He Should Inspect His Deeds

אמר רבא ואיתימא רב חסדא:
אם רואה אדם שיסורין באין עליו, יפשפש במעשיו. שנא’ (איכה ג): נַחְפְּשָׂה דְרָכֵינוּ וְנַחְקֹרָה, וְנָשׁוּבָה עַד ה’.
פשפש ולא מצא, יתלה בבטול תורה. שנאמר (תהילים צד): אשְׁרֵי הַגֶּבֶר אֲשֶׁר תְּיַסְּרֶנּוּ יָּ-הּ, וּמִתּוֹרָתְךָ תְלַמְּדֶנּוּ.
ואם תלה ולא מצא, בידוע שיסורין של אהבה הם. שנאמר (משלי ג): כִּי אֶת אֲשֶׁר יֶאֱהַב ה’ יוֹכִיחַ[, וּכְאָב אֶת בֵּן יִרְצֶה].

Rava said, and some posit [it was] Rav Chisda:

If a person sees that suffering is coming to him, he should inspect his deeds. As it says (Eikhah 3:40), “We will search out our ways and assess [them], and we will return to Hashem.”

If he inspected and didn’t find [a flaw in his deeds], he shall attribute [the suffering] to wasting Torah [ie by wasting time from immersion in it]. As it says (Tehillim 94:12), “Enriched is the man who G-d troubles, and from Your Torah You will teach him.”

And if he [tried] to attribute it [thus] and didn’t find [any time wasted that could have been spent on Torah], it is known that they are tribulations of love. As it says (Mishlei 3:12), “For those who Hashem loves, He rebukes[, like a father to his desired son].”

– Berakhos 5a

I have been encountering a number of emails and blog posts expressing dissatisfaction with how we as a community are responding to the murder of Leibby Keltzy, finding these responses to be crass, trite or self-serving. (E.g. see this blog entry, and the second half of this one.) Charities reducing the victim to a picture they can use to promote their worthy but unrelated cause; or private individuals, politicians or (again) charities producing things that draw more attention to themselves than to the tragedy of Leibby’s death.

Thinking about it, I think we can cast this issue in terms of the above-quoted gemara. Assuming what is true of the individual’s tragedy is true of the community’s, or even of the small personal tragedy we each experienced second-hand as people moved by the news.

Before I get to the point, a quibble on my translation above. For the sake of readability, I translated “yefashpeish” as “inspect”. “Inspect” comes from the word “spect” to look over (c.f. “spectacle”, “spectator”, “aSPAQlaria“, …), whereas “pishpush” means to enter and permiate.

To get to the connotations of “yefashpeish“, let me bring in another (famous) gemara and Rashi’s comments on it:

ת”ר: שתי שנים ומחצה נחלקו ב”ש וב”ה. הללו אומרים: נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא יותר משנברא. והללו אומרים” נוח לו לאדם שנברא יותר משלא נברא. נמנו וגמרו נוח לו לאדם שלא נברא יותר משנברא עכשיו שנברא יפשפש במעשיו ואמרי לה ימשמש במעשיו:

Our Rabbis repeated:

For two and a half years, Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel were divided. These were saying, “It is more comfortable for a person if he were not created more than if he were created.” And these were saying, “It is more comfortable for a person that he is created more than if he were not created.” They counted votes and concluded, “It is more comfortable for a person if he were not created, more than if he were created.” Now that he was created, yefashpeish bemaasav. And others says it: yemashmeish bema’asav.

יפשפש מעשיו – שעשה כבר ויבדוק עבירות שבידו ויתודה וישוב:
ימשמש במעשיו – כגון אם בא מצוה לידו יחשב הפסד מצוה כנגד שכרה ולא יניח לעשותה בשביל ההפסד שהרי שכרה עתיד לבוא ואם באת לידו עבירה יחשב שכרו שמשתכר בה עכשיו כנגד הפסדה העתיד ליפרע ממנו:

Yefashpeish bema’asav: that which he already did, check the sins that are in his control, confess, and do teshuvah.
Yemashmeish bema’asav: such as if a mitzvah reached his control, he should consider the loss the mitzvah would incur against its reward, and not rest from doing it because of that loss for the reward in the future to come. And if an aveirah comes under his control, he should think of the reward he gains from it now against the future loss, to separate from it.

– Eiruvin 13b, Rashi ad loc

Yemashmeish bema’asav is about convincing oneself, going forward, to do the right thing. The idiom yefashpeish bema’asav requires going through one’s past, and finding what things in one’s life requires teshuvah  — and following up on those things in particular.

Returning to the expression’s usage in our original gemara

I think we leap past this first expression, trivializing Rava’s or R’ Chisda’s words into something like: first check for overt aveiros, than for bitul Torah, and then once you rule out sins and time we could have spent on Torah but wasted, then we can assume Hashem is in His Love motivating us to come close.

