The same distinction applies to Judaism. In the recent past, and continuing into the present, there are many ways in which Jewish thought and practice over-emphasizes the intellect at the expense of other dimensions of human life. No doubt the intellect is great and hugely influential, but when it is given an outsized role in life, other essential human qualities are sidelined, and life turns out not to be satisfying, nor do individuals and communities flourish.

The “blame,” so to speak, can be laid at the feet of Rambam (Maimonides), who viewed the intellect (sekhel) as the highest human faculty and the means by which a person comes closest to God. His argument that the perfection of the intellect is the ultimate purpose of human life has had an enduring influence in the Jewish world.

And yet we have all run into very intelligent people of highly developed intellect who are obnoxious and ethically foul.

Another model is conveyed in a story that is told about Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. He was a great scholar of Talmud, which is perhaps the most intellectual activity that our species has ever developed. And yet when he learned the section of the Talmud (Gittin 45a) that rules that, “Captives are not redeemed for more than their [actual monetary] value, for the betterment of the world,” he suddenly burst into tears.

Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the Mussar supervisor of the pre-War Mir yeshiva, quotes that story and gives a pithy interpretation. What he wants to say is that Rav Yisrael had internalized the Torah and its values to such an extent that he responded to its laws not just intellectually but emotionally as well.

The Torah places extraordinary emphasis on life and redeeming captives saves people from mortal danger. Yet here the law states that we should not save a captive at any price. What’s the reasoning? Well, if we pay an exorbitant ransom to redeem one person, it will only make the business of capturing Jews more lucrative for our enemies. Ultimately, that will lead to even greater suffering for more people in the future.

Rav Yisrael learned this law and his heart cried out for the poor captive individual who might be killed because the community refused to pay an excessive ransom. But it broke as well for the potential future victims who would suffer on account of the opposite decision.

Between the urgent duty to rescue a captive right now and the risk that paying too high a price would endanger others in the future, there was no good option. Either way lay suffering. The intellect was of no help. Confronted by having to choose between two painful outcomes, weighing one person’s real suffering against other people’s possible suffering, his heart burst and tears flowed.

This is the extent to which Rav Yisrael felt other people’s suffering, something we can take to be characteristic of his flourishing as a human being. His heart was alive and intensely sensitive.

Once, when I was scholar in residence at a synagogue, the rabbi of the congregation introduced my sermon with a few words of his own. He asked, “What is the most important question asked in the Torah?” No one, including me, had an answer to that question and so he continued. We were in the week of parasha Vayeshev. Joseph was imprisoned in Egypt, where he meets the Pharaoh’s cupbearer and baker. One day, seeing their troubled faces, he asks: “Why do you appear sad today?” (Genesis 40:7).

“That,” said the rabbi, “is the most important question asked in the Torah.” He explained that it was in answer to that question that the cupbearer and baker told Joseph their dreams, which he then interpreted, and because of that, the men recommended him to Pharaoh to interpret his dreams, which in turn resulted in Joseph not only being freed from prison but elevated to a high position in Pharaoh’s government, so that he was in a position to receive and help his brothers, and that ultimately led to the redemption of the slaves from Egypt and the establishment of the Jewish people in their own land.

And it all began with attention to and awareness of the suffering of two individuals. History turned on “Why do you appear sad today?”

This sensitivity to others became a hallmark of Mussar.

On a trip to America to raise funds, Rabbi Dovid Budnik, rosh yeshiva of the Novardok yeshiva in Dvinsk, Latvia, addressed a group of distinguished rabbis just before Rosh Hashana. He asked them:

“Do any of you have anything to repent for?”

No one responded so Rav Dovid continued:

“You are eminent rabbis and you won’t have sinned. But you get up in the morning, you daven, then you have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper. There you see the suffering, the poverty, the tragedies, the troubles of other people—and what do you do? You have a sip of your coffee and turn the page. You have become accustomed to human suffering. You have allowed yourselves to become indifferent. For that you should repent.”

He was chastising them for being emotionally numb. A person can be exposed repeatedly to the pain of others and gradually lose the ability to feel that she or he has any sort of responsibility for the wellbeing of the other.

In Mussar thought, that loss of sensitivity undermines flourishing. Not only that, it is also a serious spiritual failing because it is an impediment to becoming holy. It’s another reflection on the limits of the intellect that we are unable to define holiness, since the Torah tells us that it is a quality of the divine (“You shall be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”), yet we can sense how unavoidable it is that holiness entail exquisite sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others. Could holiness possibly reside in the heart of a cruel or even an indifferent person?

How remarkably important to underline this in an era when hatred is rampant.

Alan

And with my child’s eyes, I sometimes saw another reality bound up in this one. Not yet inured to wonder, all it would take is the flight of birds, the croak of a bullfrog, or the stars in the night sky to capture my mind and connect me to something other than the physical reality I encountered. Later, I got words for that experience: “The whole world is filled with Your glory” (Isaiah 6:3).

Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the Mussar supervisor of the Mir yeshiva in Europe in the 1930s, spoke about “nature” [teva] and “a quality above nature” [ma’alah min ha’teva], and he insisted that they were entirely one and the same. You can look into the world and see only “trees and rocks,” he said, even though, right there within that, there is another shimmering reality that is the spiritual presence within the natural.

Nature has become in our eyes “trees and rocks” only because of stupefaction and material-mindedness, which weakens the connection, and there became for us a separation, and we closed our eyes from seeing the light of God in nature (Da’at Chochmah u’Mussar p.233).

Think of the implications.

When nature is only “trees and rocks” and nothing more, then the world is but a warehouse of commodities to be plundered for maximum profit. Among the many consequences of that contracted worldview is the unabating crisis of global heating that year after year is wreaking havoc in floods, heat waves, fires and other catastrophes.

That was the attitude of the hunters who exterminated the sea otters along the coast of where I live. There was money to be made. But with the otters gone, the population of their major food source, the sea urchin, exploded. Sea urchins eat kelp and with no restraint on the growth of the urchin population, they decimated the kelp beds – underwater forests that shelter and feed diverse marine wildlife, buffer shores from strong waves, and, crucially, absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The lush underwater world became a desert. Now that the otters have been reintroduced, the kelp is beginning to recover.

When we attune to perceiving the glory of God in the rocks and trees, our approach to nature will embody reverence [yirah], restraint [histapkut], and responsibility [achrayut].

“Nature” then becomes not only something to use, but also something to honour. And “nature” in this perspective is not just what we encounter in the charming world of a park but anything that lives and breathes, and that includes other human beings.

My spirituality is not divorced from socio-political reality and when I see refugees losing their protected status and being hunted down, or Jewish businesses being destroyed by arson in my own country, or West Bank settlers seizing land by force, or the killing of civilians defended as the cost of peace, or the exclusion of non-binary people from public life, and so much more, I hear the voice of Pharaoh: “Who is God, that I should obey his voice …? I know not God.”

