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2. We all sin. How do we feel after we have done wrong? Do we rationalize and try to make ourselves feel better? If one sins and then is genuinely ashamed of what they did (boshet) that sin is forgiven! (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 12)
3. One who answers ''Yehai shmay Rabba'' during Kadish with all their strength, any evil decree will be annulled. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbath 119). If the ''Yehai shmay Rabba'' is said at the Kadish following a shiur (a Talmud lecture) than all sins are forgiven. (Midrash Kohelet Rabba 9)
4. If one keeps Shabbat carefully, even idol worship will be forgiven. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Shabbat 118)
5. Golut (Diaspora... or having to leave our place of comfort) atones all sins. (Talmud Bavli Tractate Sanhedrin 37). We all have our little exiles. If one has Golut in mind while walking to synagogue during inclement weather or even if while being deposed from ones regular seat in the synagogue one's sins are forgiven. (The Pele Yoetz, Rabbi Eliezer Papo, a major exponent of the musar (ethics) tradition. Born in Sarajevo in 1785 )
6. "With kindness and truth sins are forgiven" (Proverbs 15: 6) Truth refers to the study of Torah (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 5) There is no better way to strengthen our relationship with Ha Shem than by studying His Torah daily... even just a commitment to read an on-line class such as this, or to study a bit more. A day should not go by that we don't take at least a few minutes to learn a bit of Torah.
Remember also, as you read in our last week's class, that this is NOT the Jewish new year. This is humanity's New Year. The Jewish New is the month of Nissan, the first month, at Passover. Tishrai in our 7th month. We are celebrating Adam and Eve's birthday on the 6th day of creation. We are to be reminded that we all have one set of human parents, one Divine Parent, we are all brothers and sisters, no group,tribe, religion, nation, is better than the next, and we should all treat each other accordingly.
"Happy is the man that trusts in God," reads Psalm 84:13. "Raise a shout to the Lord, all the earth, break into joyous songs of praise!" reads Psalm 98:4. "I will walk quickly in the way of Your teaching, because You have given me a free heart," reads Psalm 119:32.
Over and over in this class you have been shown that by doing God's most simple will, your life will lose its angst, fears, worries, anxieties, resentments, grudges, hates and jealousies. You will no longer covet. You will be rid of your character defects, selfishness, self-centeredness, self-seeking, low self-esteem, self-pity and confusion. Your life will no longer lack meaning and you will no longer be at odds with others. You will be integrated.
You have seen in your own handwriting that you held the key to the bondage of ego. You have freed yourself from it by following a few simple steps, set down for us by the sages thousands of years ago. I have only been your guide, your sherpa, your rabbi. You have done the work with God's invaluable aid. You are free to live a life of joy and happiness and you know what true shalom means.
When you understand God's love for you and begin to allow yourself to experience His love, your life changes for the better. You now reciprocate by loving God, as the V'ahavtah asks. You do this, not with blind faith, but by using the greatest gift God has given you. This gift is your intellect. Your life will grow spiritually.
Psychologists say that the average person has 60,000 thoughts per day. If you categorized your thoughts before taking the path laid out in this text, what would a typical 24 hours look like? What had you been thinking about? Were your thoughts about problems, pain, un-forgiveness, worry, work issues, hatred, wayward children, marital issues, sickness, resentment, and frustration? What do you think about now?
Those same psychologists also say that of the 60,000 thoughts the average person thinks in a day, more than 80% are negative! What were your thoughts before doing the work outlined in this book? As you have learned, you need to think positively and you achieve such by seeing God's abundance, and blessing Him many times every day. It is the love of God, which leads us to the love of our fellows, which sustains us and keeps us joyous and happy.
The Kabbalists teach that the Hebrew word for love, "Ahav," consists of the letters "Aleph", "Hei" and "Beit." These letters, Kabbalistically, show us how to love. Aleph is the first letter of the alphabet. This represents that you need to love God first before you can truly love your fellows. It is easy to love people whom you like without God's aid. However, God's help is needed to love someone that you don't like.
Hei is the fifth letter and stands for the Five Books of Moses. This is Torah, which God gave us to lead a happy life. It is also is the first letter of Hesed (also Chesed), which means "kindness." The Talmud teaches that Torah begins and ends with kindness. God clothed Adam and Eve and God buried Moses. The kinder you are to your fellows, the more you show your love for God. Conversely the crueler you are to your fellows, even by holding a grudge, you separate yourself from God.
The last letter of Ahav is "beit." This letter stands for house (bayet, or beth) and is also the first letter in the Torah, Beresheit. Being the second letter, it reminds us of a duo. We are not alone. God is always with us. And further, our purpose in life is to help repair the world, tikkun olam, as His junior partner.
Our feelings are symptoms of the way we think. A big problem with that is most people think that they are unloved. They think that God doesn't really love them. Before beginning our spiritual renewal journey, some of us were these people. Some also used to believe that they were unlovable. Our emotions were based upon our thoughts or preconceived ideas and this affected our actions. People tend to treat others according to the way they feel when not spiritually connected, Rabbi D. Rendelman opines.
