These are all specimens of the same species below.

But...

• Would you give a Shetland pony the same kind of food in the same amounts as you would give a Morgan stallion?
• Would you give the same job to a British Shire as you would an Arabian horse?
  
• Would you have a Tennessee Walking Horse run the same kind of racecourse as a Thoroughbred?

One of the walls I’ve often slammed against when either listening to or dispensing advice is that it’s very hard to see past one's own weak points to what the other person really needs.

For example, some people really need to be told to slow down and smell the daisies.

Yet other people are so into their slow-down and flower-smelling that they’ve made their bed among the daisies and lie there all day long with flower petals up their nose.

Likewise, when I became frum, I was very open to receiving direction and consulting with rabbis and rebbetzins for everything (because I got the impression that if I didn’t, I would make some kind of horrible mistake and then bad things would happen).

(Just to be clear, if it's a matter of actual Jewish law, then you need to ask someone knowledgeable in that area of law. But otherwise...)

And no matter how irrational or wrong the advice was, or how disdainfully given, I often pushed myself beyond my abilities to follow it.

Sometimes, I questioned them in order to understand what they were telling me to do. I’m very much the type of person who like to know why I’m doing something before I do it, partly so that I can do it exactly right.

Usually, they didn’t like it when I did that. (Later, I realized that some things are genuinely difficult to explain and I wouldn’t have been able to explain it either, but they could have had the humility to acknowledge that rather than getting sarcastic or disdainful.)

And to be completely upfront, sometimes I wasn't able to follow it because I couldn't hear beyond the disdain or jeering way it was given or because I couldn't understand it.

Anyway, when the advice either didn’t work or stopped working after two weeks, I’d go back to consult with them regarding what I had done wrong with the original advice.
(I was sure the negative results were my fault, and not the fault of the advice.)

This back-and-forth continued until they rejected me in some way.

What it took me a long time to realize was that Hashem wanted me to turn to Him, not them.

I was putting my faith in them due to a warped misunderstanding of emunat tzaddikim. (They weren’t tzaddikim, by the way. That was my first mistake. Many of them meant well and wanted to help, but that alone doesn’t make anyone a tzaddik.)

When I stopped consulting with others (and this means chinuch classes and everything else) AND started consulting with Hashem, many things in my life improved that never had budged (or had even gotten worse) when I was running around consulting with frum "experts" before.

Reading memoirs, Jewish history, and listening to frum people older than me also taught me that this insistence on running to rabbis and rebbetzins for all sorts of personal issues and non-halachic advice is actually a new invention of our generation. This is not what people traditionally did. They asked halacha (although not always even that, unfortunately) or they asked advice when they really, truly got stuck. And then, they asked someone who they felt would really know how to help them, whether that person was a true gadol, a rabbi, rebbetzin, relative, or friend.

For many, 2 factors were paramount in deciding whether to consult with a particular person:

• the level of the adviser’s emuna and yirat Shamayim
• how much the adviser genuinely cared about the person turning to them for advice

People looking for advice today don't necessarily consider those 2 factors first.

Then I came across Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender’s collection of lectures, which clearly repeat the idea of turning to Hashem with your issues, while using friends to give you general chizuk and point out your positive attributes.

Likewise, you also point out their positive attributes and give them general chizuk (encouragement).

He stresses that you need to allow your friends to shine their positive attributes on you and they must also allow your positive attributes to shine on them.

But he was clear about 2 things:

• While the desire to confide is very understandable, it's ultimately not beneficial for you or your friends to confide very personal things or sins you've committed because most people ultimately cannot handle it (even if you both mean well). Only a true tzaddik can really handle hearing your "confessions."

 

• The wrong advice can destroy the person receiving the advice. People need to consult with Hashem, each person according to his or her level.

It's not easy and it is a process. But you do the best you can and Hashem helps.
__________
So I pound this idea (of using religious authorities for halacha only) pretty hard on my blog.

I lived it, it was excruciating, I survived it, and I really don’t want others to suffer like I did.

It’s about turning to Hashem and clinging tighter to Torah, and not flinging any part of Torah away in a rebellious state of “I gotta be meeee!”

But what if my above situation isn’t like yours?

What if your problem was the exact opposite?

What if you resisted anyone’s advice, let alone seek it out?

What if you found it all too easy to dismiss any advice you felt was too hard, simply not “you,” or just made you feel bad?

What if you regret not following the advice you received?

So, then...maybe what I write about isn’t for you. Maybe it’s even wrong for you!

And that’s perfectly fine.

People who experienced the above as I did might benefit a lot from the way this blog covers this topic.

But people who experienced the opposite might not.

You have attributes that I can learn from. I have attributes that you can learn from.

You have a strength in davka the area where I have a weakness.

Yet I have a strength in davka the area where you have a weakness.

This is how it is supposed to be. Hashem set things up in exactly this way.

(It's actually not "advice," but commanded in the Torah itself.)

So tachlis. What do you do if you belong to either group?

You turn to Hashem.

(This isn’t Breslov or wacky me. It’s repeated throughout the Torah, Chazal, mussar book, etc.)

And interestingly, both groups can actually respond in more or less the same way:

Group #1 (my group) can get the message that Hashem is whomping over their head: TURN TO ME. They can sit down with Hashem as if He is their Good, True Friend and ask Him why this whole disappointing mess is happening.