That quote shows up in the Book of Exodus in verse 5:2. It’s soon after that we learn about the hard heart of the Pharaoh, and God gives Moses instructions for initiating the first of the plagues. The devastation of Egypt follows.

That’s where we are in our world right now. The many forms of hard-heartedness that we see and experience are not just emotionally lacking in compassion, they echo loudly, “Who is God, that I should obey his voice …? I know not God.” And they deny “The whole world is filled with Your glory.” Thus we have no basis for expressing surprise as we see plagues multiplying in our world and appearing right on our doorstep.

What situates what I am thinking within the Mussar perspective is the necessity that I turn the lens back on myself. I can’t just point to the hardheartedness and spiritual insensitivity of the world out there and moralize; I am obligated to interrogate myself in search of my own hard-heartedness and spiritual insensitivity, and then make effort to change. I have miniscule influence over global realities, but I do have full responsibility for what goes on within the four cubits of my own personal life.

I’ll close with a story that I have told many times but bears repeating.

In 1923, the Chafetz Chaim was asked to be the keynote speaker at the first Agudath Israel convention in Vienna. He was asked specifically to speak on the subject of how he became the renowned sage that he did. The Chafetz Chayim said that he saw the deficiencies in the world, and he decided he had to make effort to change it, but he failed. He then focused his attention on changing the Jewish world and he had no impact. So, he said, he then sought to change the Jews of his country, Poland, and he again failed. Now, he said, he would focus on changing the Jews of his town, Radin, but to no effect. So, he said, he decided to work at changing the Jews of his own synagogue, and that, too, came to nothing. So, he put his attention on changing the members of his own family but he couldn’t. It was then that he said, “Let me change myself.” And when he changed himself, he became the “Chafetz Chaim” and he changed the world.

Which brings us to: How do you perceive the divine glory infusing the reality all around you?

I would love to hear your comments.

Alan

Many others on both sides of the border are not so lucky. The fires are so threatening in some places that 26,000 people in Canada are currently evacuated from their homes.

The smoke has blown down to the US and worsened air quality over a broad swath of the north of the country. And at the same time, France and Spain are experiencing major fires.

This is an emergency and how someone responds to an emergency is very indicative of their character.

If your neighbour’s house was on fire, you would have two choices: grab a bucket or call your lawyer. Which choice you make says a lot about who you are.

Of course, what I am not saying directly is that the response of the president of our neighbour to the south was very indicative of the man. “Filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air,” he complained. “This is a big cost” for the U.S. he said and “Canada should pay for the damage.”

I’m not saying he is wrong. I am only reflecting on the kind of man he is and, especially, on what we can learn by comparing his response to what Jewish tradition teaches.

The best starting place for insight into this issue is Pirkei Avot, that book of the Mishnah compiled around 200 CE. I mentioned in an earlier post that the correct translation of that title is “Chapters of First Principles,” and here we have a question that is clearly about a first principle: self-interest vs. selflessness.

The question itself shows up in Pirkei Avot (1:14) when Hillel asks, “If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am only for myself, what am I?”

Such a good phrasing of the issue, showing that there is wisdom and merit in both directions. That seems consistent with the Mussar principles of balance in all things.

But further on in Pirkei Avot we come to a different answer, one that was much more actively embraced by the teachers of the Mussar movement.

Mishnah 6:6 introduces itself as the 48 ways to acquire Torah. (Interestingly, this happens to be the 48^thinstalment of this blog!!) I wrote a whole book on this one Mishnah (With Heart in Mind) and in the Introduction to that book, I said:

Had the rabbis wanted us to make learning Torah the goal they would have said just that. When they direct us to acquire Torah, they are informing us that there is a stage beyond learning where the truths we have learned get worked into the very core of our being, into our hearts, so that truth will be the guiding light of our thoughts, feelings, words and deeds.

And to back that up, the first of the 48 methods is “talmud,” meaning “learning.” That’s the essential first step, but it is not sufficient on its own. There are 47 additional steps or factors involved in internalizing the teachings of the Torah in a transformative way.

Further down the list comes another one of these crucial steps to reaching the spiritual heights on a Jewish path, which isnosei b’ol im chaveiro. That phrase translates as, “bearing the yoke with one’s friend,” and more idiomatically as: “bearing the burden with another.”

Pay careful attention to the wording that says, “bearing the burden with,” not “for.” We do not acquire Torah and so develop ourselves spiritually through enabling behaviour or creating co-dependency in another person. Each of us must carry our own “yoke” but how good and how satisfying and how human it is to lend a shoulder to help carry the load.

The great leader of the Mussar movement Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv, known as the Alter of Kelm, made this practice the cornerstone of his teaching. He encouraged his students to be the kind of people who helped other people, not just because that is an ethical imperative, but because making the effort to help another person bear their burden causes us to develop the sensitivity to notice another person’s struggles, the compassion to want to take on a portion of the load, and the humility to do it for the sake of that other person, not for reasons of self-glorification or even for the thanks.

You can see that the Alter of Kelm saw that the practice of helping other people to bear their burdens as an effective way to refine one’s own character. This was his answer to Hillel’s question: If I am only for myself, what am I?

The Alter of Kelm died in 1898 and here we are, 130 years later, still learning from him. I wonder if in the year 2156 people will be aspiring to be the kind of people who don’t respond to their neighbour’s difficulties with offers of help but with grievance and threats? Since Pirkei Avot teaches first principles of human life, and has been a revered text for 1,800 years, my money (literally and metaphorically) is on “bearing the burden with another.”

Tradition, scripture and experience attest to that choice.

Each of us needs to find our own ways to bear the burden of the other. For some, that will take the form of caring for your own family. For others, their community, or their nation, or for creation itself. There is no hierarchy here.

What opportunities are calling to you to step up to helping others and, in the process, to refine your own soul?

I invite you to share your thoughts.

Alan

Other catastrophes are also said to have happened onTisha b’Av, including the defeat of Bar Kokhba‘s rebellion against the Romans, which led to the razing of Jerusalem, the declaration of the First Crusade in 1095, the edict expelling the Jews from England in 1290, and the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.

Even World War I broke out on Tisha b’Av!

The ninth of Av is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar and is marked by a fast that is as stringent as Yom Kippur.

Most people do not like being sad and tend to make their escape back to the land of Happy as quickly as they can. And here we find a Jewish tradition directing us to turn to face sadness and walk right into its dark cloud, to immerse ourselves in feelings of grief and loss. The message I take away is that sadness – atzvut in Hebrew – has its place, both on the calendar and in our spiritual lives.

