Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg
August 26, 2006

Dr.  Hanan Alexander, a professor of education at the University of Haifa, recalls a conversation he once had with a Palestinian colleague.  They were discussing the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict each trying to assign blame to the other.  Finally, Dr. Alexander in a moment of generosity and exasperation exclaimed, “alright, let’s do this… you take responsibility for whatever percentage of the conflict that you feel is the Palestinian’s fault; I will take responsibility for the rest.”  But, the colleague could not do it.  This bright and sensible Palestinian academic could not fathom carrying even one percent of the burden.  It is this complete lack of responsibility or accountability that, unfortunately, permeates so much of the Palestinian population these days.  And those who consider ourselves a bit more introspective are left feeling frustrated or even violated when we venture to suggest some degree of shared responsibility for the conflict. 

These days, as our senses are inundated with headlines, sound-bites, Op-Ed pieces from the New York Times, it’s easy to become disheartened.  The hearts of those of us who love Israel ache with frustration and even moments of rage or despair.  I have often wondered what Israel would be like if the Palestinians, never-mind Hezbollah, were willing to truly see us, as so many of us have endeavored to see them.  I, personally, have been so consumed with the matzav, that I almost forgot that this week we have just entered the month of Elul.

But we have…. Yesterday marked the first of the month immediately preceding the High Holidays.  Our tradition teaches that this is meant to be a time of introspection, of taking heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of our souls.  We blow the shofar each morning of Elul in the hope that its shrill voice will call us back to ourselves, back to God.  We call this “turning” back t’shuvah, or repentance.  However, as I see it, there are two primary and incredibly difficult tasks to complete before we are able to do real t’shuvah, and during this sacred month as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.   Think of them as sort of prerequisites to repentance.  First, we must judge ourselves and, second, we must allow ourselves to be judged. …Regardless of whether others are willing or able to do the same.  So permit me this morning to talk not about the struggle for peace in Israel which so readily occupies our consciousness, but about the struggle for peace within each one of us. 

In this week’s parashah, we are instructed (Deu. 16:18): “Shoftim v’shotrim titen l’cha,” “You shall appoint judges and officials in all your gates.”  Quite simply, the pasuk commands the tribes of Israel to appoint magistrates who will adjudicate cases as they arise.  However, Reb Yaakov Yosef of Polonoye, author of Toldot Yaakov Yosef, one of the most important texts of Eighteenth Century Hassidut, offers a different explanation.  Noticing the word “for you,” l’cha, he writes:

Shoftim v’shotrim titen l’cha: For you, for yourself.  First judge yourself, and, using the same yardstick, judge others.  Do not be lenient with your faults while judging harshly the same faults in others; do not overlook sin in yourself while demanding perfection of others. 

Kabbalists have referred to this process as tikkun atzmi, the repairing of the self.  Long before “self-help” became a cliché, Jews were pushing the boundaries of our hearts and minds, examining our emotional and behavioral tendencies. 

Another possible reading of this verse is that we should appoint judges for ourselves in others.  That is to say, we should allow ourselves to be judged.  The Torah tells us that God created the first woman to be an “ezer k’negdo,” an opposing helper to Adam.  Our closest companions, our friends, our family, our mentors and lovers are our best critics.  They see us with a certain clarity that we can rarely achieve on our own.  The question is whether we are able to hear their critique.  Will we allow ourselves to be vulnerable: to put as much stock in the voice of our partners as we do in the shofar’s clarion call. 

This Elul, who will be our shoftim? Who will be our judges?  And will we allow ourselves to be judged as easily as we judge ourselves?

Much has been said about the commandment from Leviticus (19:17) to rebuke one’s fellow.  Less has been said about the importance of receiving that tochacha, even when it has been provided with the best of intentions.  It’s easy to dish it out, as they say…. harder to take it.

In the Talmud it was taught (Erchin 16b) that Rabbi Tarfon said, “I would be surprised if anyone in this generation can take rebuke.  You tell a person to remove a speck of dust from his eyes and he’ll tell you to take a board from between yours!” 

Generations come and go, as do idiomatic expressions, but I think we get the basic gist.  And I’d venture to suggest that our generation is not much better at taking criticism than Rabbi Tarfon’s.  The problem, I think, is that we so often look at our critics as adversaries, condescending and cold in their rebuke.  Sometimes this is true: the art of offering constructive criticism in a way that it will not fall on deaf ears is a rare skill.  But, sometimes it’s not true: our critics are not our enemies but our friends offering sage advice.  And wisdom is the ability to discern the difference.  

The book of proverbs (9:8) teaches: “Do not reprove a fool – he will hate you.  Rebuke a wise man and he will love you.”  We should endeavor to be wise, loving the criticism as we love the critic.  The letters of the month of Elul are said to be an acronym: aleph, lamed, vav, lamed: Ani l’dodi, v’dodi li: I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.  The month of tochacha and t’shuvah, of discerning our faults and working to better ourselves is a month of reciprocal love.  And just as we know that God loves us even (or especially) when we hear the divine call for change, we should keep in mind that so do our spouses, our children, our parents, even our bosses.  As Rabbi Saul Berman has argued, tochacha must come from a place of covenantal love. And when it does, it can be our greatest asset.  But in order to hear it, we must be wise and not foolish: We should be willing to receive or rebuke with the same loving spirit in which it was intended.

