[Avodah] How is one Qoneh Emunah

[Micha Berger]

On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 11:11:58AM -0600, Neil Harris wrote:
: This [see subject line, asked by RRW] is the million dollar question.

: I'm sure that someone will post an answer. Until then here's a few
: reading suggestions:
...

Good reading list, but learning about *emunah* isn't necessarily going
to get you emunah.

As R' Elya Lopan put it: Mussar is a matter of moving something one
ammah -- from your seikhel to your leiv. The Sefas Emes says something
similar on "veyadata hayom, vehasheivosa el levavekha". You can know
something already and STILL need to answer your heart. Internalization
is probably the harder part of emunah, not the knowing.

I would also divide emunah into two, along a related by not identical
line:

Machashavah -- knowing about Hashem
Emunah peshutah -- knowing Hashem

In terms of Hashem being both Transcendent and Immanent (baShamayim mimaal
and melo kol haaretz), our relationship to Hashem as Transcendent is only
through maschashavah. By the definitions I'm using, emunah peshutah can
only be with Immanence, since if I know Him the way I know family members,
that there is a desk before me, etc... I'm dealing with Immanence. Emunah
peshutah relies on "Hashem is here" for me to relate to Him.

Tevya the milkman, in Fiddler on the Roof, is portrayed with deep emunah
peshutah. He is never alone. When no one else is around, Tevya chats with
the A-lmighty. Taking from a translation of Shalom Aleikhem's original
version of Tevya's words, "As the good book says... but why do *I*
need to tell *You* what the good book says?"

The Rambam plays down emunah peshutah. To him, the focus of emunah is
all about knowing what Hashem isn't. A focus on Transcendence means that
the Rambam can only operate on the level of machashavah.

One can internalize machashavah or not. They're ideas. Either you keep
them in your head, or hasheivosa el levavekha.

Emunah peshuta is more of a relationship. Emunah peshutah is a middah
more than a belief.

So, if I would get down to the hardest part of RRW's question, I would
ask how someone gets emunah peshutah.

And for that, reading won't cut it.

Total immersion would, spending significant time on it. To continue
the Sefas Emes's vort, "vesamtem es devarai eileh al levavekhem". If
they don't enter the heart, keep on piling them up atop the heart.
Eventually, through repeated exposure, it sinks in.

I'm sitting a block away from Madison Ave, where this idea is the
centerpiece of an entire industry.

Hispaalus. IOW, learning one idea, dwelling on it, comparing it to my
life, saying the words over and over again out loud. In short,
maximizing the experiential aspect of learning rather than just
acquiring information.

But the essence of my answer inheres in my calling emunah peshutah a
middah. How do we change any middah? Excercises -- haadam nif'al lefi
peulaso. The usual litany of mussar tools that some AishDas committee
will actually produce a handbook for some day.

That said, emunah also includes machashavah, and besides many of the
beliefs we absorbed osmotically don't really hold water when compared to
life experience. Without the learning, I don't think the further steps
will get you very far anyway.


BTW, not that I'm advocating this method, but in my experience, being in
an eis tzara makes gaining emunah much easier. The second problem is, it
too easily wears off when things get better.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             I have great faith in optimism as a philosophy,
micha at aishdas.org        if only because it offers us the opportunity of
http://www.aishdas.org   self-fulfilling prophecy.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                              - Arthur C. Clarke