The other day, I went into a store to buy a particular item, and after I’d paid for it at the counter and was about to leave, I heard someone calling after me.

“Rabbi...” I turned around. It was someone behind the counter whom I didn’t know.

“I miss you in the magazine,” he said. I explained that although I would be continuing my association with Mishpacha, I’d no longer be appearing in its opinion section. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll miss you.” I smiled without saying anything, but thought to myself, “Me, too, my friend. Me, too.”

One of the absolute best things about my nearly 12-year run here at the front of the magazine has been the readers. The ability to hear from readers like that one behind the counter and to know, or at least hope, that I’ve made some small difference in someone’s life. Isn’t that what we all hope for in this life we’ve been given to live?

Despite the strangeness of penning a column without knowing who will be reading it, I’ve tried to be open with readers whose names I don’t know and whom I might never meet. I’ve invited you into my life, although as a private sort of person it wasn’t always comfortable to do so.

I’ve taken you back to my childhood, with memories about shuls and schools and summertime at home and in camp. I’ve introduced you to beloved figures in my life like my father and father-in-law, and mentors and good friends whom I’ve lost along the way.

And I’ve shared experiences: encounters with over-zealous TSA agents and humorless traffic cops, eventful trips to the Belorussian tundra and snow-covered Yerushalayim and even more exotic locales, like Milwaukee. I’ve painted word portraits: putting on tefillin in a darkened airplane cabin, explaining Shabbos to a clueless gentile big-firm attorney, translating the Citifield Asifah into hipster-ese.

I’ve even written about what it’s like to bear an off-beat name like Eytan — and still not be the only Eytan Kobre.

Family members have made cameo appearances over the years (Avrumi holds the record, I believe, at three), and friends, too (even Simi from Spruce Street finally made it in). One of those friends could even have been my successor here (maybe…), except that Yaakov, a brilliant, funny, multi-talented psychotherapist, is far too modest to want his name in print.

And, of course, I’ve tried to share something of me, my own inner world and how I see the larger one in which we live. I’ve tried to give you a feeling for what I get excited about, the people I revere and the things I fear for. I’ve been up-front about the times I’ve written things I shouldn’t have and what I’ve tried to do to make it right, and how I’ve tried to relate to very irate readers.

I’VE ALWAYS FELT that one of this column’s strengths was the way we mixed it up on a weekly basis. Opening to this page any given week, a reader might have found any of the following and more: social commentary, biographical and historical vignettes, more and less successful attempts at humor (and we’ll just make believe all that pun-ditry never even happened), hashkafic perspectives, analyses on politics, media and law, critique of anti-Torah movements and media, introductions to hidden treasures of the frum community, personal experiences and reflections, essays on Yamim Tovim, parshah, and other aspects of our lives as Jews.

Regular readers know that there are topic areas we returned to often, because they were important to me, like anything about Jews learning Torah more and better, or were fun to write about, like anything about words and writing.

There were the recurring Text Messages fundamentals. A sampling: That there’s a Jewish way to read the newspaper. That the great challenge to authentic Yiddishkeit these days is soul-hollowing chitzoniyus, and our greatest battle as both Jews and humans is to thwart the technological juggernaut. That it’s better to focus more on hating goyishkeit than goyim, not the other way around. That the Torah worldview and value system is unique, neither right nor left politically. That the ever-thickening frum culture threatens to overwhelm and stifle frum religion.

What a privilege this has all been. To be able to elicit a smile with a snappy turn of phrase or delight the oppressed minority of language lovers by trotting out some recondite word or delicious double entendre. To help a reader clarify fundamentals of Torah outlook or feel confident that he’s thinking straight and it’s the world around him that’s gone haywire.

To say things that may not be easy to say and even harder to hear, yet need to be said and heard — and to find a way to say them that will give them the best chance to be heard and considered. To wield the mighty pen in defense of what is true and innocent — and misunderstood.

But it has very much been a two-way street. I’ve gained much more chizuk from readers’ feedback over the years than I can possibly describe, even keeping a file of the things people have written to me or to the magazine about the column generally or specific pieces. By now it’s quite big, and I read through it sometimes, because it restores my belief in me and in you (and is way less expensive than therapy).

My colleagues here have played a role in the column’s success, too. My personal editor, Mrs. Rachel Ginsberg, in particular has saved me numerous times from the excesses of one of my worst enemies as a writer — me.

If you’ve enjoyed my feature articles in these pages (a collection of which, entitled Greatness, has just been published by Mosaica Press), you may still have the opportunity to do so. And if, like that Yid behind the counter, you miss my column, you can find lots of my past pieces and maybe even some new ones — and a picture of what I look like now as opposed to 12 years ago — on my new, eponymously named website (and no, you won’t find it by searching for “eponymous”).

And now that it’s time to take leave, I’ll do so with two words that can’t go wrong. Thank you, for both your honest feedback and your friendship-from-afar.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 939. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post I’ll Miss You More first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

This was the week of the day called Election Day in the United States. But I prefer to call it something else.

When one stops to consider it, this business of elections is quite an amazing phenomenon from a Jewish perspective. Here’s a day that arrives every other year, and with even greater intensity every fourth year, that actually poses a massive nisayon to a frum Jew. And unless he’s mentally prepared to face it, he might well fail the test.

For months in the run-up to this day, he’s inundated — even if all he takes into his home is Jewish media — with punditry and polling and ads and endorsements and much more, all designed to make him think it’s the voters who will decide the fate of the government and its various officials. And he’s warned ominously that with his one vote he too plays some tiny role in this man-controlled drama. As the day itself approaches, both the volume and the pitch of the onslaught reach a zenith.

But what happened to the words we uttered so fervently in unison just a few weeks back, phrases such as “Hamamlich melachim v’lo hameluchah” (Hashem coronates kings and ultimate kingship is His) and “Mi yishafel u’mi yarum” (Who will fall and who will rise)? Or how about just a basic “Yisrael betach baShem”? Hashem alone runs the world, with no apparent exception I’m aware of for mortal politicians, federal, state or local. For us Torah Jews, this is as basic as it gets.

In the choices we make in our personal lives, from momentous to seemingly inconsequential, many of us try to live our days based on that fundamental truth. When I was at the supermarket this week stocking up on dessert for the upcoming Shabbos, I opted for the more expensive sorbet because it tastes better, and because I actually believe the truth of Chazal’s teaching that a person’s annual allotted income doesn’t include Shabbos expenses. (I admit I didn’t buy the most expensive item in the freezer, which I hope doesn’t peg me as mikotnei emunah.)

And then along comes election season and the authentic bitachon we’ve painstakingly worked to acquire in our daily lives absorbs a massive shock to the system. Everywhere one goes, in shul and yeshivah, the grocery store and the mikveh, political prognostication rules the day. G-d is nowhere to be found. It’s not — G-d forbid — that He’s unmentionable. He’s just not mentioned.

