Making Things Sit Well

Making Things Sit Well

We will now go one step further in our work towards self-change.

The trouble with trying to change

There are many important things which we want to change in our lives. Here are some examples; Tefilla, Learning Torah, Bein Adam L’Chaveiro, Ribis, Sheker, etc.

We need to acknowledge that there is a compelling internal reason for why we have not yet made a change in our lives in these areas. To change would be to take the complex balanced chaos of our lives and take a new path. That is impossible to do! We fool ourselves to think that we can simply “decide” to change. But life experience shows us that decisions do not work. Decisions are motivated from willpower. While it is true that the will of a person has strength, the sad reality is that it doesn’t work to effect change in our lives.

We don’t want to admit this because we feel guilty to admit that “will” doesn’t work so we tell ourselves that we failed to change because we didn’t have enough willpower. However, the real reason it didn’t work is because willpower is not going to generate the life change we are discussing.

Yiras shomayim and willpower is not enough

R’ Yisroel Salanter brings a list of things which disturb our behavior and concludes that yiras shomayim will solve all of these problems and generate the middos change we are looking for. He continues to say that if we only rely on yiras shomayim we will not change because we do not have enough of it. Therefore he concludes that we need to also take motivation from other areas! This is a fundamental point in mussar. 

Our personal take away from this R’ Yisroel Salanter is that sometimes we need to be creative and take other methods towards change, which together with yiras shomayim will result in success. This should be a very freeing feeling for all of us who walk around hanging our heads low thinking that the reason we are not changing is because we don’t have “enough yiras shomayim.” R’ Yisroel just freed us from this guilt and told us that it isn’t that we don’t have enough yiras shomayim or willpower, it is that we also need personal motivation from a different source.

Why willpower is not enough to make change

The reason willpower alone doesn’t work is because we also have an internal will working against the new willpower we are bringing to the table. After all, that is why we are doing teshuva! The truth is that we can exist with these two wills even though they are mutually exclusive. 

The classic misunderstanding of the Rambam’s law of the “inner will”

There is a popular teshuva fallacy that the inner spark of a person wants to do good and this is their kernel of teshuva which they bring out to light. This fallacy is based on the Rambam which brings the halacha that even though a get (divorce contract) is not valid if a person gives it under duress, if a person is beaten until he agrees to give the get, then it is valid, because deep down he wanted to give it. 

People think this means that deep down every Jew has an inner voice urging him to listen to Hashem and this is the inner spark which brings us to repentance. Yet if we think about it, this halacha is a poor proof of this theory. The husband did not do teshuva here!

The beating did not bring the teshuva out of him; he is not kissing the hands of the judges and thanking them for squeezing his inner holiness to his surface and that now he “sees the light” and is a changed person and eternally grateful that the judges saved him from his evil inclination. The Rambam literally tells us that the husband will protest after he gives the get and say “I was forced!” 

Rather we see from this Rambam that the inner will to do good will not turn a person into a changed man! It is an authentic inner will which has halachic ramifications but it does not change the person and turn him into a ba’al teshuva! So why are we all sticking our heads in the sand with this fallacy and saying the “will to change” is enough and pointing at this Rambam for the proof of it!? As we just showed, this Rambam proves the exact opposite point.

The force of ta’anug is what we need for change

Going back to our desire to change; we must know that there are powerful internal forces at play in our life maintaining our lifestyle inertia. In order to make change, we need to engage a deeper force within us than the force of “will.” This deeper force can be dubbed “having a gishmak in something.” This is the force within us which creates “will” itself. This is the foundational principle of the Ramchal in Mesillas Yesharim when he starts by saying that “a person is made to have ta’anug (pleasure) from Hashem.” Indeed, Chazal say that oneg is the highest thing in the world. 

Lashon hara as an example

So for example, when we come to work on lashon hara (gossip and slander), if we just try to stop speaking lashon hara through our willpower we will fail. However, if we intellectually acknowledge that speaking lashon hara reflects an attitude in which we view the person as an instrument for our own pleasure—seeing their life, pain, and mistakes as serving us—then we will be touching something very powerful indeed.