When something bad happens, we are told specifically to engage in pishpush — to spend time thinking about our actions. Looking for flaws that we can rectify. In Or Yisrael, Rav Yisrael Salanter describes the process of fixing a middah as having three steps:

  • hargashah: feeling that something is wrong, incorporating both an awareness of what one is doing, and an awareness of what one ought to be doing,  and truly feeling the gap between them
  • kibush hayeitzer: conquring the inclination, ie doing the right thing despite still feeling the yeitzer hara pushing us in a different direction
  • tiqun hayeitzer: the previous two steps (working on both cognitive and behavioral planes) will naturally lead to repairing the inclination, and no longer feeling that tug toward doing the wrong thing

Rather than tragedy being a call for the cause de jeur (no matter how significant), I would suggest that yefashpeish bema’asav is a call to developing that initial hargashah of what is off-kilter. Tragedy breaks us from whatever ruts we may be in. Hashem is explicitly pushing us to explore new areas to see if they require our attention.

[Paragraph added after comment exchange with RBM, below.] This is not saying that such a push is the reason or even a reason for the tragedy. (See the chakham section in The Four Sons Confront Tragedy for more on the difference between searching for reasons and taking lessons.) Rather, that one is obligated to take our natural response to the tragic and learn from it, hislameid from it, and change ourselves accordingly. If the news makes me think about the preciousness of my own children, then I should be leveraging that to motivate improving how I relate to them. Being diagnosed with cancer (b”H and ba”h I’ve been in remission for 8 years) evinced a very different reaction; Hashem pushed me toward a different spiritual climb.

Tragedy isn’t there to provide linear acceleration but to leave us with angular momentum.

The gemara is telling us that our response to news like Leibby Klatzky’s murder cannot be boilerplate. It must begin with real soul searching. Rava says that the first response to tragedy is to check what’s wrong with our routines. If we routinize our behavior, so that there is a standard reflex — “we need more care in not saying lashon hara“, “it’s all due to the negative influence of cell phones and internet”, (and anyone in the Orthodox community can continue this list of standard responses) — we are defying Rava’s words!

 


 

N.B.: I should point out the relevence to my recent blog entry on R’ Wolbe’s negative conception of “frumkeit“. We could say that the responses I saw complaints about typify “frumkeit” bearing all the markings of coming from instinct. They have become reduced to a fixed set of near-reflexive reactions, and all too often bring more attention to the responder than to the cause or the action being recommended.

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  1. Bob Miller says:

    There is a kind of tension between:

    1. Through certain events, HaShem sends us messages as a guide to our personal improvement, and

    2. HaShem does certain things we can’t understand whatsoever

    How do you resolve this? How do we know if our assessment of a given event should fall into category 1 or category 2?

    As aside, I’m turned off when the response to a tragedy is for one to tell the other guy (or other ideological or social faction) to improve, on the assumption that he himself is perfect.

  2. micha says:

    I discussed this a while back in a post titled “The Four Sons Confront Tragedy“.

    R’ Soloveitchik points out the difference between finding a reason, and taking a lesson. As he puts it in Qol Dodi Dofeiq, the Jewish question about tragedy is not “Why?” but “How am I to respond?” In reality, tragedy shakes us out of our rut, and therefore it’s cruel to ignore that call. But that doesn’t mean any given tragedy was in order to move us.

  3. Bob Miller says:

    In 2. I wasn’t referring only to the reason, but to the personal lesson, too—that is, the matter does not give us a clear understanding about what to do in response (either in one’s inner world or in one’s external actions).

  4. micha says:

    But we’re not talking about learning from the event itself, but utilizing our natural response to the event. Tragic news shakes us up. It unites the community, at least in the short term. It changes how we treat our children, at least in the short term. Our eyes can be opened to what we have been doing now that we’re pushed for a moment to see beyond the walls of the rut we’re in. The person who doesn’t try to use that is an achzari.

  5. Bob Miller says:

    So the content of the inexplicable event is incidental as long as it gives us a jolt?

  6. micha says:

    If it gives us a jolt, and a particular kind of jolt, how can it still be incidental?

    I’m saying that the iqar of taking a lesson is to utilize the jolt, and not to explain the incident.

  7. Bob Miller says:

    Does the particular form taken by the mega-event color our specific responses?

  8. micha says:

    You tell me — do you have a different reaction when the news is about a murdered boy or about the restarting of missile fire into the Negev? If the answer is yes, then it’s quite reasonable for the two events to engender different pishpush bemaasim.

    When the tragedy makes me think about the preciousness and the gift of my children, it’s natural for me to look for potential errors in that domain.

  9. Bob Miller says:

    Good point Micha (#8). I’ve seen similar ideas in the Breslover literature.

  10. micha says:

    Now, Bob, we have to figure out how to tweak the original post to eliminate the need for a dialog like ours to get at my intent. Feel free to make suggestions.

  11. Bob Miller says:

    Maybe your aspaqlaria was crystal clear to everyone else?