And that’s why I prefer to call it Deflection Day. It’s when we deflect what ought to be our focus on the Prime Cause and Mover of Events and instead give our rapt attention to exit polls and incoming vote totals. It’s the season when rather than “hope to Hashem,” we pin our desperate hopes on some pathetically impotent mortal.

IT’S THE DAY WHEN as a  community,  time and again we fail mightily in our designated role on this earth, that of a goy kadosh — a holy nation chosen to bring G-d-consciousness to humanity. Perhaps we actually do behave like a “goy kadosh,” indeed, a heilige non-Jew, our sacred-looking outer trappings masking the fact that we think and talk about politics not a whit differently from our gentile neighbors.

Each of us, in our personal lives, faces a host of tests to our emunah and bitachon. Like everything else in our spiritual growth, we win some and lose some, we progress and regress, but hopefully over time we move higher in our awareness of Hashem’s control over our lives. What makes election season seem so different, so alien in Jewish terms, is that it’s as if we’re suddenly struck by an attack of mass amnesia. All the inspiring shiurim we’ve heard and internalized, all the best-selling books on bitachon fade from memory in a split-second because some politico or pundit with whom we share neither values nor worldview warns us in the most ominous terms that THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIFETIMES and that THIS WILL BE THE END OF AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT.

Yet haven’t gedolei Torah going back many years encouraged Jews to vote? Certainly, but purely as an exercise in hishtadlus. Just as we put in significant effort to find a job and consult a doctor, knowing all the while that Hashem is in charge and we’re just going through the motions, so do we vote to express our views and to let politicians know we’re here and to show gratitude to a welcoming host country. But no adam gadol ever suggested trading in the truth of our precious bitachon for the sheker of all the electoral majorities in the world. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 935. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Deflection Election first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

We’re now at a point in the year when the number 101 takes on a spiritual connotation. In the world at large, that number might trigger a mental association with Dalmatians, but for observant Jews dogged by forgetfulness, it has another significance entirely.

With the words “Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem” newly present in our Shemoneh Esreh since Succos, the more absent-minded among us turn to the halachically-sanctioned device of repeating the words from the paragraph “Atah gibbor” through “Mashiv haruach” 101 times. This saves the mnemonically-challenged from a never-ending loop of self-doubt and repeated tefillos for most of Cheshvan.

It was only a few short weeks ago, however, that I got a glimpse of the truly transformative power of the big One-O-One.

It began with an email forwarded to me by my dear friend Rabbi Dovid Newman. Although most renowned for his Vhaarev Na program of Gemara learning and review for yeshivah bochurim, Reb Dovid is a true Torah entrepreneur, constantly dreaming up new, innovative ways to light the fire of ahavas haTorah under his fellow Jews of every age and background.

One of his successful spin-offs of Vhaarev Na is Kinyan Hamasechta, a framework for Gemara retention and review being successfully used by balabatim around the world. And according to the email’s author, Moshe Goldstein, it had changed his life dramatically. An excerpt:

I’ve gone from casual learning by myself a couple of nights a week without really retaining much and listening to shiurim to and from work in the car — not quite lighting the world on fire, you might say — to seeing tremendous hatzlachah in Torah like I never imagined or dreamed of.

To actually know masechtos well, to have a geshmak in learning, to sit with a chavrusa on Shabbos afternoon and realize when you come up with a chiddush, that is real oneg Shabbos. To make siyumim every Shabbos, to completing roughly 4,000 blatt chazarah this year, to going from no chavrusa to many chavrusas and to realize that now you’re really living, experiencing a life surrounded by and impacted by Torah. This was truly unimaginable for me and has yet become mine and my family’s new reality.

The “4,000 blatt” (that’s about one and a half times all of Shas) wasn’t a typo, either.

Attached to the email was an invitation from Moshe and his wife to a siyum celebration. It was to take place on Sunday evening in the Inwood section of the Five Towns, two nights before Yom Kippur, which would begin on Tuesday evening. Frankly, it wasn’t what I’d had in mind to be doing 48 hours before Yom Kippur.

But I had to be there, to see this for myself.

As I parked my car outside the Soroka home on a quiet Inwood street, the booming music coming from inside the house told me I was about to experience a different kind of Aseres Yemei Teshuvah gathering from those to which I was accustomed. There was dancing to live music and a catered dinner for several dozen Inwood chevreh, at least half of whom seemed to be chavrusas of Moshe, judging from the remarks he delivered. Rabbi Dovid Newman was there too, of course, shepping richly-deserved nachas. It was, in short, a chasunah in miniature, the culmination of a story of what Rav Avigdor Miller used to call “boy meets Gemara.”

And the particular reason for that evening’s celebration? Moshe Goldstein’s completion of Maseches Makkos for the 101st time (although my sources tell me he’s already made a number of further siyumim since then).

In Chagigah 9b, Hillel expounds a pasuk in Malachi that distinguishes between two righteous people, one of whom serves Hashem and one who does not. The difference between them, explains Hillel, is that the one “who has not served Hashem” learns a passage of Torah 100 times, while his fellow, by dint of having studied the same passage one more time, for a full 101, merits the appellation of “one who serves Hashem.”

The question is obvious and compelling: How can someone who has invested the toil, the time, the dedication needed to review a piece of Gemara 100 times possibly be referred to as one who hasn’t served Hashem?

I once suggested that Chazal speak of someone learning a piece of Torah 100 times in the same vein that the number 100 is used elsewhere in Shas, to denote the outer limits of one capability. Thus, for example, Chazal ordained that the finder of another’s lost object must keep returning it to its owner “even 100 times,” meaning as repeatedly as is humanly possible.

What, then, in the “wisdom language” of Chazal, does it mean to learn something 101 times? It denotes an individual who has broken through the barriers of nature, transcending his limitations and “breaking” his very self, as it were.

Of course, anyone who seriously toils in learning is an oved Hashem. But he might very well have other considerations at heart, too. He might also be enjoying the prestige that learning brings or the intellectual challenge it presents. He might be hoping it will earn him a coveted shidduch or sought-after position. He might, in other words, be serving Hashem and also be self-serving at the very same time. And that’s okay, since Chazal encourage a person to learn with vested motives, with an ultimate goal of reaching the level of altruism.

But there comes a point when a person becomes so committed to his learning, when he so surpasses the normal bounds of endurance and stamina that he can only be regarded as a pure oved Hashem. When one acts in seeming disregard for his own interests as the world defines them, it means he has lost his self in Torah, becoming entirely other-directed toward the One Who gave the Torah.

