Dear Friends,
I hope you are well and managing this most difficult time.
As I introduced to you last week, my intention for this teshuva season is to focus these Erev Shabbos messages and more on the issue of sinat chinam, providing both food for thought and practical action points that can help us begin to demonstrate care for each other and ameliorate our nation’s divisions by adjusting both our thinking and actions. I hope that you will find this meaningful and helpful, add your own energies to this effort, and ask you to please be in touch to contribute your own thoughts and ideas.
The message below was shared as well with the broader OU community.
Rosh Chodesh Elul is when we begin to undertake serious reflection on the challenges of the past year and the opportunities and goals of the future. The current discord and rifts within Klal Yisrael pose a huge challenge, undermining our fundamental identification as goy echad ba’aretz and visibly affecting our ability to work together, benefit from each other, influence each other, and stand together as a unified community to confront our many external challenges. Seeing what is happening, some have gone so far as to say we are choosing to self-destruct, Heaven forbid. And those are just the issues that grab the headlines, the dramatic discord bringing protesters to the streets and segmenting our communities.
It does not end there – and it may not start there. We have no boundaries within ourselves; what we do in the public sphere we will also do in our personal relationships. A respected Rav once took an accounting of the time he spent counseling and supporting the members of his community and discovered that most of the issues he was helping them with were not heaven-sent occurrences of illness and death but man-made conflicts between spouses, relatives, neighbors, and colleagues. Moshe Rabbeinu bemoaned the fact that the interminable quarreling that we engaged in necessitated the appointment of a judge for every ten people (see Sforno Devarim 1:12). Too often we hear that it is hard to work with or do business within the community, that we may be insufficiently fair or gracious. We are voluntarily introducing difficulty and suffering into our lives.
The second Beit Mikdash was destroyed even though Jews were engaged in Torah, mitzvot, and acts of kindness, due to the prevalence of sinat chinam, vain hatred. That hatred was manifest in matters both communal and personal, in the sectarianism that corrupted Jewish life, the political divisions between the peacemakers and the war-mongering baryonim, and the petty interpersonal arguments such as the infamous wedding invitation mistakenly sent to Bar Kamtza (Gittin 55b). Once we make the critical decision to embrace conflict, we will find it everywhere.
It is therefore worthwhile to shift gears away from arguing and towards caring, to become students of Aharon who loved peace and pursued it, loved people and brought them closer to Torah (Avot 1:12). We need to grapple with the big and the small, refining how we deal with both the big picture ideological and political rifts as well as our personal relationships and interactions, understanding that improvement in one will enhance the other.
I, for one, plan to start small, by putting away my ear pods when walking in streets and hallways and noticing and acknowledging the people around me. This seems like a good first step, an opportunity to demonstrate and authentically feel some of the love for people that is characteristic of Aharon’s passionate pursuit of peace.
As a communal Rav, I developed a conscious and simple habit. When visiting hospitals and nursing homes, grim and busy places, I tried to smile at everyone I saw in the halls, whether medical staff or orderlies, patients or their family members. While some were too busy to notice or had their own earphones in, it was wonderful to see the impact on others of simply being noticed and acknowledged and it deepened my own care for others.
There are two similar statements in Pirkei Avot, Shammai’s teaching (1:16) that one should be “mekabel kol ha’adam b’sever panim yafot — greet each person with a pleasant face,” and Rabbi Yishmael’s teaching (3:12) that one should be “mekabel kol adam b’simchah — greet every person with joy.” Which is it? With a pleasant countenance or with joy? Rav Leib Nekritz of the Novardok school of Mussar explained beautifully and simply that the pleasant face Shammai directed us to put on is to gladden and uplift the other, while Rabbi Yishmael guided us to feel the happiness of seeing a fellow Jew and to let the greeting bring us authentic joy.
That is my first commitment to action. Rather than resolve the national debate over a hostage deal, I will start small, focusing outside of myself so I can try to notice and care for others a bit more. It cannot end there. There are serious issues that cannot be avoided. But perhaps by beginning to passionately pursue peace and show love for others, the greater peace we all seek will get a bit closer.
And please, do me one favor. If you see me walking around with my ear pods in, I would appreciate if you would smile at me and remind me to take them out.
Have a wonderful Shabbos and may we be blessed to hear besoros tovos, very good news.
Moshe Hauer
PS: For those who wish to see something on the Parsha, please see the Dvar Torah below which has much relevance to this same theme.
The Mizrach Wall
Do you have any idea how hard it is for your rabbi to concentrate on his Davening?
Kavana – the maintenance of clear focus during tefillah – is a universal challenge, but at least everyone else is pointed in the right direction. Rabbis, on the other hand, sit on the mizrach vant, the eastern wall, and spend most of davening looking out at the people. As Rambam taught (Hilchot Tefillah 11:4):
“How do the people sit in batei knesset? The elders sit facing the people with their back to the heichal (ark, aron hakodesh), while the people sit row after row with each row facing the back of the preceding row such that all the people face the kodesh and the elders.”
The reason for the rabbis on the mizrach wall facing out is understood by some as inspirational, providing the community with an instructive model of prayer; by others (see Rabbeinu Manoach on the Rambam) as disciplinary, inducing good communal behavior under the elders’ watchful eyes; and by others as an expression of respect towards the community, demonstrating that the leaders do not “turn their backs” on the community they serve. Whatever the reason, the result is built-in davening distraction as the rabbis – rather than praying with the exalted image of the holy ark before their eyes – daven facing a roomful of tzarot, unresolved issues and unreturned phone calls.
There is, however, an additional perspective that views this seating arrangement as an opportunity to focus the prayer experience of one who assumes any level of responsibility for the community.
When Yitzchak prayed for Rivkah, the Torah describes him as praying l’nochach ishto, opposite – or facing – his wife (Bereishis 25:21). Radak suggests that he faced her to induce kavana, to be reminded of her challenges and thus focus his prayers appropriately. The elders similarly face the community during prayer because it is their community’s “issues” that are to be the focus of the elders’ prayers. While individuals bring their own issues – their or their family members’ personal needs and preoccupations – to Hashem, those who bear communal responsibility are expected to be preoccupied with the community’s individual and collective needs and must approach Hashem with those needs on top of their minds. Facing the community does not distract; it induces proper focus.
Our Parsha concludes with the Eglah Arufah ritual to be conducted upon discovery of a murder victim (Devarim 21:1-9). As part of that ritual, the elders of the city declare that they did not spill his blood (21:7). The mishnah (Sotah 9:5) explains that while the elders never topped the list of suspected killers, what they were really saying was that they had been attentive to this person’s needs and had not allowed him to pass through the city without feeding him and providing him with company. Had they done so, the victim’s death would evidently be their responsibility.
That is why the elders of the community sit facing the people and not the holy ark. That is the ultimate reminder that while the rabbis are surely responsible for elevating the community spiritually and for helping them turn to G-d in prayer and study His Torah, their first responsibility is to look out at their people and ensure that they are taken care of, that they will be okay. For the Rav, the people are not a distraction but rather the focus of his life and his tefillah.
Moshe Hauer