It was hot, I was trapped, and it was getting hotter. I fidgeted uncomfortably in my seat for a few minutes, and then I unbuckled myself and starting moving around my little prison. Inevitably, as a normal seven-year-old, I soon found myself drawn to the Forbidden Fruit.
I was stuck in a maroon station wagon that belonged to my neighbor. It was during the few days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot when everyone is rushing hither and thither trying to build a Succah, buy a lulav and esrog, and cook hundreds of holiday meals. My parents had the additional challenge of doing all of the above while also managing a whole brood of lil’ ones, and if I was any indicator, we were not an easy bunch! One of my neighbors, who needed to run a few errands, offered to take me along. My parents were only too happy to take him up on his offer. None of us realized that it would lead to me being imprisoned in a maroon station wagon.
I tagged along with our friendly neighbor as he ran a few errands. We went to the hardware store, the grocery store, and a few other stores, and then we came to the final stop, a bank. My neighbor left me with these great parting words, “I’ll be right back. Stay in your seat, and don’t touch anything!!!” To me, using the great deductive logic imbued in me by my Creator, that sounded like, “If I’m not right back, you can get out of your seat and touch everything!”
To be fair, I gave him a good twenty minutes (or at least that is what it felt like!). But as the heat increased, my boredom increased, and my discomfort grew exponentially, I began to focus on the latter half of my mandate. I began to touch everything. First I tooted the horn, then I turned the wheel, but my mind kept wandering toward the gear shifter…
Finally, I gave in and starting playing with that nifty handle, the ultimate Forbidden Fruit. I somehow managed to take the car out of park, and put it into neutral. The car was parked on a very slight incline, and it started to roll across the parking lot…
People rushed up to the car and tried to open the door, but it was locked. Then they started screaming at me to press the brake, or to put the shifter back, but to me it sounded something like, “PRESS THE SD;IO@HSV!!! PUSH BACK THE OU^FA;SJN!!!” At first, I smiled and waved. Then, realizing that they were not friendlies, I quickly jumped into the back seat, buckled myself in, and pretended like everything was the way it was before I touched anything. The car however, didn’t play along. It kept rolling across the parking lot picking up speed. It finally came to rest in the back quarter-panel of an innocent pickup truck.
After that, things became a blur. I remember someone running into the store and fishing out my neighbor. I remember him being very, very unhappy with me. I recall the owner of the pickup truck being unhappy with the both of us, and using words that I didn’t understand, but I don’t think they meant brake or shifter. A dark cloud of impending doom settled uncomfortably on my shoulder as they exchanged insurance information. My neighbor let me know that he could not believe I did something so foolish, and that he would be make sure my parents would know how careless and reckless I had been, and how much damage it caused. As we drove home the cloud thickened, every mile taking me closer to the inevitable punishment.
I look back at that story, and I wish the current me was there to defend myself a few decades ago. My defense would sound something like this;
“Mr. Neighbor-Man, is it true that you left the boy in the car, in the heat?”
“Yes”
“And is it true that you left him there for over twenty minutes?”
“Yes”
“Then what in the world did you expect of a seven year old-child trapped in a car? That he would just sit there strapped in for twenty minutes without moving?”
“Umm…”
“Your honor, faced with no response but umm, I rest my case.”
This story is a classic Yom Kippur story. On Yom Kippur we review the mistakes and sins we committed in the previous year, and do teshuva, repentance, for them. Teshuva has three components. We start by honestly regretting the sin, recognizing the harm it caused. Then we verbalize the sin by saying viduy, making that recognition real, taking it from a cognitive idea to a spoken reality. The last, and perhaps most important, step, is leaving the sin behind, walking away from it forever.
The last component is where most people get stuck. We may be very sincere in regretting what we’ve done wrong, we may verbalize it in the Yom Kippur service with a torn heart, and we may even resolve never to do it again. But by the time November rolls around, that resolve seems to melt away, and we find ourselves back in the same patterns that have been so destructive in the past. We wonder where our Yom Kippur sincerity went.
The reality is that we are often doomed right from the start. Our sincerity isn’t the problem, our resolutions are. Often, we resolve not to do something again, but we don’t put the proper systems into place to prevent it from recurring. In those cases we are bound to break. “What in the world did you expect, that just because on Yom Kippur you said ‘I’m never going to this again, never ever ever!!!’ that it would just magically go away?”
Yom Kippur is the time to look for the triggers that cause us to make mistakes and devise strategies to eliminate them. Once the child is in the car for twenty minutes, it is too late, disaster is a given. It is not the child’s fault, he was being a child, it’s the adults fault for setting up a disaster. We need to make sure we don’t leave the child in the car. We need to resolve to change our behaviors so that we are not setting ourselves up for failure!
If we know that we always get angry when we walk into a messy house, we need to plan what we’re going to do before entering the house, to prepare ourselves mentally for what we will see. If we spend most of our time in synagogue talking to our good friend seated on our left, maybe we need to change the place we sit. If we always gossip with a certain co-worker, maybe we need to have a discussion with them about our feelings towards gossip. Waiting until he says, “I can’t believe it! Did you hear what Marcy did this weekend?” is setting yourself up for failure.
If we are taking our children on a trip we need to make sure we have plenty of snacks, drinks, and activities for them, because if we don’t, they will get bored and cranky, and we are likely to get stressed and lose our temper. Proper planning and avoiding triggers can go a long way in positively navigating this tricky planet.
This Yom Kippur, when we go over our mistakes, when we think about the pitfalls that have plagued us for so long, let’s not only resolve not to make the mistakes again. Let’s think about removing ourselves from the situations which cause those mistakes.
