Living With Kedusha – Shmiras Einayim

Kedushah is not about removing taavos

The normal issues that we need to deal with are taavos achila and taavos nashim. We think that the way to work on kedushah is to get rid of these taavos. We think that we need to throw them out of the window. But we cannot, because they are a normal part of every healthy person’s life. Even if we work hard to remove them and we convince ourselves that we have succeeded in removing them, this is not the case. They are still sleeping happily under the rug.

Anyway, we see that the life of a good Jew requires taavos. On Pesach we eat matzah leteavon, with an appetite. Also, we make birchas hanehenin-clearly, we are supposed to get pleasure from our eating.

(We will not be discussing kedushah in regards to unnatural taavos. Examples of such taavos are taking drugs and other such stimulants which make changes to your brain, to make you feel happy. Also, bungee jumping where you get a thrill out of feeling that you are about to die and then you don’t. These are not relevant to kedushah as they are not necessary and are not part of normal living.

I was visiting a very Chareidi community and they were very proud of themselves. They had hired a lunar park for 2 days. One day for the men and one day for the women. I told them that a Chareidi person doesn’t need this. This is the wrong attitude. They are feeding their children these extreme feelings. This makes that the children now feel like they need these types of feelings and this is very hard to get rid of. There is no such thing as a glatt kosher lunar park!

For this reason, R Yisroel Salanta says that a ben aliyah should stay away from creating extreme and unnatural feelings in oneself since they are very hard to satisfy and will drive a person crazy as they cannot find similar feelings of excitement elsewhere in the world.)

Kedushah is a tosefes

So, what is the real definition of kedushah?

Kedushah is called a tosefes. A tosefes means an addition.

The addition that we mean when we refer to kedushah is very different to the addition that we mean when we say for example that icing is an addition to a cake. Let us explain.

If you have a cake and then you add icing on the top, the icing is a tosefes. This means that before you added the icing, the cake was fine. To now spread icing on the top of the cake is to make an addition to a cake that was before, fine without it. This is called a tosefes. However, once you have added the icing, it is no longer characterized as a tosefes because it now becomes one entity with the cake-it’s an iced cake.

If Kedushah would be the same as the tosefes of icing then it would be the following: the world originally worked fine without kedushah and then Hashem added kedushah to the world. It’s true that the kedushah originally wasn’t needed and wasn’t a part of how the world worked. However, now that it has been added to the world, so it becomes a part of the world just like the rest of the world. So, it’s no longer really an addition. So why is it characterized as a tosefes even after that it has already been added? 

The tosefes of kedushah is something else. The simple world with all its animalistic taavos exists. Kedushah means to copy over the simple world, and to make a whole other world, but this time on a deeper level. This new world consists of all of the taavos copied over, but this time on a deeper level. We now have two separate worlds. One world is the original, simple world which remains as it always was. This is not affected by kedushah. The other world is the deeper world of kedushah.

Now we can understand why it is that kedushah is characterized as being a tosefes. It always remains a tosefes and never becomes one entity with the other simple world.

This is the way that the Chasam Sofer and also how the Nefesh Hachaim understand the essence of what kedushah is. This is not only the correct way of understanding kedushah. It also makes kedushah something suitable for us to work on. According to our definition our aim in working on kedushah is now no longer to get rid of taavos. They still exist in their world. Rather, our aim is to understand them in a deeper way in the other complete world of kedushah.

Now let us speak about taavos nashim which carries with it many challenges for us and for our children who are getting married. Shmiras eynayim is also very relevant to this.

All creatures are created by Hashem to have taavos nashim. We human beings are included in this. However, there is a major difference between us and animals.

Ponim el Ponim between humans

We have what is called ponim el ponim. This means that a husband and wife ‘turn’ (‘ponim’) to each other. The husband and wife are not looking at each other but rather they are turning towards the other one’s turning. This means that they are interested in seeing the other one turning to them. In other words, they want to see that the other one is happy with them.

The animal kingdom does not have this ponim el ponim. Take for example the king of the animals-the lion. When he comes to a gathering of lionesses (whose male lion leader has died and he comes to take control of them), what does he do? He either kills or eats all the cubs, so much so, that the mothers need to try and hide their cubs from him. Isn’t he a nice husband?!

Why does the lion do this? This could be understood in a superficial way. He behaves like this since he is selfish. Therefore, all he wants is his satisfaction and therefore he does not give or care for the other female lions. This is not the correct explanation.

