Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily.
One of the topics we discussed recently was the concept that when a person has a mental illness, it's not always easy to use religious devices to pull out of it. That was a chiddush to some, who think that we should be able to do everything with religion. We gave the analogy that a person doesn't use religious methods to get rid of a kidney stone, they do the regular hishtadlut, and the same is true with anxiety, depression, or the like.
I attended a derasha given by Rabbi Lopiansky from Silver Springs, Maryland, a son-in-law of Rabbi Beinush Finkel from the Mir Yeshiva. He was speaking to a group of mental health specialists and brought up this question, What's the need for mental health specialists? We believe in freedom of choice, so why not go for it. Address your problems with your freedom of choice, get hizzuk from the rabbi and you're good to go.
Who needs mental health specialists?
He went on to show, from three different sources, that a person can be in a situation where he's what's called Anoos. In our religion, we take into consideration that a person can sometimes be in an accidental situation. The normal case of Anoos is if you're driving a car, and your brakes go out. You're out control and something happens, like you smash into another car. You're not responsible. You're Anoos- it’s an accident. It's not under your control.
He went on to bring three different sources for this. The first source was from a Rishon, the Rivash, in his She’elot UTeshuvot. In those days, as in our days, there were people that gambled. The gambling that he was referring to was with dice. Obviously, people that gamble lose money and it's not good for their lives, their families or whatever else it may be. In those days, they didn’t have, Gamblers Anonymous to help people stop gambling, but they were religious people, so one technique they used was that they would swear, in front of their rabbis or family
members, that they were not going to gamble any more.
It’s even brought down that a person could use swearing for Mitzvot or protection against Averot, like Yaakov Avinu made a neder that when he came back, he’d build a mizbe’ach. So using vows is a technique. I might not be able to control myself from eating cheesecake but if I swear that I won't eat cheesecake, it now becomes a vow and it stops me.
They knew that breaking a Shevua as a terrible thing.
In a related, cute story, a person that went to Weight Watchers was successful getting through the holiday of Shavuot without gaining weight even though cheesecake was one of their favorites foods.
The instructor was all excited and asked how they did it. The person said, “I used a religious technique. I ate a little piece of meat or chicken before the meal, and that was it. I couldn't eat any cheese for six hours. And that's what kept me in check.”
And so if you don't want to, or can’t eat meat before your meal, you could make a Shevua, “I swear I won't eat cheesecake.”
So this man swore he was not going to gamble anymore. But, lo and behold, he did gamble. In those days, they had a Jewish court system, and when a person broke a Shevua, they were publicly flogged, they were excommunicated, all kinds of horrible things..
So the question that was asked of the Rivash was, Should we publicly flog this man who broke his swear that he is not going gamble ever again?
He said, “No, you should not, because this man is like an Oness. It's like he was forced. His Yetzer Hara for gambling is so strong, he couldn't control himself. And therefore it's like he was forced, and he should not get the regular punishment.
That was Rabbi Lopiansky’s first source that the concept of being forced is recognized in Halacha.
It's recognized in Halacha that this man really didn't have full freedom of choice. It wasn’t a level playing field, so to say. It's like a guy smoking, does he really have freedom of choice to stop smoking? It's not that easy. He's already addicted to it. Of course, he has some level, obviously, because he doesn't smoke on Shabbat, but to totally stop, it's a whole different story. That is our first source. We will continue with the other sources tomorrow.