Who We Really Are – and Who We Could Be
Many communities, including Syrian Jews, have the custom to recite throughout the month of Elul the 27th chapter of Tehillim, which begins, לדוד ה' אורי וישעי – “[A Psalm] by David: Hashem is my light and my salvation.”
In this pasuk, I believe, David prays to Hashem to give him the “light,” the vision and clarity, that he needs in order to earn his ישועה (“salvation”). If we want to earn Hashem’s help and blessing, then we must first see ourselves clearly and accurately, and we must therefore pray to Hashem for His “light,” to give us a clearer picture of who we are and who we could be.
So often, we don’t know who we really are. There are many nasty, mean-spirited people who think they are nice and pleasant. They simply don’t realize the way they come across. There are people who think they are funny, and so they repeatedly tell jokes, but the jokes aren’t funny at all. They don’t have an accurate picture of who they are.
It happens every so often that a movie is released which receives dismally poor reviews by all critics across the board. When this happens, we can only wonder, what were the people involved in the film thinking? The film was made by professional, experienced, perhaps even award-winning screenwriters, producers and actors. How did they end up producing such a poor film that nobody liked? The answer is that they could not see the flaws of their movie precisely because it is their movie. Since they made it, they saw it with a biased, jaundiced eye, and were blinded to its low quality.
We so often do the same. We feel comfortable with who we are and what we do, without realizing the things we do wrong. We all think that everybody who is more strictly religious than we is a fanatic, and everybody who is less stringent is sinful. We all think that those with less money than us are depriving their children, and those with more money than us are either corrupt, ostentatious, or both. We feel comfortable with the way we are, with our lifestyle, and feel that anything different is wrong. Our goal during the period of Elul and the High Holidays is to try to shine some “light” on ourselves and our conduct, to assess ourselves with greater clarity, accuracy and objectivity.
The Tears That Created a Torah Sage
There is a famous story told about the Netziv (Rav Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin of Volozhin) which has always haunted me since the day I heard it, and which underscores the kind of honest introspection and self-evaluation that we are to be doing.
Once, when the Netziv was an old man, he made a siyum celebration. But this was no ordinary siyum. The Netziv was celebrating his 1,000th time completing the entire Shas!
At this siyum, he revealed an incident that happened when he was a child, around the age of ten. He was struggling in school, and was not succeeding in his Torah studies. One day, he stood behind the door to a room in his home and heard his parents talking. They were saying how it seems their son is simply not cut out for advanced Torah study, and that it was perhaps time to take him out of his Torah school and teach him a trade, rather than continue watching him struggle. The Netziv heard what his parents were saying and watched as his mother began crying, heartbroken by the reality that her son would not become the Torah scholar she had wanted him to be.
The Netziv said that at that moment, as he saw his mother’s tears of distress, he resolved to redouble his efforts. He ended up staying in school, and grew to become one of the greatest Torah figures of his time, leading the great yeshiva of Volozhin, authoring many seminal works of Talmudic scholarship, and completing Shas one thousand times.
“I can only imagine,” the Netziv concluded, “what would have happened if I had not overheard that conversation. I would have likely ended up being a shoemaker, and probably being a good shoemaker. I would have been a fine Jew, praying three times a day, attending Torah classes, and raising an observant family. But when I would leave this world, I would come to heaven and be shown a large stack of Torah books. I would ask what these are, and I would be told, ‘This is what you could have become. You could have written all these books. Instead, you made shoes.’”
This story haunts me because I, like many people, feel generally comfortable with who I am. We assume, without giving it much thought, that our path in life is correct, that we do things the way we should. This is the time to give more thought to the question of who we are, and who we could be. Is there perhaps another, better version of ourselves that we could become? Is there potential within us that we are failing to actualize? These are the difficult questions that we need to be asking, and answering as honestly as we could, during the month of Elul.
Long-Term Effects
There is also an additional element of this process that must be emphasized.
It is told that the Hafetz Haim was once traveling with another prominent Rabbi, and they lodged in a Jewish-owned inn. The innkeeper was overjoyed at the privilege of hosting such distinguished guests, and wanted to make sure they were well taken care of. During dinner, he approached their table and asked if everything was to their liking. The Rabbi accompanying the Hafetz Haim said, “The food is very good, but the soup could use some more salt.”
After the owner left, the Hafetz Haim turned to the other Rabbi and asked, sternly, “How could you say such a thing?”
“What’s wrong?” the Rabbi replied. “All I said was that the soup could use some more salt. I wasn’t complaining.”
“Don’t you understand what you did?” the Hafetz Haim said. “This innkeeper probably stormed into the kitchen and complained to the cook that there are two famous Rabbis in his restaurant and they complained about the soup. He is probably going to fire her because of it. She is very likely a poor widow with children to support, and the holidays are coming.”
“But…but I didn’t complain. I said the food was good. I just innocently observed that the soup needed more salt.”
The Hafetz Haim took the other Rabbi outside, and behind the building they saw a woman crying. They approached her, and it turned out that indeed, as the Hafetz Haim suspected, she was the cook and she was fired because the other Rabbi’s comment about the soup. And, sure enough, she was a poor widow who depended on this job for supporting her children. The Rabbis intervened and the woman got her job back.
This story demonstrates the long-term effects of our actions and our words. We can be sitting at a Shabbat table or at an affair enjoying talking with our relatives and friends, and we unwittingly make an innocent remark that ends up being very damaging. If we make a derogatory comment, or a comment that could come across as derogatory, about a husband or wife in front of the other spouse, we have no idea what that could do to their marriage. If we make a comment about our children’s success or good behavior, this could often cause great pain to other parents around us who struggle with their children. We think that we are upstanding, good, considerate people – and most of us, baruch Hashem, are – but we often fail to pay attention to how we come across, to the possible harmful impact of our words.
Criticism
How do we solve this problem? How can we step outside ourselves and try to assess our speech and conduct, and its long-term effects, with pure objectivity?
The most important way is to use the perspective of the people around us, which means listening to criticism.
Nobody enjoys criticism. When somebody criticizes us, it gives us an unpleasant feeling, and so we do whatever we can to deflect it. We defend ourselves, and we insist that we did nothing wrong, and that the other person’s remarks are out of place. But if we want to look at ourselves accurately so we can grow and improve, we need to be able to listen to criticism with an open mind. We might honestly conclude that the criticism is misplaced, or not entirely accurate, but we should at least consider that maybe the other person is right. We are not as perfect as we like to think we are. We do not always do everything right. When we receive criticism, we should relish the opportunity to get a different perspective about us than our own biased perspective.
Once at the end of the summer I met with a group of students who had just graduated high school and were about to leave to learn in Israel. There was one boy in the group who had left the school where I teach a year earlier. When I spoke with him, he complained that I had not reached out to him all year. His complaint was not easy to hear, but it was important for me to hear. It got me thinking and asking myself, how many other students have I failed to keep in touch with over the years? Sure, I am busy, but perhaps I should be working harder to reach out to students. The criticism stung, but it gave me a different perspective than the comfortable, secure perspective with which I normally view myself.
Stories are told of great tzadikim who would appoint one another to give them criticize. Knowing how hard it is to judge oneself with pure objectivity, they would respectfully ask each other to assess each other’s conduct and point out areas that need improvement. This is how they were able to get an accurate picture of who they were, and overcome the natural human tendency to justify oneself and assume everything he does is correct.
Let’s listen carefully to other people’s criticism, rather than instinctively dismissing it. If we can somehow step outside ourselves and view our conduct from a different perspective, we will see a different picture, and thus set ourselves along the path of growth and improvement, so we can become the people who are capable of becoming.