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Aspaqlaria

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9/11 and How to Effect Permanent Change

Posted: 02 Aug 2009 08:10 AM PDT
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Aspaqlaria/~3/jrrq41nn8Oo/911-how-to-effect.shtml


(Significantly expanded in response to writing on the subject for Yashar,  
the magazine of The Mussar Institute. -micha)

I

The most powerful High Holidays experience of my life was five years ago. A  
week before I went to an office from which one could still see the World  
Trace Center. By that Rosh haShanah I hadn’t yet returned to work after the  
nightmare of the attack a few blocks away. The charley horse from walking  
down 42 flights of stairs and up several miles of Manhattan had faded, and  
my ash-covered clothes long since went into the trash. I had a hacking  
cough, my lungs trying to get rid of the burnt airplane fuel, building, and  
human suffering that was forced into them. My life’s stride was broken, and  
I hadn’t yet found it again.

Remember how we said the poem Unsaneh Toqef that year? “Let us give  
consideration to the holiness of the day, for it is awe-inspiring and  
fearful…” That year, who could say “Who will live and who will die? … Who  
in chaos? Who in fire? … Who by suffocation and who by falling or  
hurtling?” The chaos came alive in my mind. The floor shaking beneath me  
from the wave of noise. The ball of fire, the bits of metal falling to the  
street like confetti. The cloud of smoke that rushed at us as we were  
trapped on the southern tip of the island. And the bits of falling debris  
that hid within it. The sight of those “windows” that fell from the  
buildings, that I realized a moment later in horror weren’t windows.

The notion that our lives literally were in the Hands of the Almighty was  
very real and etched in the core of our beings. That Rosh haShanah, I  
didn’t need to hear the shofar to be woken up to repent. The thunder of  
falling buildings, the cries of Wall Street workers suddenly frightened,  
had already pierced my shell. And it wasn’t just me or those of us who were  
there. The entire country   the world  we were all awoken from our  
comfortable and sometimes petty routines.

And in the following months, you stopped on the road to help a stranger  
stranded on the side, regardless of their ethnicity. We all proudly flew  
our flags in a show of unity. Even the dynamics and unity with our  
community of American Jews was markedly stronger. But now? The flag got  
dirty and faded into a grey, sky blue and pink, and was taken down, not  
replaced. And if the fellow on the shoulder of the road is identifiably  
Jewish, and I have time, or if its not a stretch of highway frequented by  
many other Jews who might have pity on him then I would stop to give him a  
hand.

There is a pasuq in Devarim which reads The Eyes of G-d are on [the Land of  
Israel] from reishis hashanah ad acharis shanah  the beginning of the year  
until the end of a year. The Satmar Rav points out the asymmetry; first the  
use of hashanah, the year, but it closes with just shanah, a year.


The Yismach Moshe notes that unfortunately that is the way with most of us.  
Every year, when it begins, we are all excited and determined. This is  
going to be THE year! The year I finally have the patience my children  
deserve, the year I get to synagogue regularly, the year But the year goes  
by, and by the end, its just a year, another span on the calendar.

In VaYoel Moshe, the Satmar Rav adds that this can be read in the words  
nusach Sfard quotes at the conclusion of Qedushah, hein gaalti eschem  
acharis kereishis  here I [G-d] will redeem you in the end [of our history]  
as in the beginning [i.e. in Egypt].  Hashem will redeem a people for whom  
the end is like the beginning. When we can end the year with the same  
determination to be better as we had when we began it, we will have merited  
the redemption.

So we return to my in synagogue, crying in my seat.  I swore to myself   
“Who will live and who will die?” Me. I will live because I will die. This  
is the year, finally, the one where I turn over that new leaf, when the old  
me departs and the person I want to be will be born.

And then we leap ahead to a year later, as Rosh haShanah again approached.  
I looked over my spiritual accounting for the year and I saw something very  
depressing. My list of things to commit to working on didn’t differ all  
that much from one made in 2001 after all. In general, the list of things I  
wish to do teshuvah [repent] for one year closely resembles the changes I  
promised myself the year before.

What happened? Why couldnt we hold onto that feeling? (Ironically, I ask  
myself that question annually as well!)
II

My son and I went on a trip to Northern Israel  at the end of the Lebanon  
II war. We brought food and supplies to Tzefats poor and to our soldiers at  
and heading to the front, and we also stopped by Chaifa and the Rambam  
Hospital. There we met Yechiel ben Zoharah. Yechiel left his bunker,  
unaware that they were actually situated north of Hezbollah trenches. He  
was shot from behind, with shrapnel destroying much of his liver, part of  
his right lung (which the intial bullet went through as well), and his  
right shoulder. He was waiting for the other wounds to heal sufficiently  
for him to be up to reconstructive surgery on the shoulder. And yes, he is  
a righty.

What made him stick out in my mind was something he did when it wasnt  
war-time. There are people capable of a moment of bravery, being in the  
line of fire to save another. It is a different skill (not greater or  
lesser, just different) to be able to live heroically for long stretches of  
time.

