Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Breishit, Good vs Evil round one!

I hope Everybody had an uplifting High Holidays and were able to start the newest round of Torah study on the right foot.  My family and I had an amazing Simchas Torah and Shobbos Breishit in Omaha. We were privileged to experience a unique Holiday atmosphere arranged and lead by Rabbi Dembitzer and Rabbi Weiss, and added to greatly by the YU students that came out as part of Torah Tours. I came away really inspired and ready to start this new year on a whole new foot.

The Hakofos were incredible, the classes were well prepared, the drashas were inspiring and our hosts were gracious. All that said, the highlight of  the whole experience for me happened at a more private setting. On Erev Shobbos I had the chance to sit down with Dr. Shyken and his son , my host, Reb Gary Shyken, to learn one of the most essential teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. The teaching known in Breslov circles as "Azamra".  As we began, I pointed out that in Breslov each chapter in Rebbe Nachmans magnum opus "Likutie Mohoran" is referred to as a "Torah".  The reason being that Rebbe Nachman taught that each chapter is a commentary on the entire Torah and one could learn the the entire Torah through the "glasses" of any given chapter.

We began learning about the Rabbinic teaching, "Havei don et kol adam lkav zchut/Judge every person on the side of merit." We spoke about how the Rabbis are not implying that we should justify wrong doings by making excuses for them, but rather our sages are teaching us a much harder lesson. Judging a person according to his merits means just that, to judge them based solely on their good deeds. This requires us to hide our eyes from the bad they do, just as we would like others to ignore our shortcomings and focus instead on our merits.  Rebbe Nachman goes as far as to say, that even should we encounter a completely wicked person, it is our DUTY to search beneath the surface as far as necessary and to find some good that we can "exploit" in order to build a positive view of this person.

The obvious question at this point to me is, how? How do we overcome a life time of training by our surroundings, the media, and our own natural innate desire to somehow feel superior to those around us? Rebbe Nachman immediately addresses this. His answer...Just as we have to search and seek out the good in others until we find it, so to do we have to search for the good inside ourselves! Even if when we look at the good we've done and find it to be lacking, we need to search deeper until we find the point of good were there is only good. Through judging ourselves according to the good we've accomplished, we have the ability to lift ourselves out of even deep spiritual depression. By doing so we can bring ourselves to a higher spiritual level than we previously knew.

When we are able to see the good in ourselves and feel confident in our positive attributes, abilities and accomplishments, we have the power to look past the shortcomings of others and see the goodness every person possesses. Best of all, our positive judgment of others has the ability to uplift them from their lowly state and give them the strength to better themselves.

As we began to learn The Torah from the beginning on Shobbos I was thinking about this teaching and trying to understand the parsha through the "glasses" of Azamra. This is what I found:

The Parsha starts off introducing us to Hashem's attitude and outlook on his creations. Every day He finishes His work and sees it's "Good". He doesn't evaluate it's strength's verse it's weakness's and say "These animals are not so smart" or "Bugs are important but they're kind of ichy." He looks and only sees good. Hashem tells us this story to teach us what goodness looks like and what Hashem's "Way" looks like. Later when He approaches Cain He again teaches us how to not see. Sometimes we have to close our eyes and refocus. Hashem asks Cain, "Where is your brother?" He never says I saw what you did. He says "your brother's blood is crying out to me." There's a problem we have to fix. Not your an evil murderer. Hashem sees all, but HE decides where to look. Just like we have the power to decide what we choose to set our focus on when looking at others and ourselves.

Now lets examine the actions of the serpent. The serpent tells Eve, "Hashem is trying to hold you down, He just doesn't want you to become a god like Him." The Serpent looks to find evil, even when none exists. He uses Hashems own "Torah" to find faults in others, even in Hashem Himself. That is what Evil looks like. The Zohar teaches that the serpents teachings still circulate among us. We can spot them through this test: Any time the Torah is used to find fault in others, rather than improve ourselves, that is the "Serpents Torah" or "Torat Hanachash".

Every time we open our eyes in the morning we have the opportunity to choose which path we take. Every time we look in the mirror we have the choice to look at ourselves through G-dly eyes, and seek out our good points. One good point, and another good point until we see our selves as truly good people.






1 Comments:

At October 23, 2014 at 11:07 PM , Anonymous Uri Shinsky said...

Powerful Torah my friend, Thank you for sharing!

 

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