• What’s the message?
• Are these advisers right?
• Are they wrong?
• A mixture of both?

And even if you stop asking for advice, Hashem still sends you the messages you need in other ways, via other people or experiences, and even via spiders.
(Speaking from personal experience…)

Group #2 can sit down with Hashem as if He is their Good, True Friend and ask Him how they should handle the advice they’ve received. They can admit that their instinctive response is to just fling it all aside and keep going their own way. Then they can describe the advice they received and piece it apart point by point with Hashem to see what they should keep and what they should discard (in the same way as described above).

Any comment or “advice” given in an insulting or hard-to-swallow manner still needs to be discussed with Hashem regardless of who said it or how it was said.

If it was said negatively, then I'm the first to admit that it's hard to swallow. At times, it's taken me a whole week before I could sit down with Hashem and go over what was said.

If a rabbi or rebbetzin didn’t say it to you, then maybe your aunt or your grocer would.

If Hashem wants you to hear it, then it will come from somewhere.

This applies everyone, regardless of what category they fit into.

Even in my situation, I still needed to seek out the grain of truth within the mostly wrong or hurtful words. And believe me, if you have a rav literally snickering at you while he’s explaining what you should do, it’s very hard to disregard the natural wall of defense your heart erects to protect itself.

That’s normal…which is why you turn to Hashem later in a private moment.

Of course Elul and Av did not switch places.

But at first, it felt like they did.

Av is always a hard month for me and a time when I really struggle to overcome the inner lion roaring to get out.
(Please see How to Deal with the Mazal of Crabby Tammuz and Savage Av for more about Av's "inner lion.")

But mostly, this Av saw me making some progress without the usual lows. I was thrilled because I thought that if Av was going so well, spiritually speaking, then Elul would be amazing.

Only Rosh Chodesh Elul arrived, and I went numb. It wasn’t depression exactly, but just "blah." I even did a few things in the spiritual realm that called for tremendous time, effort, and a certain amount of self-sacrifice. One of them I’d never done before.

I felt good for two minutes after I’d completed these efforts, then things went right back to blah.

I tried all sorts of things, including writing down 20 things for which I was grateful and Pitum Haketoret among other spiritual efforts, acupressure, the proper vitamins...and still no release.

Then I started thinking things that I knew were false and anti-Torah, like maybe this is Heavenly rejection, maybe Hashem doesn’t like me anymore, chas v’shalom.
And yes, I knew this couldn’t possibly be true, yet I fretted about it anyway.

(I realized later that because I've failed this particular challenge before, Hashem was probably throwing it my way again in a last-ditch attempt for me to tackle it before Rosh Hashanah.)

Heartbreakingly, it also seemed that toddlers injured in Av were succumbing to their injuries in Elul.

I felt a lot of din maybe?

Then I started seeing a lot of spiders, including a very big one. In Perek Shira, the spider (shmamit) says, “HalleluHu b'tziltzalei shema. HalleluHu b'tziltzilei teruah - Praise Him with resounding cymbals. Praise Him with trumpet blasts” (Tehillim 150:5).

• According to the Metzudah Tehillim, Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch explains this verse as "a call to whole groups for attentive participation."
• Metzudat David says tziltzalim (cymbals) produce a sound that travels far.
• Malbim says that teruah (trumpeting) represents fear of punishment (yirat onesh), but this fear will be mixed with joy.

(I believe that some interpret shmamit as a small lizard and I saw a couple of geckos along with the spiders. Either way, I got the message: With humility and joy, Praise Hashem LOUD AND CLEAR!)

So all these "singing" spiders and geckos encouraged me to start calling out thanks and praise to Hashem (as per the Sages commentaries on that verse) with myself, with my family members, and on this blog.
(Now you know why you got a big dose of pro-monotheism posts!)

Finally, I decided to say a prayer before randomly opening Volume 1 of Words of Faith by Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender.

It was all about not speaking falsely (even positively) or with any exaggeration of the deceased. I haven’t been speaking about dead people at all recently as far as I could tell, so I did the procedure again with the Volume 2.

Bingo!

It was all about the key to getting past “dry” hitbodedut:
Talk to Hashem like He's your Good, True Friend.

I realized that when I was trying to talk to Hashem, I was being too self-conscious about it. I was being too formulaic and not "real" enough.

I ended up not having any alone-time that day, so I resolved to give it a try the next day.

I also tried to remember that Rav Berland spoke about this, that sometimes you’re not given a good feeling about your spiritual stuff for two reasons:

1. Having too much blessing too fast really makes people incredibly stuck on themselves. I’ve seen it happen and it’s a very real concern.
2. Sometimes, Hashem just wants us to serve Him from a place of constriction. It’s a way of serving Hashem l’Shem Shamayim. You don’t have all the enthusiasm and flavor and spiritual uplift. You’re only doing it because Hashem said so.

It feels all wrong, but really, constriction is Hashem’s way of earning you and the rest of Am Yisrael a lot of extra merit. In other words, it’s actually a really good thing, even though it feels bad.

So that made me feel a little better.
 
But I was still out of sorts until I finally had the private time to speak to Hashem. I still got distracted, but I tried to follow the "Good, True Friend" advice by closing my eyes and settling my mind into the idea that right now, I'm talking to Someone who really cares about me, is totally Trustworthy, and Kind, Gentle, and Warm. And eventually it went pretty well and I felt better.

