[Avodah] Using Bein Adam laMakom to Motivate Bein Adam?laChaveiro

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jan 15, 2020 at 04:19:56PM -0500, Sholom Simon via Avodah wrote:
> An interesting exercise (I heard this in a shiur once): for those who are
> shul rabbis here, or are close to a shul rabbi, ask them: how many
> questions do they get on BALM (kashrus, shabbos, niddah) vs RALCh (lashon
> harah, tochacha, tzedakah, even ribbis)?

Other illustrations:

1- My first grade classroom was decorated with posters by Torah UMesorah
of Torah, Avodah uGemilus Chassadim and of VeAhavta leRei'akha kaMokha.
And yet I left middle school with the message that my Judaism would be
measured by my ability to learn Shas, and some other stuff.

This illustration made me realize something.... The problem is more
pronounced on the men's side of the mechitzah. Not RnTK's. But even among
women... Whereas the Beis Yaakov type experience of my oldest daughter's
year was a very Chessed-centric Judaism, now seminaries increasingly
focus on Tzenius. Other-Focus to Self-focus.


3- In Litta, they would say "Frum is for the galach, a Jews must
be ehrlach." But today that talk of ehrlachkeit was eclipsed by
self-identifying as "frum".

Which is why someone who eats treif isn't frum; but somone who rips off
his customers "isn't really frum" -- something we remind ourselves. And
which one isn't given kibudim in shul?


3- Newspaper headlines.

Included in that is a lie in #1. I didn't leave middle school with that
impression, although most boys do.

And why didn't I? Because my yeshiva -- a school named for the founding
document of the mussar movement, no less! -- got my classmates to
participate in defrauding the government. We were served breakfast when
we usually don't get any, another school's younger grades were brought in
to pad the numbers, and even so 7th and 8th grades were led out the back
door and past the government's counter again. So, the school were getting
breakfasts despite not serving them, and meals for more children than
the school actually had. My classmates participated, I left in disgust.
So no, I didn't leave thinking BALC is a distant second. But I also know
I was the exception.


4- We speak of hashkafah in terms of Chasiddus's search for deveiqus vs
Litta's quest for temimus. In the Chassidishe model, Yahadus really is
about BALM, and BALC is a handmaiden to get you there.

And in Litta's model... How many people think of temimus in terms of
all of Torah being a means of being better at bein adam lachaveiro.
Whether we mean R' Chaim Volozhiner's nosei be'ol im chaveiro, R Shimon
Shkop's "leheitiv im hazulas", or REEDs goal of being a nosein. Or are
middos seen as an end in themselves?


5- When there is a BALC scandal, people try to motivate better behavior
by invoking chilul hasheim. "How can you cut people on line at the bus
terminal, it's a chilul Hashem (sic)!"

That in itself makes my point -- we need to bring Hashem into it to
motivate. Talking about stealing people's time, that it's wrong to cut
the line in and of itself, doesn't work.

And as long as we invoke chilul hashem, we might win the battle in the
short term (my recollection is pessimistic about this), but we cannot
win the war. Because until BALC becomes a priority, we lack the necessary
drive for these behaviors to become unthinkable.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger                 There's only one corner of the universe
http://www.aishdas.org/asp   you can be certain of improving,
Author: Widen Your Tent      and that's your own self.
- https://amzn.to/2JRxnDF    	    - Aldous Huxley