Parshas Ki Savo: Getting to the Root

This week's shiur fell on Rabbi Adi's Hebrew birthday, and he opened with a bracha: there is an idea in Kabbalah that on a person's birthday he has a little something extra, so he used the day to bless everyone with an amazing year, on a personal level, on a family level, and together, to keep making an impact on thousands and thousands of people.

And with that, we reach the last of the trifecta. Three weeks ago was tzedakah, last week tefillah, and this week the first word of the three: teshuvah, repentance. U'teshuvah u'tefillah u'tzedakah ma'avirin es ro'a hagezeirah, these three remove the evil of the decree, and now we have all three in hand going into Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

One small thing before he began, and it is worth recording. Rabbi Adi shared that since the tzedakah shiur a few weeks ago, he now brings a stack of individual shekels with him to davening every morning, and gives one shekel to every person who comes by collecting. It is not a lot of money, he said, but the point of learning these things is to put them into action, and he tries to practice himself what he teaches on these calls.

The crash that changed aviation

Rabbi Adi opened teshuvah with a true story from 1974. A United Airlines flight was approaching Washington Dulles Airport when the control tower issued a clearance, and based on that signal, the pilot began descending. It was a clear day, and as the plane came down, the crew suddenly saw what was ahead of them: mountains, directly in the flight path. At nearly the last minute they pulled up, cleared the ridge, and landed safely half an hour later.

The pilot was badly shaken. He had followed the signals as he understood them. Going over it again and again, he realized the clearance from the tower was misleading: it did not mean begin descending, it meant hold your altitude and prepare for the descent to come. So a warning went out explaining this to the pilots, but here was the fatal flaw: the warning went only to United's own pilots.

Six weeks later, on December 1, 1974, a TWA flight approached Dulles and received the same clearance. This time it was a cloudy winter day. The pilots began descending, and they could not see the mountain until it was too late. All 92 people on board were killed on impact.

Out of that horror came something that may have saved the future of aviation: the Aviation Safety Reporting System, funded by the FAA but deliberately administered by an outside body, NASA. It lets pilots, air traffic controllers, mechanics, and flight attendants report their own mistakes, near-misses, and hazards, anonymously, with no fear of being fired, punished, or embarrassed. Every error anyone makes becomes a lesson for everyone, instead of a secret that crashes the next plane.

That, said Rabbi Adi, is the core idea of teshuvah. The mussar books describe how people would tremble as Elul began, anxious before the Day of Judgment. But Elul is not meant to be anxiety. Elul is the reporting system: a safe place to look honestly at your own near-misses, to learn from every person and every teacher, and to become a better person, a better husband, a better father, a better sister. That is the gift of Elul.

Symptom or root?

So what is teshuvah? When a person sins, there are two jobs. The first is to fix the action itself. But the deeper job is to realize that something at the core caused it, and the core is what has to be fixed. If your tooth hurts, filling the cavity will not help when what you really need is a root canal. Rabbi Adi told about his little nephew who dislocated his shoulder jumping on a moon bounce, and someone suggested giving him Advil. Of course you can give him Advil, he laughed, but Advil does not fix a dislocated shoulder. Someone has to pop the shoulder back into place. Advil only covers it up.

So step one of teshuvah: stop the action. The stealing, the negative talk about people, the disrespect to parents. But if you want to become the best person you can be, step two is to find the root cause. This is why, as all the rabbis point out about self-help books too, a change that is only in behavior and not in your midos (character traits) usually reverts. A few weeks or a few months later, you are back doing the same thing, because the root was never touched.

Two Gemaras

Rabbi Adi brought two Gemaras from Kiddushin that seem to give opposite advice. The first, in the name of Rabbi Ilai: if a person sees that his yetzer (inclination) is overpowering him, let him go to a place where nobody knows him, dress in black clothing, cover himself with more black clothing on top, and do what his heart desires, so that at least he will not desecrate the name of Heaven in public. Tosafos, the great commentary, is bothered by the obvious problem: “do what his heart desires”?! Travel somewhere anonymous and then do whatever you want? That does not sound very Jewish. So Tosafos and others explain: deep down, what every Jew truly desires is what is good for his neshamah (soul). By the time you have traveled all that way and wrapped yourself in black, you will discover that you do not actually want to sin at all.

