See the Good in Yourself!
Nothing in the looks or behavior of the young man gave away anything about his past. No one could imagine that a few years ago, the only brilliant career anyone could have predicted would have been an impressive criminal record. A MUST READ!!
An Inspirational Personal Journey
Nothing in the looks or behavior of the young man gave away anything about his past. Anyone who would look at him would see his gentleness, nobility, seriousness and studiousness, his proper social behavior and good manners, and wouldn’t be able to imagine that only a few years ago everything was exactly the opposite.
And indeed, back then no one had given him a chance. The only brilliant career that they could have predicted then would have been an impressive criminal record.
But this young man decided, unknowingly, to add one more proof to the long list of historical proofs that there is never any reason to despair, and that a person – due to his Divine soul – can change completely for the better, from one extreme to another, from the depths of iniquity to the heights of righteousness.
And so, at a very young age he already had behind him an impressive life story of change and success that could easily fill a book.
At the beginning of the month of Elul, we met once more. He was frustrated. You might wonder what can cause frustration in someone who has already done the impossible. He was feeling that he wasn’t advancing in his Gemara learning, and that during the summer break, known as bein hazmanim (“between the semesters”) he had only regressed and had lost contact with learning even more.
I knew him, and I knew that he was serious, and I tried to understand: “What happened? Didn’t you learn Gemara during bein hazmanim?” “No,” he replied despairingly. “I learned a few pages a day, but I couldn’t manage it alone and I was completely dependent on ‘Schottenstein’.1 What’s going to be with me?”
See Yourself in a Positive Light
Are you laughing? I was laughing too.
“You’re not hearing yourself! You’re not hearing what you’re saying!” I said to him. “You’re telling me a fantastic success story, and you feel that it’s a story of complete failure! No wonder you feel broken and defeated…”
The truth is, I didn’t have to say anything more. His “Tisha B’Av” face disappeared right away and was replaced by a huge grin that lit up his countenance. But I continued anyway:
“See how sophisticated the yetzer hara (evil inclination) is. It sees your rich past, it sees all your successes. It knows that if you continue to do what you’ve been doing in the past two years, there will be no limit to what you will be able to achieve in your avodat Hashem (service of Hashem)!
“The only way for it to stop you is to cause you to develop that horrible feeling that you’re worthless and unsuccessful and not advancing – and so to take away from you your belief in yourself and the belief that Hashem loves you and the knowledge that Hashem is proud of you and sees all the good in you. The yetzer hara erases all this amazing beauty and replaces it with despair and frustration, thus causing you to be in despair, to be depressed – and from there the way is open for a dangerous free fall, the results of which could be very bad.
“That’s its only way to trip you up: the only way!!!”
Believing In Yourself
“And so, your main battle is not over the learning, nor is it about the prayers; your main battle, upon which all your future success depends, is the battle for simcha (joy)!
“A battle for simcha, using all Rabbeinu’s wonderful advice that teaches you to see the good in yourself, to believe in yourself, and to know that Hashem always loves you, and that He takes pride in every good move of yours, to be able to always start afresh, to be joyful even after failures and, of course, after such successes and more and more…
“And especially now, in the month of Elul, when the days are the day of teshuva (returning, repentance), the first teshuva is not the rectification of one’s deeds, but, rather, the rectification of our relationship with Hashem, correcting our emuna (faith) in Hashem, and our faith in ourselves. Only by doing this can we rectify our deeds.
“Because if you attempt to rectify your deeds without believing in yourself, the yetzer hara will easily aim the spotlight on all your faults and failures, and will only increase your feelings of failure and despair, and by doing so will knock you down from where you are now, from what you have achieved already.
“But if you rectify your belief in yourself, you create within you the fertile soil in which everything will grow and develop and multiply and increase – and it will even happen easily!”
What you have just read is a completely real exchange that took place between one of the young men in the yeshiva and one of the yeshiva’s rabbis, who wrote it all down. There is nothing better than that to demonstrate the tremendous power of speech that Hashem granted us, to enable us to know how much Hashem loves us, and how much He believes in the good in us, and how much we must believe in ourselves.