The seforim point out that the name of our arch-enemy, Amalek, can be read as the phrase ‘Amal (and the letter) kuf,’ implying some point of comparison between Amalek and one who toils (“amal”) through 100 (“kuf”) rounds of review of his learning — but no more. What could that be?

Amalek is the ultimate nihilist, and there’s nothing Amalek loathes more than transcendence, the notion that there’s meaning that goes beyond the finite, material universe, and that there’s a soul that can express that meaning and a G-d Who created that soul. Amalek can perhaps tolerate one who learns Torah within the parameters of the humanly normal. But he who learns that 101st time has by definition transcended the self, and that Amalek will never abide.

Moshe Goldstein will insist, as he did that night in Inwood maybe 101 times over, that he’s just an ordinary guy who happens to have fallen in love with Torah. And that’s the secret of that extra “one.” How ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things in learning if they have the will.

Reb Moshe Goldstein is you and me and so many of us. And that’s precisely what makes his example — of what happens when you horeveh and break through the barriers of the finite — so powerful. It’s Amalek’s biggest nightmare.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 934. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post One More Round first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Because part of what I do is write about things news-related, I often think about the two ways, broadly speaking, for a Jew to process and react to events taking place in the world at large. On the surface at least, these approaches seem to be opposites.

One way is to react with disdain or disregard, devaluing anything that happens outside of our Jewish world. The other is to attach a certain value to what one observes and to find the lesson within it.

To illustrate these divergent responses, let us consider the recent events surrounding the passing of the British queen and her son’s subsequent elevation to the throne. Both of these rare events were marked by pageantry and pomp the likes of which few of us alive today have ever witnessed.

The ancient rites observed in intricate detail amid the ornate trappings of royalty — the bejeweled vestments, the solemn processions replete with elaborately costumed officials, horsemen and the flourish of trumpets — were all designed to bestow high honor upon the deceased queen and her heir. But even more, they were a way of paying homage to the institution of the monarchy itself and the momentous passing of the scepter from one generation to the next.

It’s not hard to look at this cynically and say, “All this honor, and for what?” We can easily deride the ceremony and circumstance as just that — an empty, overdone display of undeserved tribute to mere mortals, glittering to the eye but devoid of any deeper meaning. We can look down our noses, dismiss the entire thing and move on.

But then again, perhaps it is indeed too easy to simply deride all the ceremony and circumstance. If we stop and reconsider, we can look at the episode through very different eyes, deeply Jewish ones, too. We can find in its details the outlines of the Torah concept of kavod, and come away personally enriched.

Kavod is actually quite a big deal in Yiddishkeit. Not the kind of honor paid to a building donor or dinner honoree, but that which is owed to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. As the Mishnah in Avos (6:11) teaches, “All that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created in His world, He created only for His honor, as Yeshayah himself states (43:4), Kol hanikra vishmi v’lichvodi beraasiv, y’tzartiv af asisiv.”

Yet when we first encounter the centrality of Hashem’s honor in the scheme of things, we might wonder: Don’t Chazal cast kavod in a decidedly negative light? The very same Pirkei Avos states that kavod is one of three drives, along with jealousy and lust, which can actually take a person out of this world.

And, in any event, how can it be that an infinite G-d, Who has no needs, created this world just so that we mortals would give Him honor? And can the piddling honorifics of puny mortals possibly mean anything to Him, anyway?

But then we open the siddur and read these words in the first brachah of Krias Shema: “Tov yatzar kavod l’shmo — the Good fashioned honor for His name,” and we begin to understand. Honor is not an intrinsically bad thing. Indeed, it has a very important, even vital role — the very purpose of Creation itself. It just depends upon whom the honor is being shown and why.

Kavod, the seforim explain, is related to k’veidus, weightiness. To give honor to something or someone is to attribute weight and worth to it/them.

Hakadosh Baruch Hu isn’t just good; He’s The Good, the only One worthy of being called simply “Tov,” because He encompasses all that is good. And so, “Tov yatzar kavod l’shmo” expresses the idea that He created the universe in order that everything it contains will proclaim the honor of — that is, give the greatest weight to — His Name: The Good, the Source of all goodness.

And in so doing, we too partake of that goodness. Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn’t need this honor — we do. It enables us to rise above our human limitations and be connected to The Good.

The various types of honor that we are required to give as Jews are all variations on this theme. The kavod due parents, talmidei chachamim, elderly people, a shul — all are in essence ways to attach significance to a concept, an ideal that is embodied in a person or object. And these too are given not to benefit the recipient, but to make us, those who bestow it, better people.

However, when we look at the world around us, “honor” has for the most part a very different, far less honorable meaning. It is merely a way to stroke the ego of the honoree, to fill a void within him that hungers for acclaim, while also allowing the one granting the honor to curry favor with him. This kind of “honor” is actually a response to human weakness.

But even in our very material world, there are exceptions, where the honor accorded begins to assume a spiritual form. When people come together to pay tribute to those who’ve fallen in the line of duty, as soldiers or policemen and firefighters and first responders, that’s honor for an ideal. It stems from the need of those bestowing it to respond to human greatness rather than from the need of the recipient to appease his human weakness.

And then there is the display of honor for a monarch like that which recently held much of the world in thrall. It was as close as human beings come to giving honor for honor’s sake, not to satisfy someone’s ego needs nor even to recognize achievement, but simply to honor that which is intrinsically deserving of honor. And if we are attuned to realizing what we are seeing, it can give us an inkling of what true honor really is.

Is there a justification to look upon all that pomp with cynicism, even derision? Chazal teach, “All leitzanus is prohibited, except for leitzanus regarding idolatry.” Leitzanus is a precision instrument, perfect for deservedly knocking avodah zarah, whether literal or metaphorical, off its societal pedestal. Whether it’s idol worship or modern-day heresies or the veneration of the god of Mammon, well-placed ridicule is what’s needed to puncture the aura of reverence and lay bare inanities.

And yet, we need to proceed with caution. It can be tempting to lump everything going on in the world into the category of “avodah zarah” and unleash the barbs of leitzanus bearing Chazal’s supposed hechsher.

Rav Yitzchok Hutner observes (Pachad Yitzchok, Purim 1:5) that leitzanusa d’avodah zarah shares nothing in common with other forms of mockery. The latter are rooted in a nihilistic denial of all significance. The derision we direct toward avodah zarah, in contrast, is specifically rooted in granting chashivus, significance, to the things that truly deserve it. By taunting idolatry, we deprive it of the ill-gotten respect it usurped from all that is holy and return it to where it rightfully belongs.

Hashem created a world full of natural wonders, brimming with opportunities to gain inspiration and awe (a la Perek Shirah). But there’s also a world of humanity, filled with untold billions of actions and interactions, foibles and triumphs, past history and current events. And that world, too, is filled everywhere we look with metaphors for spiritual truths, which can teach us so much if we are attuned to looking for them. But if we blithely wave away all that occurs in the world as just so much nonsense that can’t possibly possess any deeper meaning, we’ll never access those truths.