The real reason why he behaves like this is simply because he has no interest in others. He has no ponim el ponim. He is not interested in his wife being happy with him. Therefore, he is not concerned what she will make of his violent behaviour.

Why does a husband give his wife flowers? If it’s so that she will make for him a better cholent then he is no better than an animal. The real reason why he gives her the flowers is so as to get a smile. He wants her smile, to show him that she is happy with him. He has a taavah that his wife should be happy with him. Receiving this from her excites him. This is the higher level of taavas nashim.

The women donated their mirrors for the work in the mishkan. Rashi says that Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t want to accept them as mirrors connote physicality and taavos etc. and they are not suitable to be used in the Mishkan. Hashem says back to Moshe that these mirrors are the best things to use.

These mirrors are what the women used in Mitzrayim to help their husbands. They used to look in the mirror together with their husbands and they said ‘ani noeh mimcha’. This is commonly understood to mean that the wives were telling their husbands that they are more beautiful than them. But, when was the last time that you heard of a beauty contest between the two gendres?!

Rather, the explanation is as follows. The wives were telling their husbands that they were beautiful-not beautiful in physical form but rather that they were beautiful from that which they received ‘from you’-from the care and concern that their husbands gave to them. Through this the wives showed their husbands their happiness of being married to them. This is the type of beauty which excited the men. 

Knowing that their wives were pleased and happy with them, this was the beauty that the men in Mitzrayim desired. This is the taavos nashim that we are speaking about. This is taavos nashim of kedushah. Men want to know that their wives are happy with them and similarly wives want to know that their husbands are pleased with them.

If a husband works on developing this taavah of kedushah, then he will not feel like he is missing out from the taavas nashim on the street. The two taavos are not really different. They are like the same violin- just being played by two different people. The taavah of the street is shallow and animalistic. The ‘violin player’ of taavos nashim of kedushah is a different person. He is much deeper. He is using the same violin, just that he is finding the greater depth that the violin has to offer. He is not being deprived at all. He is fulfilling the same taavah, just in a much deeper way.

Even very chashuvah 60 year olds still have this animalistic taavas nashim in themselves. The avodah of developing the kedushah of tavaas nashim is not to get rid of this animalistic drive. We are not trying to say that these drives are stupidity and not really anything. They are real taavos that we all have. Our avodah is to work on not going for this low level of taavah but rather to develop within ourselves the interest for the deeper level of taavas nashim.

Such a person who works on this will be helped greatly in his shmiras eynayim. When he sees the other gendre, he knows that he has no ponim el ponim with them. He knows that he has a wife at home who is far happier with him in their relationship than any of these other women could offer him. Such a relationship means that his wife will be shielding him from all other women in the world. The excitement and taavah that he gets from her is incomparable.

This work on kedushah is very workable. We accept the fact that we still always have the animalistic taavos within ourselves. We do not need to get rid of them. All that we need to do is to be the person, who with his kedushah develops the deeper level of the taavah.

Q&A at the end of the shiur

Q. When you are working hard on something is there an idea of taking a break and watching a movie etc.?

A. You should not break out from the avodah you are working on. However, your brain needs some rest. For example, I work very hard working out and writing up my chiddushim. I then type it up on a type writer. This is not very hard. It is a bit of a rest but I still stay within my learning.

Q. Chazal say that a husband shouldn’t be with his wife like a chicken (shouldn’t spend too much time with her). How does this fit with the shiur?

A. R Akiva Eiger shortly after his wife was niftar, was suggested a shidduch. He said how do you expect me to get married to another woman so soon? I spent hours in the night discussing avodas Hashem with her. Gedolei Olam, R Chaim Kanievsky and R Aron Leib all had very good contact with their wives- making jokes etc. You are supposed to spend time with her and get from her how she relates to what you say. The way I explaind the mehalech in the shiur- a chicken is not able to do this. They just relate in a bodily way. I am speaking about relating with depth.

Q. The mehalech that has been set up in the shiur will take a long time to achieve. In the meantime what can we work on to help?

A. There is an over exaggerated interest in the world nowadays. People feel second class citizens if they do not know all the news. Looking at pritzus is connected with this curiosity. If a person can calm down this extreme interest in what’s going on around them, then this will help very much in regards to their taavos nashim.

Q. Wouldn’t ligging in your learning also help in this area?

A. Yes but it’s a very hard avodah. For a person to be at the level whereby it’s so hard to pull himself away from his learning, is a very high level.