Doing so will help us truly rise above our sins, and reach the purity we dream of on this purest of days.
Have an Introspective Yom Kippur!
Parsha Dvar Torah
The Dvar Torah this week comes from Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky’s wonderful piece on Torah.org
Parshas Vayelech has Moshe handing the reign of power to his beloved disciple Yehoshua, who now will grasp hold of the destiny of the Children of Israel. Moshe does not leave him without first guiding him through the difficult mission of leadership. At the end of Parshas Vayelech, (Deuteronomy 31:7), "Moshe summoned Yehoshua and said to him before the eyes of all Israel, 'Be strong and courageous and do not be broken before them, for Hashem your G-d -- it is he who goes before you.'"
The Torah does not specify what "strong and courageous" actually means. I conjured my own visions of how to be strong and courageous when dealing with a "stiff-necked" nation. It entailed exacting demands and rigid regulations. The Medrash, however, offers a totally diametric explanation.
The Yalkut Shimoni, a compendium of Midrashim compiled in the Middle Ages, discusses a verse in Hoshea. "Israel is but a beloved lad and in Egypt I had called them my child." It quotes the verse in Deuteronomy 31:7, and explains the words "strong and courageous." Moshe explained to Joshua, "this nation that I am giving you is still young kids. They are still young lads. Do not be harsh with them. Even their Creator has called them children, as it is written, (Hoshea 11:1) "Israel is but a beloved lad."
Can the Midrash find no better words to translate the phrase telling Joshua to "be strong and courageous" other than be patience and understanding? In which way does forbearance show strength? How does courage translate as tolerance?
In the years of World War I, a young student who was fleeing the war-ravaged city of Slabodka sought refuge in Tiktin, a village near Lomza, Poland. A prodigious Torah scholar, he compensated for room and board by becoming a simple cheder teacher. He gave his lecture in a small schoolhouse, but the townsfolk were quite suspicious. There were no shouts from inside the one-room schoolhouse as it was with other teachers; the boys seemed to be listening. Rumor had it that the young man even let the children play outside for ten minutes each day in the middle of the learning session.
They decided to investigate. They interrupted his class one morning and were shocked. The kanchik (whip) used by every cheder-Rebbe was lying on the floor near the trash bin. Upon interrogating the children the parents learned that this radical educator never used it.
Outraged, the townsfolk decided to call a meeting with their Rabbi to discuss the gravity of the situation. Who knows what ideas a teacher who would not use the kanchik was imbuing in our children? They worried.
The local Rabbi pointed to a picture of Rabbi Isaac Elchonon Spector, the leader of Lithuanian Jewry. "Do you see that picture of the Kovno Tzadik?" He asked the townsfolk. "One day thousands of homes across the world will have this young man's picture hanging on their walls."
The elderly Rabbi was right. The young man became the leader of a generation, teacher of thousands and dean of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. It was the beginning of, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky's career in education.
Moshe, the guide and architect of Jewish leadership, was empowering his disciple with a message of guidance. The words "be strong and courageous" embodied leadership of love and understanding. One can not talk of forbearance and patience without talking of strength and courage. But more important: one can not show true strength and courage if he is not patient and understanding.
Parsha Summary
The Parsha Summary this week was taken from Chabad.org
General Overview: This week's reading, Vayelech, recounts the events of the final day of Moses' terrestrial life. Moses transferred leadership to Joshua and wrote a Torah scroll which he handed over to the Levites. Moses commanded the Israelites to gather following every Sabbatical year, and informed them of the suffering which will be their lot when they will abandon the laws of the Torah.
Moses addressed the people, saying that he is 120 years of age on that day, and he is not permitted to cross the Jordan River together with them. Instead, Joshua will lead them, and G‑d will go before them and destroy their enemies.
Moses continued his talk: G‑d will vanquish the inhabitants of Canaan as He did the Emorites and Bashanites. Moses enjoined the Israelites to be strong and not fear their enemies.
Moses summoned Joshua and told him to be strong and courageous, for G‑d will be going before him and will not forsake him. Moses then wrote the entire Torah and gave it to the Kohnaim (priests) and the Israelite elders.
Moses gives the commandment of Hakhel (assembly), whereby every seven years, during the holiday of Sukkot which follows the Sabbatical year, all men, women, and children assemble and the king publicly reads sections of the Torah.
G‑d commanded Moses to enter the Tabernacle together with Joshua. G‑d appeared to them both and informed them that a time will come when the Israelites will abandon G‑d and stray after alien gods. At that time, G‑d will hide His countenance from the nation, and they will be subjected to much evils and troubles. Therefore, G‑d says, "Write for yourselves this song, and teach it to the Children of Israel. Place it into their mouths, in order that this song will be for Me as a witness..." This 'song' is narrated in next week's Torah reading.
When G‑d's wrath will find the Israelites as a consequence of their evil actions, they will claim that the misfortunes are befalling them because G‑d has abandoned them. At that time, the song which Moses and Joshua wrote will bear testimony that these events are in fact punishment for their sinful behavior.
Moses took the freshly concluded Torah scroll and gave it to the Levites. He instructed them to place it beside the Ark which contained the Tablets. Moses then gathered the entire nation to hear the song, wherein he would call upon the heavens and earth to be witnesses that the Israelites were forewarned regarding their fate.
Quote of the week: There is a vast difference between praying and saying prayers. – Basil James Williams.
Random Fact of the Week: There are 293 different ways to make change for a dollar.
Funny Line of the Week: I imagine if you knew Morse Code, tap dancing would drive you crazy!
Have an Introspective Shabbos,
LB