responses and that person stays true to the ideal and does not give in to the temptation to “get away with it” and does not listen to the inner voice that is telling them, “Everybody does it” or “What’s the big deal? or whatever inducement or rationalization that individual might be prone to, then the test has been passed. Now you know what you are capable of doing and the same situation encountered the next time will be not nearly the test it was the first time, until it is just second nature for you.

And the opposite is true as well. The Talmud (Kiddushin 40a) tells us that when a person transgresses and then goes and repeats that transgression a second time, it becomes as if that negative action were actually permitted. And I heard somewhere that after doing it a third time, the person comes to consider it praiseworthy!

We see people – including some in high office – who brag shamelessly about their immoral behaviour. Their moral descent has become praiseworthy in their own eyes.

This is the path of ascent in this life. Each test is a rung of the ladder; pass and ascend, fail and descend.

Understanding the role of nisyonot in life does not just give us a tool to analyze other people’s behaviour but, more importantly, our own. It is easy to point a finger at someone else who failed a test, and, in parallel, to minimize the strength and other resources someone else had to muster to pass one, but what about you? What tests have come your way recently?

Is there a certain phone number that calls to you to be dialed even though you know that no good will come of it.

Does a certain retailer or product call you to indulge in something you do not need, or that might be harmful to you, or your family, or this planet?

Is there someone whose advice almost certainly leads to strife at home?

And then there are smartphones. Since the publication of The Shabbat Effect, I have been in conversation with people about turning off their phones one day a week and I have a clear idea what an enormous test this is for some people.

Do you have a clear vision that every test is nothing other than a rung on the ladder of your spiritual life? Grasping that notion deeply and with conviction is an essential foundation for meeting the tests and trials you inevitably fact in your life. And emerging more whole and more holy.

The thoughts expressed here are mine alone and do not represent the views any organization I may be affiliated with.