What a contrast to a world that is infatuated with happiness. Disneyland markets itself as “The Happiest Place on Earth” and happiness has come to be so cherished that there is a movement to replace Gross Domestic Product as a measure of a country’s success with an evaluation of Gross National Happiness. GDP has been criticized because it only looks at what generates economic activity, and by that measure, if someone gets cancer or has a car accident, that might actually boost GDP. A scale based on happiness does not focus strictly on quantitative economic measures but takes into account a mix of quality-of-life factors.

Mussar perspective has nothing against being happy, but is guided by what Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement in 19^th century Lithuania, wrote, that a Mussar student’s goal should be to master both “a trait and its opposite.” The goal is not to try to eliminate anger, envy, sadness or any other inner trait from our experience, if for no other reason than because that is actually unrealistic and unattainable. Who gets through life without some measure of anger, envy, and sadness? Rather, the goal in the Mussar approach is to become an expert in a trait and as well as its opposite: sadness plus joy, anger and also equanimity, envy as well as contentedness.

Tisha b’Av focuses particularly on the pain of loss and invites us to explore and process the feelings of longing and grief we have all experienced when a parent passed, a business collapsed, a proposal was rejected by every publisher or foundation, an exam was failed or whatever form of loss you might sustain in life, as we all do.

Experience sadness, but with a caution not to go so far as to descend into depression or despair. Those dark depths can be very destructive and must be avoided. The word in Hebrew for depression is dika’on, stemming from the word ledake which means “to suppress” and that is surely not what we are after.

The message I hear is that we are meant to engage with sadness but not wallow in it. That’s because any middah taken to the extreme becomes a spiritual obstacle, while at a more moderate measure is a feature of inner wholeness.

The starting point for understanding the place of sadness in our pursuit of wholeness is actually to understand and appreciate the middah of love – ahava – because where there is no love, there is no sadness. What kind of loss do we mourn? The loss of something or someone we have loved.

Love is notoriously difficult to define because it is, in essence, a spiritual experience and our ordinary, everyday English language defines things in psychological and material – but not spiritual – terms.

But look at what we find in the Torah about the love between future King David and Jonathan, son of the present king (1 Samuel 18:1):

As soon as he had finished speaking to Shaul, the soul [nefesh] of Jonathan was knit [nikshara] to the soul [nefesh] of David.

The key words here are nefesh – soul – and the word that describes what happens to the soul in love, which is nikshara – knit or bound together.

And then the verse says: “And Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

We are learning something crucially important here. The Torah is not speaking in metaphors. It is telling us what happens when one person loves another. What might be unfamiliar to us is that the Torah includes the spiritual realm in its matter-of-fact discussion of our world. From a Torah perspective, the spiritual is as real as anything else, and it shows up in our real lives in real ways.

We only have trouble defining love when we try to do that in terms of the material world. When we include the soul in the picture, it becomes easy to define love: that’s what happens when the soul of one person knits together with the soul of another person.

The Torah’s definition of love makes loss more understandable. Upon hearing that Jonathan had died, David took hold of his clothing and tore it (2 Samuel 1:11). We see the same action being taken by Jacob when he received word that his son Joseph was dead (Genesis 37:34).

To this day, we model our own behavior on these precedents. Just before a funeral, the ritual of kriyah is performed. Kriyah means “tearing” or “ripping” and involves rending the clothing of a bereaved person.

When we understand that love means knitting together two souls, then we can see that death or loss is the severing of that bond. The ritual of kriyah gives physical expression to the spiritual reality. We tear the clothing because the soul of the bereaved person has had a piece torn away. Again, this is not a metaphor but an actual description of what happens on the spiritual plane when we experience loss.

Of course, this is not something uniquely Jewish. In popular music, love is a major theme. And where there is love, there is loss, which is often described as a ripping or tearing. And then there is country music, where nearly ALL the lyrics describe feelings of sadness and loss, and the perception of being torn apart that goes with it.

We are not solitary, independent, circumscribed beings but are spiritually united with other people, places, things, etc. This way of seeing ourselves – not as separate but as a composite of all the things and beings we love – is expressed by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, the 16^th century kabbalist and Mussarist who wrote: “Yesh ba’zeh cheleq zeh” – there is in this one a part of that one. Our inner lives are an intermingling of all that we love.

And when we lose one of those things for whatever reason, the loss is experienced as a tearing away – not of it, but of a part of ourselves.

Our losses place us on the path of sadness, and soon we come to a three-way fork in the road.

One way leads to stoicism and rejection of feeling. That is the road to hardening and blocking the heart.

Another fork leads to melancholy and depression and every voice in the Jewish world cautions us not to take that turn.

The third one – the way of sadness – means accepting broken-heartedness and allowing tears to flow. This is the straight path according to both nature and spirit. When it is time for the heart to break, it is meant to be broken, and opening to that experience is both healing and a spur to personal growth, leading to renewal and wholeness.

Renewal is the gem that glistens in the shadows of sadness.

That idea is expressed so poetically in the psalm traditionally recited before grace after meals on Shabbat and YomTov. There we read in the image of the agricultural cycle:

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. One that goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seed, shall come again with rejoicing, bringing one’s sheaves.

Have you had the experience of renewal sprouting from sadness?

Rambam says (Hilchot De’ot 1:5):

This path is the path of the wise. Every person whose traits are intermediate and equally balanced can be called ‘a wise person.’

But Rambam himself acknowledges that there are times when we need to act in ways that deviate from the middle way:

The pious of the early generations would bend their temperaments from the intermediate path towards [either of] the two extremes. For some traits they would veer towards the one extreme, for others, towards the other extreme. This is referred to as [behavior] ‘beyond the measure of the law.’

He calls bending toward the extreme not wise, but “pious.” Sometimes, a situation calls on us to abandon balance at the centre. And right now, I feel the need to be an extremist because what I see coming at me daily from the world out there is itself extremist, only in ways that I feel that I need to counter. My values are shaped by the legacy of Jewish values, and to defend them – within myself and in the world – against the onslaught, the world is demanding that I be an extremist.

If the world is going to be so unkind to the stranger, I need to be extremely kind to the stranger.

Because compassion is denigrated as weakness, I need to be extremely compassionate.

Because the world is as grim and dour as our politicians, I need to seek out joy.

If what I see around me is deceitful, I need to be scrupulous with the truth.

Because some leaders strut their arrogance, I need to strive to be as humble as Moses.

And so on. In this I feel I have no choice. It is not an exaggeration to say that every single value that the Jewish tradition has endorsed for millennia is being trampled before our eyes, and if we believe in the truth and significance of building a world infused with Jewish values, we need to defend them to the extreme, beyond the measure of the law, in piety, and starting in our own lives.

What we call “Jewish values” are better understood as the ideals that the Torah and our rabbis have identified as worthy to pursue in our own individual human lives. Think of being charitable not as a value but as a prescribed aspiration.