The Sophisticated Yetzer Hara
These things are already explained in Likutei Halachot:
“For this is a big rule that in every thing and every midda in the world there is good and bad and the ba’al davar (the yetzer hara) is always trying to ambush a person and trap him, chas vechalila, with all sorts of tricks and cunning and deviousness in the world, things that the mouth cannot say and the heart cannot think. And one must always pay attention to the truth and look well at everything, what will come out of it, so that he won’t be captured in its snare, chas vechalila…
“When a person wakes up to a certain extent and wishes to return to Hashem, to pray or learn etc., it (the yetzer hara) blocks him and prevents him with a number of inhibitors and weaknesses and endless confusion, to the point where even when he prays and learns, the avoda isn’t done correctly, completely perfectly… And that’s not enough for it, and it goes on to ambush him, making him think there is no hope, chas vechalila, that he can’t come close to Hashem yitbarach properly anymore since the days and years are passing, and he is still as far as he was.
“And truly, that too is the ruse of the ba’al davar… inserting into his heart laxness and weakness by way of his mitzvahs and fear of G-d, masquerading as if it wants his good and berates him for being far… And really its intention is to harm him, to prevent him from acting and to weaken even the small amount of his avoda that he wishes to do.”2
Joy is Essential
And those are precisely the words that make the difference between success and failure, between blessings and curses. If you succeed and you feel like a failure – you have really failed; and if you failed but you feel you have succeeded – you have really succeeded, and you will succeed in the future.
This illuminates the pasuk that everyone talks about in the middle of the curses, which says that all those frightening and terrible curses come upon the Jew “because you didn’t worship Hashem your G-d with joy and goodness of heart.”3
And this is shocking: A Jew serves Hashem – not simple at all in this world with all its nisyonot (trials, tests) – but he doesn’t serve Hashem joyfully. You might think that’s a small detail, a small drawback, something insignificant. So, he didn’t get 100 in the test – only 95…
Says the Torah: No, no! He gets a 0, and even a minus! It is not a small drawback; it is the complete opposite of avodat Hashem, and it is the only cause for all those curses to come upon us.
There are many explanations of this idea, and they are all true when it comes to serving Hashem. According to the ideas we brought above, it can be explained further: If you serve Hashem without joy, that says that you don’t believe in yourself, that you don’t believe that Hashem gets nachat (pleasure) from you. A constant feeling of bitterness accompanies all your avoda. Know that you are on the way to complete despair. Spiritually, you are on your way to the lowest and most dangerous places.
Teshuva Begins from Inside
Practically speaking, when you approach service of Hashem, you must approach it with the right and straight da’at (understanding) that says that Hashem loves you and that Hashem knows you are good and that He enjoys every mitzvah of yours, even the smallest. Even a mitzvah that is being done in a way that is the furthest possible from perfection and without the proper intention gives nachat ruach to Hashem.
As Rabbi Natan writes in Likutei Halachot: “Most of all, a person must strengthen himself and have courage, and believe in himself, believe that even his small degree of service and Torah learning is very precious to Hashem yitbarach… Because even if he believes in Hashem yitbarach and in tzaddikim and in his good fellow Jews that they are all tzaddikim, but he doesn’t believe in himself… – that too is a flaw in his emunat chachamim (belief in sages).”2
Rabbi Natan explains there that from a certain point of view, “this flaw is the worst,” and it is prevalent mainly among those who are at the beginning of their journey in the direction of avodat Hashem: “This affliction is present among some people who are somewhat worthy already and they start to get close to people of truth, to truly wise and worthy sages.”2
May it be that we will be able to do complete teshuva now on this flaw in emuna and begin to believe in ourselves, in the good in us, and in the love that Hashem loves and is happy with any good thing that we do, and in the merit of that we will receive all the blessings and all the salvations, a good life of success in Torah, tefilla and avodat Hashem.
Editor’s Notes:
1 An edition of the Gemara by Artscroll that includes translation and comprehensive explanations.
2 Likutei Halachot, Laws of Pikadon 7
3 Devarim (Numbers) 28:37
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