Perhaps there’s a superficially good feeling of superiority when we are dismissive of everything beyond our narrow context. But, as Rav Hutner taught, genuine leitzanusa d’avodah zarah flows not from pure zilzul, but from chashivus for the emes. Why, then, not take note of events to discern lessons that can only enhance our sense of chashivus for what is good and true? —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 932. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Honor Roll first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Every Yom Tov is special, but there’s something different about Succos.

It’s one of the three regalim, of course, along with Pesach and Shavuos, and like them, it is a remembrance of Yetzias Mitzrayim. But, as the pesukim in parshas Emor make clear, Succos also has its own unique character.

Chapter 23 of Sefer Vayikra, known as the Parshas Hamoadim — the Passage of the Festivals, is introduced by a verse declaring, “These are the festivals of Hashem which you shall declare as holy times, these are My festivals.” The Torah then proceeds to discuss each of the festivals in chronological order, beginning with Pesach, followed by the days of Sefiras Ha’omer (which, Ramban writes, is a Chol Hamoed-like period between Pesach and Shavuos), and then in succession, Shavuos, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succos.

At this point, a concluding pasuk (23:37) appears, which summarizes all that came before, stating (in paraphrase), “These are the festivals of Hashem which you shall declare as holy times, on which to bring sacrifices each day.” Thus, the passage has addressed each of the Yamim Tovim, bookended by opening and closing verses.

But then, strikingly, the Torah returns in the very next verse to again speak specifically of the Yom Tov of Succos. This time, however, it calls it the “Chag Hashem,” not “Chag HaSuccos,” the name used earlier. It repeats the date on which Succos begins, but adds that this is the time “when you gather in the produce of the land.” It also describes Succos using the unusual phrase, “seven days in the year.” And only now does the Torah set forth the mitzvah of dwelling in the succah for seven days.

Succos is a Yom Tov, but it is also more — it is a microcosm of life itself, of how a Jew is to experience quotidian day-to-day living throughout the year. The message and the mission of Succos are that of bringing trust in Hashem fully into our lives, and specifically at harvest time, when the gathering in of our plentiful bounty might otherwise make us prone to delusions of self-sufficiency.

To enter the succah is to take shelter under His wings from all the storms, literal and figurative, that gust about, to cast all our worries and fears and insecurities onto Him and thereby achieve inner serenity and genuine joy. Succos’ character as the “time of our rejoicing” is unthinkable without its complementary aspect as the quintessential Yom Tov of bitachon.

The other Yamim Tovim are ours; even when the Torah writes, “Atzeres laHashem,” it means we take our holiday and dedicate it to His purposes. But of Succos the Torah says, “Tachogu es chag Hashem” — meaning that it is His chag that we celebrate. We spend it with Him, as guests in His own home, the succah, which according to Chazal (Succah 9a) “has the Name of Hashem resting upon it.”

Succos is “seven days in the year,” meaning that by comprising one complete week-unit of the year, it serves as a model for how the year as a whole ought to look, even once we make the trek back inside our year-round homes to resume our mundane lives. Succos is a laboratory of emunah and bitachon, and the more time we spend in it, the deeper we absorb the wordless lessons it has to teach about how to feel completely secure in Hashem’s embrace, how to let go — but truly, once and for all — of all the imagined supports we’ve been so terrified to give up.

THIS, PERHAPS, is why so many great Jews went to such lengths to treat their succah as their literal home, holding nothing back. I recall, for example, speaking with Rabbi Elysha Sandler, mashgiach ruchani at Yeshiva Shor Yoshuv, about the Succos of his rebbi, Rav Hillel Zaks, the Chafetz Chaim’s grandson and rosh yeshivah in Chevron and of Kiryat Sefer’s Yeshivas Knesses HaGedolah. He recalled that Reb Hillel’s succah, built without any metal whatsoever, was huge, with a main room furnished with his breakfront and a bookcase filled with seforim, and a separate bedroom.

In earlier years, when he’d lived on Rechov Tzefania in the Geula neighborhood, his succah had featured several bedrooms and even more seforim. Reb Hillel virtually never left the succah throughout the seven days of the Yom Tov. The minyanim, the seudos, receiving all those who came to spend time with him, even the reading of Mishneh Torah on Leil Hoshana Rabbah — all took place in the succah.

Part of this, of course, may have been about performing the mitzvah of succah in the most ideal way. Rabbi Sandler certainly remembers his rebbi as “a great medakdek b’mitzvos, with many chumros and hiddurim, whose avodas Hashem was always vibrant and thought-out. For a period of time, he would shecht his own chicken and meat and press his own wine. All food in the Zaks home consisted of unprocessed, homemade ingredients and needed to have terumos and maasros removed regardless of their source.”  And so too, to truly fulfill the requirement of teishvu k’ein taduru, to dwell in the succah as one does at home, Reb Hillel transformed the former into the latter.

But beyond the mitzvah of succah, and the dikduk b’mitzvos it calls for, there’s also the idea of the succah. Its priceless resources of bitachon and kirvas Elokim can’t be accessed if we treat our succos as mere booths to step into a few times daily at mealtime.

When it came to the mitzvah of succah, Reb Hillel Zaks didn’t just want to perform it; he longed for it to transform him. And he knew that in order to profit, you need to invest, to go “all in.”

And so, he did.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 931. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Home Is a Succah first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

AS the entire intense period of teshuvah reaches its climax at Ne’ilah, it’s noteworthy that we invoke in the final prayer, “Atah nosein yad l’poshim v’yeminchah peshutah l'kabel shavim — You give a hand to sinners, and Your right hand is extended to those who return.” A few lines later, we again say, “You desire the return of the wicked, and You don’t want them to die,” and then we proceed to recite four additional pesukim that all affirm that same theme.

We might have thought after an entire Elul, followed by the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, which are then capped by a Yom Hakippurim, it would be obvious beyond all doubt that Hashem wishes for nothing more than for His creations to return all the way home to Him. And yet, in these last moments of the season of teshuvah, we’re quoting pesukim one after another as if we need to be convinced of this truth.

It seems, perhaps, that the thing holding us back from finally, truly repenting and throwing ourselves into Hashem’s open arms (kivyachol) is that deep down, we still have a hard time believing that Hashem would want to accept us back after the way we’ve sullied ourselves, that we could possibly be worthy of His hand being outstretched and beckoning to us.

There’s a human analog to this idea, too, in the uncertainty many of us have about whether we’re worthy of another’s attention and beneficence. A study in the September issue of the journal Psychological Science reports on recent large-scale experiments that yielded the conclusion that people who need help from others consistently underestimate how willing both friends and strangers are to assist, as well as how good the helpers feel afterward.