    The only thing to add might be to emphasize that the self-examination should focus on some something one felt on hearing or reading the news, even if the event reported was inexplicable.

  12. Eli says:

    There are no “reasons”, there are messages.

    If Hashem wants to send you — YOU — a message through a certain event, then you can be sure that He is communicating to YOU in a way that YOU will understand.

    If you don’t understand, or can’t tell if there is a message from a particular event, then there WAS no message in that event for YOU.

  13. micha says:

    Eli,

    Agreed. And the added paragraph that was a consequence of my discussion with RBM makes a point of clarifying that.

    That said, there is a difference between not being able to understand or bothering to notice the message on the one hand, and deciding not to try and instead either go on with life or fall back on one of the standard responses on the other. Someone striving for ehlachkeit must pay attention to their actual spiritual needs; someone acting on frumkeit will seek being a spiritual person (intentionally phrasing it that way rather than “seek spirituality”) will respond more reflexively.

    -micha

  14. dovid says:

    Bob Miller: “… when the response to a tragedy is for one to tell the other guy … to improve, on the assumption that he himself is perfect.”

    Isn’t this a christian concept that only those who never sinned may pick up a stone (to throw it at a sinner)?

    Does the person raising an issue or giving tochacha assume he is perfect? Not necessarily. Those giving tochacha never claimed they have perfect midos. I remember R’ Eliezer Ginsburg of Mir/Brooklyn concluding his drasha saying that if his tochacha made a positive change in him (i.e., that he also needs tochacha and need to improve), then it was worth it.

    • micha says:

      Dovid,

      You’re citing J’s attempt to do away with misas beis din because the eidim who would throw the first stone were themselves far from perfect. I don’t think that’s on-point, since batei din have the job of judging others that a man on the street does not.

      It says in Matt 7:5: “You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” Luke 6:42 repeats basically the same statement. But lehavdil R’ Tarfon, who lived in the same era as those who recorded J’s mythos (between the churban and Hadrian y”sh), also uses the same idiom (Eiruchin 16b):

      א”ר טרפון (תמיהני) אני אם יש בדור ×”×–×” שמקבל תוכחה אם אמר לו טול קיסם מבין שיניך אמר לו טול קורה מבין עיניך

      Too often the response to tragedy is to take the blame off oneself by finding the sin the other does (that has always been bugging you anyway) and blaming that. This isn’t true of someone responsible for a qehillah saying that the problem is his qehillah’s. But passing blame is not the mitzvah of tokhachah; it is at best “tokhachah shelo lishmah”, assuming R’ Tarfon’s dictum and the rule that tochakhah that won’t be accepted applies.

  15. dovid says:

    I wasn’t referring to this maase. I wasn’t aware of it. I was referring to a maase were a woman was suspect of z’nut are actually committed z’nut and the crowd wanted to stone her. J said something to the effect that only those should raise their hands to stone her who never committed (or considered committing?) a similar crime. Derech agav, christians hold her a “saint”, named streets and some of their houses of worship after her.

    Introspection, t’shuva are difficult and painful. It’s a hard avodah not to see Chodesh Av, Chodesh Elul, and Yamim Noraim but as inevitable yearly hurdles just to survive them. Same thing with a big tzarah sent to our communities. Our obsession with the suspect in the Kletzky affair, why he did it, what we should do to him, is our defense mechanism to do nothing about ourselves, and not to address the ills of our community.

  16. dovid says:

    There is a pasuk in Koheles (4:10) stating: kie ihm ipolu (clearly lashon rabim), haechad yakim et chavero. (I don’t have a keyboard with Hebrew letters). This pasuk is widely quoted to urge Yiden to undertake tikun hamidot together with a well-meaning and equally motivated chaver. The pasuk considers the possibility of both failing in the same nisayon. Still, the one who recovers first is not disqualified from pulling his chaver out through tochacha and encouragement, on account of his failing to the very same nisayon. On the contrary, the purpose of such a partnership is to give and receive tochacha and encouragement.

  17. Shmuel says:

    >Does the person raising an issue or giving tochacha assume he is perfect? Not necessarily. Those giving tochacha never claimed they have perfect midos.

    More importantly, the tru Ba’alei Mussar always made a point of stressing that they were talking to themselves, and whomever overheard said conversation may take from it what they needed; the point of the exercise was to inform everybody that this was not a sermon from the mount, and certainly not from some ivory tower…

  18. Bob Miller says:

    My point was NOT that you have to be perfect in order to criticize another, and WAS not related to being a judge or juror in a court. It was about lazily, smugly, reflexively blaming others (especially others outside your own circle) for some negative event while drawing no personal lesson.

  19. Bob Miller says:

    That WAS above should have been was. Sorry!

  20. Michael Harel says:

    Dear R’ Micha,
    The source of the gemora is in Brachot 5a not in Shabbos 5a.

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