Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily. We’re talking about the step of self-awareness and realizing what’s going on inside of you: realizing your negative traits and negative sides. And that’s already greatness. To realize your weaknesses is greatness, not to suppress them.
Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, who was Rav Wolbe’s Rebbe, told a story. This story is brought down in Da'at Torah, Bamidbar, page 83. He says that when he learned in the Talmud Torah of Kelm, that’s where the Alter of Kelm raised the great giants. Among them were the Alter of Slabodka, Rabbi Yerucham Levovitz, Rebbe Eliyahu Dessler, and Rebbe Eliyahu Lopian. When he was a bachur (yeshiva student) Yeshiva, there were a few kollel (full-time Torah study) rabbis who learned there, extremely great men. A fire came out in one of the houses next to the Talmud Torah. Many houses were burnt down, but the Beit Midrash (study hall) survived. As the houses were being burnt and the fire was getting closer to the Yeshiva, this kollel rabbi thought to himself, “I hope the Yeshiva gets burned down as well. And then I’ll be able to go back home to my wife and children.”
When you hear this, you say, “Oh my gosh, this guy’s a horror.” But he says, “No, that’s greatness.” He realized that deep down, inside of himself, he had a desire. He had a desire to go back home. People are normal. He wants to go back to his wife and kids. He’d go back home and he’d be embarrassed. His wife said, “What are you coming back now? You’re supposed to be there.” The kollel rabbis used to spend a month at a time in the Yeshiva, separated from their wives. “What are you doing here? You’re coming in the middle of the month? You don’t belong here.” He’d say, “Oh, the Yeshiva burnt down. I had to come home.” He’d have a nice excuse. He’d be embarrassed to come back to his family. He says to a person to be able to realize that.
The Torah is always looking for and finding faults in our great avot (patriarchs) and the Dor HaMidbar (generation of the desert). Those problems that we’re finding show what’s really going on inside of us. And he says a person who doesn’t really know what’s going on in himself is not considered a human being at all. He quotes the Pasuk (verse) in Tehillim 49.21: “If you don’t understand yourself, you’re like an animal.”
The Pele Yoetz, on the topic of Pachad (fear), brings down a story that happened in the time of the Rambam. An Adam Gadol, a great man, did not want to say the vidui (confession) on Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) because he knew that he did not do those sins. And why should he lie in front of God? God’s stamp is the stamp of truth. The Rambam says, “If you knew the level of service to Hashem, you would realize—listen to these words—that you don’t do—you do everything.” How could that be? He says, because a person's not judged only on the most extreme. He says, “The Torah says he sinned with a married woman when in truth she was divorced.” So what does that mean? That means that when the Torah views a sin and tells us to look into ourselves, we’re talking about fine points. Everyone has fine points inside of them. And that’s our job.
So this rabbi was able to detect something inside of him. And that’s part of the job: to detect what’s going on inside of ourselves. Rav Wolbe told over that Yisrael Salanter said about himself that he would not want to be left in a room with uncounted money. Other Baalei Musar (ethics teachers) said, “If you left me in a room with uncounted money, I would take it.” Does that really mean they would take it? It means that they felt they also have some kind of taste of that sin inside of themselves, because they’re always checking on themselves. And that’s greatness: to realize your weaknesses and not to shy away from them.
We hear the story of Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. “Oh, horrible man.” That’s not the correct response. The Gemara says, “If someone sees a lady who was unfaithful to her husband, and after taking the test, she failed and she exploded and died in a heinous way, what are you supposed to do? Stop drinking wine.” Why? Because you’re not saying, “Ooh, terrible lady, look what she did.” You’re supposed to say, “Oh, if that happened to her, it could happen to me. I also could get into trouble like that. How do I have to look into myself?”
And there was once a story where a certain Rosh Yeshiva was caught up in some improper relations. And it was a big disgrace. Rav Wolbe was talking to a student of Reuven Leuchter about it, and he said something to the effect of, “We have to say that it could happen to us also.” Like, well, come on, how could that be? He went on to explain to him how every one of us has things inside of us. And the people you’re safe from are the people who are always concerned: “Oh, it’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen to me.” No, that’s the problem when you don’t realize that you have these possibilities inside of you.