Third Vaad Elul – Kabbala Ketana within our life routine

Over the next two vaadim we will try to find a mehalech to do teshuva in a pragmatic way. Nowadays people shy away from teshuva and do not believe in it. In the newspaper the headline call to action during Elul was “Tefilla and Tzedaka!” and left out “Teshuva!” 

We said last time that a person cannot do teshuva without reaching themselves and uncovering their “me.” This was too abstract. To make this concrete we need to understand from a practical standpoint what it means “where a person is.” 

Where a person is

Where a person is can be defined very simply as “his 24 hour life.” He needs to make teshuva there, with and within his 24 hour life. In Miktav 15 R’ Yisroel Salanter is dealing with a Jew who has a poor memory and is doing business all day. If we were to advise him how to do teshuva we would inject a torah seder into his life and tell him he can work less and give more time to Torah. R’ Yisroel Salanter however says to him “you uniquely are fit for learning Torah!” What R’ Yisroel Salanter is really saying is “do not change your life habits at all, and specifically there without changing your life habits, you are shayyich to Torah learning!” 

This is why our kabbala ketana never works, because we move our life around to perform the kabbala ketana and then after asseres yimey teshuva when life comes back to its normal schedule we cannot maintain the kabbala ketana! How pitiful it is to see us each year laboriously change our life around and then foolishly applaud ourselves for doing teshuva, when the truth is that this strenuous and unwieldy change is not touching our life because our life is our 24 hours! To be successful we must find a kabbala ketana which does not change our life around. Only when we keep our life the way it is do we have teshuva! 

This takes Emunah

Emunah means that a bigger thing can reveal itself in our reality. It means that within our reality we are shayyich to something bigger. Emunah rejects our assumption that we need to push away our reality in order that kedusha should be present.

Shalom Bayis Example

There was once a newly married man who was ready to divorce his wife. He was driving me around and I tried convincing him that it really wasn’t such a terrible situation which he was describing to me. He was not convinced. I then asked him who wakes up first in the morning, him or his wife? He said he does. So I told him that I also do, and when I get up in the morning before I leave, I put some water in the kettle, and some instant coffee in a mug with the fresh milk next to it for my wife to know I thought of her that morning even though I didn’t see her. He was able to implement something similar to this in his own home and today he is still married to the same woman and together they are raising a fine family. This was an implementation of something which did not change his life around, it worked within his life.

This is different than what we always think, we always think “I hate my wife, so I need to fix it with monthly quality time with her – sit smiling for an hour with her.” This does not change our life. It simply moves around life and puts something special in the one hour slot we just made. It doesn’t provide the change we need. 

To change our life we need to keep our life as it is. When we don’t think that kedusha can enter our life, then we have a problem with emunah. It is a mistake when we think that as a kollel avrech the Torah exclusively belongs to us and not to the balei batim. We don’t realize how big the Torah is that it can even find a place by the balei batim! We think the Torah is so small that it is only shayyich to us!

In the end of parshas Ki Savo when Moshe wanted to give the Torah only to Shevet Levi and then Klal Yisroel came and said they want it for themselves, not through Shevet Levi, Moshe said “now I know, you didn’t have hearts and eyes and ears until now.” Meaning that Klal Yisroel was saying “we have shaychus to Torah even as weak minded laymen, the kedushas HaTorah can reveal itself even in our life!”

What a Kabbala Ketana really means

Everyone assumes that in principle teshuva means doing something big, however since we are realistically unable to, we are forced to settle and do something small. 

Now we see that this assumption is incorrect, and rather a kabbala ketana is effective precisely because it is gentle enough not to move our life around. We are not arduously creating a “someone else” for 15 minutes a day during asseres yimey teshuva which then disappears when “we” return after yom kippor. Rather we are keeping our identity and finding a kabbala ketana within our 24 hour life.

Learning Mussar on the Kabbala Ketana

Rav Yisroel Salanter says we need to learn mussar about that kabbala ketana in order to make it important. This is because we will inevitably judge a kabbala ketana which doesn’t take much effort to maintain as an unimportant thing. This is why we need to learn mussar, to reveal to ourselves that this seamless integration of our kabbala ketana into our daily routine is an important thing which will change our life!

Another Shalom Bayis Example

Someone came to me and it was such a tragedy that I turned white! He was steeped in terrible sins and he wanted to get out. I asked him “do you have shalom bayis at home?” and he said that he does. He was a teacher and said he calls home at lunchtime. I told him “you need to call home sporadically, like every smoke break, five times a day. Mundane talk about family and life and the kids, etc.” It did not move his life at all. It was easy to incorporate for him. This guy never did that terrible sin again. Had I rebuked him “You need to turn your life upside down for these chiyuvey kares you are doing!!” it would have had no impact. After all, he already rebuked himself to no avail, that is why he came to me.

A Tefilla Example

Someone came to me, a very intellectual thinker. He wanted to work on tefilla which was so boring to him. I said to him “should we drive down to the heart of the matter and discuss your issues with emunah? Or should I give you a practical way to do tefilla properly?” As an intellectual thinker he said he wants to go to the source of his problems. But really the second way is the better way, because there he would already be davening in his life. He would be doing it.

Another Tefilla Example

Two days ago a person who is completely exempt from davening came to me. He wants to daven. I told him “daven before you put the kids to bed that you should be able to put them to bed nicely.” Isn’t that the advice we give women? Something which does not interfere with our life and then the kabbala ketana will be able to change us and grow us.

Next Week

Next week we will discuss how to think creatively to uncover the proper kabbala ketana we need in our life.