The experiments involved both simple requests, like asking someone to take a picture of them in a botanical garden, to things that were a bit more of an “ask,” such as writing a letter of recommendation for graduate school. Almost invariably, those who’d asked for help believed that their helpers would be less willing to assist than the helpers actually were. Dr. Xuan Zhao, a Stanford University researcher who coauthored the study, explains its results simply: “Helping makes people feel better.”

But the fact that people underestimate others’ readiness to help means they’re less likely to ask for that help. As Zhao put it, “These kinds of expectations in our heads can create barriers that might not be warranted.” It was that common hesitation to ask for help that led University of Michigan business professor Wayne Baker to author a book entitled All You Have to Do Is Ask: How to Master the Most Important Skill for Success, in which he sets forth what he calls the “SMART” system. This means that when asking someone for assistance, a person should make sure his request is: Specific, Meaningful, Action-oriented, Realistic, and Time-bound.

PROFESSOR BAKER’S “Smart” approach came to mind the other day when a young fellow I know who’s involved in kiruv on a major Boston, Massachusetts campus shared with me a recent experience of his. His outreach group has Shabbos meals that sometimes draws hundreds of students, which necessitates borrowing chairs from a local gemach.

He had loaded a large pile of chairs from the previous week’s event into his SUV to return them to the gemach, and although this prevented the rear trunk door from fully closing, he decided to drive slowly toward his destination, hoping to make it there without incident.

It was not to be. As he proceeded up Chestnut Hill Avenue, a busy Boston street, the door flew open and out came chairs — 15 of them clattering into the middle of the bustling thoroughfare. He quickly put the car in park and jumped out to round up the chairs strewn all about.

But as he did so, he realized someone else had pulled his car to the side of the road and had run over to lend a hand — two very large hands, actually, belonging to a young black fellow who looked to be about six-foot-four and about 220 pounds.

This kiruv rabbi knows his sports and was surprised to recognize his helper as a pro basketball player, a point guard for the hometown Boston Celtics. And not just any player, either, but a standout one, recently named the National Basketball Association’s Defensive Player of the Year. It probably shouldn’t surprise that he’s also a two-time winner of the NBA’s Hustle Award, an energetic team player who’s known for diving for loose balls and defending against opposing players taller than him.

It was just a simple kindness on a Boston street, but there’s something impressive about it. The value of a good deed, after all, has to be assessed in its context. This one was performed by a 28-year-old star who was instrumental in his team making (albeit losing) this year’s NBA championships.

He’s also a very wealthy young man, with a multi-year contract for over $75 million, and gets lots of adoring attention wherever he goes. Even as he was helping load the chairs, passing cars slowed down to enable their passengers to wave and call his name.

All that fame and money can go to someone’s head, perhaps making him not the most likely candidate to stop his car on a busy street and jump out to help a stranger. But he did, in a way which was indeed specific, meaningful, action-oriented, realistic, and time-bound. And that just proves the point of Professor Baker, creator of the SMART program: People really do want to help and feel good when they take action. You just have to know how to ask.

I know the story’s true, because the kiruv rabbi is my son. And the Celtics star who helped him? His name is Marcus Smart.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 930. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Street Smarts first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Many of us were doubtless struck, in these days leading up to Rosh Hashanah, by the timely convergence: Just as we prepare to once again coronate the King of All Kings with our shofar and machzorim, and above all our hearts, across the pond in Britain, a new flesh-and-blood king has taken the throne of the world’s most famous monarchy upon the passing of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.

Speaking for myself, I felt the slightest chill down my spine as I read of how, on the day after the queen’s death, a proclamation declaring Charles III’s reign was to be read by heralds arriving to London’s Trafalgar Square on horseback, wearing uniforms harking back to the Middle Ages. Two days later, the report continued, “the proclamation will be read out in ceremonial fashion in capitals across the United Kingdom… and later, high sheriffs in traditional garb will declare the news in towns and villages across the country.”

Why, here in 2022, was a scene out of 1022 — one I’d only encountered in Marcus Lehmann novels (okay, Shmuel Kunda tapes too). For me, it brought alive the halachah (see Mishnah Berurah, Orach Chaim 61:4) that directs us to recite Krias Shema twice daily as if it were a royal proclamation that’s just been posted in the village square, with all the townsfolk gathering round to read the sovereign’s commands slowly and carefully, with trembling and awe.

Chazal teach that there are worthwhile spiritual insights to be gained from studying earthly kingship. As they express it, “malchusa d’ara k’ein malchusa d’Rekiya,” in various particulars earthly kingship resembles the one On High.

In our times, of course, British royalty is a far cry from what kings and queens around the world once were. The king or queen of the British Commonwealth is the head of state, not of government, entirely apolitical and without any real power over their subjects. Notwithstanding, there are important things to learn from the institution of the monarchy, insights about the essential nature of meluchah, whether Divine or mortal.

And if there are lessons to be learned from a monarch’s reign, there are few better examples than that of the just-deceased Elizabeth II. Upon her birth in April 1926, she was described in contemporaneous press reports as “a possible, though improbable, successor to the throne of England.”

Boy, were they wrong. By the time she died, she’d ruled for more than 70 years. In September 2015, she surpassed even her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, as Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. And she and her husband, Prince Philip, were married for nearly seventy-five years.

In 1952, when Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary ascended to the throne at age 25 upon the death of King George VI, she instantly became one of the most famous people in the world, whose every act and utterance was followed by millions. On April 24, 1960, a short newspaper piece carried the headline, “Queen Elizabeth Has a Cold.”

Yet, she was the furthest thing from a conventional celebrity. She was neither brilliant nor glamorous; neither highly-accomplished nor super-talented. She didn’t have the power to wage war or move markets. True, she was very wealthy — with lots of jewels and very nice houses, called palaces and castles, to dwell in — but that, too, wasn’t the essence of her mystique. It was, instead, something I believe Miles Smith IV, writing in The Dispatch, touched upon when he observed: “Elizabeth understood that she was the actual human embodiment of the United Kingdom.”

From that role flowed a great dignity, a public deportment of grace and refinement, a presence that wordlessly conveyed significance, hers, and by extension, that of her subject nation. Not only is none of this the stuff of contemporary celebrity; it is its antithesis. As Mr. Smith writes: “Frivolity, therefore, seemed entirely outside of her character. Certainly Elizabeth was light-hearted and even fun at times; her visible excitement at winning Royal Ascot, and her delight in cows at a livestock show, were not the actions of a person who was temperamentally stern. But Elizabeth didn’t publicly kiss babies or hug fawning fans.”

THE QUEEN’S ABILITY to embody her nation stemmed from a decision she’d made right at the outset of her reign. In a speech on her 21st birthday, she said, “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.” And by keeping that promise, and becoming the picture of a leader as devoted servant who places the nation’s interest before hers, she came to embody it.