We need to first touch our place of “ta’anug,” best translated as “resonance” or “sitting well with me.” We need to realize that what the Torah commands us is a valuable perspective which we can incorporate. The Torah is asking that we not approach our friends and neighbors as instruments for our own pleasure, but rather we must change our attitude and approach them with an eye for how we can help them in their sorrow, pain, and life challenges! 

Food berachos as an example

As another example, we can take the mitzvah of making a bracha prior to eating. A non-religious person can struggle with this mitzvah. When it comes time for them to do teshuva and make a blessing on everything, it feels so alien! The first step for this person is that they need to acknowledge intellectually and it should sit well and resonate with them the Torah concept that “before I eat a food I should be thankful to the Creator for the food!” 

Shabbos as an example

So too when a person comes to begin keeping shabbos. This is a harder intellectual work than a blessing before eating. He needs to work to make the concept of shabbos sit well with him. R’ Chaim Volozhiner calls this “Amira N’eima” (the Word of God – which sits well within us). The sense of shabbos, or any mitzvah, needs to be that “it is a good thing to live with this mitzvah.”

Ribis as an example

In Eretz Yisroel there are many opportunities to avoid ribis (the sin of charging interest on a monetary loan). Yet there are many situations where it is really hard for a person to avoid this sin. For example a person who needs a loan to get a dental procedure done, it may be a sin for him to take a loan from his israeli bank on interest. Yet he simply cannot imagine his life without taking that loan so he uses a heter iska (a document which legalizes and redefines the loan as a type of partnership investment in which profits are permissible) which is a poor loophole in this particular case. This person’s teshuva would begin with acknowledging that “yes, I can live my life without taking this loan from the bank!” 

Making it sit well with us

So the secret to making the halacha sit well with us is to dive deeply into the Torah to reframe and understand what the halacha is asking from us in order to uncover what resonates and sits well with us about the mitzvah or aveira under discussion.

As an example, a non-religious Jew views shabbos as a burden, because they have not dug deep into what Hashem wants from the world out of shabbos. We can all do this with middos and bring out the “Amira N’eima” of the mitzvah. I gave a personal example about anger, that I can appreciate that living without anger is a good way to live. This means that I appreciate that having an attitude that in life not everything needs to go my way, is healthy and wholesome. 

In summary, our first step is not the “will to action”, but that we work on discovering how the halachic obligation sits well with us personally. R’ Yisroel Salanter sought to personally guide individuals on how to come to a recognition of how the halacha is liveable and makes sense to them as unique individuals. In essence, he showed them their path to teshuva. We keep failing in our teshuva endeavors because we keep skipping this foundational first step and jumping to the “will to action.”

A ba’al teshuva working on this fundamental first step we are discussing now is one who is still living in the old world of not keeping shabbos, but he is also now recognizing that keeping shabbos is a legitimate and liveable lifestyle. Now he sees both options as liveable in front of him, and he can use his willpower to choose the path of keeping shabbos. As we have said, just starting off with “I am obligated to keep it” is not going to do the trick.

A personal example

Here is a personal illustration of the need to learn the Torah obligation in depth and discover the obligation from a new angle, one which sits well and resonates with us. 

I realized that I need to do teshuva on the fact that I taught Torah in the public forum without measuring my words. I would speak off the cuff without having a plan of what I was going to say. People started quoting me and even building Torah and life frameworks off of my words. I realized that I need to do teshuva on being irresponsible in this way. 

How would I do teshuva? I decided I need to speak only after preparing clearly and having a source for everything. Yet I simply could not do it. My willpower could not change me. 

I realized I needed to deepen my understanding of what it means to “be responsible when speaking in the public forum.” It does not mean writing everything ahead of time and having a source for everything. I realized that if I take away my personality from my speeches and only quote from the books, then that would be the greatest disservice to what Hashem wants from me. So the question was how can I maintain my personality while still upholding my responsibility to the public. I began to deepen my understanding of what it means to have “a source in Torah” for what I say. That sat well with me. I still cheat, of course, but I was able to actually make solid change.   

Distinct from the secular way of change

Here we set ourselves apart from the secular world which is hyper focused on goal setting and achievement. That is not the Torah way, rather, we are looking for that which is sitting well and resonating with us.