And why is it prescribed and why should we follow the prescription? I am influenced by the rabbis who, 1600 years ago, said:

The commandments were only given in order that people would be refined through them, because what does the Holy Blessed One care if one slaughters [an animal] from the front of the neck or if one slaughters from the back of the neck? We must say that the commandments were only given so that people would be refined through them.

In other words, it is in my interests to pursue Torah ideals because that process will have the effect of refining me, working down the negative and enhancing the positive.

An example: joy.

What a joyless world it appears to be. It’s all bad news. War after war. Politics is just transactional and morally deplorable. Being a convicted felon is no bar on public office, nor is profiting from that office. People have hundreds of online “friends” but few relationships and we are the loneliest generation. Public discourse is dead; it’s mostly divisive haranguing now. I don’t need to go on – you are living this reality, just like me.

I’m in danger of having the joy wrung out of my life. And if I want to prevent that from happening, extreme measures are called for. But first, I need to understand joy, which I equate to the Hebrew word gila [גילה]. Joy is not the same as happiness. In The Shabbat Effect I drew a clear distinction between the two:

Happiness is that transient feeling of uplift and ebullience that comes from fulfilling or experiencing something that you really want and like.

Joy is also a feeling of expansive and positive uplift, but it is very different from happiness because it is sparked not by getting something you desire, but by experiences that actually transcend anything you might personally want.

Happiness is an inner experience at the level of our personal self, with its wants and desires, while joy penetrates us more deeply, transcending our personal selves to touch us at the deeper, more spiritual, more eternal level of the soul.

Happiness gratifies the ego; joy transcends it.

Happiness makes you smile; joy makes you cry.

I’ve become an extremist in opening myself to joy. But how do I do that? My “effort” in that direction has meant taking steps to unencumber my heart. Turn off the phone. Slow down. Spend time in nature. Look for beauty. Connect with people. Savor the flavors of food and drink.

The world as we receive it dehumanizes us, and my search for joy is an attempt to undo the damage. The more extremely joyless the world appears, the more I reach for the antidote, extreme pursuit of joy.

A final anecdote. I travel around with a major league joy-generator: my dog, Dr. Pepper. He happens to be very cute and has the sweetest disposition. Anytime we go for a walk, people stop in their tracks. He doesn’t make them happy but joyful. He awakens their hearts and gives them a moment of transcendence that penetrates whatever happens to be on their mind at the moment.

Take a look:

What brings you joy?

Alan

As I did my collecting, I invoked the middah of חריצות (diligence) and our woods are now much more park-like than ever. It’s comical to see our little dachshund, Dr. Pepper, zooming around on the new trails that he has discovered in the woods.

But I’m now done with that task – for this year.

Still, walks in the forest are a major source of refreshment and exercise on this island. The size of the trees reflects our climatic zone, which is designated as Pacific temperate rain forest. Although the island has been logged at least twice, pockets of majestic old trees remain, and even in the logged areas, such as our own property, the trees grow so fast (1’ or more per year) that in the 30 years we have been on the island, we have seen the shrimpy trees around us grow into much more mature giant firs, cedars, balsams, hemlocks and the occasional spruce.

The climate as currently configured is ideal for trees to flourish: plenty of moisture, adequate sunshine, soil, and a year-round growing season. And they grow straight, true and tall. Douglas fir can grow to a height of 100 m. (330 feet). That’s the length of a football field (not counting the endzones).

Walking among the huge trees in the forest yesterday, we came upon a little cluster of Ghost Pipes, also calledIndian Pipe or, more descriptively “Corpse Plant,” because its flower is a sickly white. Its colour reflects the fact that this little plant completely lacks chlorophyll and gets its nutrients through a complex underground connection with tree roots and fungi. If you look it up on the internet, you will see that it is considered rare, though “it commonly grows on Hornby Island and throughout the surrounding Pacific Northwest coast.”

A Ghost Pipe typically stands from 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 inches), quite a contrast from the surrounding trees.

Which gives me pause to think. A flourishing Douglas fir stands 100 m. tall; a flourishing Ghost Pipe .5 of a metre. There is a lesson for us in the contrast.

The word for “flourishing” or “thriving” in Hebrew isפורח (poreach), a word that shares its linguistic root with the word פרח (perach), a flower. There is a sense that thriving is a kind of blossoming, and what that tells us is that flourishing is not something an entity takes on or acquires; it is a bringing forth into full flower the potentialities that are already seeded within the living being.

Humans also have the potential to flourish, and we do that by a process akin to blossoming. I love that notion because it directs our attention inward rather than outward, and it invites us to measure ourselves not so much by what others have accomplished but by the seeds of possibility that are present within us.

It also tells us that the measure of flourishing is not necessarily size or grandeur. The little Ghost Pipe puts out a delicate, translucent flower that is, by some measure, as magnificent a creation as is the mighty fir.

The Douglas fir is primed to grow enormously tall and fulfills its potential way up in the forest canopy. Down below, the Ghost Pipe has the potential to reach its full capacity at a very different order of magnitude. Both thrive on their own terms, not on the terms of the other.

This message converts to the human realm in the recognition that we are all unique individuals and so the seeds of possibility that have the potential to blossom in you will be different from my own potential. We flourish by recognizing what is true for each of us in our own lives and then doing what it takes to water those seeds to grow to their full potential.

Rav Naftali Amsterdam (1832–1916) once said to his rebbe, Rabbi Yisroel Salanter: “Rebbe, if only I had the mind of the Sha’agas Aryeh,1 the heart of the Yesod Veshoresh Ha’avodah2 and your middot (character traits), then I could be a true servant of God. Rav Yisroel responded, “Naftali, Naftali! With your head, with yourheart, and with your character traits, Naftali Amsterdam can be a true servant of God.”

I am very interested in the notion of human flourishing, so, tell me: What gives you the feeling you are thriving?

Alan

1 Rabbi Aryeh Leib ben Asher Ginzberg (c. 1695 – 1785), known by the title of his most famous book, Shaagas Aryeh (“Roar of a lion”), a collection of rabbinic responsa first published in 1755.

2 “Foundation and Root of Service” by Rabbi Alexander Ziskind of Grodno (1735-1794) contains directions for the right use and comprehension of ritual, daily Jewish prayers, Shabbat and holidays.

As I do my work in the woods, the entire lifecycle of the forest is laid bare to me. A tree grew in the humus that accumulated from previous generations of trees, then it reached the end of its life, fell, and now young sprouts reach up for the light, their roots stretching into the flesh of the nurse log. And when we pull back to take in the other species that have woven their own lives around that central storyline – insects and spiders, ferns and creeping plants, birds, newts, and slugs, and forest mammals like deer and possums – we are witnessing a long-term, slow-motion performance of the dance of life, and I have my own part to play in the beginning and in the end.