Now Elul is going better. I’m in basically good spirits even as those year-end “This is your last chance to get it right!” nisayonot are rolling in.

So I hope I’ll keep feeling the spiritual flavor of Elul. But if I don’t, I plan to do my best to keep pushing myself along spiritually and trying to feel good about serving Hashem from a place of constriction.
____________________
How to Serve Hashem from a Place of Constriction by Rav Berland

A little boy attended preschool in the cozy home of a very special woman. She genuinely loved small children and knew how to care for them and teach them according to their needs.

She’d been caring for children in her home for years and fully expected to continue in this happy way.

After the little boy finished the year of preschool in her home, the little boy needed to attend a nearby school. His parents prayed that he would manage the transition and get a good teacher.

When he walked through the door of his new classroom holding tight to his mother’s hand, whom did he see?

The same woman who’d cared for him all the year before!

The boy’s mother was also thrilled and relieved to realize that her son would be in such loving and competent hands for his first year of school.

Furthermore, because the teacher knows him so well, the little boy won’t need to go through any transition of the teacher needing to learn his personality and his quirks—she already knows all about him and how to deal with him in a warm and loving manner.

I heard about it this morning straight from the boy’s mother.

Needless to say, this is an ideal situation for any child. Interestingly, the boy’s parents had no idea that this woman would be teaching at their son’s Talmud Torah this year. She herself was only offered the job a month earlier.

The moral of the story is the importance of praying for your children.
___________________
Regardless of how much money and power or how many connections and ideas parents may have, there is no way to set up a situation exactly like this.

Only Hashem can do it.

As much as the boy’s parents prayed for him, they never imagined things would work out like this.

I’ve had this too, in which I really davened for something even as I thought it wasn’t really feasible, then Hashem designed it to happen in way that checked all my little boxes. And He did so in ways that, with all my obsessive brainstorming, I’d never considered.

This is because Hashem is All-Powerful and All-Knowing.

Sure, He might say no. He does that sometimes and He can do so with a lot of oomph, may He have mercy.

But He might also say yes. And when He does say yes, He can do so in a way that is wonderful beyond anything you imagined.
________________
Oops, school has already started, but it really is never too late. Here is a short tefillah especially for your child's teachers and others involved with your child:
A Short Yet Powerful Tefillah for Our Children

While the history preceding the civil rights in America is usually portrayed as a time of narrow-mindedness and injustice, the truth is that values like decency, courage, fairness, and justice were respected and admired.

And decent people in a basically decent society behaved decently, even if aspects of that society were unjust and narrow-minded.

Yes, it’s true that for women and minority groups, there wasn’t much they could do when someone did discriminate against them. It was hard for those groups to receive a fair hearing, both in court and in society. Not always impossible, but it was often difficult to receive completely fair treatment.

Yet society upheld standards of decency which enabled decent people to behave decently despite socially acceptable or even law-enforced discrimination. For example, I have southern family members who remember the era of the Jim Crow Laws (forcing black people to sit in the back of the bus, drink from separate water fountains, use separate hospitals and restaurants, etc.).

Yet they also remember their mother greeting the black elevator operator with proper courtesy, including asking after his wife and children. In fact, they never remember their parents behaving rudely toward black people even though the laws of that time did not stop them from doing so.
____________________
And further north in New York's late 1940s, my grandfather discovered that the cops were holding a black man accused of murder.

And my grandfather knew that this black man hadn’t ever killed anybody.

Sure, Troy wasn’t a law-abiding citizen per se, but he’d never committed murder. So my grandfather went to the police with the evidence that could free Troy…and they let him go. Troy never forgot what my grandfather did for him and remained a loyal friend for the rest of his life, accompanying my grandfather as a body guard through the rough neighborhoods my grandfather needed to enter for business and teaching my dad to drive.

My grandfather wasn't religious, but he was raised by Jewish immigrants who kept Torah according to their limited understanding. And despite their lack of understanding and deep commitment, I think some of the core values ("Justice, justice thou shalt pursue", etc.) radiated within their souls.

Furthermore, I never heard racial or chauvinistic jokes or slurs from either my northern family members or the southern ones, no matter how old and "old-fashioned" they were.

Yet with the way things are today, you’d think that you’d need someone constantly exhorting you not to be racist just to behave with basic courtesy—or in my grandfather’s case, heroically.

But in fact, many people behaved decently because the society that surrounded them idealized such decency. Even as that same society discriminated against certain groups, those very groups were able to achieve equality by insisting that people live up to the personal values and their national Constitution.

(Yes, I know there was a lot of rowdy and radical stuff that happened too, but if you look at that time period, things were already moving in the direction of equality. The civil rights and feminist movements simply gunned the momentum—and did so in ways that ultimately were not beneficial to the very groups they claimed to be helping.)

To the end of his life, my grandfather referred to black people by the term acceptable throughout his childhood: “colored.” Maybe he used the term “black,” but I don’t believe he ever said, “African-American.”

But you don’t need to be politically correct in order to behave with justice and decency.

You just need to care about justice and decency.

And know that every human being is created in Hashem's Image.

In Words of Faith, Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender strongly exhorts us to ask Hashem for advice, while utilizing rabbis—even great rabbis—primarily for halachic questions only.

