How Beliefs Dictate Our Reactions

We've been discussing over the past couple of weeks that we met how basic beliefs and theological principles dictate behavior, have very real and far-reaching practical repercussions. So let's continue with that tonight. I believe it's quoted in the name of the Gra that a person's avoda in life is tikkun hamiddos. A person's avoda in life is tikkun hamiddos. Now while intuitively we understand that tikkun hamiddos is very important and an important part of one's avoda, but to underscore it with a hey hayediya that is the avoda which a person has in life is very difficult to understand. It seems to be overstated. You find a similar difficulty, not exactly the same, a similar problem, the solution is not exactly the same in how the Gra understands the Gemara in Shabbos, the famous Gemara in Shabbos with a ger who appeared successively, first before Shammai, then before Hillel. So one of them says that he'll be misgayer על מנת שתלמדני כל התורה כולה על רגל אחת. So Shammai throws him out and Hillel says

מה דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד ואידך פירושא זיל גמור.

So here too you have the same problem, how can Hillel tell him that ve-ahavta lere-acha kamocha, again a similar problem, not the same problem, how can Hillel tell him that ve-ahavta lere-acha kamocha is kol hatora kulla, that the rest of Torah is a peirush on ve-ahavta lere-acha kamocha. So Rashi clearly bothered with that says that Hillel is interpreting reia to refer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. reiacha v-rei avicha. That it doesn't mean your fellow man, but it means Ribbono Shel Olam. So he's telling him that kol hatora kulla is to do ratzon Hashem. ve-idach perusha. Everything else just fills out and fills in the details of what ratzon Hashem is. zil gemor. But the Gra says that what the ger meant, why did the ger say al regel achas? What the ger meant is like this: that the mishna says in Pirkei Avos

על שלושה דברים העולם עומד. על התורה ועל העבודה ועל גמילות חסדים.