The deeper I look and the more I learn, the more I appreciate the wonder of the natural world. Mussar teachers going back to Bahya ibn Paquda (c.1050–1120 CE) have emphasized the practice of contemplating nature. In his case, in his classic 11^th century Mussar work, Duties of the Heart, he encourages us to contemplate the workings of the natural world in order to awaken hakarat hatov – recognition of the good one has received.

He repeatedly asks us to consider how bodily systems just go about their work without our awareness, and how conditions – almost all of which we had no role in creating – make life possible.

For ibn Paquda, the goal of the practice is to move ourselves away from taking for granted all the gifts we have received, and replacing that feeling with heartfelt thankfulness.

It strikes me that what is involved here is more than just soaking in a feel-good emotion. For ibn Paquda, and Rambam after him, contemplating the intricate design, beauty and complexity of nature was seen as a way to awaken profound awe and love for the Creator. Like the contemplation of great art, this is an intellectual experience that goes beyond the mind to touch the soul in a deep and lasting way. Nature is a great teacher.

But if we pick up on ibn Paquda’s focus on gratitude, we can see how utterly valuable and needed contemplating nature is for our generation, at least in its current manifestation, when the politics of grievance have become a dominant force in public life. Gratitude is the diametric opposite of grievance.

Masses of people have developed a grievance mindset, the driving force in their lives being resentful protests about their perceived losses, slights, and unmet expectations. Donald Trump has been a relentless cheerleader for victimhood, targeting globalization, immigration, trade, political elites, and the media. His slogan of MAGA only makes sense to voters who feel the country has declined, making them the losers. But he is only one of many populist leaders beating the grievance drum. From the left, the grievances are different – concentration of wealth and political power in the hands of a small elite, inequality and the influence of corporations and billionaires – but the focus is still on grievances.

The flavours change – it is still lemonade.

Grievance asks, “What wrongs have I suffered?” Gratitude asks, “What gifts have I received?”

There are, of course, grievances that are legitimate and ought to be addressed. What I am talking about here is not objective reality, but the glasses people voluntarily put on through which they perceive the world: the glasses of grievance versus the glasses of gratitude.

When you look at nature with an eye to recognizing the good, the gifts are abundant: air to breathe, a sun to warm the earth, water, delicious fruits, magnificent trees, nourishing crops … stop for a moment: What would you add to the list?

And another moment: How does your heart feel when you open to gratitude?

Contrast that with approaching the world from the place of grievance.

Gratitude is expansive; grievance is narrow and contracted. Gratitude is generous; grievance is mean. Gratitude directs us toward the benevolence; grievance sees a system rigged to work against me.

Gratitude connects; grievance is adversarial.

I’ll leave you with a question: How does your heart feel when you open to gratitude? And when you approach the world from the place of grievance?

And now it’s time for me to gratefully don my gloves and protective gear, pick up my chainsaw, and get back to my spiritual work in the woods.

There are only 800 full time residents on Hornby, who are served by a basic medical clinic. Bev is a (now retired) palliative care physician, and over the years, the nurses and doctors of the clinic have called on her for help with patients who were reaching the end of their lives. This summer, they asked her to give a talk on end-of-life issues and this past week she offered a large gathering her practical wisdom and wise spiritual insight, under the title “Living to Die and Dying to Live.”

Drawing on her decades of experience and basing her teaching in first-person stories of deathbed spiritual awakenings, she shared her experience of seeing people who were facing death come to recognize essential truths about life that tend to remain hidden from us in our hectic, earthly, seemingly unending lives. Dying people offer us those lessons and we can enrich our lives by choosing to apply them to our own lives, even before we find ourselves facing our own end of days.

I was reminded of a classic story that is told about Yosef Yozel Horwitz who was the founder of the Novardok school of Mussar but who, prior to that, involved himself in commerce to support his family. On a business trip in eastern Europe, he ran into Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, founder of the 19^th century Mussar movement, and his disciple, Rabbi Yitzchak Blazer, known as Itzele Peterburger. The two rabbis challenged him about why he was not devoting himself more fully to his Jewish life.

Horwitz responded:

“Doesn’t a person need with what to live?”

And they answered:

“And doesn’t a person also need with what to die?”

That response pushed him into his decision to leave business and devote himself to Torah and Mussar. His first step toward becoming the Alter of Novardok was to have himself bricked into a small room where he devoted himself to study, prayer and meditation for two full years.

The truth is that throughout our lives, we are given many opportunities to develop “with what to die.” From one perspective, life can be framed as a battle against death, as Dylan Thomas captures so well:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

But from another perspective, the end of earthly life is just one in a series of transitions we got through, beginning with our own birth and continuing through the many births and deaths we experience all throughout our lives.

Every new relationship, new business or career change, project or development, and new home is a birth. The birth of a child creates a parent; your child’s child births a grandparent.

And on the flip side, every loss, disappointment, betrayal, failure, bereavement and the like is a death. Even decisions we make can be seen to embody the same phenomenon: the word “decide” shares a Latin root with words like “homicide” and “suicide” because when you make a “decision,” one or more other options need to be cut off, to die.

The essential lesson is that we have the opportunity to cultivate “with what to die” by looking for the lesson in every circumstance that life delivers us into. This is the attitude that Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe called (drawing on earlier teachers, back at least to the Rambam) hitlamdut, or as he would have said it, hislamdus, which he saw to be a central tool of Mussar.

Hitlamdut is a stance of approaching yourself, other people and all life experiences with an attitude of curiosity, openness, and a willingness to grow – and this literally until one’s last day. Rav Wolbe wrote: “When one reaches the day of death, one won’t be dying—one will be learning how to die.” And he concluded: “This is the way of one who toils in the work of Mussar.”

It’s ironic that this focus on death – the final one as well as all the ones we experience along the way – turns out to be the path to thriving in life. That was the point Bev emphasized in her talk. When we truly internalize the conviction that our time is finite, and when we bring that curious, learning attitude to all the births and deaths we go through in life, we will find ourselves living like there is no tomorrow. And maybe there won’t be. Maybe today is all we’ve got.

I usually end my blog with a question. This time, I welcome your comments and reflections.

The “seven empirically tested strategies for developing character” that Wake Forest teaches are:

1. habituation through practice

2. reflection on personal experience

3. engagement with virtuous exemplars

4. dialogue to increase virtue literacy

5. awareness of situational variables and biases

6. moral reminders, and

7. friendships defined by mutual accountability.

They say that they developed these seven techniques through a process of rigorous synthesis of research across multiple disciplines, especially philosophy, psychology, education, and related fields. They reviewed and integrated evidence from:

• Classical virtue ethics (especially the Aristotelian tradition)

• Contemporary psychology of habits, moral development, and behaviour

• Educational research on learning and personal growth

• Case studies from university-based character education programs, particularly the Oxford Character Project and Wake Forest initiatives.