The second Gemara, also in Kiddushin, says in Hashem's name: I created the yetzer hara, and I created the Torah as its antidote. If this scoundrel attacks you, drag him to the beis midrash, go learn.

Two questions. Which one is the right advice, the black clothing or the beis midrash? And how does the first one work at all? Is a change of neighborhood and a change of clothes some kind of magic potion?

Three relationships, three roots

To answer, Rabbi Adi built a framework. Every aveirah (sin) a person can do falls into one of three relationships: bein adam laMakom, between man and Hashem; bein adam lachaveiro, between man and his fellow man; and bein adam l'atzmo, between man and himself. The last one needs explaining, and the sefarim describe it like this: it is when you are alone at night, you look in the mirror, and you say, I am upset with the person I have become. Your own actions are eating away at your self-esteem, your confidence, your excitement to excel and do good. That is a sin against yourself.

The very name Elul hints at all three. The rabbis found the letters of Elul, aleph-lamed-vav-lamed, spelled out across Tanach. The most famous:

אֲנִי לְדוֹדִי וְדוֹדִי לִי

I am my Beloved's, and my Beloved is mine. (Shir HaShirim)

I do for Hashem and Hashem does for me: that is bein adam laMakom. The Arizal brings a second acronym, from the Megillah: “ish l'rei'eihu u'matanos la'evyonim,” sending gifts to friends and presents to the poor, thinking of other people: bein adam lachaveiro. And a third: “es levavcha v'es levav zar'echa,” that Hashem will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children, your own future: bein adam l'atzmo. All three relationships are packed into the name of the month.

The same three run through the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos that the world stands on three things: on Torah, on avodah, and on gemilus chasadim. Avodah is prayer, your daily relationship with Hashem. Gemilus chasadim is the kindness you do for your fellow man. And Torah is the truth Hashem gave us so that we can improve ourselves. And the same three appear in the dark mirror image, the three cardinal sins a Jew must give up his life rather than commit: avodah zarah, idol worship, abandoning Hashem; shefichus damim, murder, destroying your fellow man; and gilui arayos, illicit relationships, surrendering to your own temptations, a sin ultimately between you and yourself.

Now the key Mishnah, from Pirkei Avos:

הַקִּנְאָה וְהַתַּאֲוָה וְהַכָּבוֹד מוֹצִיאִין אֶת הָאָדָם מִן הָעוֹלָם

Jealousy, desire, and honor remove a person from the world.

These three are the roots, and each one corrupts one of the three relationships. Kavod, the hunger for honor, corrupts bein adam laMakom: a person who cares only about his own ego leaves no room in the room for Hashem. That is why the Gemara says one of the worst traits a person can have is being a ba'al ga'avah, extremely haughty; he will end up believing in nothing but himself. Kinah, jealousy, corrupts bein adam lachaveiro: why does a person speak badly about someone else? Almost always because he wishes he had what that person has. Ta'avah, desire, corrupts bein adam l'atzmo: when a person gives in to an urge he knows is wrong, he is left disappointed in himself, and that disappointment slowly shrinks his sense of his own greatness.

Fix these three roots, and you have done real teshuvah. The symptoms stop appearing, because the thing producing them is gone.

The answer

Now both Gemaras make sense. Rabbi Ilai's advice is not a magic potion; it is root removal. Go where nobody knows you: there is no honor to chase, because no one knows who you are. Dress in black, and more black on top: you are no longer the polished man in the nice tie and clean shoes measuring himself against everyone around him, so the jealousy quiets. And a person hidden in black in a strange town, with no one to impress and no appearance to keep up, finds his own temptations quieting too. Rabbi Ilai is prescribing an environment where kavod, kinah, and ta'avah have nothing to feed on, and once the three roots are starved, you discover what Tosafos said: your heart's true desire was never the sin.