That there are three legs or three pillars which support the world. So the ger wanted a simpler formula. He wanted it reduced even more. למדני כל התורה כולה על רגל אחת. That's what al regel achas means. Instead of gimmel regalim, so tell me al regel achas. So Shammai, seemingly correctly, is d-chafo b-amas habinyan. He threw him out. It can't be reduced, the formula can't be reduced anymore. It's על שלושה דברים העולם עומד. And Hillel told him, no. מה דעלך סני לחברך לא תעביד. So the Gra is taking this at face value, meaning that, no, he was telling him the peshuta shel mikra in ve-ahavta lere-acha kamocha. So that only returns Rashi's original question, hadra kusha le-duchta. How can Hillel be reducing kol hatora kulla to gmilus chassadim, as important as it is? So the emes is that the Baal HaTanya says the same pshat in the Gemara, says the same pshat in the Gemara that not like Rashi that v'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha is to be understood at face value, and he says that the pshat is like this: that the way a person interacts bein adam l'chaveiro is also a reflection on his bein adam l'makom. And that a person who has genuine yiras shamayim, a genuine sense of anavah and shiflus, if he really genuinely possesses these things, so then it will be reflected in his bein adam l'chaveiro. And if his bein adam l'chaveiro is lacking, so then that's a siman muvhak, it's a tell-tale sign that there's something lacking in his bein adam l'makom as well. And that's what Hillel meant by saying ואהבת לרעך כמוך מה דסני לך לחברך לא תעביד, if you can really be very meticulous and very careful about this, it reflects your bein adam l'makom as well. There's a similar idea lich'ora latent when the Gra emphasizes that the avodah in life is tikkun hamidos. There's a similar idea latent here. And that is as follows: The Rav zichrono l'vracha at times explicitly in drashos and at other times, more often than we realize, implicitly, would underscore the fact that Yahadus believes and demands that we can not only control, regulate, and sanctify our behavior, but also our inner life, also our emotions also can and therefore must be controlled. And that's something which he on many occasions stated explicitly, but if you stop and think for a minute, you'll realize in many famous divrei Torah and shiurim of the Rav with which we're familiar, this was axiomatic. Take the Yahrzeit shiur in the first volume of Yahrzeit Shiurim, Mibinyan Avelus, where the Rav explains that the clash which the Gemara just assumes is irreconcilable between avelus and simchas yom tov is really in the kiyum shebalev. Right? The Rav explains that practically the two are compatible. An avel is muttar b'basar v'yayin on yom tov, it's muttar to abstain from rechitza and sicha and ne'ilas hasandal etc. etc. So why does the Gemara take for granted that there's a tarti d'sasri and that the asei d'rabbim has to docheh the asei d'yachid? Why can't we reconcile the two? So the Rav says because the real incompatibility is in the kiyum shebalev. It's in the kiyum shebalev. That the kiyum shebalev of avelus is a sense of being menudah l'makom, of being remote from Hakadosh Baruch Hu and the real kiyum shebalev of simchas yom tov is the sensing closeness to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, lifnei Hashem. So that's a famous shiur with which we're all familiar. So when you stop and think about it from a different perspective, how can there be a mitzvah, how can there be a mitzvah which tells me what I should feel and what I should experience? Nicha, the Torah says avelus, so it's proper that a person should, there should be a certain objective reflection of degradation and therefore he shouldn't wash and he shouldn't use oils and shouldn't have ne'ilas hasandal etc. etc. good. So that can be dictated. But how can the Torah - but you see from the Rav's chiddush, from the Rav's understanding, that that doesn't satisfy the requirements of the mitzvah. That the requirements of the mitzvah are only satisfied if a person feels and experiences... Experiences this notion of being menudah lamakom, of being far away from the Ribbono Shel Olam. And conversely, the same is true when you talk about מצות שמחת יום טוב. It's quite clear that the Torah says that not only is it expected of us to consume basar va'yayin, but it's also expected of us to cultivate that experience of feeling lifnei Hashem. So it's quite clear that the Torah assumes the possibility and consequently demands of us not only control of action, but also regulating our inner life, emotions, and cultivating experience. Now, this has to be one of the most basic and repercussive ideas in Torah, in hashkafa. Clearly, and again this is something we all know but perhaps don't always take a moment just to underscore this dimension, the fact that mitzvahs teshuvah demands not only azivas hacheit and kabbalah l'haba, but the fact that mitzvahs teshuvah demands charata as well, means again that the Torah wasn't content with the behavior modification, wasn't content with simply again reforming and refining one's actions and one's external life, but the Torah was equally, perhaps primarily, concerned with one's inner life. And therefore the mitzvah of teshuvah cannot be fulfilled unless it's accompanied by this genuine experience of charata. And kohena v'kohena many mitzvahs confirm this yesod which the Rav underscored of what the Torah's expectations of us are. But how is that realized practically? Halacha l'maaseh, how does one do it? Halacha l'maaseh, we experience or we think we experience so much of our emotional life as being involuntary. And therefore we assume that yes, the Torah can be regulating our actions, but how can the Torah be dictating the content of our emotional life? So consider the following example. Someone once raised the question once about the Rav's yesod about how the kiyum shebalev of aveilus is this notion of being menudah lamakom, of the middas hadin having acted against a person, rachmana litzlan, whether it was echad meichavuroso, echad mimishpachto. So someone once asked, how can how can a person experience that if the person who died was very old and it was just a natural occurrence? Zaken usva yamim. So isn't that a natural occurrence, and how can the Torah realistically expect that our reaction should be to cultivate this experience of feeling rachmana litzlan as though HaKadosh Baruch Hu has pushed us away? And it's a very good question and the Very natural question. So the answer is that in the Torah, according to the Torah's perspective, and this clearly is, you don't have to go further than Parshas Bereishis, death is not a natural occurrence. That really, really, the ideal for which man was created, for which Adam was created, was to be immortal, was to be immortal. A person's neshama is immortal and really it should have allowed a person to live even in his present state eternally. And that's what it says in Chumash, right? כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות, that mortality is a direct result of cheit. That's what created mortality. Now since that happened before all of us were born, so we mistakenly relate to death as something purely natural. But the truth is, according to the Torah's perspective, that's not the case. It's not something natural. And this same hashkafa is suggested by the ma'amar Chazal of אין מיתה בלא חטא אין יסורין בלא עון, also suggests this same hashkafa that it's not simply again a natural occurrence that the human body simply gives out after so many years, but