Selflessness

יצר לב האדם מנעוריו that משעה שננעל לצאת ממעי אמו ניתן בו יצר הרע, that the yetzer hara enters as the baby emerges from the birth canal. We generally think of babies as being rather cute and innocent and don't seem to detect too active a yetzer hara. So what do Chazal mean? So we'll suggest something which is maybe one aspect of what they have in mind. A person is naturally self-centered. The natural state of a person is that he's self-centered. In some respects, unalterably so. Our notion of past, present, and future, the three basic divisions in terms of time, are a function of our own lifetimes. We don't think of events that we've lived through as historical events. Okay, so they may have been a year ago, maybe been five years ago, ten years ago, but we don't associate them with the history books. We think of them as, again, not historical events, as real life, part of the realm of experience. So everyone does that for himself by definition. Your grandparents' generation thinks of the establishment of Medinat Yisrael as something which isn't from the history books. It's something they remember. My generation doesn't think of the Six-Day War or Milchemet Yom HaKippurim as something from the history books. Yours certainly does. So that's a sort of an orientation which inevitably and unalterably one's orientation is self-centered. The Ramban famously says that self-love is nothing that can be equaled. And that's why Ve'ahavta Lere'acha Kamocha doesn't mean to love someone as you love yourself. But then there are other aspects of the self-centeredness which are the natural state, but is something that we can and are supposed to move away from and ultimately transcend. From the very first moments of life, literally, so a baby instinctively feels his own needs. He feels hunger and other sources of discomfort. And that self-centeredness of being so keenly and instinctively aware of ourselves and our needs and not being instinctively aware of other people's needs, yitachen that might be one aspect of what Chazal have in mind when they say that the yetzer hara enters a person משעה שננער לצאת ממעי אמו. That self-centeredness begins at the very first moments of life. What's more, kimedume that we wouldn't be guilty of exaggeration to say that on one level one can and should describe a life of avodas Hashem encompassing again both tchumim of bein adam lamakom and bein adam lachaveiro as a movement away from that natural state of self-centeredness. How do we see this? At one end of the spectrum, if that natural self-centeredness that begins again from literally the first moment of life, if it's left totally unrefined and unredeemed, so it generates kinah, it generates taivah, it generates kovod. There's a narcissistic common denominator to all three of those, מוציאין את האדם מן העולם. So that's at one end of the spectrum. What's the other end of the spectrum? The other end of the spectrum is that one's self-interest doesn't exist. When Antignos ish Socho says, הוי כעבדים המשמשים את הרב, not just שלא על מנת לקבל פרס, but על מנת שלא לקבל פרס, that a person should bedavka, bedavka not want. That that's the goal. That's the ultimate level. That's what the Chassidei Elyon attain. So that's the polar opposite. Rav Chaim Volozhiner in his comment on the first mishna in Pirkei Avos, where משה קיבל תורה מסיני, quotes the gemara in Chullin that גדול מה שאמר משה from מה שאמר אברהם אבינו. Avraham Avinu just said anochi afar va'efer and Moshe Rabbeinu says venachnu mah. So afar va'efer is something. Something. And venachnu mah, and Moshe Rabbeinu says we're nothing, ונחנו מה כי תלינו עלינו. And says Rav Chaim Volozhiner, and in that zchus זכה שתינתן תורה על ידו. So a life of avodas Hashem can be defined, and on one level is defined, as a progression, as a movement from that natural self-centeredness which we begin feeling and experiencing משעה שננער לצאת ממעי אמו to move away from that, to progress, to venachnu mah. The Chofetz Chaim comments that a person naturally instinctively judges himself favorably. Whenever we err, so that self-love which is supposed to be there—again, the Ramban says it's programmed, it's supposed to be there—that self-love that, again, which minimally translates into a very favorable disposition towards ourselves, so we see all the mitigating factors, we see all the צדדים לדון לכף זכות. It was an aberration, I don't usually do it, I was underslept, I was provoked, I didn't really mean it, it came across worse than it was intended, vechulu. And he says that, in essence, the mitzvah of being dan lekhaf zechut