What this means is that when people treat others rudely, it's because they are not feeling loved! They are disconnected from God and are thus spiritually deficient, but they do not realize it. When one acts rudely to someone, it is proof that one is not focused. One is not thinking mindfully with God throughout one's day. Teshuvah need to be made. This person need to immediately take a time out, get into prayer and meditation and get refocused. If you feel loved by God and grateful to Him for your cup overflowing, you will treat all people with God's love.
Understand that if you are not feeling the love of God, your emotions will stop His ahavah from filling your life. If you stop, pray, meditate, think, bless, do a mid-day chesbon ha nefesh katon and reconnect with God's ahavah, your emotions will reflect His ahavah. Your actions will follow your thinking.
People see God through your ahavah. We are to know and experience the ahavah of God and keep His love before us at all times. Once your mind is conformed to God's ahavah then you will be able to show God's love to others.
"Love your fellow as yourself" is an extension of "And you shall love the Lord your God" (Deut .6:5). Loving your fellows is loving God, for one's fellow contains within himself a "part of God above" (Job 31:2). By loving one's fellow, the innermost part of him, one loves God (Rabbi
Now that you know the Jewish Spiritual Renewal steps, you understand that it is an ongoing process of spiritual growth, study, becoming better at prayer and meditation and getting closer and closer to God. You will never be perfect as you were not made like saints or angels. You should therefore not expect the world to treat you as such.
"Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian," stated Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. "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," says an old Chasidic proverb.
As a spiritual Jew you will always be improving and stumbling. You may take five steps forward and two back, then four steps forward. You are moving forward spiritually, as long as you do your daily chesbon ha nefesh katon, the small daily accounting of your soul. Rabbi Elimelech of Lezinsk said, "A person is born only for the purpose of perfecting his nature." The Midrash says, "There is no real joy except joy of wisdom...if there is wisdom in a person, this person studies mussar (spiritual self improvement). If the person has no wisdom in him, he is not able to learn mussar" (Yalkut Mishlay 909).
The Talmud Bavli (Tractate Bava Basra 10b) tells us that this is an "upside-down world" in which "rich, arrogant, powerful people are considered important." Things are not much different in our world today than in
You have taken this course and have done the work. One may decide, however, to turn one's back on these teachings and re-enter the rat race. One may still try to win the admiration of the rich, the arrogant and the powerful. God will still bless this person despite the individual's turning his back to God. However, egotistical people will abandon anyone whose stock portfolio drops and cannot make the $50,000 yearly donation to their favorite charity. However, God's Gates of Renewal are always open.
A well-known story is told of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter (1810
These words hit Rabbi Salanter hard. He realized that these words were the secret to human growth. As long as the candle burns...as long as I am still alive…I can repair myself as a human being. Even someone older and set-in-their-ways can always work to improve as long as one still has the gift of life. Your primary purpose in life is to grow spiritually at all times.
"It is harder to change one bad character trait than to learn the complete Talmud. It is just as great a distance from knowing something to not knowing something as is the distance from knowing something in your head alone to internalizing it into your heart...As long as one is still alive, one can still work on perfecting himself." said Rabbi Yisrael Salanter. When your heart is connected with your mind, you have become integrated and you will know true shalom, shlema, wholeness and Oneness with God.
"The strongest trick in the storehouse of the yetzer ha ra (evil inclination) is to take what you know to be truth and make you come to have doubts about it. If you are not careful, this can cause you to come to sin even where you are spiritually strongest." (Duties of the Heart, Rabbi Ibn Pakudah, 1050 C.E.
Being happy, joyous and free does not mean being a Pollyanna and it doesn't mean that everything will be perfect in your life. It does mean you will learn that God controls the universe and that you can go with the flow of His universe. You can accept both good and bad things that come your way without changing your attitudes about life and of God. The more you grow spiritually, the more your evil inclination wants you to fail, as your ego does not want to die.
The Torah (Deut. 21:10) reads, "Kee saytzay la milchomo al oyvecho (when you go out to war against your enemies)." Hebrew, depending on whether one is addressing one person or more than one has separate singular and plural forms of expressing "you." In this verse Moses is talking to the Hebrew people. Moses should use the plural "saytzu" (you go out) as if he were speaking to many, but the Torah uses the singular "saytzay" (you go out) as if Moses were talking to only one person. The commentaries explain that the Torah is saying that the basic war in life is the individual's war against his number one enemy, the yetzer ha ra within. The yetzer ha ra strives to keep each person's Jewish Spirituality down by keeping his ego alive. The yetzer ha ra has the individual do his own will. This leads one to negative actions due to character defects. This leads one farther away from God and mitzvoth.
