How Do We react in an Educational Way to the Reality in Israel

How do we react educationally to the reality in Israel?

We are going to think about a basic point in avodas Hashem, in light of the tragedies that are currently happening in Eretz Yisroel.

Basic Emunah

Our basic Emunah is that everything that happens is what Hashem wants. The basic Emunah also says that what Hashem wants depends on our actions. If so, this means that what is currently happening must be based on our actions. Our natural reaction to this is that we must become more devoted in our avodas Hashem and that we must strengthen ourselves in our limud hatorah, for example, to learn for an extra half an hour each day, in order to make Hashem want to improve our situation.

One identical reaction

We find that this reaction of increasing learning time or davening with more devotion is the identical reaction that we have for all different bad events that occur. Regardless of whether the trouble in which we find ourselves is on the scale of the tragedy that we are seeing in Eretz Yisroel, with so many soldiers fighting on the front line, together with all the tragedies that accompany this- all the almonos and yesomim and injuries that are being caused, or whether we experience a much less problematic situation, such as someone we know that broke his/her leg and needs to undergo surgery- we nevertheless react in exactly the same way.

How can it be that we only have one such reaction- to increase our learning and to improve our devotion to davening- for every bad situation? This suggests that there must be a problem with this reaction.

So what is the correct approach on how to react correctly?

Resembling the soldiers

There is one such correct response, called noseh b’ol chaveiro, which means that we share the pain that others are going through. However, this is not the only correct reaction. In addition, we should look at the type of work that our brothers, in the army, are doing. We should then work to resemble this in our actions.

You might think that this means that we need to rent a big hall for all avreichim to come and sleep there on mattresses, learning 20 hours a day, just like the soldiers who are displaced from their houses having no real beds to sleep on, who are not sleeping and who are working almost the entire day. This also is not exactly the correct reaction.

Internal changes

Our response to this situation (and other similar situations) is not to make big, extreme and outwardly recognizable changes. The Mashgiach said that if he opened up a yeshivah, he would run it under the slogan of hatzneah leches im elokecha (to run the yeshivah with the focus on improving the internal state of the talmidim and not on their external actions). The ideal chinuch (the education to most effectively build people up for their avodas Hashem) in yeshivahs, is to build the talmidim in a way that their building is internal and not seen. In other words, the focus in our chinuch should be on the penimius.

I want to prove this idea that our avodah needs to be done in the penimius, and not externally from the Vilna Gaon in his peirush on Mishlei, perek 2, possuk 7. The possuk says that ‘yitzpon layeshorim tushia’– ‘the straight people will hide, they will be weakened’. The Gaon explains that the Torah is mateshes (weakens) the koach of those who are working on breaking their taavos and middos, according to the Torah. This means that the Torah demands a person to go beyond his normal abilities. He therefore needs more kochos in order to be equipped to fulfil what the Torah wants from him. How can he do this? We think that if he needs more than what he has until now, the only way to find new ways to deal with these demands is in external ways (since he currently has no inner kochos to satisfactorily deal with the demands).

The Gaon says though that the word ‘yitzpon’– hidden means ‘neelam balev’- hidden in his heart.

If the solution would just be to pressure himself and push his normal kochos more than normal, then he would need to learn for extra hours- but this would only be a change in his external state. The Gaon however is telling us something else. Instead, he needs to make changes within himself, where it is hidden. He needs to build new kochos within himself.

However, when we talk about the penimius, do not think that we are talking about becoming just penimius and losing our external state. I know people who are very focused on just penimius and ironically they do not have any content inside them. They are not interesting to speak to. This is not what we are looking to create. We want to create a chinuch whereby we look like anyone else externally, but our internal is rich and filled with content.

Building a second floor within ourselves

So how are we hoping to build the talmidim in yeshivah? We want to build a building which has not only one floor to it but two floors! We want to build people who are built up not just from the kochos that they are used to using but have other kochos which work even when the person is outside of their comfort zone. This is the way in which we will work to resemble the soldiers.

R Moshe Hillel Hirsch shlitah recently said that in our current situation, we need a mahpeicha (a transformation). This is commonly misunderstood to mean that we need to change the whole yeshivah system externally. This is not what he meant. This would be a mistake in the whole chinuch system. We do not need to, and we cannot change the whole system. Instead, what we need to do is to add a new floor to our buildings. We need to find new kochos which work on a higher level and this will give us a new dimension of an additional higher floor.  

Let’s look at an example of somebody who is trying to learn how to daven the first brochah of the shemoneh esrei with kavonah. He cannot do this overnight. Firstly, he needs to learn how to acquire the koach hanefesh of menuchas hanefesh. This will take at least half a year. He then needs to acquire the koach hanefesh of rikuz hamachshavah (concentration). This will take at least another half a year. These kochos hanefesh do not naturally exist in his one-floor building. Therefore, he first needs to build a second floor with these new kochos hanefesh.

If a person wants to go straight to davening the first brochah with kavonah, without first developing within himself new kochos, this is impossible. He would just look like certain people who try and daven the first brochah very slowly because they have just read what Reb Chaim Soloveitchik says about the kavonah for this brochah, but who only externally do this, without understanding what are the kavonahs they need. These people fail to work on acquiring the inner kochos hanefesh that are needed.

Avodas Hashem

To work on new kochos which are demanded, this is avodas Hashem. Avodas Hashem means that you are working outside of your ‘comfort zone’- developing new kochos that you have never before worked on.

When you learn the very hard Tosefos of lefichach in Baba Basra do you have a special method of how to learn it? When you are tired, do you have a different way of learning compared to how you normally learn when you are not tired? You do not! You only have one way of learning!

We are very limited. We need to develop within ourselves different ways of learning and different ways of doing our avodas Hashem with different and new kochos hanefesh which we are not used to.

The way to find new kochos hanefesh, based on the centrality of Torah in our lives

The method of how we can keep growing and finding new kochos hanefesh is based on one idea. We must make the demands of the Torah central in our lives. These demands need to stay fixed in front of our eyes the whole time, without going away from us for even a moment. Doing this will force us to find new layers and kochos within us, that until now we didn’t know about, and use them to be able to fulfil the constant demand from Torah that exists at all times and in all varieties of situations.

When the sifrei mussar say that if we do badly then we will get gehennom, their intention is not to scare us. Rather, they aim to tell us how greatly we are obligated in the demands of the Torah and how much we need to make it central in our lives. If we think of the demands of the Torah as being flexible, then we will not see the need to build in ourselves this ‘higher floor’ to be able to fulfil the Torah. We will instead just see how to fit Torah into our pre-existing lives with our pre-existing kochos.

The mahpecha that we need to do in our current situation needs to be done inside of ourselves and not just in external actions.