is to transfer that and transpose that onto someone else. When you juxtapose this definition of the Chofetz Chaim of the mitzvah of being dan lekhaf zechut—the Rambam mentions it as the Chofetz Chaim points out in Sefer Hamitzvos, the drasha of the Gemara in Shavuos that הוי דן את כל האדם לכף זכות comes from the pasuk in Parshat Kedoshim: betzedek tishpot amitecha—the Rambam quotes it in Sefer Hamitzvos; it's part of the mitzvah aseh d’Oraita of betzedek tishpot amitecha. So when you juxtapose the Chofetz Chaim's definition, that it's basically that positive disposition, favorable disposition that one has towards oneself, to now channel that towards at least others as well. When you juxtapose that with what Mattisyahu Salomon, I saw divrei Torah suggests, that if you look at the pesukim in Parshat Kedoshim, so betzedek tishpot amitecha is the first of a whole string of

מצוות בין אדם לחבירו: לא תלך רכיל בעמיך, לא תעמוד על דם רעך, הוכח תוכיח את עמיתך, ולא תשא עליו חטא, לא תקום ולא תטור,

ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha. And he suggests that the placement of the pasuk teaches that this is the basic middah for bein adam lachaveiro to resist the urge for nekama, for netira, על אחת כמה וכמה to act in a way that fulfills the mandate of ve’ahavta lere’acha kamocha can be tremendously challenging as long as I sort of have my self-centered perspective on everything. A self-centered perspective that judges myself favorably but not necessarily others. With the being dan lekhaf zechut, if I can be dan someone else lekhaf. The desire for loshen hara, for lashon hara and rechilut. It undercuts, it preempts the desire for nekama, for netira, and it certainly motivates ve-ahavta le-rei'acha kamocha. But that requires a movement away from the self-centeredness because the self-centeredness is again that one is dan oneself le-chaf zechut but not others. And in cultivating that midah again which Rav Matisyahu suggests is the core מידה בין אדם לחברו, it means that it involves again a movement, progression from a self-centeredness towards the ultimate goal of anavah. Bichlal in order to practice chesed, a person needs to be empathetic. A person needs to be able to recognize someone else's needs. So sometimes unfortunately rachmana litzlan they're obvious, they hit you in the face. It doesn't require tremendous sensitivity to see certain signs of poverty or other types of neediness. Neediness doesn't have to be financial, there are other forms of neediness. But who knows how often, only the Ribbono Shel Olam, but too often it's not that we cruelly ignore the needs of other people, it's that we don't pick up on them because we see the world from our perspective rather than their perspective. I think over the years we've revisited this story a few times, but in this context it bears retelling. There's a story, presumably apocryphal, but very true in other senses of the word, of a Rebbe who's giving, saying divrei Torah at shalosh seudos and the Chassidim are hanging on his every word and feeling a tremendous hisorerus, hisromemus and then a farmer pushes through and he interrupts the divrei Torah to ask the Rebbe about his horse, what can he do that his horse is not working the way it used to. So the Rebbe says, 'maybe put some more sugar into the horse's food and it'll eat more and then the horse will do better.' So the Chassidim were aghast at the brazenness of the interruption, okay, but they restrain themselves and the Rebbe resumes the divrei Torah. Five minutes later the farmer interrupts again, says 'no, that's not the solution, I already tried it.' And again the Chassidim are just totally... new horseshoes because when a horse needs new horseshoes it's a very painful condition. He resumes the Divrei Torah. Chasidim finally they're able to calm down; they're so upset over the chutzpah of the two interruptions. And then when they finally just resumed connecting to the Rebbe's Divrei Torah, so the farmer says, "No, that's not it either. I already checked the horse's shoes." So at this point the Chasidim are ready to bodily evict him and then the Rebbe says to them in Yiddish—the farmer only speaks the vernacular, he doesn't understand Yiddish—he says, "Don't you understand what's happening?" He says, "He's not—I'm no expert in horses and he knows that." He says, "When you want to cultivate, you want to connect with me, you want to cultivate a relationship, so you ask me about a pasuk, Chumash, you ask me about a Mishna, Gemara, and etza in Avodas Hashem. At age four they sent him out to the field to help his father; had no