Not done yet! The researchers then tested and refined the framework through practical educational programs. Wake Forest describes these as evidence-based strategies and uses them as the foundation for its leadership and character curriculum.

Wow! So much work! But when we rephrase their list (“WF”) in terms of the practices that we have inherited from the Mussar movement of the mid-19^th century (“MM”), we find:

1. WF: habituation through practice
   
   MM: kabbalot, the Mussar practice of taking on specific practical exercises in order to work on a character trait or spiritual practice.

2. WF: reflection on personal experience
   
   MM: cheshbon ha’nefesh, the process of soul accounting that features in the 11^th century book Duties of the Heart that includes journalling.

3. WF: engagement with virtuous exemplars
   
   MM: a rebbe, a personal teacher; or a mashgiach, the name given to the Mussar supervisor in a yeshiva.

4. WF: dialogue to increase virtue literacy
   
   MM: the va’ad (small group) is an essential part of the Mussar process, and the discussions in that intimate setting are crucial to the work of personal change.

5. WF: awareness of situational variables and biases
   
   MM: hitlamdut; seeking and extracting lessons from every situation we encounter in our lives.

6. WF: moral reminders
   
   MM: hitpa’alut; the daily recitation of phrases to imprint awareness of our spiritual agenda.

7. WF: friendships defined by mutual accountability
   
   MM: chevruta; a committed partnership for the purposes of learning, companionship and accountability.

Very similar, no? And it is, as far as effective methods are concerned. What the Wake Forest people discovered through “a process of rigorous synthesis of research across multiple disciplines,” the Mussar masters discovered through experimentation and acute empirical observation. Or as the punchline goes on a famous Mussar story, the bottom line for them was, “Does it work?”

But a big difference shows up in terms of goals, the why of the programs.

The aim of the Wake Forest program is “to help students develop good dispositions (‘virtues’) that foster individual and communal flourishing and to avoid bad dispositions (‘vices’) that inhibit flourishing.”

This notion flies right in the face of both the Mussar tradition and common sense because both tell us that there are, in fact, no “virtues” and no “vices.”

Characteristics that make it onto the reviled list of “deadly sins” sometimes earn praise in the Jewish world. What’s so bad about envy, for example? When I pose that question to audiences, they immediately get that envy can have the positive value of being a motivator. The Talmud tells us that “The envy of the Sages increases wisdom” (Bava Batra 21a).

Or, to take another example, pride also makes it onto that blacklist, but the Talmud says, “A Torah scholar should have one-eighth of one-eighth of pride” (Sotah 5a). Many sources emphasize the importance of self-esteem to humility.

And on the other side of the ledger, is it possible to do harm with a “virtue” like generosity? Yes, of course it is, like spoiling a child, creating co-dependency or enabling destructive behaviours.

Or patience? Is there such a thing as too much patience? If your patience amounts to inactivity in the face of your responsibilities and the needs of the moment, then that patience is no virtue.

Mussar would have us pay attention not developing good dispositions but to calibrating and recalibrating those inner traits in which we have the potential to grow. We may be seeing the same practices in the Wake Forest program as we find in Mussar, but the paradigms are very different.

And the goals are even more different. The Wake Forest program elevates the humanistic vision of “flourishing” to be the ultimate goal of the work we do on ourselves. In its drive to be empirical and scientific, a university program is bound to ignore the spiritual dimension of life, thereby falling out of step with reality.

Believe me, I have nothing against flourishing; it’s a wonderful ideal. But the Jewish tradition would have us aim even higher than that, not just to flourish or to thrive but to be holy. For the Mussar masters, the reason to work on yourself is to fulfill the injunction the Torah lays out for us, which is to become holy people.

In a famous quote, the Alter of Slabodka cautioned: “Don’t aim to be better; aim to be higher.”

Or as we say in The Mussar Institute, “Working on yourself but not for the sake of your Self.”

I find it very validating that the methodologies developed in a scientific way correspond to Mussar practices that evolved through empirical methods practiced in real life. But we part company when it comes to the spiritual and divine. I don’t expect a university to be able to contend with an undefinable notion like holiness. But I can’t see the world through any other lens. Can you?

I would love to read your comments!

Somebody asked me if I had learned anything on that tour and my first response was, “Yes: I learned that I am not as young as I used to be.” It was gratifying, even exhilarating at times, but also very tiring, especially the travel. For example, one of my last stops was Cleveland, where my flight going to that city was cancelled. And when it came time to depart on a different flight, that flight was also cancelled. I had to scramble to get there, and then scramble some more to get away, all of which is exhausting.

Two other (more substantial!) lessons stand out for me.

I met hundreds of people, many of whom I got to speak with, if only for a few minutes, and the cumulative impression I have from those encounters is that the yearning for authentic Jewish spirituality is strong.

That message was conveyed to me in the numbers of people who attended my talks. Commonly, it would be 100 people or more. The question period was lively and sincere, as people asked questions that were genuinely important to them.

I also saw that the demand currently outstrips the supply. Many people are clamoring for guidance for their inner lives that has strong roots in the Jewish world. But because there are not yet enough teachers, materials or group leaders to meet that demand, I encountered people who were filling that void with practices and ideas that have no Jewish roots, like mindfulness meditation and various self-help approaches.

I – and I hope you join me in this – feel an obligation to keep working hard to give people access to Mussar teachings and guidance that we who grew up as spiritual orphans were not able to access early in our own searches.

There was a second lesson as well, which is that people are reaching the point of despair over the debased culture that slaps us in the face no matter which way we turn.

Listen to the foul-mouthed and demeaning politicians, starting right at the top, who clearly hold any idea of respect to be a sign of weakness and who have raised the cult of arrogance to new heights.

This phenomenon comes right down to street level. I’ll share an experience I had on the way home from the last talk on the tour. That was in Tacoma, WA, which is not far from Vancouver where I live, and so I drove down. When I set out for home the next day, I had three stops in mind before I hit the highway: synagogue for morning prayers,

Trader Joe’s, and coffee.

I finished the first two stops and then looked on my phone for a nearby café. The nearest one that popped up was called “Ladybug Espresso” and that seemed good to me because the word “espresso” implied a serious attitude to coffee. My phone guided me the few minutes to the café, and I arrived to find a kiosk, not a cafe. Even better! I can get coffee and be on the road even sooner.

I pulled up to the kiosk to find the door closed and the place looking desolate. Dejectedly, I start to drive away when the door sprung open, filling my eyes with the sight of a woman wearing nothing but a string around her waist from which hung a gauze triangle that hid nothing, while on top she had the same completely transparent cloth over her breasts, leaving everything in plain sight. Not even thinking for a second I exclaimed, “You’re naked!” to which she replied, “Yes. That’s how it works here. You didn’t know?” We talked — I stayed in the car — and it turns out that my phone had omitted one key word from the name of the place. It is actually called “Ladybug Bikini Espresso” and their thing is having virtually naked women serve the coffee. Or, as their website says, “Kickstart your morning with our Beautiful Baristas serving Beautiful Coffee!” There are several branches.