This flies in the face of the exhortations that inundated me as a baalat teshuvah, where very well-meaning people (including rabbis, rebbetzins, and hosts/hostesses) insisted that one needs to consult with a rav about everything. It was like something terrible would happen if I'd make a move without consulting a rav. And the English frum press is full of stories of people who were floundering until they consulted a rabbi and -- TA-DAAAH! -- they saw the light and everything become rosy and sunny.

Later, I discovered that consulting a rabbi for non-halachic advice is like tossing a coin: Sometimes he's right, sometimes he's wrong. Or he's kind of right but either his reasoning is wrong OR his persona of sarcasm or irritability or condescension makes it hard to swallow whatever benefit may be contained in his words.
(I'm obviously not talking about real tzaddikim, but run-of-the-mill rabbis.)

The success stories are true, but the people who benefited from a rav's advice benefited from a certain amount of luck, good chemistry with the rav, thick skin, and maybe they consulted a true expert in that particular field.)

Anyway, to my surprise, this idea of not consulting another human being for advice is actually an intrinsic part of Breslov philosophy.

This is even more intriguing given that we are talking about Chassidus, which places a huge emphasis on the relationship between a chassid and his Rebbe, with chassidim encouraged to turn to their Rebbe for advice and guidance.

Yet Rav Bender offers many examples of Breslov opposition to the dispensing of advice, even among the Breslov giants like Rebbe Nachman himself and Rebbe Nachman’s prime disciple and transmitter, Rebbe Nosson.

Yes, such wise and qualified tzaddikim like them rarely gave direct advice, even when their closest disciples or even their own children begged for direct advice.

Why? They resisted because they did not want to remove the asker’s bechirah (free will).

I’m writing this post to give myself chizuk too. Despite all the benefits and pleasures (usually, but not always) of talking to God, I often face the yetzer hara of “Well, I don’t really feel like it right now…” (Or any number of other excuses.)

Objectively speaking, that’s so bizarre. Talking to Hashem has proven so helpful. I've seen changes in my life that common wisdom insists that only profuse therapy and special programs can effect.

And sometimes, I've ended a hitbodedut session feeling high -- literally.

So why don’t I yearn to do it all the time?

I was recently reminded in Garden of Emuna that there is a yetzer hara against hitbodedut. Rav Shalom Arush (who himself has at times engaged in 6-8 hours of hitbodedut on a daily basis) states that even a high-level person who regularly does copious hitbodedut can still struggle with an inner resistance against talking to God.
 
That’s the yetzer hara for you.

So I'm really into turning to Hashem for everything and showing Him gratitude, and I've personally done it a lot and reaped a lot of benefit from this...and I still struggle with making the time to do it! Or sometimes I want to talk to another person (instead of Hashem) about an issue, but then Hashem makes that go wonky and I end up regretting it.

So the benefit is so clear...yet I still struggle with this resistance!

And that's normal.

The main thing is to keep trying.

When talking to God (or when just thinking about talking to God), it’s rational to wonder whether the messages you get are really from Hashem or from your subconscious.
 
For example, what if I hear a voice telling me, “You really need to increase your daily intake of large gooey butter croissants”?

Or, “You must replace aaaaall the Harry Potter books you got rid of…go to the bookstore and do it NOW.”
 
And haven’t we all read of people who did horrible things because some kind of voice told them to do it? (Yet what the stories usually omit is all the dark stuff the person was engaged in long before he heard those evil voices.)
 
The thing is, the above doesn’t really happen. Yet the occasional times I do get a “message” that sounds “off,” I ask Hashem about it. Sometimes, I re-orient my mind by thanking Hashem more and praising Him, and then asking again.
 
(Anyway, according to the Gemara, it’s essential to open up any Divine chat session with praises and thank-You notes.)
 
For example, I often ask Hashem how I should deal with people who have hurt me or have behaved in ways I find problematic or off-putting.
 
Interestingly, the message can be exactly the opposite of what my heart tells me.
 
For example:

For example, despite a certain person’s highly respected (chashuv) position in the frum community, I felt she was a big fake and I resented how she alternated between saying very nice things to me (to show what a religious hotshot she is) and sniping unwanted and unhelpful shots of mussar at me accompanied by her trademark face-splitting grin. I also saw her behave with appalling insensitivity and narcissism in a tragic situation that demanded a lot extra sensitivity and compassion.
 
Based on halacha, my personal policy is to treat everybody with equal courtesy, regardless of status and middot (unless of course, the person is a true gadol or possesses exemplary middot or deeds, in which case, I’ll treat them with even more respect and courtesy). And I see that a lot of other people have this policy too.

I've also been a rebbetzin myself, so I know that the majority of people in religious leadership positions are just regular people who aren't actually any better than anyone else...and may even be a lot worse. (Although if you're lucky, your rabbi or rebbetzin genuinely means well and is not just there for all the worldly perks that can come with that position.)
 
Nonetheless, each time I ran into this "chashuv" person, my skin crawled and I felt like jerking back in disgust. This made it very difficult to be nice.
 
Yet each time I asked Hashem about it, the answer was:
Be kind. You have no idea has much she’s suffered.
 
And believe me, in my heart of hearts, I was not feeling kindly inclined toward this person. She herself can be egotistical and unkind, as she showed in the tragic situation mentioned above.
 
