Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA >, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
Our approach is that we try as much as possible to get our knowledge from Torah sources. Occasionally, we might stumble onto something from secular sources that matches the Torah sources. But I am not psychiatrist, a psychologist, or a social worker. I’m not even a life coach. I didn't go through any of those trainings, and therefore I'm not fit to talk about those topics. Whatever I do talk about are concepts that I received from my teachers. How did my teachers, who also did not take that training, have any knowledge in human emotions? I'd like to quote to you from a piece Rav Wolbe wrote in Aleh Shor (vol 2, page 140). Rav Wolbe was my teacher. I merited to learn by him for close to 10 years, first in Yeshiva and later in what's called his Bet HaMussar. He writes, “Today, psychology has become Nachlat HaKol/the inheritance of all.” That means it’s not something that's top secret, classified information. Everyone's familiar with psychological terms. He says that the basic psychological fundamentals have entered our thinking. For example, everyone's familiar with subconscious, everyone's familiar with the inferiority complex. Everyone's familiar with self-confidence. We are aware of these concepts and even the knowledge of how they deal with it has its impact on us. When we want to try to understand ourselves, we're trying to get what's called self-awareness.
We might use ideas from the secular world that have entered into our world, without knowing whether or not they match the Torah. These are just concepts out there, that we've heard of. Like we said, self-confidence. Is there a Torah concept of self-confidence? Bitachon Atsmi, in Hebrew, means Rely on yourself.
You might think, ‘That doesn't sound very good. I thought we're supposed to rely on Hashem,׳ and so on and so forth.
Where do we get our sources of knowledge and self-awareness?
Rav Wolbe says that we have another approach, called Mussar. Shlomo Hamelech talks about it as early as in Mishleh. The whole Mishleh is a Musar book written prophetically. And Pirkei Avot is Mussar Mishnayot. So Mussar is something that's been part of the Jewish people. His words are “Hi Hochma Amuka/It’s a very deep wisdom and knowledge.”
That is the Torah’s approach to self-awareness and to self-education.
It's built on a knowledge of human
character traits and human ways, as the Torah teaches us.
His words are, “Mussar is the Torah psychology.” This is a wisdom that we have a tradition on, from Rabbi to student. It’s a very deep and developed wisdom built on Torah, built on Gemara, built on the mussar works of the earlier and later Rabbis.
And he says, “We don't have to be embarrassed at all. We have Torah psychology. There's nothing to be embarrassed of. And even in today's world of Psychology, he goes on to say, Rav Yisrael Salantar revealed the subconscious 60 years before Freud did, with his psychoanalysis.”
He discusses how we can use the subconscious for healing as well. He adds that that this mussar is something that needs a teacher because it's what we call Torah Sh’bAl Peh. You must have a teacher that has a tradition. It's not a self-help book that you can just take out. You need to know how to learn mussar. That’s why Rav Wolbe wrote his book, Aleh Shor, where he has 30 or 40 pages on how to properly learn Mussar. He goes as far as saying (I heard this from him live) that today, many people learn Kabbalah. There are even people out there in Hollywood that learn Kabbalah. It's very out there. He says today, the Torah, the Sitreh Torah/ the Hidden Secrets of Torah is this Torah of Mussar and Torah Psychology. And this is why he wrote his book-to bring out the depth and understanding of Torah Psychology that comes from learning mussar. This is an important concept- to know that we do possess this, in our Torah. Again, it needs to have a teacher, and it’s not something that you can just jump into, but, in his words, “We should not feel less than. Our Torah has everything it needs to have, including a Torah psychology.”
Have a wonderful day.