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Dear Rabbi Abrams and Talmudim:
I have a question. It is timely perhaps with the secular time of the year. In Talmudic Rabbinic Judaism it is a daily concern.
We are read of New Year's resolutions. Many resolve to stop smoking, or stop over eating, or stop drinking, or be nicer to their loved ones, and the list is endless. And many can stick to these ideals for a month or so, but eventually fall back to old patterns. A few lucky ones, can continue for their lives.
Why do we as Jews walk to flowing water on Rosh Ha Shana and throw bread into it, during the Tashlik ceremony, symbolizing casting away our defects, yet walk back up to dry land, with the same defects, resentments, and selfish thoughts, that we just supposedly cast away? Did the bread jump back into our pockets? We can symbolically clean our homes of every crumb of chometz pre Passover, but that bread in our pocket of our defects, be it Tasklik during the Jewish New Year, or during the secular New Year, doesn't want to leave.
What is the Talmudic step are we not performing, before Tashlik, or before making these December 31 resolutions?
The Chassidim say : ''The virtue of angels is that they cannot deteriorate; their flaw is that they cannot improve. Humanity's flaw is that we can deteriorate; but our virtue is that we can improve.'' We read : "Repentance: a fierce battle with the heart." [ Orhot Tzaddikim, 15C] and "Even if you be otherwise perfect, you fail without humility''. [ Talmud: Kalla Rabbati] and ''How is one proved to be a true penitent? Said Rabbi Judah: If the opportunity to commit the same sin presents itself on two occasions, and he does not yield to it.'' [ Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86b]
Is that we are not doing the Talmudic steps of a complete moral inventory or a complete confession of our defects? Is it that we are missing the invaluable step of truly making teshuvah (repentance) to those we have harmed with our defects and resentments? Is it that in the longest journey in life, from the head to the heart, we truly do not find that which we state we which to cast away objectionable, and still wish to hold on to them, hence blocking that channel from our minds to our heart, but also block us from having a channel open to G!D, our Healer. Instead of being nevi (open...also the Hebrew word for prophet,) we are still narrow, (mitzriam, the Hebrew word for Egypt), and still wish to be in a bondage they we ourselves have created.
Is it that we lack humility, and truly do not have belief, faith and trust in G!D and try to depend on our own finite will power, instead of accessing G!D's healing infinite power, and hence we are doomed for failure, as the evil inclination, is greater than an one human?
I am interested in how my fellow Talmudim have grown, and continue to grow, and what Rabbi Abrams believes that Rabbinic Talmudic Judaism specifically speaks to us so that New Years resolutions, be they at Tashlik or on December 31, work.
Todah Rabbah.
Happy New Year.
Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal
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