Welcome back to Daily Bitachon. We're talking about the concept of small kabbalot and the question is if it's so small and so easy why don't we do it? And one of the reasons is impatience. We have a culture of instant gratification and that makes it difficult to appreciate slow and steady progress. We don't like the concept of one step at a time, we want it to happen right away.
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski zatzal, who is well-known psychologist used to keep a sign outside his door that read elevator broken, take the steps. It comes from an outside secular source, it's a popular slogan widely used in the 12-step recovery program and it emphasizes that no shortcuts to recovery and personal growth. And there's a lot of other different motivational sayings to the same effect: there's no elevator to success, you have to take the stairs, the elevator to success is out of order, you'll have to use the stairs one step at a time.
And this is a metaphor that works, telling you in personal growth and self-improvement context the broken elevator represents the idea that shortcuts don't exist. You can't press a button and automatically arrive at self-mastery, healing or success. You have to do the step-by-step incremental work one stair at a time. This concept, as all good concepts, is found in our Torah sources.
Rav Chaim Volozhin in his sefer Ruach Chaim says the following: if a master asks his servant to go up ten steps, he doesn't expect him to leap all ten steps in a single bound, he expects him to climb them one step at a time. But this lack of patience and wanting things to happen right away interferes. But there's one important difference between our way of looking and the outside way of looking at it. When you climb those first ten steps out of the hundred and you get to the first landing, there is an elevator waiting there for you, which means Hashem when you put your effort in haba letaher when a person takes that step mesayeno oto they help you.
בדרך שאדם רוצה לילך in the path that you want to take molichim oto they take him, says the Maharsha. What does it mean they take him? When you make that right move you create angels and those angels help you along. So yes, we need to have patience at the beginning but once you get through that beginning God helps you out. So our metaphor is take the stairs for your few flights and there is an elevator on the third floor.
Rav Wolbe in his ספר עלי שור חלק ב quotes the Gra who tells us anytime as when a person is asked about his progress in serving Hashem he says I need siyatta d'ishmaya I need divine assistance. He says what a pitiful statement that is. It's as if he says I did everything I need to do and I'm just waiting for Hashem to help out and for some reason He's just not helping. In the secret recesses of his heart he's actually blaming Hashem for his lack of success.
And Rav Wolbe says there's a pasuk in Mishlei explained by the Vilna Gaon. The pasuk says the foolishness of a man perverts his way and his heart frets against the Lord, which means you made a mistake, now you blame Hashem. What does that mean says the Vilna Gaon? Sometimes a person begins learning Torah, performing mitzvot and then it's too hard and he stops and he says it's Hashem's fault. But in truth it's his own mistake.
What was his mistake? That everybody must go according to his own level and not jump ahead and then he'll walk securely on his path and then God will help him. But this man did not begin by going properly on the path, he tried to jump and therefore he fell and that's your foolishness. Don't blame it on God that you didn't have patience. Because if he acted without composure and clarity, yishuv hadaat, he perverted his way and then he blames Hashem and says why didn't You help me? And Rav Wolbe says this is work.
We have to be sober enough to estimate well, neither being too lenient with ourselves nor demanding too much of ourselves. And therefore as we mentioned before it's so important to do cheshbon hanefesh, to make a self-reckoning every day and to know where you're holding. Now again the self-reckoning doesn't mean I'm sitting there beating myself up at what I did or didn't do. Self-reckoning means I have to train myself and have the proper understanding of myself and be able to have the proper patience with myself because I know who I am.
And Rav Wolbe says part of this mistake is why don't we take things one step at a time because we think... God's demanding from me something that's above me. But he quotes a Midrash Rabbah on Shemot 34:1, the pasuk that says Kol Hashem b'koach. The voice of Hashem is in power.
It doesn't say in His power, but in power, which means according to the capacity and strength of each and every individual. So God only wants what you can do. Rav Volbe says this rule of according to his capacity is a great overarching principle in the service of Hashem. And our strength is quite modest.
The entire path of our spiritual work that we attempt with Hashem's help is to outline in his sefer Alei Shur. It's built on this foundation. Progress is step-by-step in our work. We must not burden ourselves excessively nor exaggerate.