This is why in this program of Jewish Spiritual Renewal, as soon as you did your Chesbon ha Nefesh Gadol, you began doing a Chesbon Katon each night. This is why this program is not just Shabbat or holiday oriented, as are most of today's synagogues. Your ego, your yetzer ha ra, is always trying to lead you astray. It will speak to you loudly. Your yetzer ha tov doesn't speak as loudly. It is what Elijah called "a still small voice" (1 Kings 19: 12) inside of you, that you must purposely access via prayer and meditation, walking with God consciously throughout the day, and by daily spiritual growth.
One character trait that you can work on that will continue to keep you happy, joyous and free is humility. Humility is the removal of the wall between you and others, whether it is God or other people. Humility lets your heart and mind "make room and let the other in." Conversely, arrogance and resentment let no one into your mind and heart except you. Humility is the negation of ego and self-centeredness. You can only attain humility with God's aid because He created you with ego.
Other character traits discussed in this book are the love and awe of God and chesed (kindness). You need to develop zeal or in other words non-procrastination. The first law in the Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) is, "Strengthen yourself like a lion to wake up in the morning to serve the Creator." The Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim 4a reads, "The zealous are quick to do mitzvoth."
You need to be good-hearted, just, and respectful of others. You need to be compassionate and not judgmental and always give the benefit of the doubt. You need to be patient, forgiving, and slow to anger. You have to learn that you can live without having your way. God will provide what you need, so if a friend wants to see movie X and you want to see movie Y, go see movie X.
As this chapter implies, a character trait to develop is one of happiness and joy. Things will not make you happy. We have all met the guy who is in love with his new boat. A week later he is miserable again so he buys a new Harley. Now he is happy again...until another week passes. So he runs out to buy an RV, and a month later he is miserable yet again. Then his business slows and he has all of these bills to pay so he has more misery piled on top of misery. If he knew that happiness and joy come from inside and never from outside, he could have kept his money, sat by the ocean and enjoyed more than he enjoyed from his toys. He would have thanked God for the ocean rather than polluting it with gasoline and speeding through no-wake zones just to feed his ego...and scare the dickens out of the seagulls.
Orchos Tzadikim said that happiness and joy is "calm in the heart without any sense of wound." "Who is truly rich? The one who rejoices with what he has." (Pirkei Avot 4:1). You will find happiness and joy by understanding your purpose in this world, to love God and His children, and to do mitzvoth for them, and to "serve God with happiness" (Psalms 100:2).
All of the work you have done, and will continue to do, toward your Jewish Spiritual Renewal, is to live a life of shalom, peace, shlema, and wholeness. Psalm 34:15 reads, "Love peace and pursue it." This is echoed in Pirkei Avot 1:12, "Rabbi Hillel said: Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving your fellow creatures and bringing them close to the Torah." While other mitzvoth will have us do them as the occasion warrants, like paying a day worker before the sun sets, we are commanded to pursue peace as well as to love it.
When you read the class about meditation you learned that your channels must not be blocked with resentments and teshuvah owed, and that you must be open, nevi, to hear God.
"Shalom is the only pipeline through which blessing comes down to earth from Heaven." (Midrash Bamidbar Raba). All of those defects and resentments will keep you from true Shalom. You learned in this class that the God's name in the Talmud is "Shalom". You learned that all of God's and Torah's "ways are sweet and all of its paths are peace" (Proverbs 3:17). We learned we must rid ourselves of defects and resentments. We learned we must continue to do so daily. Allowing ourselves to reattach to our defects, leaves us not in Shalom, but at war within and with the universe and others in it.
"Great is peace between husband and wife."(Talmud Bavli Tractate Chulin 141a). Rabbi Shimon Ben Gamliel, Talmud Tractate Avot De Rebi Noson 28:3, says: "A person who brings peace into his house is considered by God as if he brought peace on the entire Jewish people." We all know what living in a house with no shalom bayat (peace in the house) is like. None of us could leave that home and go to work and be as kind and gentle as we would like. So developing the character trait of Shalom is the ultimate in living happy, joyous and free with Jewish Spiritual Renewal.
Never lose sight of the fact that God created all of us to be happy, joyous and free. He wants us to live in Shalom. We have the power to "get back to the Garden" every day of our lives, if only we choose to do so.
I have enjoyed this journey with you. Each journey begins with a small step and we have taken that first step and many more together. Spiritually, we have traveled miles. God willing, we will continue our journeys and grow ever more spiritually, ever more close to God and ever closer to our fellows. "May it be your will, Adonai, our God and God of our ancestors, that you lead us toward peace, make us reach our desired destination for life, gladness, and peace. Blessed are you, Adonai, Who hears prayer. Amen."
We did our d'var Torah for this coming Shabbat in last week's class along with the special Torah and Tanak readings for Rosh ha Shana. In our next class on Jewish Spiritual Renewal we will begin to explore further spiritual issues using the Chumash, the Books of Nevi'im and Ketuvim, the Talmud, Midrash and other texts as our guide.
L'shana Tova:
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Avrael Yahudah ben Avram ha Levi ha Rav
Hebrew College, Newton Centre, MA, USA
via Shamash Org, on-line class
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Jewish Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC
Bluffton, SC
Savannah, GA
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