Bnei Machashava Tova- My aspirations to grow with the help of others

What can I say? I’m not a Litvak. Each year, when I come to Shabbos Shuva, having left Rosh Hashana and on my way towards Yom Kippur, I have no interest in a Shabbos Shuva derasha which explores the intricacies of Migo for 58 minutes, with a two minute reminder that essentially says “Oh yeah, don’t forget do teshuva” (I say this not criticize anyone's approach, but merely to point out what doesn’t work for me). Alas, I have made my home in Passaic rather than Mezeritch, so that chassidic derashos about teshuva and our relationship with HaKadosh Baruch Hu are not to be found. It has been many years since I last attended a Shabbos Shuva derasha.

This past Shabbos, a friend from a different shul mentioned that he would be going to hear Rabbis X’s derasha, as he thought it would be more inspiring. As I thought about what he said, it occurred to me that what I was missing was not just a live version of what I could get in the Piaseczna Rebbe’s Derech HaMelech, but even more so, is a live version of what I have found in his Bnei Machashava Tova, which I recently completed for the second time.

Each time I go through a small portion of the sefer which was written to create small groups of chassidim who work together to become truer Ovdei HaShem, I am left with mixed emotions; joy and inspiration at the ideas he writes about, mix with feelings of sadness as I can only imagine what being part of such a group would be like. To cite one example, his descriptions of Shaleseudos leaves me yearning for an environment where the singing and camaraderie would truly be m’ein olam haba.

None of this is to suggest, God forbid, that I am not surrounded by those who aspire to greatness in their Avodas HaShem. I am fortunate to live in a community which has many Bnei Torah. At the same time, I’ve reached a point in my life where my soul yearns for a different kind of nourishment. While I’m fortunate to have a chavrusa with whom I learn Hachsharas HaAvreichim, which is a high point of my week, and to have friends in real life, as well as online who are into chassidus, most of the time I am left with the feeling of something akin to parallel play, like what young children do when they play next to each other, but not with each other, as each of us tries to grow in his own way.

Of course, part of my struggle comes from my own weakness. I am simply not capable of becoming who I want to be by myself. I want to learn together with others, aspire together with others, and grow together with others. I picture myself as part of a group of like-minded individuals with whom I could try and put the Piaseczna’s holy words into practice, meeting each week to learn, sing, and talk of holy things.

That’s what I realized this past Shabbos. Not only do I wish I could have been present for the Rebbe’s teshuva derasha from 1930, but that afterwards, my friends and I could have gotten together to talk of what we learned and how, together, we could take steps towards living it.

Letting Go- On teshuva, religious experience, and the intellect

When I think about what I’m experiencing, I am scared. I feel myself changing, and that leaves me feeling vulnerable. I also find myself questioning the change and my motives. Is this real? Am I fooling myself? If I really change, what else goes along with it?

For a while, I’ve associated teshuva with brokenness, and gravitated to Torah where brokenness and even darkness could be found either explicitly or implicitly. Rebbe Nachman and Rav Shagar spoke to me, while other more optimistic approaches like that of Rav Kook did not. The reasons for my preference were not hard to understand. In the battle between my father’s pessimism and cynicism, and my mother’s ever hopeful optimism, life had mostly pushed me towards the former. I struggled to not fall into skepticism, or even worse, cynicism. Little by little, I tried to stop dreaming dreams, fearing getting hurt once again, if like Charlie Brown I convinced myself that this time I’d succeed at kicking the football.

I can’t put my finger on why things changed this year, but somehow the dark shadows receded, and I found myself connecting to Rav Kook’s Torah. I felt hopeful, and started believing that I could really change in a way I’d long thought impossible. Still, I struggled to just go with it. The fears of what this change would mean to me and those around me, and whether what I was experiencing was real, attacked me, refusing to let me go without a fight. I felt like a faker, pretending to be what I am not. A friend’s recommendation to take things a day at a time rather than worrying about the future helped, but only partially. Then I learned a section in the Piaseczna Rebbe’s Derech Hamelech this past Shabbos which I think might allow me to take a big step.

In the ninth perek of Derech Hamelech, the Rebbe gives strategies for working on Avodas HaShem. As with other places in his writings, he touches on the power of the imagination and how it can put you deeper in an experience than merely thinking about it intellectually. At one point he suggests a partial way to attack thoughts and feelings coming from the yetzer hara. Essentially, he suggests intellectualizing the experience. By looking at the thought and questioning where it comes from, the power of the feeling dissipates, as you stop experiencing it, and switch to thinking about it. In discussing this with my chavrusa, I recognized that this is the opposite of what the Rebbe suggests with davening, where he warns against intellectual thoughts and assessing whether davening is going well, as this prevents being in the tefillah.

Here, in the moment where an optimistic and hopeful teshuva feels possible, and my connection to God real,  intellectual scrutiny will be destructive. Putting these experiences under the microscope will dry them up, sapping them of their power and vitality. For now, I will simply be in my experience of teshuva, and not worry about ramifications, authenticity, or what comes next.