And yes, the message was to be kind.

Not "nice" or "indulgent" or "sweet" or "assertive"...but kind.
 
Not to grovel or cater to her every suggestion or request. No flattery either. And not to swoon with all sorts of excuses for her unacceptable behavior.
 
And certainly not to be rude in any way or toss her an obviously tight smile as I go by.
 
But to be kind.

Kindness implies gentleness, understanding, compassion.

And that is very different advice than what you would normally get from a person.

And getting the message straight from Hashem (even though the same advice to be kind is also in the Torah—which is also straight from Hashem) made it a lot easier to actually do.
 
If I’d confided in a person who then lectured me to be kind or tried giving me pointed mussar (“Well, you’ve got to judge favorably, ya know…and anyway, don’t you feel soooo sooooorry for people who act like that?”), it wouldn’t have been nearly as helpful.

(Anyway, I always feel like answering: "No, I don't feel soooo sooooorry for people like that; I feel soooo sooooorry for their victims, thank you very much!")
 
Ditto with someone who would only commiserate with my feelings, i.e. “Yeah, I hate those types too.” (Of course, I certainly prefer this to being lectured or melodramatic fake pity, but I still need the loving directive to be kind.)
 
So there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with either of the above reactions. As a friend, I’m very into commiserating and validating along with giving the occasional heads-up if I think a friend is veering in a bad direction.
 
My point is the importance of effective and accurate insight.
 
It’s hard for people (including me) to offer an effective response and accurate insight. That often demands a higher level, which is why real tzaddikim are so good at effective responses and accurate insights.

Also, Hashem gives you messages with love because He truly loves you more than any other human being ever could. So you get messages without any ego interests: no kissing up to you, patronizing you, pretend caring, smirking, snickering, or anything else that tends to muddy the waters of consultative conversations.

Anyway, I was always uncertain about this aspect of turning to Hashem for advice, but I see that it really does work out well.

I wanted to re-emphasize something mentioned in a previous post.

In Words of Faith (Vol. I, pages 410-412), Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender refers to Likutei Moharan, explaining that in order to tame and focus your mind, you need to liberate it.

And Likutei Moharan emphasizes that the only way to liberate your mind is through joy.

Yet especially if you're feeling despondent and loathsome, how can you cultivate such a positive emotion?

By finding good points within yourself.

And again, this idea is directly from Rebbe Nachman's Likutei Moharan.

Paradoxically, Rav Bender uses the example of tackling the negative trait of pride:

So in order not to feel superior and haughty, you davka need to find the superior (i.e. positive) attributes Hashem engraved within you and not the inferior (i.e., negative) attributes He also gave you.
(He gave you negative stuff for the purpose of rectifying and elevating these same negative aspects.)

So, you'd think that in order to feel less superior and less arrogant, you'd need to find the good points of others or to see where you are flawed.

And you do need to do those two things.

But first, find the good points in yourself.

It's counter-intuitive, but it's the truth.

Get happy, feel good about God and yourself...and then focus on your flaws.

In order to plumb your personal depths, you need to first uplift yourself with joy.

For more details, please see How to Use Joy for Self-Improvement.

In Words of Faith (pages 380-382), Rav Bender mentions a secular Jew in Uman who apparently was a hitman for the underworld.

Think about this for a moment:
It means he killed people in cold blood simply for the money.

Jews and non-Jews alike were terrified of him.

But he did teshuvah.

It started by his coming to the Breslover shul to say kaddish for his father. (None of the other shuls allowed him to enter.) He only recited kaddish without any other prayers and without putting on tefillin until one day, Rav Yankel Zatamer approached him and said, "Moshe...if you already came, you can put on tefillin!"

That was the first step in a long line of steps to completely transform himself from a murderer into an upright Torah Jew.

It's always one step at a time; sometimes a series of baby steps or sometimes long strides. Self-transformation is always a process and no one has any right to shove you up to where they think you should be or judge you for the size of the steps you're taking.

Anyway, Moshe did honest and complete teshuvah. And believe me, he had what to beat himself up for. But he cried to Hashem—literally, he fell upon Rebbe Nachman’s grave many times and cried to Hashem with regret and remorse.

(Regret and remorse are good. Self-hatred and self-recrimination are not.)

And then he picked himself up and risked his life to build and maintain a mikveh against Communist law for the Jewish community to perpetuate life. Furthermore, he was very generous with all the impoverished people who came to him for food.

This man who had taken lives in cold blood was now giving life with a warm heart.

He lived among the very Jews who knew him at his worst, which takes a lot of courage.

But apparently, he felt his teshuvah was accepted, both before Hashem and by the Breslov community. And after they saw his generosity to the poor, the other Jews accepted his teshuvah too.

In other words, despite his horrific deeds, he managed to go on with his life as a rectified Jew.

How is this possible?

Needless to say, I have no idea what he spoke to Hashem.