Yechiel lived alone, working the land and building at a spot near the  
Kineret for a year. I unfortunately forgot the name of the town in the  
Golan, at nearly 50 families, that he build around his efforts. (And of  
course, he had to brag about his daughter, who since turned 1.)

What we try to do most Rashei haShanah is closer to the moment of heroism.  
We think of teshuvah in terms of being at a new place by the end of Yom  
Kippur.

Rav AY Kook describes two ways of doing teshuvah (Orot haTeshuvah ch 2).  
The first is sudden, coming from some kind of spiritual thunder that  
centers the soul. In one moment he recognizes the evil and disgustingness  
of sin, and turns into a new person
. This sort of teshuvah comes from some  
influence of inner gift, by some great spiritual influence, that its worthy  
to seek its roots in the deepest of mysteries. The higher teshuvah comes  
from the thunder of universal good, the Divine Good which underlies all the  
worlds.

The second sort of teshuvah is gradual. He feels that he must progress and  
improve his ways and his lifestyle, his desires, his thought patterns. In  
his travels on this path he conquers, bit by bit, the ways of  
righteousness, repairs his middos, improves his actions, teaches himself  
how to become more and more proper until he reaches the pinnacle of  
brightness and repair.

The first luchos, G-ds manufacture they were, and the writing was G-ds  
writing (Shemos 32:16). They were a thunder from heaven, spirituality as a  
gift from the A-lmighty. As something unearned, there was no guarantee that  
they could be kept.

The Benei Yisrael sought to maintain this lofty experience; they had a need  
for further inspiration that could not await Moshes return. They built the  
calf, and it all unraveled. That which was quickly gained was just as  
quickly lost.

For the second luchos, Moshe is told to quarry for yourself two stone  
tablets like the first (ibid 34:1). Man must take the first step. This is  
the gradual, incremental path. Its not a thunderous gift from Hashem, it is  
a call to which Hashem responds. He will write on the luchos the ideas that  
were on the first luchos (v. 2). But man must invest the effort.

Perhaps we can say that the first sort of teshuvah is embodied by the pasuq  
Hashiveinu Hashem eilekha venashuvah – Hashem, bring us close to You, and  
we will return. (Eikhah 5:21) Hashem taking the first step. The second,  
harder but more likely to be permanent teshuvah is Shuvah eilai veashuvah  
aleikhem – return to Me, and I will return to you. (Malakhi 3:7) We take  
the initiative, and Hashem promises to respond.

The kind of rapid change we typically aspire for over Aseres Yemei Teshuvah  
is similar to that Rav Kook compares to the first luchos. It is rapid,  
because it is gifted from G-d. But it is much harder to keep permanent.

Buried under the all the rubble of 9/11 was a gift, an environment that  
called upon us to grow as people. But like the first tablets, it didnt come  
from within. As the world slowly returned to something more like (although  
never again the same) it was before, so did we lose much (but not all) of  
that personal growth.
III

The Kotzker Rebbe once asked his students: There are two people on a  
ladder, one on the fourth rung, and another on the 10th, which one is  
higher?

The book where I saw this thought doesnt record his students answers. I  
assume some recognized it as a trick question, and answered that it was the  
one on the fourth, some answered the 10th figuring the rebbe was leading  
them somewhere, and others were silent. But the rebbes answer was succinct,  
It depends who is climbing the ladder, and who is going down.

Once I told the story, the idea is familiar. The idea of spirituality is  
not where you are, as that is largely a function of forces beyond your  
control (your upbringing, your genetics, etc) Rather, its the direction  
youre heading in, and how rapidly youre getting there. To apply a notion  
from Kierkegaard, its not about being a good Jew, its about the process of  
becoming one. The journey, not the destination, is what matters.

Holiness is measured by our engagement in becoming, so why do we think of  
teshuvah, repentance, in terms of who to be by Yom Kippur? My dream of  
having “the year” was deciding to be someone new. ? sentence  
fragmentTeshuvah as motion, getting from point A to the desired point B.  
But with velocity comes momentum, and this dream was really my expecting to  
shift that on the proverbial dime. Expecting sudden relocation to get to  
that point B is as unreliable as setting oneself a destination without  
planning the journey.

A different metaphor: teshuvah as acceleration – changing the direction and  
speed we’re taking in our lives, changing the course of life’s journey to  
aim for that “point B”, rather than simply expecting to leap there.

We must realize that the work is long, that the entire year will be one in  
which we will need to slowly, incrementally, work toward our goals.

The goal to set for the season is that by the end of Yom Kippur we have a  
plan for that year’s growth, and are more engaged in the process of change.  
It is a time for gathering the means to implement holiness in our lives,  
and for starting to use them. Through such efforts, we will hopefully look  
back on this year as “the year” even as it comes to an end.

Through such efforts, we can hopefully look back on this year as the year  
even as it ends.
(PS: With the Satmar Rav and Rav Kook quoted within paragraphs of each  
other, this is probably my most eclectic blog posting yet!)




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