This why the queen kept whatever political and social views she had to herself, the better to serve as an inspiring, unifying symbol for her countrymen, the one person who when she spoke, did so for all of Britain. As one writer put it, when Elizabeth became queen, she “was tasked as a twenty-something with a job that required her to say or do nothing that could be misconstrued, controversial, or even interestingly human — for the rest of her life.”

Chazal, as we know, constantly draw upon meshalim involving kings (and princes too, because what’s a good king parable without one?). And because the kings in these stories represent Hashem, they invariably are powerful yet benevolent rulers.

In actual history, however, absolute rulers who were not self-aggrandizing abusers of their power at the expense of their helpless subjects, have been the exception rather than the rule. And so it’s valuable when we can point to an actual contemporary example, a mashal come to life of what royalty is supposed to be.

True, the British queen never had to overcome the temptations of power, since she had none. But with her fame and wealth, she could have succumbed to the debasing lure of celebrity, but didn’t.

The reason the Torah is so concerned that a Jewish king’s heart should not stray, the Rambam (Hilchos Melachim 3:6) writes, is because his heart is “the heart of all of K’hal Yisrael.” In other words, he embodies his nation, and that’s why he is bidden to be preoccupied with their welfare, “spending day and night in the study of Torah and involved in the needs of Klal Yisrael.”

As the Rambam describes, a Jewish king must be treated by his people with a mix of the greatest respect and fear. He receives a daily haircut, and sits upon his palace throne, resplendent in his royal attire, a crown atop his head. All who enter his presence must bow to the ground, even a prophet.

The role of the king himself, however, is more complex. Privately, he stands when the Sanhedrin enters and seats its members next to him; but in public, he projects a very different image. “He stands before no one, does not speak softly, nor calls anyone by any title, only by his name.” And yet, the Rambam continues,

As much as all must accord him the greatest respect, his own heart must be hollow and lowly within him… He must be compassionate to both the greatest and least of his people, and be constantly busy with their needs and welfare and considerate of the honor of the smallest of the small… He must always act with exceeding humility… and bear the burden of his people, their trouble, complaints and anger…

The Jewish king stands the common conception of rulership on its head. He is all-powerful in his realm, with broad license to draft his subjects into his service and use their property as he sees fit, yet he is expected to humbly put himself at his nation’s service. And in this, he is an earthly stand-in for Hashem, who is truly all-powerful, yet has no needs and created everything only to benefit His creations.

The queen was far from a Jewish role model. Yet in her rare synthesis of dignified demeanor — royal aloofness mixing with concern for her countrymen — and in her steadfast exaltation of nation over self, she provided a modern-day glimpse of what malchus is about. As Miles Smith put it, “In Elizabeth II, the Anglophone world has lost a ruler who sought to not to be great, but to be good. Would that there were more like her.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 929. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Live Like a Queen first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

IF you were to take a survey and ask people which times of the year they associate with Torah study, many would obviously answer Shavuos. Others would add Chanukah and Purim too, which have deep links to Torah shebe’al peh. Some sophisticates of machshavah might mention Shevat, when Moshe Rabbeinu began his review of the Torah, as a propitious time for renewed fervor in limud haTorah, or Shemini Atzeres, the “fourth regel,” corresponding to Moshe Rabbeinu himself.

Yet the Chazon Ish is quoted as saying that the month of Elul is a time to invest particular effort to learn lots of Gemara. In the Shemoneh Esreh’s fifth brachah, we make three requests, beginning with “Return us to Your Torah,” continuing on to “And draw us near to Your service,” and concluding with “And bring us back in complete repentance before You.” If we view this as a sequence of supplication, we see that the process of spiritual rehabilitation begins with returning to Torah, renewing and redoubling our efforts to learn and understand the Divine wisdom it contains.

The first step in repairing and strengthening a relationship is, after all, to make a concerted effort to understand how the other party thinks and what he or she truly wants. In contemporary idiom, this is called knowing where the other “is coming from.” Well, as the pasuk states, “Hashem m’Sinai ba.” Sinai — that’s where He’s coming from.

Hashem’s rendezvous with humanity reaches the height of closeness at this time of year, in the hope His proximity to us will spark our desire to respond in kind. And one of the best ways to do so is by seeking to discern His Will, what He really wants of us, as conveyed in the Torah.

Torah study is also the first step toward becoming serious about avodas Hashem and character improvement. That indispensable guide to those goals, Mesillas Yesharim, is based on the ladder of spiritual qualities set forth by the Tanna Rabi Pinchas ben Yair (Avodah Zarah 20b). But the fact that the Ramchal begins with a discussion of zehirus — watchfulness, can mislead us into thinking that zehirus is the first rung on Rabi Pinchas’s ladder, when in fact it’s not.

Torah is. “Torah mevi’ah l’yedei zehirus — Torah brings to watchfulness,” is actually how the baraisa of Rabi Pinchas ben Yair begins. However much we may want to ascend the rungs of spiritual growth, without Torah, we literally don’t get off the ground.

All of this makes it so timely that a wonderful program of Gemara study called Daf Hashovua, from which I personally benefit, is marking a major milestone during this third week in Elul. After nearly two and a half years of learning Yevamos, Daf Hashovua’niks — now almost 10,000 strong — will conclude that masechta and begin Maseches Kesubos.

The beauty of Daf Hashovua is its simplicity: One daf per week. That’s the whole of it.

To be sure, the folks who run the program have worked to provide lomdim with an ever-expanding array of resources, such as a daily calendar to facilitate regular reviews, optional weekly tests, a booklet containing summaries of the week’s topics and citations to mefarshim to take one’s study deeper, a chavrusa-finding service, and even a nightly phone line manned by a shoel u’meishiv.

Ultimately, however, the genius of Daf Hashovua is that it’s a mere vessel, waiting to be filled. It doesn’t give you precise instructions to learn this or that. Instead, it challenges you by saying, “Here’s one page of Gemara. You have one week to mine it for all you can, clearing as much time in your busy life and investing all the heart and brainpower in this one page that you can muster.” And if it didn’t work out that well one week, there’s always the next one and the one after that (nor is there any penalty for continuing to delve into the daf of last week during this one).

There are so many different ways to learn the weekly daf: with Rashi only, or with some Tosafos or all of them, or with other Rishonim and Acharonim, too. Daf Yomi is the Great Equalizer, because the relentless pace means most people are just learning Rashi; Daf Hashovua, on the other hand, is the Great Unifier, because the slower pace allows for a spectrum of lomdim of diverse levels and backgrounds to join together in one beis medrash, with each person or pair of chavrusos learning according to their own predilection.