And he quotes a Gemara in Kiddushin 17A. The Gemara is referring to when you want to learn something out from a pasuk and it tells you something, whether it's a stringency or leniency, you can't go overboard. If I give you a finger, don't take a hand. And what does the Gemara say? This is talking about when it comes to extracting practical law.
If you grabbed too much, you hold nothing. If you grab a little, you hold it. Which means תפסת מרובה לא תפסת. You try to grab a lot, you have nothing.
tafasta muat, if you try to grab a little bit, tafasta, you'll get a little bit, you'll get that. What does that mean? Mashal, you go to a table and you're a kid and there's a pizza pie, eight pieces and you take three, they're going to grab them all back from you. You take one, you get one. So Rav Volbe applies this to serving Hashem also.
If you try to grab too much, you're not going to get anywhere. Grabbing too much comes from lack of patience, from arrogance, whatever is driving you, from misunderstanding of God's demands of you. But we have to, and again, this is all about how to get us to do smaller things and understand that that is the proper path. So we're trying to get over those humps of the misunderstanding and here we are in Elul and I want to do something small and there's a lot of forces inside of me that are saying I have no patience, I want it to happen right away, God demands so much, I got to do so much, he's not going to be happy with the little.
All these are misconceptions that we must overcome. The Chofetz Chaim in his sefer Zachor L'Miriam Perek Yud Chet says, coming times of Mashiach, like what can I do? And his answer is, my answer, he says, God doesn't want great things and things you can't reach. He wants you to do what you can. And this is a fundamental rule: אין הקדוש ברוך הוא בא בטרוניא עם בריותיו.
God does not come to argue with us. He wants you to do what you could do. And he proves it. The Midrash says when God told Moshe to build the Beit HaMikdash and the Mishkan, he trembled.
He says I'm going to make a house for God? God's in the heavens. God says that the whole world is just my footstool. And God said, I'm not asking you on my terms. I'm asking you on their terms.
And again, when it came time to dedication of the Mishkan, Moshe said, you have all the gold and the silver in the world.
לי הכסף ולי הזהב. What am I going to do? And again he said, their ability. What do I want? A half a shekel, machatzit hashekel.
Nine dollars I want. I don't want more than you can do. Understand that. I might have said this in the past, I'm sorry to go overtime.
A beautiful mashal from Rav Mattisyahu Salomon that there was a small peasant couple that lived in a little hut and they got a letter one day that the king is coming. The king is coming to their hut. They don't know, what am I going to do? I have a leaky roof, we have the carpets, there's no carpet, and the whole house is in shambles. And the wife says we got to do this, we got to do that, we got to do the other thing.
And the husband says the king knows what kind of house we live in. He doesn't want us to build a palace. He wants us to do what we can do. He doesn't want us to gut our house.
He wants us to mop it, clean it, maybe put some lightbulbs in the chandelier, whatever it is, but he knows what our abilities are. God's coming on Rosh Hashanah, says Rav Mattisyahu Salomon. You think he wants you to change everything? Where is he coming to? Rav Volbe says he's coming into your heart. Our hearts are a mess.
Well, God knows it's a mess. Clean it up a little bit, do something. And again, we say Pesukim of Malchuyot on Rosh Hashanah. One of them is השם ימלוך לעולם ועד.
God is going to be, should be king forever. Now we know certain things are written chaser and malei. The word Yaakov is י' ע' ק' ו' ב' but the O sound really should have a vav. There's two ways to do the O sound, with a vav and a dot on top, or a little dot on the side of the kuf.
The word yimloch is lacking a vav, it could have a vav. He says to show us that Hashem doesn't expect us to have a full recognition of his kingship. He says Hashem doesn't make unreasonable demands of his people. He doesn't want to ask the impossible, give us arduous, grueling work.
Everything he says is doable. As the navi Micha says 6:3 עמי מה עשיתי לך ומה הלאיתיך ענני בי and how did I tire you? Please respond. God says I never asked you too much more than you can do. This is very important when we accept the yoke of Hashem's kingship, we're not accepting upon ourselves an impossible task.
That's the yetzer that wants to say to you, the original claim: did Hashem say you can't eat any of the trees in the garden? That's fake news. He wants to say it's impossible. And that's Rosh Hashanah number one. The snake comes and says God wants the impossible.
And that's fake news we must recognize and overcome that misconception.