And the second Gemara is for when you cannot travel. Then drag yourself to the Torah, because embedded in the Torah is the answer to the question underneath all three roots: why am I in this world, and what am I supposed to be doing here? A person who stops to re-anchor himself in his purpose is far less likely to walk out and sin.

Practical tips for Elul

Rabbi Adi finished with one practical handle for each root, and he added, honestly, that he is collecting these ideas for himself as much as for anyone.

For kinah, jealousy: the Mishnah in Avos asks:

אֵיזֶהוּ עָשִׁיר? הַשָּׂמֵחַ בְּחֶלְקוֹ

Who is wealthy? The one who is happy with his portion.

Some commentaries even read “ashir,” wealthy, as an acronym: ayin for einayim, eyes; shin for shinayim, teeth; yud for yadayim, hands; reish for raglayim, feet. If you have your eyes, your teeth, your hands, and your feet, you are rich; be happy you are alive and able to accomplish. But the main idea is to focus on what you have, not on what you lack. There is a famous study of Olympic medalists' faces on the podium: the gold medalists beam, and the bronze medalists beam too, thrilled to have medaled at all. It is the silver medalists who look miserable, because all they can see is how close they came to gold. The Torah's answer: work your hardest, and then be genuinely happy with whatever you achieved, and push harder next time. The Chassidim add a higher level still: who is truly wealthy? The one who is happy when his friend succeeds. Learning to be glad for other people is the deepest cure for jealousy.

And here is where this week's parsha comes in. Parshas Ki Savo opens with bikkurim, the first fruits: whatever first grows in your field in Eretz Yisrael must be brought up to Yerushalayim, with a full procession, a beautiful gold basket, flute players walking you into the city. And Hashem says: even if your entire field produced one single pomegranate, you bring that one pomegranate, and the procession is the same procession. Someone else arrives with a hundred fruits; you arrive with one; the flutes play for both of you. Be proud and full of joy over your one pomegranate. That is hasameach b'chelko.

For ta'avah, temptation: the Mishnah says, who is mighty? The one who conquers his inclination. Conquering an urge is genuinely hard, whether it is something you should not be looking at or the junk food you know will make you feel terrible. So count your wins. Every time you overcome a temptation, stop and feel proud of it. Victories you never acknowledge do not build strength; victories you count do.

For kavod, honor: the Mishnah says, who is honored? The one who honors others. Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, whose old Yerushalayim neighborhood Rabbi Adi lives in today, was famous for simply loving everybody, and he used to say: giving honor to another person is free. It does not cost a penny. So give it to everybody, and the more the better.

The takeaway

The challenge for all of us this week and this month: be mindful of the three roots, jealousy, honor, and temptation, and catch them when they pop up in real life, because they will. Each one you overcome is real teshuvah, root-level teshuvah, the kind that does not revert. That is how we become better people, and how we walk into Rosh Hashanah with all three of the trifecta, teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah, already in motion.

And with that, as he promised at the start, Rabbi Adi ended where he began: that we should overcome these things and become better people, and have an amazing year, for us and for the entire Jewish people.

One more, from the conversation after

In the discussion after the shiur, the talk turned to spreading happiness and making people smile, and Rabbi Adi added one more Gemara, from Maseches Taanis. One of the rabbis of the Talmud was standing in the marketplace when he encountered Eliyahu HaNavi, and asked him: is there anyone here who has earned the highest place in the next world? Eliyahu pointed to a few people in the crowd, and one of them was, of all people, a jester, a clown. The rabbi was amazed: out of everyone in this marketplace, him? And Eliyahu answered: of course. He goes around making sure everybody has a better day. He makes people laugh, he makes the sad ones smile, and that is one of the most important things a person can do. Rabbi Adi's point from his own shul last week: smile at somebody during the day, and you can change the entire room you are standing in, at work, at home, anywhere.