Daf Hashovua is also, of course, the slow boat to finishing Shas, taking a full 52 years to run its course. Why, that’s even longer than the proverbial “ah yohr und ah yovel” that Yiddish speakers use to denote a really long time. That’s the price we pay for the luxury of lavishing a full week’s attention on each blatt and reaping all the good things that flow from that.

But that slow pace can also be a refreshing change from the push to finish one masechta after another. It’s a great thing to finish a masechta, but it’s another level to complete it. Daf Hashovua, when done right, gives learners a shot at the latter.

Although the current cycle of Daf Hashovua began in 2005, I’ve been at it with my chavrusa, Reb Yitzy Weiss, in a chaburah in my shul for the past six years. And during that time, it has occurred a number of times that things mentioned in the week’s blatt were uncannily connected to events of that same week on the Jewish calendar.

And now, it has happened again: It is in Elul, whose mazal is that of besulah — a virgin woman (Sefer Yetzirah, chapter 5), that Daf Hashovua learners will commence their study of Kesubos, which opens with the words “Besulah niseis l’yom harevi’i.”

There’s more: Rav Pinchas Horowitz, author of the Hafla’ah, a major work on Kesubos, asked why the fifth chapter of the tractate begins with the word “af,” which means “anger,” when the midrash says that using “af” to begin a sentence is ill-advised. The Baal Hafla’ah answered that Kesubos has 13 chapters, corresponding to the 13 Divine Attributes of Mercy. Since the fifth of those attributes is “erech apayim,” that Hashem is long to anger, the fifth perek of Kesubos purposely opens with the word “af” as a form of hamtakas hadinim, “sweetening” the Divine anger and transforming it into Divine mercy as represented by the attribute of “erech apayim.”

Consider, then, that we will begin Kesubos — the masechta corresponding to the Yud Gimmel Middos shel Rachamim — on the 22nd day of Elul, the first day of Selichos, which are built entirely around the recitation of the Yud Gimmel Middos.

Rav Moshe Sternbuch observes that the besulah entering marriage is a fitting symbol for the spirit of renewal that pervades Elul. That same sense of forward-thinking rejuvenation will surely be felt by the revavah of Jews, Daf Hashovua veterans and neophytes alike, who’ll be taking up the study of Kesubos this coming week and doing their part in helping to bring about the bestowal of Hashem’s mercy on His nation.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 928. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post By the Week first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

When Rabbi Motty Berger of Aish HaTorah spoke about Akeidas Yitzchak, he would describe a conversation between a father and son about the meaning of life. The son would ask his dad whether there was anything in life worth dying for. “If not,” asked the son, “why did you bring me into this world… to die?”

His point was that since death is inevitable, when a parent gives life to his child, he is essentially bringing him into this world knowing that somewhere down the line that child will be wrenched from it. Why would a parent subject his beloved child to that – unless there are things in this world that are precious enough to make it worthwhile to eventually experience death.

What makes life truly worth living is that there are things in life for which we are willing to give up life itself, rather than part with those things.

Rabbi Berger’s story came to mind when I read an excerpt from the speech that the longtime Illinois congressman Henry Hyde, a conservative Republican, would give to each year’s GOP freshmen. He’d tell them:

This may sound odd, even ironic. You are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat — perhaps even the necessity of defeat…

Let me put the matter plainly: If you are here simply as a tote board registering the current state of opinion in your district, you are not going to serve either your constituents or the Congress of the United States weIl…

Indeed, I feel obliged to put the matter more sharply still: If you don’t know the principle, or the policy, for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.

Hyde’s words reminded me, in turn, of recent goings-on in Arizona, where Rusty Bowers was a state lawmaker for eighteen years, including the last four as speaker of the state’s House of Representatives.

But after refusing to violate his oath to the Constitution by overturning the will of the 3.4 million Arizona voters who had handed victory to Joe Biden, he was censured in July by the Arizona Republican party as “no longer a Republican in good standing.” The next month, he lost in the Republican primary to his Trump-endorsed rival, David Farnsworth, who told voters the 2020 presidential election had been stolen by the “devil himself.”

A fourth-generation Arizonan, the 69-year-old Bowers is the father of seven children, a devout Mormon who regards the United States Constitution inspired by G-d. Bowers says, “Family, faith, community — these are values at a very core level. Belief in G-d, that you should be held accountable for how you treat other people, those were very conservative thoughts and the bedrock of my politics.”

In the 2020 election, he said, “I campaigned for Trump, I went to his rallies, I stood up on the stage with him.” He expected that the race in Arizona would be close because a demographic of younger, college-educated women with small children were not voting for Trump, and when Biden won the state by 10,457 votes, he was unsurprised.

When armed Trump supporters protested outside Arizona counting centers demanding “audits,” he took a group of trusted lawyers with him to examine the counting process first-hand. “I saw incredible amounts of protocols that were followed and signed off by volunteers — Democrats, Republicans, independents. Yes, Republicans for crying out loud! And they did it by the book.” (Later on, an audit of votes in Arizona’s largest county ordered by pro-Trump politicians actually found 99 additional votes for Biden and 261 fewer votes for Trump.)

In late November 2020, he received a call from Trump and Rudolph Giuliani, claiming 200,000 illegal immigrants and 6,000 dead people had voted in Arizona, and pushing him to empanel a special legislative committee to investigate. He told them they had to provide hard evidence. “I said, ‘I’m not doing anything like this until you bring me something. Let’s see it. I’m not going to have circus time at the House of Representatives.’”

Then they cited an “arcane Arizona law” whose text has never been found that would allow the Republican-controlled legislature to throw out Biden’s electors and replace them with Trump alternatives. Bowers said, “Oh, wait a minute. So now, you’re asking me to overthrow the vote of the people of Arizona? I took an oath to the American constitution, the state constitution and its laws. Which one of those am I supposed to break?”

Later, John Eastman, the law professor advising Trump, called Bowers to implore him to “decertify” the electors, saying, “Just do it and let the courts figure it all out.” Bowers said, “No.”

As January 6 approached, processions of horn-blaring pickup trucks began riding by his home, bearing MAGA flags and digital signs accusing him of vile crimes. Inside his home, his daughter Kacey was bedridden, terminally ill with liver failure. “She would get emotional and say, ‘What are they doing out there?’” he remembers. She died three weeks later.

To protect his family, Rusty Bowers stepped outside his home to confront the protesters. One man, a member of the far-right Three Percenters militia group, was screaming obscenities and carrying a pistol. “I had to get as close to him as I could to defend myself if he went for the gun,” Bowers says. “I never had the thought of giving up. No way. I don’t like bullies. That’s one constant in my life: I. Do. Not. Like. Bullies.”