it's an unnatural occurrence. In the larger scheme of things, if one has a sweeping view of things, it's an aberration. Now if a person internalizes that hashkafa, let's just take this, this is only an example, not necessarily the most important example. If a person internalizes that hashkafa, and then you have someone else who has not internalized, maybe never even been exposed to that hashkafa. So then what we perceive as a purely emotional and what we perceive as an involuntary reaction, truthfully is being generated, the engine, right, which is generating that emotional reaction is really this attitude or perspective which a person has on misa, on mortality. And again, when you view it carefully, when you analyze it, so again, what we perceive as purely emotional and as unrelated to beliefs, attitudes, it's not true, it's not true. And similarly, and this will point a person in the opposite direction, but it also illustrates and confirms what we're talking about, a belief in Olam HaNeshamos and in Techiyas HaMeisim and in Olam HaBa, also again unconsciously at the time, it's not that a person is necessarily reflecting and meditating upon it, also clearly determines what at the time seems to be a purely emotional and again as such seemingly involuntary reaction. I think it was the first of this series of shiurim when we mentioned the Ibn Ezra on Lo sachmod, again, it illustrates the same thing, that Lo sachmod at the time again it's an emotional instinctive reaction, and yet the Ibn Ezra explains how depending upon what belief in hashkafa... internalized or not, so again how he'll respond, again, instantaneously, instinctively. In reality, that emotion, that reaction is generated or dictated by the beliefs which he has about Hashgocha Protis, and exactly how, to what degree he not only subscribes to these beliefs, but has really internalized them. Just to give one or two more examples, and if you'll think, if you'll think about it, it applies to virtually every single, again, reaction which we describe as instinctive or emotional. When you think about it, there's some attitude which is a part of the fabric of our being, which really generates that, again, what we perceive as emotion. Anger also is not, by its very definition, is not a premeditated, deliberate response. You can make a show of anger. But when a person genuinely feels anger, there's nothing premeditated about it. Something happens which pushes a person beyond his limits and his response is anger. How does a person control anger, and how does, how do such emotions reflect basic Emunos V'Deios? With the exception of moral outrage, and there are occasions for moral outrage, too many occasions. With the exception of moral outrage, a person's ego plays a role every time he feels anger. A person is angered at what was done to him and, "Why did you do this to me?" Or if what happened to him was impersonal, "Why did this happen to me?" There's always ego involved in anger, again, unless it's a pure moral sense of outrage, of V'chein Lo Yei'aseh. And there's no question that the degree to which a person has cultivated the Midda of Anavah and Shiflus, which in past Shiurim we've explored, is an automatic consequence of שיוויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד. So to the degree that a person is aware and fulfills שיוויתי ה' לנגדי תמיד, and therefore to that degree he becomes an Anav and Shfal Ruach, to that degree he's able to control anger, because there's always ego in anger. What about materialistic or or physical yetzer hara? That's also instinctive. How how does that... how is that consistent with the approach that really every emotion ultimately is rooted in some attitude, in a belief, in the hashkafa? So here we had... we had discussed the Ibn Ezra on lo sachmod. Don't remember if we discussed the famous Beis Halevi on lo sachmod. Beis Halevi refers to the Ibn Ezra's answer and says it's a beautiful answer, but there's another answer he says, maybe an even more basic answer. And he goes on to give the following famous mashal. He says imagine a person who is obsessed with realizing a certain taivah that he has, whatever that taivah may be. And it's winter time and the river is frozen and he's running across the river after the object of his taivah. And all of a sudden he hears and feels the ice begins to crack beneath him. And he realizes that he's about to fall beneath the ice into freezing cold waters. So the Beis Halevi says what happens to his obsession? What happens to what he was so focused on to the exclusion of everything else? So the Beis Halevi says obviously it totally totally leaves his mind and the only thing he can think of is the imminent danger, the imminent danger. And then the Beis Halevi writes so... he doesn't intend it as mussar. He writes it so naturally, so sincerely. It's quite clear from the style. He says if we would have the most elementary level of yiras shamayim. That's what he says. If we would have the most elementary level of yiras shamayim, which of course is no less than the yirah this person feels when the ice begins to crack. He says if you know that the Torah disapproves, so just one's basic yiras shamayim undercuts any taivah or chemdah. It's a profound profound vort. And even if one hasn't... arrived at, should I say, realized what the Beis Halevi calls that elementary level of yiras shamayim, again, if a person reinforces to himself within himself the Torah's stress on tznius and how the Torah says you have to be mekadesh what's physical and you have to be mekadesh anything which is a source of physical pleasure because otherwise it's just animalistic. If a person reinforces that to himself within himself so then that affects the way he sees the world. He sees the world differently. People don't have a taivah to eat a poisonous apple if they know it's poisonous. There's no such taivah. No such taivah in the world. If you look at the apple and you don't know it's poisonous and then it's A luscious apple, so then a person can have a taiva. If a person knows that he's gonna get sick from eating it, so then the same apple, it can be just as shiny, just as red, just as beautiful, the same apple you view differently, you perceive it differently. Even if we're not, we haven't been successful in developing that level of yiras shamayim which the Beis Halevi is talking about, but even if we just reinforce within ourselves the Torah's standards of tznius, the Torah's concept of kedusha, again in a more limited and even more elementary sense than the Beis Halevi is talking about. Again, what seems to us without reflection to be an involuntary emotional reaction, in truth is also a function of our perception, and our perception in turn is also a function of our hashkafa. If you know that the apple is orlah, and that eating the orlah is worse than eating the apple that's gonna make you sick physically, it's gonna make you sick spiritually, so then it just doesn't, it's not attractive, it doesn't arouse in a person that desire for it that it could otherwise. And this is another, again, yet another example of this yesod of how, again, what seems to be emotional reactions, in reality can be traced back to basic hashkafos, attitudes, and beliefs which generate, again, these quick emotional reactions. And lichora, that's what the Gra had in mind. He wasn't talking about stam tikkun amidos, but if it's a tikkun amidos as we're describing it, so then that really is a very, very broad and inclusive definition of avodah, and lichora, that's what he had in mind.