But using the principles of teshuvah and the idea discussed in the previous post (regarding the need to find good points in yourself and cultivate a happy mood before you engage in self-improvement), an oversimplified version of what someone like him might go as follows:

“Look, Hashem…You’ve known me forever—literally! You gave me this ability to murder in cold blood another human being made in Your Image. How many people can say they can do that? Yet I’d like to use this cold-blooded fearlessness to serve You. And You know what? I think that says something good about me. After all, how many cold-blooded murderers ever develop a conscience or regret their deeds? Also, I find myself attracted to davening at the Breslov shul. I think that’s a good sign too. It means that deep down, I do want a connection with You. And in order to really connect with You, I need to stop being a hitman and start being a God-fearing man. Please help me do complete teshuvah from love and please help me rectify the terrible crimes I’ve committed.”

You probably haven't done anything nearly as bad as this guy has. And even if you have, if his teshuvah could be accepted, then yours can be too.

That's something to be very happy and relieved about.

If he could face the worst parts of himself, then you can too.

Hashem is right there holding your hand as you do it.

Previous Post: How to Use Joy for Self-Improvement

Thus says Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender in Words of Faith, Vol. 1 pages 410-412

He states that the following two commands must be performed simultaneously:

• “Seek His Face constantly”
• “It is a great mitzvah to always be happy”

The Rav advises:

Rav Bender himself lived under terrifying Communist pursuit with his life constantly in danger at times. Or at least, under the constant threat of being sent off to a slow and grueling anonymous death in Siberia.

And he’s very honest and open about his feelings.
He endured personal moments of sheer terror.

Yet he emphasizes the constant seeking of connection with Hashem accompanied by a happy heart.

Believe me, he wasn't chuckling or doing the Irish jig when he was brought to KGB interrogation where they talked about shooting the rav and his friend with the casualness of shooting a beer bottle.

Yet he emphasizes the importance of being happy in connecting with Hashem and scrutinizing yourself for self-improvement and repentance.

Rav Bender says:

And true enough, you can always find someone—including yourself—to put you down about any spiritual efforts you struggle to make.

You need to bring yourself to happy heights in order to plumb your dreary depths.

It brings to mind the image of a person whistling as they search for Hashem, doesn't it?

In Likutei Moharan II:10, Rebbe Nachman states:

Coming from American culture, this amazes me.

I always associated joy or a happy heart with giddiness and frivolity. It always seemed like being happy makes you crazier and more impetuous while being very solemn and even grave grants you a balanced mind and better decision-making.

In fact, we even refer to deep thoughts with the slang, “heavy.” If something is very profound, we say, “Whoa, that’s pretty heavy.” There’s a sense of being weighed down with all that deliberation and contemplation.

And of course, a happy-hearted person can still possess a serious countenance. But he or she is not depressed or sad. They’re just taking their responsibilities seriously, that’s all.

One of the things I’ve been learning from reading Chazal is to reframe my understanding of happiness.

When Judaism talks about joy and happiness, it means real joy and not the fake giddy frivolous merriment I’ve been seeing most of my life.

Happiness that comes from mockery, secular comedy, or emptiness is latzanut. This is disconnected from Hashem and leads to lightheadness or recklessness or a mind-numbing “high.”

Real joy is connected to Hashem and leads to all the good things Rav Bender describes here.

From reading classic Torah sources, I’m learning about genuine joy and not its giddy shadow.

Rav Bender says:

This is incredible. In order to control the mind, you first have to set it free?

Yes, apparently so!

Once again, Judaism is cozying up to the very real paradoxes that Hashem established within the world.

Eureka! I mean, Azamra! You mean, doing something ordinarily considered gaavadik is actually good for you?

Well…as always, it depends on your motivation.

Understood superficially, this sounds like all the self-affirmation and self-esteem building stuff advocated by psychology. We’re back to the the old “Love yourself and everything will be dandy!” method again.

But it's much deeper and more real than that.

No pop psychology here! Again, it’s all in the motivation.

Why are you seeking out your own self-fabulousness?

In order to work on the not-so-fabulous parts of you.

You are using your acknowledgement of your good points for Hashem, to bond with Hashem and to enable yourself to perform a genuine cheshbon hanefesh and perfect yourself as much as humanly possible.

This goes far beyond the psychology of “love yourself so that you can love others” or "Be happy and then you'll be a nice person."

It’s "love yourself so that you can love Hashem" because your self and your positive attributes come from Hashem. He’s part of you and you are part of Him.

Your negative attributes also come from Him, by the way. So self-hatred and self-recrimination are not part of cheshbon hanefesh or Jewish teshuvah.

(Regret is good. Recrimination is bad.)

So in order to strengthen yourself for cheshbon hanefesh to do teshuvah:

• Work yourself up into a good mood as best you can; cultivate a happy heart
• Seek out the good points in yourself and actually find them.
• While in this state, look out what you need to improve in yourself. (You can use your children’s undesirable behavior or someone's hurtful comment for clues. Ask Hashem to guide you in this. After all, He gave you those hints, so feel free to pester Him to enlighten you!)
• Do each step with Hashem. All of this needs to be done with Hashem.

Again, it's important to be happy.

This does not mean you think your negative points are cute or funny, as people often imply when they joke about their penchant for snipey comments or coarse behavior.

"Funny" and "cute" aren't joyful or happy.

You're happy that in addition to being snipey or coarse, you also cook meals for the sick and you have a soft spot for elderly people.

And you are happy that you are willing and able to regret your snipeyness or coarseness because the ability and willingness to do teshuvah are great middot!

Example:
1) Admit to Hashem that you've been snipey.

2) Regret it. (And feel happy about the fact that you are able to regret it.)

