Category Archives: Salanter

My penchant to rant…

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… or why I don’t blog Anon

This is actually my second blog. My first blog was back November 2004 and I did not use my name. The blog was called “Out of town Yid” and constisted of only one posting. The blog was put to sleep after about two days. My ‘post’ was basically about how middos and basic ethical concepts in Yiddishkeit should, in theory, get passed on to one’s children, students, congregants, or receivers of ‘Jewish outreach attempts’. When this doesn’t happen, it’s a disaster. It was not what I would describe as as a “happy go lucky post full of sunshine”. After rereading it I, as mentioned, pulled the plug.

For some, the ability to blog anonymous works to their advantage. For me, it brought out a dark side, that gravitated towards the sarcastic, a place were I might be prone to use my “wit to abuse, not to amuse.”

I know, for myself, that blogging under my name helps to (hopefully) keep me in check and for lack of a better phrase, not do anything foolish. When one puts themselves out in the public, on the web, on You Tube, Facebook, at the grocery store, at work, in shul, or in line somewhere for coffee, we do not only represent ourselves. There is a bigger picture.

That picture, may include our family, spouse, children, or the general category of “Torah observant Judaism”. Chillul Hashem is never a good thing. Rav Yisrael (Lipkin) of Salant (I know it’s not Sunday) said:
When Lashon Hara is spoken in Vilna, the effect will be Chillul Shabbos in Paris.

If, chas v’Shalom, this is true, then the best way to counter such a thing would be for me to remember that the opportunities that I can use for a Kiddush Hashem, or the learning I do, or the davening I do, or the mitzvos I do can have a very global effect. Can a Jew davening in Yerushalyim have an impact on another Jew in Wichita, KS? I like to hope so.

I’m not so global of a thinker tonight, though. I’d rather think more locally, like about my kids sleeping several rooms away. I hope I can affect them positively.

"Headlong into harm"

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A Simple Jew commented here and asked me how I interpret the following said in the name of R Yisrael Lipkin of Salant: When running to complete a Mitzvah, one can destroy an entire world on the way.
I think the following two vignettes about R Yisrael should be told in order before I continue:
A) When asked to tell something over about Pesach, R Yisrael would tell his talmidim prior to Pesach that they should be careful to be nice to the widows that bake the shum’ra matza they purchase before Pesach.

B) R Yisrael was once asked to tell over a thought prior to starting davening on Yom Kippur. He told those around him that they should be careful before davening that night when they put on their tallisism and not hit the person behind them with the tzitzis of their own tallis.

Clearly being, what was viewed at the time, as highly sensitive to others was a major part of R Yisrael’s Avodas Hashem. He put a re-emphasis on mitzvos Bein Adam L’Chavero that seemed to be lacking in the mid-to-late 1800’s. For him, in fact, Bein Adam L’Chavero was an aspect of Bein Adam L’Makom.

Shabbos night two weeks ago (just after R Yisrael’s Yartzeit) I actually read the above quote to my 8yr old. I gave him the above examples and also asked him if it would be fair if he was running a race and decided to trip someone he was running against so that he could win. Of course, he thought that it would be unfair and not a “real win”. Then I used a senario that was more close to home. When we are late to shul Shabbos morning (this is a real life example) and we rush into the beis medresh so that we can get two seats together, how would Hashem look at us if we bumped into several people on the way and distrubed their kavana as they were davening to Hashem?

This is probably what R Yisrael was speaking about…frumkeit. Let me use my zerizus to do whatever I need to do to, and another’s expense, to fullfill my mitzvah. That’s what the founder of the Mussar movement was up against. I see the same thing when people go shopping and grab the last package of sushi pushing aside someone’s shopping cart or a parent cuttting off cars so that they can get a prime spot in the ‘car line’ at school. To some, it might not seem like a chiddush to be thoughtful. Others, just might not think. If each mitzvah that we do creates a malach and each person is considered a ‘world’, then how careful must we be that the path we make towards fullfilling even the ‘smallest’ mitzvah doesn’t totally destroy the proverbial flower garden that belongs to our neighbor?

New Day Rising

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There are times when blogging non-anonymous has its’ advantages. One can wear their heart on their sleeve and those that truly know you are non-the-wiser. You can celebrate your victories and your setbacks (not defeats, mind you, simply setbacks), post them, and them get on with your day. There have been plenty-o-posts of mine that are, in fact, very personal and what I have written on this blog is exactly what I would have written in a journal that only I would have seen. Of course, there is a name attached to it and because of that I don’t always post every little thing that happens to me or what I think about certain topics.