It was this spirit of love and reproval that formed the backdrop for a powerful movement in Nineteenth Century Lithuania.  In the 1840’s, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter pioneered the Musar Movement which quickly spread to many Lithuanian yeshivot.  Faced with the emergence of the Haskalah (enlightenment), and the growing popularity of Hassidut, Musar or “ethics” attempted to appeal to the same younger population by encouraging them to re-examine traditional values.  Texts like Moshe Luzzatto’s The Path of the Upright and Bahya ibn Paquda’s Hovot Halevavot (Duties of the Heart) were studied with renewed vigor.  The mashgi’ah, a term typically reserved for the supervisor of the kitchen’s kosher status now became a moral supervisor, reflecting critique on prayer and ethical behavior back to his students.  The overall goal of the Musar Movement was to overcome the gap between theory and practice, between knowing the right ethical step and actually taking it.  Or, as Emmanuel Etkes of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem has noted, the Musar Movement developed “…what is in effect a religious and pietistic psychotherapy based on an astute and penetrating psychology” (see pg. 157 in Wertheimer’s The Uses of Tradition). 

Or as Salanter suggests in his own words: “Speak quietly and deliberately without joking or irony, estimate the good traits of man and his faults, how he should be castigated to turn away from the latter and strengthen the former. Do not decide matters at a single glance; divide the good work among you-not taking up much time, not putting on too heavy a burden. Little by little, much will be gathered... In the quiet of reflection, in reasonable deliberation, each will strengthen his fellow and cure the foolishness of his heart and eliminate his lazy habits.”

Salanter and his followers developed five methods for helping the individual to reach these ethical and behavioral ideals: Intense study of oft neglected areas of Jewish law, enthusiastic study of Musar texts, the cultivation of worldly wisdom from combating the yetzer hara or “evil inclination,” unsparing introspection, and finally the deliberate undergoing of trials.

Sounds intense?  It was, and its strictness and intensity was criticized by some even in Salanter’s day.  However, though not all of us may respond so favorably to the cloistered existence of the Lithuanian yeshiva, I believe that Salanter’s teachings and methodology have resonance for us today.

Hevre, we have one month before the High Holidays.  As we gear up for the Yamim Noraim, I would like to suggest that we use these Musar methodologies to examine our behavior, to appoint judges for ourselves, both internally and externally.  In order to do this, I want to focus for a moment on the final two of Salanter’s methods: unsparing introspection and the undergoing of trials.  These, I think, speak directly to the challenge of our parasha: Shoftim v’Shotrim titen l’cha, Make judges for yourself…

First, unsparing introspection: As we learned from Toldot Yaakov Yosef, before we can judge others, we must be willing to judge ourselves.  As I was taught by one of my teachers, this can best be done by cultivating a certain voice inner voice.  This is the voice that tells us when we are being hurtful or counterproductive.  This voice is our internal shofar, reminding us to remain on the path of the Kadosh Baruch Hu, and on the path of righteousness.  But, in addition to the voice within, true introspection requires that we see ourselves from the perspective of others.  Here is when we turn to our critics, our ezer k’negdo (our opposing helpers), those who offer tochacha with love and acknowledgment of our covenantal responsibility not just to God but to one another.  Kol yisrael aravim zeh bazeh.  All Jews are responsible for one another.  This Elul, will we allow ourselves to be guided by that sacred community?  Will we, in Salanter’s words, be strengthened by our fellows?

Second, the Musar Movement demanded that its students undergo trials “designed to cultivate certain positive character traits or eradicate negative ones.”  This is the concept of inui or affliction.  We do a version of this each year when we fast on Yom Kippur; we afflict our bodies and our souls in order to focus our minds on the task at hand.  But the trials of the Mussarist were also designed to provide him or her with the inner strength to ignore or withstand the ridicule of the ignorant.  The fool may not be able to take criticism, as we learned in Proverbs, but he also does not have the capacity to offer it in a constructive way.  Being open to having ourselves judged does not mean having to listen attentively to every ignoramus.  One attribute of wisdom is knowing who are our opposing helpers and who are simply our adversaries or detractors, and this is the point of the Mussarist’s trials: to steel him against undue or unhelpful critique.  When we can tell the difference and focus on valuable tochacha from valid sources, we can make sincere progress toward real t’shuvah.

So whatever happened to the Musar Movement?  Well, I want to reassure you that this Nineteenth Century innovation survives today in various forms adapted to respond to Twenty-First Century challenges.  Try googling “musar” and you will find ample resources at your fingertips: resources to help you probe your ethical and spiritual core.  Take, for example, the Musar Institute created and maintained by Rabbi Ira Stone of Conservative Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia.  Go to http://www.musarinstitute.org/.  There you will find, among other things, a list the eighteen midot or ideal character traits as delineated by Rabbi Mendel of Satanov in his important musar text: Cheshbon HaNefesh, “An Accounting of the Soul.”  And, as we know, it is precisely this soul-searching for which we strive at this High Holiday Season.

So here’s the homework assignment: we have one month until the New Year.  Over the course of the coming weeks, choose one midah, one character trait on which you would like to focus.  It could be patience, humility, cleanliness or modesty.  Perhaps this year you could use a dose of generosity, or rediscover the ability to trust.  Whatever your midah, take time each day for some “unsparing introspection.”  Talk to friends and family.  Ask for their guidance and counsel.  Shoftim v’shotrim titen l’cha, before we can do t’shuvah, we must open ourselves up to rebuke.  If we can find the strength to do this, if we can summon the will to use this month of Elul, this month of covenantal love, to truly grow, then that will have been something great indeed.  And when we arrive at the closing of the gates on Yom Kippur; when we encounter the Day of Judgement, having judged ourselves, having allowed ourselves to be judged, perhaps the Holy One will take notice and judge us each us with favor.