This is just an example of the unabashedly sordid things that are filling the public square these days.

I draw a link between these two lessons. The hunger for Jewish teachings to guide the inner life is fueled, in part, by the degradation we experience in public life that leaves many of us feeling soiled and dejected. And who wants to live a soiled and dejected life? Guide me out of here, please!

So, even though my book tour is done for now, I come away with a firm sense that there is still a lot of work to do on behalf of the Jewish people. Your partnership in that effort is precious to me.

Let me ask you: Do you think ethical and cultural standards in public life have sunk as much as I have portrayed? What have you experienced?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this….

With Gratitude,

Alan

One of the realities about being a spiritual orphan – the plight of most Jews of our generation, me included! – is that we were never introduced to our own Jewish spiritual lineage. Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz stands tall in that lineage and is a major ancestor who is well worth getting to know.

Rav Yerucham, as he is called by all who were not his direct students – they called him simply “the Mashgiach” – was born in Belarus in 1873 and died in 1936. This Wednesday, June 3^rd, marks the 90^th yahrzeit(anniversary of the death) of this great Mussar teacher who merited the privilege of studying at two of the primary centers of 19^th century Mussar learning and practice, the famed yeshivas of Slobodka and Kelm. His teachers were Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel (the Alter of Slobodka) and Rabbi Simcha Zissel Ziv (the Alter of Kelm), two of the three second-generation leaders of the Mussar movement that emphasized what has been so absent in our generation, which is awareness and cultivation of the inner life in a Jewish context.

Rav Yerucham joined the yeshiva at Mir, in Belarus, in 1908 and served as the Mussar supervisor (mashgiach) there until he died, 28 years later. His son Simcha Zissel Levovitz (named after the Alter of Kelm) gathered together and published his lectures and helped extend the Mussar heritage into the post-Holocaust worldwhere they are available to us still today, though only in Hebrew.

I have been learning my way through Rav Yerucham’s Daat, Chochmah u’Mussar for a number of years now, meeting consistently with my loyal and wise chevruta, Robert Barris. We meet for an hour every week and work our way through several paragraphs of the book, translating, discussing and applying what we are studying. As soon as our session ends, I sit down to write out the translation in English, with footnotes and sources. We are currently on page 226, just over halfway through.

I try to get as close to an accurate translation of Rav Yerucham’s thought as I can. I try to capture the p’shat, the straightforward meaning of the words on the page. After all, what I am interested in and will benefit from is Rav Yerucham’s thought, and so I strive to be as true to his ideas as I can get, with Robert as a partner in this endeavour.

This seems to me to be a very fitting approach to learning from him, since his thought centers on living with da’at, which he understood to mean perceiving reality honestly as it is. He pointed out that we tend to live superficially and reactively, and from habit, and as a result, we might see only the surface of life, without recognizing the deeper spiritual processes that go on and with which we can engage, to the benefit of ourselves and the world.

Rav Yerucham’s Mussar talks were not abstract sermons. His students described them as revealing “maps of the human soul.”

Here are a few of the gems I have encountered in studying his teachings:

• “The greatest danger is that a person becomes accustomed to everything.”

• “Most people are asleep, though their eyes are open.”

• “The yetzer ha’ra does not first seek to make a person wicked. It seeks to make them inattentive.”

• “A person can know something with complete clarity and yet live as though they never heard it.”

• “The inner world of a person is built specifically in silence.”

My favourite teaching of his, though, is one I have already shared on this blog. He said that if you see a baker who is baking matza and you ask that person “What is your work?” and the baker answers, “I’m baking matza,” that’s the wrong answer. It reveals that the person is conscious of worldliness but not of the corresponding internal reality where we also have to work. The correct answer, says Rav Yerucham, would be, “I am working on caution and alacrity, precision and patience,” or the like.

Steeped in Mussar, he understood profoundly that the pursuit of a spiritual life involves cultivating the inner traits [middot] and so no matter what worldly activity you find yourself engaged in – baking matza or driving a car or protesting in the streets or raising a child, or whatever – the eyes of your consciousness should always be focused inwardly, on whatever traits you are working on that could be honed or strengthened in that moment, within that context.

I’ll give the final word to Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe (1914 – 2005), who saw his years studying under Rav Yerucham in the Mir yeshiva as the central formative influence of his life. He said that a single Mussar shmuess(discourse) from Rav Yerucham was so powerful that it became the source of the strength and fortitude that allowed him to survive the terrible years of World War II.

May that influence live on, growing stronger as we probe and cultivate his teachings in our time. And may hisneshama have an aliyah.

I’ll ask a question: Do you identify with the idea with which I began this post, that Jews of our generation are, by and large, spiritual orphans? Is that true of you, do you think?

I was in Cleveland for Shavuot, which coincided with Shabbat this year, and an older man with whom I shared the Shabbat dinner table told a tale of his woes. He was still practicing as a dentist. But he was suffering, and it was painful to hear how difficult it was for him to master all the new technologies, not only in his care for his patients but in all the administration he was now having to do by computer. Although he loved what he did and was good at it, he was about to throw up his hands and retire.

That’s where he was focused. But other people at the table were engrossed with political events that explode in our faces in such rapid succession, and environmental initiatives that are attacking preservation of habitat and setting back the timetable for the inevitable move to sustainable energy, and wars nobody voted for, and the rapidly spiraling cost of living, and the proliferation and mainstreaming of antisemitism, and division over Israel, and…. I am sure you are living in the same conversations as I am.

As I sat at that table, I struggled. All the issues are real and important and how great it is that people care and are passionately engaged. But we had just lit candles, sanctified the day with kiddush, and welcomed the Sabbath bride. I wanted to park all those issues at the door. It was not my table and not my place to direct the conversation, but silently to myself, I drifted away from the conversation because I was reaching to savour the taste of the world to come that Shabbat offers.

No doubt the needs of the moment are pressing, but it seems to me that giving 6/7ths of my life to the struggle to build a better world is quite enough. I know exactly what would happen if I gave all my days to the affairs (crises?) of the world and I allowed Shabbat to be just another day of worry, complaint and pursuit. The world would be no better off, and all I would succeed in doing is exhausting myself.

I’m underlining my need for rest on Shabbat, not because I am exhausted, and not even to help me avoid becoming exhausted which would bring along with it the depression and despair that inevitably accompany such depletion, but because Shabbat offers an opportunity to realign myself with the deeper truths of cosmic reality that are pummeled and buried under the welter of assaults everyday life throws my way.