chinuch whatsoever, doesn't know anything. The only thing he knows is farm life and horses. So this is his, this is the only language he speaks, so that's how, that's the only language he can speak to me in." So in less dramatic form, so it's probably maiseh b'chol yom, again we don't know it's maiseh b'chol yom because because we don't see that. But it captures again how within bein adam l'chaveiro again, that's the only part we've spoken about so far, that Avodas Hashem again on one level can be defined as a movement away from the self-centeredness which we begin experiencing naturally, instinctively from the very first moment of life, to try to become more aware of other people's needs rather than just feeling and experiencing instinctively our own needs. And because it's a defining quality in Avodas Hashem, same way one can define Avodas Hashem that way, one can on a certain level assess, on a certain level to a certain degree one can assess where one's holding in one's Avodas Hashem by looking to what degree he's been able to move away from the self-centeredness and move in the direction of v'ahavta l'reiacha kamocha, to move in the direction of the ultimate goal of anachnu mah. Some of the more practical applications we'll leave for future weeks bli neder, im yirtze hashem. But sort of small instances of small; they're relatively trivial, there are much bigger ones, instances of... I'm not saying a person needs to needs to excuse himself for a minute, whether it's to walk out of a shul during davening, to walk out of a shiur during shiur. And when he goes, so when the door closes behind a person, it makes noise. Some doors, even when they have the, what's the thing called on top, the door swing which which makes it go slowly, but it doesn't doesn't mean that it's not going to close with a quite audible noise. So if the person holds onto it, that the door should close without making noise, so it's an indication that he's stepped out of himself a little bit and is aware of not just the fact that I need to leave the room, but that there's so many other people who are in the room trying to concentrate on something, whether it's davening or whether it's a shiur and the maggid shiur is trying to talk and those listening to the shiur are trying to focus and listen, he's moved out of himself. Again, another relatively trivial example, but let's say I forgot something, or I didn't forget something, I left it there intentionally, but I didn't realize when I'd come back to the same room that there would be a shiur in progress. Okay, but if I don't get whatever object I left there, I'm going to be inconvenienced, it's going to disrupt whatever whatever my schedule calls for is going to be disrupted. So I'm aware of that, so I go and I get it. But the other side of the coin is that X number of people are being disrupted, but that doesn't always register on us. And it's a chisaron not only bein adam lachaveiro, but it's again, bli neder all these inyanim we'll come back to, im yirtzeh Hashem, to try to elaborate at least a little bit more. But in a certain sense, genuine avodas Hashem depends upon at least to a degree moving beyond that self-absorption, because otherwise it just elevates instead of acting on my self-interest in a material and physical sense, so I'm acting on it in a more spiritual sense. But if there's the same self-absorption, so it doesn't just doesn't just interfere with bein adam lamakom, it certainly interferes with what ultimately we're supposed to attain in terms of avoda, not only bein adam lachaveiro but our bein adam lamakom as well. We need, as Rav Yisrael Salanter tells us, we need to go through, we need to have the discipline and of yiras ha'onesh and yiras ha'onesh certainly appeals to self-interest, that's absolutely true. We need that discipline, but we also need to simultaneously try to go at least somewhat beyond that as well, that that shouldn't be all there is to it. So whether whether it's in little relatively small examples such as the one or two we gave, or more significant manifestations. A life of avodas Hashem is supposed to go again from the natural self-centeredness which is everyone's starting point משעה שיצא ממעי אמו and to chip away and ultimately, again, transcend, again, not in terms of the self-love—that's not transcended—but in terms of the other, the the absorption, that that is something that's supposed to be, and it's something that that has to be a very conscious part of our effort and and our avoda, and bli neder we will try to elaborate a few elements in the next week or two.