When a bill was proposed to empower the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature to review the ballot tabulating process and unilaterally reject any election result, Bowers killed it off by sending it to languish in all twelve of the legislature’s committees. “I was trying to send a definitive message: This is hogwash. Taking away the fundamental right to vote, the idea that the legislature could nullify your election — that’s not conservative. That’s fascist. And I’m not a fascist.”

In the same August primary in which Bowers lost, all statewide nominations went to enthusiastic supporters of overturning the 2020 election. Mark Finchem, who was at the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 and is still trying to decertify Biden’s presidency, is the party’s candidate for secretary of state and would be in charge of Arizona’s election administration.

Following the primary, Bowers reflected on the state of Arizona politics, holding his thumb and index finger so close together that they were almost touching. “The veneer of civilization is this thin,” he said. “It still exists — I haven’t been hanged yet. But holy moly, this is just crazy. The place has lost its mind.

“The constitution is hanging by a thread.  The funny thing is, I always thought it would be the other guys. And it’s my side. That just rips at my heart: that we would be the people who would surrender the constitution in order to win an election. That just blows my mind.”

But Bowers remains optimistic. “It’s not like I’m alone in the wilderness. There’s a lot of people from all over the United States thanking me.”

I’m one of them. I thank Rusty Bowers for defending the democracy that has made America a safe haven for my people, and for standing up against attempts to undermine it, whether by suit-wearing state politicians or a mob of gun-toting thugs outside someone’s home.

But I also thank him for something else. These last few years, various ideas have been injected as toxins into the American bloodstream. One is that one must win at any moral cost, because there’s no fate worse than to be a “loser.” As the former president said to his chief-of-staff, John Kelly, among the graves at Arlington military cemetery, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”

Contrary to his claim that “I win, I win, I always win,” he has lost often — the 2016 popular vote, then both houses of Congress, then the 2020 election — and this  one man’s bottomless need not to be a “loser” is now turning America upside down.

So, I thank Rusty Bowers, a Mormon, for exemplifying a quintessentially Jewish idea — that it can be a high honor to be a loser, because there are noble things that are well worth losing over, indeed, even dying for.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 927. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Losers Take All first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

One of my still-strong memories of my years in the Yeshiva of Staten Island is of the atmosphere of intense spiritual focus that pervaded the yeshivah during Elul. Some years ago, while writing a biographical sketch of Rav Dovid Kronglas, the unforgettable mashgiach ruchani of Baltimore’s Ner Israel, I came to understand the roots of that Elul ruach.

Rav Chaim Mintz, menahel ruchani in Staten Island who was close to Reb Dovid, told me that “one who didn’t see Rav Dovid’s Elul, never saw an Elul. You could see the awe of the approaching Yamim Noraim on his face, which only increased as those days drew closer. On Rosh Hashanah itself, you didn’t talk to him, you didn’t think to approach him, such was the aura of eimas hadin around him. And he imparted this spirit into the whole yeshivah.”

Understandably, then, when a group of ten boys, including Reb Chaim, went to Toronto to help establish a branch of Ner Israel there and then returned to Baltimore for Yom Kippur, they hesitated to approach Rav Dovid. It was the Aseres Yemei Teshuvah, when his intensity reached its apex. “But when he saw us,” Reb Chaim recalled, “he smiled broadly and gave us the warmest shalom aleichem, and inquired into how we were all doing. In his eyes, we had gone to be marbitz Torah and deserved no less, even if it was in the very midst of the Yemei Hadin. As Rav Yisrael Salanter used to say, ‘the other person doesn’t have to suffer because I’m working on my fear of Hashem’s judgment.’”

Perhaps there is a way to extend that to apply not just between one individual and another, but within each person, too. That is to say, can each of us somehow find a balance between cultivating a sense of awe appropriate to the magnitude of the period, while not having a healthy awe turn into immobilizing dread?

It would seem that Reb Yisrael’s own leading talmid, Rav Itzele Peterburger, lights a path for us in an essay in his sefer Kochvei Ohr. He addresses a mishnah in Rosh Hashanah that discusses how all human beings pass before Hashem on Rosh Hashanah like “bnei maron” — an ambiguous term the Gemara says refers to a procession of people walking single file.

Reb Itzele explains that even though the omniscient Creator could judge all of his creations in one instant, He chooses instead to adopt all the trappings of an earthly judicial system. He ascends to His seat of judgment on one particular day, with each person passing before Him individually to have his record of conduct scrutinized and his fate pondered. There’s a Book of Recollections, along with Heavenly accusers and defenders, and Hashem Himself serving simultaneously as witness and ultimate Judge.

Now, in a system in which we all pass, one at a time, before the Throne of Judgment, there’s a great advantage to be closer to the head of the line than to its end. Once Hashem has taken stock of all of our actions, the cumulative effect of all the sins we’ve committed might give rise to great Divine anger over the mess we’ve made of His beautiful world. The earlier our turn to be judged comes, the less people have stood in judgment before us and thus, the less of a build-up of Divine displeasure there has been for us to have to contend with.

The crucial question then becomes: How can we earn a spot toward the beginning of the line that will make its way past the Kisei Rachamim on the Day of Judgment? And, as it turns out, the answer is one we’re well familiar with from, l’havdil, the many mundane lines we’ve stood on in the hopes of being among the first to get into stores and other venues: by getting there early.

And that, says Reb Itzele, is part of what Elul is all about.

Tzaddikim have no problem going to the head of the line because their many good deeds help to muscle them into those coveted berths at the front. But as for the many of us whose spiritual track record is far poorer, we need Hashem to exercise His compassion, to focus on some merit we have and use it to exonerate us in judgment.

Except that since it’s hard to know what that merit will be, the surest way to elicit Hashem’s compassion is to show Hashem how deeply we care that we’re about to undergo this awesome judgment, and how our deep concern over it has led us to begin preparing for it.

What emerges, the Kochvei Ohr explains, is that our efforts in Elul to improve — including spending more quality time learning and davening and using mussar to stoke the once-glowing but now dormant embers of yiras Shamayim within us — are not just for the purpose of trying to enter the Yamim Noraim with more credit points.

Because even if our sustained efforts over the course of this precious month to turn ourselves into tzaddikim fall short, and we remain among those with a mitzvah deficit in our spiritual ledgers as Rosh Hashanah commences, we need not feel an underlying dread of what awaits us. The very fact that we got serious about the Yemei Hadin early on still makes us deserving of Hashem’s rachamim.

As the first of Elul’s shofar blasts pierce the air, we can seize the initiative to do something, almost anything, to demonstrate that we are not sanguine in the face of the approaching period of judgment, thereby bringing forth Hashem’s infinite mercy upon us. Getting in line early — by taking even tentative, small steps toward self-betterment — ensures that we’ll be standing toward the front of that single file queue when it wends its way past the bar of Divine justice in just over a month from now.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 926. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

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