It is true that I am a small creature on a planet circling its sun, and when I light Shabbat candles at the designated moment, the small light of those candles brings me in line with the light of the sun, the position of the earth in relation to it that creates the season, and the rotation of the earth on its axis that delivers up evening. Six days a week of electric lights, mental agitation and frantic busyness obscure this truth. Once a week, I realign.

That realignment reminds me of the truth of my place in Creation. Finite, mortal, small – vital, aware and capable.

The great Mussar teacher, the Alter of Slabodka, tells us that what got created on the six days of creation were the elements of the universe, but only when the seventh day came into being did the full set of days take on their purpose and meaning (their form, their tzurah). And pointing to how much pleasure a person gets when they finish some project or inquiry they have been long working to complete, he says Shabbat offers a much greater pleasure, though of the same type:

How much pleasure and delight there is in finishing the complete form of the entire creation. A person is united with this pleasure through rest on the Sabbath day which has in it the completion of the form of the creation. Even sleep on Shabbat brings a person to this pleasure. And although sleep is one sixtieth of death (Berachot 57b), and “the beginning of one’s fall is sleep” (Genesis Rabbah 17), and there is something to confess before sleep like one confesses before death, and they say: “Enlighten my eyes lest I sleep in death,” (Psalm 13:3),but on Shabbat there is a virtue in sleep, because a person unites through the rest of sleep with the complete pleasure of the form of creation and one elevates and rises to a higher level.*

And so, come Sunday, I re-enter the world of struggle and battle, not just refreshed and renewed, but – much more importantly – realigned with that higher level in me and with the world through the rest and pleasure I gave to myself on Shabbat. Rest on any day is good for body and mind. Rest on Shabbat is also good for the soul, and so I have no guilt about having taken TWO naps this past Shabbat. Now, when I rejoin the world as a person who has reconnected to living in tune with the soul within, I can expect that everything I do will be more worthwhile for being informed and infused with that higher wisdom. That’s the Shabbat effect.

I would love to hear if any of this resonates with your own experience, whether of exhaustion or renewal?

* Ohr HaTzafun, “The Rest of Shabbat”, Part 2, page 120.

You have to wonder how you could possibly develop these sorts of inner attributes without taking action to clear away the soiled mundane that is the essence of a Shabbat practice. (The word shabbat itself comes from the root that means “to cease.”)

This week I want, seemingly, to digress. Everything I write and teach has been put through the wringer of my own life experience, and while it might originate in teachings from previous centuries, if I have not put it through my own test of living the teaching, I can’t offer it up with conviction, so I don’t. And there is something from my own experience that I do want to offer up this time that, at first glance, seems not connected to Shabbat or Mussar, but you may be surprised.

This past week (May 14^th, to be exact) marked the 230^th anniversary of an event that took place on that date in 1796. Edward Jenner, an English physician, vaccinated 8-year-old James Phipps in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, England, with material collected from cowpox lesions that had erupted on the skin of milkmaid Sarah Nelmes. Later, on July 1^st, Jenner exposed Phipps to the human smallpox virus, and the child did not get the disease. This experiment demonstrated the protection conferred by vaccination.

Of course, vaccination is in the news these days because irrational thinking has taken hold in some segments of society and the direct result has been an increase in cases of measles, polio and malaria and other infectious diseases.

But as I said, there is something in this topic that is related to my own personal experience, and I will focus there.

In 1974, Bev and I decided that when I finished my master’s degree at Oxford, we would drive our car to India. It was possible to do something like that in those days. Turkey was not restive, the Shah was in power in Iran, Afghanistan had not yet been invaded by Russia or the US, nor taken over by the Taliban. Pakistan was safe. And so, we made the trip over several months and drove into India.

It was largely a pleasant, interesting and uneventful trip. There were some surprises – like Greece and Turkey going to war over Cyprus on the day we were driving across the border between those two countries. That was harry! But we made it across without incident and proceeded to traverse Turkey by making our way from one hammam (traditional Turkish bathhouse) to the next.

We were not in India long before we realized we’d be staying for a while. The option of drifting from ashram to ashram in a cloud of smoke did not appeal, and so we began to look around for something useful to do. We soon got a recommendation to check out the WHO smallpox eradication program that was ramping up at that time.

We showed up at the smallpox office in southern Bihar state (now Jharkhand), volunteered, and soon found ourselves being part of the effort to wipe out a disease that had been a scourge on humanity for millennia.

The year we joined the program – 1974 – was an epidemic year. Those came around roughly every 7 years. The disease would rage through the population and infect most of the people who were not vaccinated or had not survived the disease itself (which provided natural immunity), and it took about seven years for a new pool of vulnerable people to accumulate that would sustain the next epidemic. Since most of the people who newly entered that pool did so by means of being born, epidemics overwhelmingly affected children. The mortality rate was 30%.

Of course, the year after an epidemic – in our case, 1975 – saw a real dip in the number of smallpox cases. And because the disease was transmitted person-to-person by airborne water droplets, the dry summer season within that year of minimal infection would be the period when incidence of the disease would be at its lowest. That one season of that one year came into focus as our golden opportunity to stamp out smallpox, before the rainy season came, the number of cases started to rise, and we entered the next epidemic cycle. If we could interrupt transmission for just 21 days, the virus would be vanquished.

And we did it! People from around the world, from Brazil and Canada, from the US and Russia, Slovakia and Poland and, of course, India, and elsewhere, put aside differences and came together with the common purpose of benefitting humanity. We each made a small contribution, adding our drop to the bucket that eventually snuffed out a disease that had killed millions.

And therein lies a lesson that applies both to Mussar and to Shabbat, and that is: Don’t belittle the little. Every change, whether a small improvement in our personal lives or a monumental transformation on the global stage, is ever and always the culmination of many small steps.

Rav Yerucham Levovitz, the revered Mussar mashgiach [supervisor] of the Mir yeshiva in pre-war Belarus, wrote:

A person must always think, what did our ancestors do that caused God to desire them? A person should know that all the success of the holy ancestors, and all the great ones of the world, was in this: That they did not … distinguish big from small. Rather, they would snatch and utilize everything. A person who contemplates the holy Sages will see that all their work and engagements were in small matters, and for such a thing they sacrificed themselves.

And so, it was in the smallpox eradication program, and so it is in our work on ourselves in the way of Mussar, and so it is as we look to stretch and grow through evolving our Shabbat practice. Edward Jenner jabbed some virus into the arm of 8-year-old James Phipps in England, and today, 230 years later, no one anywhere in the world needs to be vaccinated against smallpox.

Never belittle the little. Every small act has the potential to change global history.

I would love to hear about one of your small actions that you recognize as important for both yourself and others. Please write about it in the comment section of this post.

With Gratitude,

Alan

(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.