Rabbi's Blog

An interesting - and really scary - phenomena occurring more frequently as I get older is repeating lines that I heard from people older than I. Certain life situations that were told to me using the too-common quote "just wait until you're my age" were scoffed at only to become grim reality now that I am saying and doing those same things. One prominent example that I experience is trying to sleep late on Shabbos morning. Many older people encounter a challenge as they wake up early despite not having to get up early any more. Many people say "the morning after I retire from work I'm going to sleep in", only to find out that they still get up at the same time they've been getting up for the last fifty years.

On Shabbos morning davening is later than during the week, and even though I don't have to get up, I still wake up at the same time I do during the week. Sometimes I may stay in bed, but most of the time I just get up. What is that force which causes me to get up even when I have the luxury of sleeping later? The answer to this age old question is found in this week's Parsha Bechukosai beginning with the very first word. Vayikra 26:3 states: "Im Bechukosai Teileichu V'es Mitzvosai Tishmiru Vaasisem osam". "If in my statutes you go and safeguard my commandments and perform them". The word 'Im' - 'if' in my statutes you shall go, is the key point.

The Midrash Rabbah in the beginning of this parsha quotes a verse from tehilim 119:59: "Chashavti drachai v'ashiva raglai el eidvosecha". "I considered my ways and I turned my feet towards Your testimonies". The thought in my brain sends a message to my feet to walk to the good places such as Shul and school to learn Torah and to follow in His ways. If a person does this repeatedly, then his body becomes accustomed to doing something consistently. After doing something hundreds, thousands of times over and over again, it becomes second nature and eventually the body just follows through on its own. With regularity a person trains himself to do something, influencing his body even when it tries to something different.

Rav Eliyahu Dessler Z"tl explains Gemara Sukah 52a with this concept in mind. The gemara states that in the future families will cry by groups, men crying amongst the men and women crying amongst the women. They will cry because they were separated and divided between the men and women. Despite the fact the evil inclination was no longer present to create the urge for men and women wanting to be together, they cried as if their inclination was still there and would want to be together with the opposite gender. The reality was that there was no real desire between the sexes, yet they cried as if it still existed. That, however, was only a reaction to them wanting to be together during their entire lifetimes. Even without the official evil inclination now being in the next world, they still wanted to sin because they were so used to it. Another example is found in the Gemara Gittin 57a where Bilaam the Rasha, even after he had left this world, was still trying to convince Onkelos not to convert to Judaism. Other examples are found in Gemara Sanhedrin 63b where the Jews were willing to give up their lives in order to serve idolatry. A young boy was close to death and Eliyahu HaNavi told the boy to recite the Shema and he would be saved!. The boy refused, took out his little idol and kissed it and died upon it. The gemara asks: "how could such a thing happen"? The gemara answers that after the child had been accustomed to the idol as his god, it became a part of his soul. He could not give it up. On the positive side, we read stories of Jewish children taken into Catholic orphanages during the holocaust who were identified after reciting the Shema at bedtime. They were conditioned to recite the Shema before going to bed and, even in a Catholic orphanage this bedtime ritual stayed with them. As the Rabbi entered the orphanage, he started saying the Shema out loud and it struck a chord in the children. Without hesitating, they started to utter Shema Yisrael and were taken back into Jewish custody.

My personal experience has been that it's easier to break a good habit than a bad one. By this I mean that in order to strengthen a good habit a person has to put a great amount of time and effort and repetitiveness into what he is doing. A bad habit, on the other hand, is difficult to break even if we haven't been doing it for such a long time. Another proof to the strength and influence of "Hergel"- something repetitive - is smoking or drinking. At first a person coughs from the smoke or chokes on the whiskey. After a while, though, he becomes used to it and dependent upon it to the point that he can't control it. Nevertheless, it says in the sixth chapter of Pirkei Avos: "The only free person is someone who is involved with and toils in the study of Torah. A person who constantly learns Torah has the ability to break a bad habit once he knows it's no good.

A person who woke up at five in the morning his entire adult life will continue to do so because his body is programmed and conditioned to rise at 5:00 A.M. This is the way his body works. Every one of us has many good and also some bad habits. The benefit an observant Jew has is the regiment of following the Torah. We have a seder Hayom - an order of the day, a code of Jewish law to follow. If and when we start to follow it, our bodies become conditioned to do the good things over and over again without even thinking about the effort they may entail. Our challenge is putting in the time and effort that's necessary to make it Hergel -consistent -over and over again. If we commit to taking on something that we have been lax about doing and give it an honest try to do it consistently for a while, it will eventually become second nature. We all have the ability to develop a tolerance for good things, and for the bad.

As we approach Shavuos and finish the countdown of the omer, we should all make the effort to work on conditioning our physical bodies to help our spiritual side fulfill the will of our Maker.

Ah Gut Shabbos Rabbi Avram Bogopulsky