3) Take upon yourself to cease and desist with the "sur m'ra v'aseh tov" ("turn from evil and do good") method: "Instead of using my quick tongue to slice through people, I will now use it to build people."

4) Think of to whom and how you need to apologize: "Shira, I feel that I've said things in the past that were inappropriate and hurtful, and I'm very sorry. You have many admirable qualities and I was wrong to ever insinuate otherwise. I truly regret my hurtful and inappropriate behavior, and have resolved to work on this bad middah. If there is any further way I can make amends, I hope you will feel free to discuss it with me."

May we all merit to do full teshuvah from love.

Note: This post discusses the cultures surrounding the Jewish people from the time of Avraham Avinu and onward (AKA the Ancient Near East). Please be aware that the study of the Ancient Near East is an imprecise field because it is based on whatever happens to have been dug up and interpreted.
(And much of what has been dug up still hasn't been translated or published.)

Researchers hold opposing views, each with strong proofs for their stance. Without interviewing a selection of actual ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, or any other Mesopotamians, etc, it's hard to know what their attitudes really were. Furthermore, researchers in this field do not usually recognize the Divinity of the Torah and tend to compare it with other Ancient Near East literature as if it's all human-sourced (while noting that Judaism was radically different than its neighboring belief systems), which makes researchers innately wrong about certain things.

So with that disclaimer...
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While the inclination toward occult worship was nullified by our Sages in a powerful and holy way, polytheistic tendencies still exist.

The Torah is eternal and the bare fact that Hashem and His Neviim (Prophets) repeatedly remind us through the entire Tanach that there is only One God, and that we shall have no other gods before Him, and that Hashem is Loving, Just, Compassionate and Omnipotent means that we still have the tendency to drift away from these facts of monotheism.

But why?

If God is so Good and His Perfection, Omnipotence, and Oneness are the Truth, then why would we struggle with this fact?

And why is polytheism (or a fractured belief in God) so compelling?

Turning away from Hashem appears to give you control over your life. By conjuring spirits or conducting rituals, you feel like you can fulfill any wish, whether it’s revenge, success, “love,” protection, or anything else humans desire.

And because there is a type of “physics” within kochot hatumah, these tricks can work (or appear to work) for a time. But eventually, the price gets higher and usually, the end is pretty dark. And that’s just what happens in This World, let alone the Afterlife.

Whether a person chooses to ignore God in an atheistic manner or in a polytheistic manner, God generally attempts to shake a person awake at some point.

(And though beneficial, it’s not fun when that happens.)

When you read about ancient polytheists and the more disturbing extremes of their idolatry, it’s mind-boggling. How does a person sacrifice another human being, especially their own child? And how does a person debase themselves to voluntarily performing the most disgusting or raunchy acts as part of a religious ceremony?

Also, polytheists seemed kind of weird. They could be kind of nice, but also manipulative and even heartless and brutal. Sometimes, they just seemed kind of blasé about everything.
(Read the Torah and you'll see what I mean.)

So if you look over whatever writings have been dug up from those times, you'll notice that people didn’t seem to think very highly of their gods. In fact, almost no published literature expresses the idea that a god is innately good or just or wise or compassionate.

This is interesting because Christianity and Islam do say this about their trinity or Allah.
But we said it first!
So they got it from us.
Until Avraham Avinu came to restore things, these ideas don't seem to have existed among the surrounding cultures.

However, you can find lots of literature expressing the desire on the part of the penitent that the god will behave in a manner defined by that penitent as good, just, wise, or compassionate.

Some researchers believe that these people simply didn’t possess an independent standard of goodness. “Good” was defined as relative to the people themselves.

If they liked something, it was good. If they didn’t like it, it was bad.

This is shocking today because many people throughout Western society have this idea of “universal values” and "following your conscience."

But the ancients in the Biblical era and area apparently did not have such ideas.

So the idea of “universal values” likely stems from Judaism (even as it has been warped to mean anything liberals deem good).

As Professor John H. Walton says:

Furthermore, polytheism is perfectly comfortable with the idea of worshiping gods who are capricious, evil, licentious, or can't be trusted to make good decisions.

(This is actually the attitude people today reflect regarding their favorite politicians, sports teams, or celebrities.)

In other words, the ancients were okay with a god not being perfect. They didn't have expectations otherwise.

If the more capricious or malicious gods got the upper hand, then the polytheist simply felt appeasement was needed or that the intervention of another god was called for.

While ancient texts discuss confession and sin, it’s all in relation to the whims of a god and whether that god has been personally offended.

Professor K. Van de Toor seems to say that a Babylonian living in that time was capable of feeling guilty about personal wrongdoings and being concerned for personal integrity, but there was no cultural idea or guide for such values as emphasized in Judaism (values which today are considered "universal" and "self-evident").

Van de Toor says:

Again, it’s unfathomable to us today. No self-introspection? How can that be? Everyone in the Western world talks about “getting in touch with yourself” and the term “self-introspection” is a byword. People fork out tons of money in therapy to plumb their inner depths.

Despite the fact that it's usually not real or complete self-introspection (it’s impossible to perform a complete cheshbon hanefesh in all its raw honesty without involving Hashem), but people today at least give lip service to the idea.

Another researcher, Tzvi Abusch, postulates that aspects considered internal today were externalized and objectified within the non-Jewish culture of Biblical times.

"In that sense," adds Walton, "self and soul are external identity constructs rather than internal ones."

With all today's talk of one's "inner self" and understanding or internalizing things at the "soul level" and much more, it's hard to see these intrinsically internal aspects as external. Yet apparently, this is how these aspects were seen at that time.

It’s bizarre to think that these ancient societies, for all their genius as displayed in their astronomical tables and architecture and more, were so shallow and superficial.

(The same, however, could be said today. The geniuses behind all the hi-tech stuff aren’t necessarily deep thinkers nor introspective ones.)

This provides additional insight into the scope of Avraham Avinu’s power and influence in the world at that time.

Imagine him and Sara Imeinu as the lone voices in the world informing people of an independent and unmoving standard of good, of right and wrong, and of Hashem Who is Always Right and Perfectly Tzaddik (Righteous & Just), in addition to being Compassionate, Gracious, and Slow to Anger (even if the individual does not experience certain events as Compassionate or Tzaddik).

In other words, "Please meet the Only God there is...and He's Perfect."

Imagine them introducing people to the fact that Hashem does not possess any base human qualities like whims or lusts.

And that people needed perform an accounting of their deeds based on objective standards of right and wrong.

Imagine them speaking to people of the need to internalize things, of the human soul as deeper part within one's self.

It must have been mind-boggling.

Anyway, another facet that applies to today comes from a theory developed by a professor of Ancient Near East history, Robert H. Walton (quoted above). He claimed that culture of Middle Eastern polytheism populating the world of Tanach acknowledged public shame, but not personal guilt.

For example, if something went wrong in a person's life, it was embarrassing because others saw it as a sign that this polytheist hadn’t taken care of his god properly. So he was ashamed before his society.

But he didn’t feel bad necessarily about having actually done something wrong.

(Or maybe he personally did, but it wasn't culturally appropriate to feel so.)

In other words, he didn’t necessarily feel guilty or any sense of healthy accountability.

There was no examining himself and his deeds, but only his deeds in relation to his occult worship.

In light of this, another researcher in the field, K. Van der Toorn, notes that in the world surrounding the Jews of the Tanach, these ancient polytheists valued “shame over guilt” and “success over integrity.”

This is shockingly similar to the dynamic of toxic shame today. Within society, a person might be shamed for being overweight or for not dressing “right” or not keeping a clean enough home or for being socially awkward or for not being up with the latest popular fad/TV show/whatever.

But certain types of lashon hara or snipey humor or demeaning dress or raunchy behavior might be perfectly fine and even laudable within society.

And of course, modern culture abounds with examples of people choosing success over integrity.

So we see that a lot of people feel bad about the wrong things and feel good about the wrong things too.

The few laments archeologists have recovered show the desperation idol-worshipers felt when things didn’t go their way, like from this Mesopotamian:

Another one, an Assyrian (Ashuri in Hebrew), laments his inability to know which god is angry and what he has done wrong. So he addresses his prayer to “the god I know or do not know, the goddess I know or do not know.”

This is so obviously pathetic.

He is ready to confess anything, ready to do anything to appease.

He ends with:

It’s astonishing to think that they not only had no idea of right or wrong, but that they didn’t care whether something was morally right or morally wrong.

All that mattered was that the god was appeased and that the suffering ended.

The above verse “What in one’s own heart seems despicable is proper to one’s god” is particularly disturbing.
What did this Mesopotamian feel expected to do?
What was “despicable” in his eyes that desperation was leading him to do?

People felt if they didn't appease whichever god they'd offended, then their suffering would just go on until for the rest of their life. And who can stand that?

So you can see from this why polytheism led to the foulest and cruelest acts being committed as a form of worship.

(All quotes are from the book Ancient Near East Thought and the Old Testament by John H. Walton)

Having explored the culture and experience of the Ancient Near East in Biblical times, it seems inconceivable why anyone would want to be a polytheist.

So the thing is, polytheism was a way of covering all their bases.

Suffering happened or people wanted protection from future suffering, so they turned to whatever they thought could possibly be behind it.

They had no problem including Hashem in the picture, and they could accept him as the Most Powerful, but they struggled to accept him as the One and Only God and as the Only Force in the Universe.

The problem is that the minute you think that Hashem isn’t behind everything or that He isn’t operating in your best interests, then this is the first step in a slippery slide.

So this is the pull of any polytheistic belief system:

• I don’t want to deal with the paradox of a Loving God in a hateful world.
• I want to feel in control of my own destiny.
• I want to feel like I can get what I want—guaranteed!
• I don’t want to have to examine myself in a cheshbon hanefesh or do real teshuvah.
• I don’t want to deal with the guilt of not living up to my potential and fulfilling the purpose for what God put me here.
• I don't like the idea of absolute morality; I prefer to do whatever brings me pleasure and helps me avoid pain.
• I’ll do anything to avoid shame while reaping adulation as defined by whatever society in which I live.

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So while we don't have the actual yetzer hara to go and bow down to an idol, we still struggle with the underlying tendencies that led to avodah zarah (occult-/idol-worship).

We can also be grateful that Hashem orchestrated things so that Judaism influenced the world so profoundly that the above Ancient Near East value system now seems mind-boggling to us.
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May we all merit to live every moment in complete emuna.