[Avodah] R'YBS-Feminist/Talit Story

[Sholom Simon]

> And the Frimers' article (Winter 1998, a half-year before) is at (pg 41
> [37th of the PDF]) http://bit.ly/2FfK715
>

Let me ask the obvious question here.  According to the story, the Rav
concluded:  "It was obvious, therefore, that what generated her sense of
'religious high' was not an enhanced kiyum hamitzvah, but something else"
and therefore was "an inappropriate use of the mitzvah".

Does _anybody_ here get a "religious high" from doing a new mitzvah?
Perhaps a bar mitzvah boy the first time his tefillin "counts", or, perhaps
the first time one dons a tallis at shul after marriage, or the first time
one does birchas hachama?

(As a baal teshuva, I have had a plethora of opportunities to do a mitzvah
for the first time, and sometimes I get a spiritual high.  And it's quite
possible that I didn't do all of them correctly the first time, and that
sometimes I wasn't even yotzie b'deived.  No, I don't check my tzitzis
every time I put on my tallis).

Now, suppose you got that "high" but later found out that the mitzvah was
done incorrectly.  Does that mean the "high" one felt was perforce
inappropriate?

The more obvious question: doesn't one sometimes get a high because he is
*thinking* that he is being mekayum a mitzvah?  Is believing that one is
doing ratzon HaShem, or believing that one is getting closer to Hashem, an
inappropriate thought?

-- Sholom
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