Then there are time times, like this one, when a post is simply esoteric. Without knowing exactly what I’m writing about, the reader simply either spends another minute finishing up the post or simply moves on to something more interesting. I find recently that Hashem has been very good to me. By this, I mean, that I have been zoche to see how certain things have worked out to my benefit. When this happens, I take a minute or two and engage in some hisbodedus, attempting to show my Hakoras HaTov to Hashem.

When these things transpire it feels like a New Day Rising and I am pretty uplifted. The knowledge that Hashem is working things out for me, is both comforting and humbling. Such an incident occurred during a casual conversation I had over the weekend. I was speaking with someone and found out some good news about a few people I was close with during a chapter of my life that has been closed for some time now. I will end with this:

If you are involved on a communal level in the Jewish community, if you are in chinuch, if you find yourself being used as a klei to bring others close to Hashem (my fancy term for those in kiruv), if you daven for your kids to be Yirei Shamayim, if you say Tehillim for someone who is ill, just know that every effort you make, every minute spent putting someone’s needs above yours, counts. Sometime we never see it and other times Hashem shines the proverbial MagLite.

Sunday’s Spark of Mussar

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While other children in town were learning in cheder, one poor orphan boy went roaming in the streets, for there was no one to pay his tuition. R’ Yisroel insisted that the townspeople pay it. “We have no money,” they argued. “Sell your Sifrei Torah,” thundered R’ Yisroel, “and pay the child’s tuition!”

From Sparks of Mussar by R Chaim Ephraim Zaitchik


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Parsha Vayigash

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For the past few years I have found the following pasukim to be a bit confusing…

Now Joseph could not bear all those standing beside him, and he called out, “Take everyone away from me!” So no one stood with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept out loud, so the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. -Berashis 45:1-2 quoted from here.

I know that Rashi on the first pasuk says that by sending the Mitzriem away Yosef was being sensitive as so not to embarrass his brothers. Rashi is teaching us a very important lesson. However, why does the pasuk say that the Egyptians and Paro heard Yosef cry?

I was thinking about this and I might have found a lesson in it for me. R Yisrael Salanter said that, “One’s face is considered a r’shus harabim (public area)”, after he saw someone in the street looking very depressed. I think there is a fine line between wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve and being completely deadpan or non-emotional in the public arena.

Yosef was always setting an example not only as viceroy, but as a Jewish leader. It is common to want to be senstive to others, as Yosef was to his brothers. At times, by putting others’ needs before one’s own, one can tend to forget about himself and his feelings. I think Yosef needed to cry as an expression of his emotions before his brothers. I believe he also wanted Egypt to hear a more ‘human’ side of him, not just him as Paro’s right hand man.

To be someone who thinks about others’ feelings, and at time same time not negate their own is, in Yosef’s case, all in the timing. I hope you have a Gut Shabbos Kodesh!

How Not to Say Selichos

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The following was emailed to me as part of the Rabbi Yisrael Salatner Daily e-list compiled by Prof. Yitzchok Levine, and is being posted with permission from Prof. Levine:

Given that Ashkenazim begin saying Selichos this Sunday, I think that the piece below is particularly apropo at this time of year.
From pages 215 to 216 of the Mussar Movement, Volume 1, Part 2.
He [Rabbi Salanter] would point to many such object lessons [where people harm others while doing a mitzvah] in every day life:

It is customary at the end of the month of Elul and during the Ten Days of Penitence to rise in the middle of the night or very early inthe morning for the Selichot services. In their eagerness to perform the mitzvah, people commitmany misdeeds.
It is not infrequent for an energetic individual to make so much noise in rising from bed that he wakes his entire household and even the neighbors.
Sometimes there are sick people or infants in the vicinity, and his behavior causes them pain and suffering.
One individual might even have the housemaid rise and make tea for him. In most cases, she is a widow or orphan, and so he transgresses the prohibition, “You shall notafflict any widow or fatherless child.”
In his haste he pours dirty water in a place where people pass by, and so he sets an obstacle in a public domain.
When he enters the synagogue; he might discover that his lectern has been moved from its place.
He reprimands the shamash, and in this instance he is guilty of slander and publicly shaming his neighbor.
Sometimes the one who has moved his lectern is a full-time student who has been awake all night engrossed in Torah study, and the owner now inflicts grief and humiliation upon a Talmid Chacham.
And so R. Israel enumerated seven grave transgressions one is liable to commit in this instance, yet remain sublimely unaware of having done anything wrong and derive smug self-satisfaction from his fervent prayerand sincere repentance, blissfully unconscious tha this loss outweighs his gain.
Earlier issues of The Daily Salanter are at http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/salanter/