Just thinking about spiritual genetics. The parsha being called "Toldot" and seeming to concern itself with generations, with the generation of one thing by another. Rashi tells us how Yitzhak was definitely borne of Avraham, and was therefore righteous, and Rivka was born into a not-so-righteous family but she was still able to become a righteous woman. Still yet, Rashi tells us that when Yitzhak and Rivka were praying together, that Hashem heeded Yitzhak, because there is no comparison between the prayer of a "tzaddik son-of-a-tzaddik" to the prayer of a "tzaddik son-of-a -wicked-person." And we know further on that the fact that Eisav and Yaakov were both born of this coupling must mean that Eisav, the evil, came from Rivka's spiritual genetics. So we see about Rivka that she was able to pull herself out of her background, but could not escape it entirely. It was in her.
We, the ba'al teshuva, love our parents (Hi, Mom!!), but we must all admit that we grew up with influences that we would rather not have. I, for example, spent about 6 hours a day in front of the television, mostly playing Nintendo games I had already won hundreds of times over. Now I spend 8 hours a day in front of a holy book. Mazel Tov!! That's great!! It really is. But who knows what is still festering inside. Am I changed, or am I supressing? Supressing is good too, but only temporarily. As it says, when your "evil inclination" acts up, drag it to the house of learning. But this is not a simple statement -- dragging it to the house of learning doesn't mean sit there and ignore it until it dies down. It means learn it itself, learn your inclination within the house of study, learn from the people who know what it means to have an inclination, but have been able to slowly come to use its raw energy for the sake of service of Hashem, whatever that may mean.
What a frightening proposition to bring a child into the world. Our mystical teachings promise us that the child is first drawn from the brain of the father - that scares the hell out of me. I don't know what's in there!! I'm not sure I want to know!! Even if I have changed, how far down have I actually changed? If Rivka the righteous woman, coupled with Yitzhak, could still produce something as absolutely evil as Eisav, then either her family was really nasty, or it is a really hard thing to do to uproot what is inside. Where is there hope?
There's three answers. 1) Partial labotomy 2) Shock therapy 3) Hard work. And this is a long road; there is no short cut. We are dealing mostly with unconscious material here, that even Rivka, when she was three years old, had absorbed enough to produce Eisav. We must notice when we feel extremes of emotion, joy or anger or sadness, and let those times become doorways to our deeper selves. Rather than let the moment of joy pass, we must joyously look at it, look at what is deeper, find something out about ourselves. When we are angry, usually the tendency is to close up, but at that moment, there is rawness, and rawness is spiritual primordial muck, unprocessed. If we can open at that moment rather than close, we may find great insight into who we are.
This is the month of sleep, the month of dreams. The Talmud says that a dream uninterpreted is like a letter unopened. None of us is an expert interpreter, but some signs are obvious. We must pay attention as our inner self tries to tell us who we are. Seeing as this month is also the month of the fixing of netzach (our eternal or consistent selves), we must notice patterns in ourselves, factors or issues that repeatedly come up, and let them show us who we really are. It may not be pretty just yet, but this confrontation may help us bring happy, healthy children into the world who can be fixings for what we have wronged rather than expressions of that wrong.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
|
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |