self-help – Jewish Independent

Change can’t happen in a day

Judaism is an aspirational religion that, while accepting the reality of failure, believes in the human capacity to transcend and achieve levels of excellence in our everyday lives.

“You shall be holy, for I the Lord God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:6) These are but two of the more potent examples of the aspirational quality of our tradition and its immense respect for the capacity inherent within the human being. As beings created in the image of God, there is nothing that we cannot do, a factor which created a tradition defined by commandment and expectation.

A significant manifestation of this future is the commandment of teshuvah. We expect people to honestly assess the content and the quality of their lives, regret and admit their failures, and commit to embarking on a new direction. This expectation is brought to a climax during Yom Kippur, where the Vidui (Confession), which lies at the nucleus of the Yom Kippur liturgy, places before us the realities of our sins and challenges us to honestly confront what we have done with our lives.

It is, therefore, deeply troubling to recognize the profound failure of Yom Kippur as a force for change. The passion, seriousness and devotion that accompany many of us throughout Yom Kippur peters out into a form of amnesia during the break-fast meal, as we return to our behaviour of yesterday.

Yom Kippur is a synagogue success story. More people show up than on any other day, pounding their hearts with great devotion as they cry out, “Ashamnu.” (“We have sinned.”) However, Yom Kippur’s impact on Jewish life seems to be marginal.

This is not a new phenomenon. It may be the meaning behind Isaiah’s critique of the Jewish people and their fast days: the people indeed fast, “starve their bodies” and “lie in sackcloth and ashes,” however, this is not the fast day that God desires, but rather a day in which we “unlock fetters of wickedness and untie the cords of the yoke and let the oppressed go free.” (Chapter 58) To paraphrase Isaiah, the quality of repentance is not judged by what one does on Yom Kippur, but by what one does afterwards.

The problem with Yom Kippur in the synagogue is that it is too complete and comprehensive. It creates the myth of putting all of one’s life and behaviour up for judgment, where we confront every one of our failings and repent for them all. The list of sins in the Vidui is too extensive to have any impact on the life of a real person. For a prayer, and within the isolated environment of the synagogue, it is fine. As a force for facilitating change in real life, the comprehensive nature of our service makes it impossible to be a significant factor in everyday life.

Change, growth and improvement are rarely radical epiphanies, but are rather slow and gradual processes. As Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed teaches us, radical transformation away from that to which one is accustomed is impossible. (3:32) According to Maimonides, God and the Jewish tradition had immense patience with the idolatrous, slave mentality of the people who came out of Egypt and did not require them to accept or adopt either beliefs or practices that were radically different from that to which they had grown accustomed. We must do the same both with ourselves and with others.

If Yom Kippur is to be the force our tradition aspires it to be, it must cease to be the culmination of the process, and instead serve as its beginning. The purpose of the all-inclusive lists cannot be to ask an individual to review all of his life, but to create a menu from within which every individual can find one dimension, one quality that they can commit to working on.

Yom Kippur must cease to be a forum for New Year’s declarations and instead become a catalyst for a new culture among the Jewish community, a culture that fosters individual responsibility, reflection and a commitment to being a teshuvah person. As a teshuvah person, one commits to the ongoing and difficult path of constantly aspiring more from oneself. As a teshuvah person, one neither views oneself as an ideal, nor fools oneself into believing in overnight conversions.

Our tradition teaches us, “It is not for you to complete the task, neither are you free to desist from it.” Nowhere is this saying from The Ethics of the Fathers more relevant than in the task of building a life of value. This year, let us take teshuvah out of the synagogue, disconnect Yom Kippur from its myriad rituals and place it at the foundation of our everyday lives.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is president of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of the 2016 book Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself. Articles by Hartman and other institute scholars can be found at shalomhartman.org.

Continually coping with our deficits

If you see me in the grocery store and I don’t recognize you, I’m sorry. I sometimes have a hard time remembering names and faces. Why? Well, it turns out that sleep deprivation can affect this kind of memory. Even though my kids sleep better now, for four-and-a-half years, they didn’t get through the night. Parents who have gone through this may know what I’m talking about. It’s embarrassing and depressing to feel like I’m losing my mind, but it’s lack of sleep! It’s not anything serious; just part of many families’ lives with young kids.

While I’m bemoaning this – I used to keep track of hundreds of students when I taught full-time – I can let you in on a little secret. Newsflash: we’re not perfect. Yup! Shocking, I know. We all have faults, challenges, difficulties and struggles. It’s normal. However, the secular New Year often comes with New Year’s resolutions and, right about now, they are testing people’s commitment everywhere. Only a few weeks ago, all around us, in the media and on the gym treadmills, many of us were committing to “fixing” our faults and making a big change(s). Some of us are, no doubt, already having trouble sticking to them. Don’t get me wrong, change, exercise, new promises – it’s all good.

When we look at the Torah portion for the beginning of the year (Jan. 6, Shemot/Exodus 1:1-6:1), we can enjoy both a good storyline and some thoughts about challenges. This is a portion that covers a lot of ground. The Reform Judaism Torah portion page summarizes it this way:

“The new king of Egypt makes slaves of the Hebrews and orders their male children to be drowned in the Nile River. (1:1-22)

“A Levite woman places her son, Moses, in a basket on the Nile, where he is found by the daughter of Pharaoh and raised in Pharaoh’s house. (2:1-10)

“Moses flees to Midian after killing an Egyptian. (2:11-15)

“Moses marries the priest of Midian’s daughter, Zipporah. They have a son named Gershom. (2:16-22)

“G-d calls Moses from a burning bush and commissions him to free the Israelites from Egypt. (3:1-4:17)

“Moses and Aaron request permission from Pharaoh for the Israelites to celebrate a festival in the wilderness. Pharaoh refuses and makes life even harder for the Israelites. (5:1-23)”

Here we are, looking at a portion about our leader, Moses. He’s likely confused about his identity, since he was nursed by his Jewish mother, but raised as an Egyptian in Pharaoh’s house.

Moses is a person who kills someone else in anger and then runs away. He also – according to Rashi’s commentary – has a speech impediment and stutters, so he needs his brother to help him communicate. There’s much here. The short version is that we have a model of a leader with serious faults and challenges – and that’s OK.

Why? Well, the Jewish take on this is that we have to continually work on ourselves. We don’t get to stop learning, seeking forgiveness, or trying to do better. We have to keep on keeping on. So, while a new year (any new year, go ahead and pick one!) might help remind us of this, it’s meant to be a daily exercise. It’s not supposed to be easy, either. The Torah offers us multiple narratives about struggle, challenge, defeat and renewal. It’s up to us to read it and draw conclusions.

In the popular media, there’s a whole self-help genre. This stuff is sometimes helpful and, on occasion, you see that the website, book, podcast or article was a waste of time. Reading it can also make us feel worse and fuel our anxieties. However, the Torah, the rabbis and centuries of Jewish liturgy are part of this self-help tradition – of how to make ourselves into better people. The difference, in my opinion, is the emphasis on perfection. If you get sucked into it, you’ll have yourself believing that your house should be as perfect as the staged ones on HGTV, or that if you just exercised, dieted, exfoliated or botoxed enough, you, too, would look like the “ideal” you.

Judaism may offer an alternate reality. There is no such thing as perfect. We may have struggles or challenges, disabilities or personality flaws. Our Jewish goal, in this context, is to try hard to be better people. We may not be perfect in our work lives. Our bodies may not look like airbrushed super models – and that’s OK. We’re offered a text that includes powerful, important leaders who are just people. People, like Moses, with identity issues, anger management problems, physical challenges and a lack of confidence. There are people who struggle with defiance, disobedience and authority, and all kinds of other folks, too.

I think it’s fair to say that all of us struggle sometimes, and give in to the bad feelings. It’s knowing we’re not where we want to be – personally, professionally, physically or socially. I feel embarrassed every single time that I bump into someone who knows me and I don’t know them or cannot remember their name. Instead of beating myself up about it, I try to smile, say hello and embrace the (sleepless) situation I’ve got, and that might be the key to a good resolution. We can keep working on it, no matter where we are. In this way, Dec. 31 is no different than Jan. 31.

Or, as one of my kids (in Grade 1) says, “I will keep learning more science. I will learn more addition! I will use new, bigger, better tools for art.” In this way, we aren’t committing to feeling badly about where we are. We’re just trying for more, with no start or end date in mind.

Joanne Seiff writes regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Life-changing lecture

Avrum Nadigel (photo from Avrum Nadigel)

Not only is there no quick fix to making a relationship work, but there’s no quick fix for absorbing the main points of Avrum Nadigel’s Learning to Commit: The Best Time to Work on Your Marriage is When You’re Single. Its lessons can’t be summed up in a few bullet points – you’re going to have to read it.

That being said, Nadigel will have to make the audience at the Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival “fall in love with” his book in less than 180 seconds. He’s part of the event A Literary Quickie, which takes place on Nov. 22, 10 a.m., at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver. The brunch event lineup includes authors Richa Dwor, A.D. Gentle, Rosa Harris, Revital Shiri-Horowitz, Paula Hurwitz, June Hutton, Evelyn H. Lazare, Olga Medvedeva-Nathoo and Marina Sonkina. Admission is by donation.

Nadigel has been a therapist for more than 15 years. He received his master’s of social work from McGill University in Montreal in 1997, and did post-graduate training with the Western Pennsylvania Family Centre, which teaches Bowen family systems theory. He also received supervision via Skype from author and family therapist Dr. David Freeman (who died in 2010). In Learning to Commit, Nadigel doesn’t just offer theories, but advice gained from personal and professional experience. Advice that changed his life, and he’s hoping it’ll help others.

Though Nadigel only lived in Vancouver for about six years, from 1999 to 2005, it was here that he first encountered Freeman, who was speaking at a singles event at the J. His words had a profound impact on Nadigel.

“For all I thought I knew about relationships (I was a practising therapist at that time), Freeman debunked many of my own assumptions, for example, that poor communication is the cause of relationship problems,” writes Nadigel. “He introduced novel ideas about romantic love, providing subtle warnings that the very things that cause a young lover’s heart to flutter can, down the road, be the catalyst of dissatisfaction and divorce. He encouraged us to focus on our own interests, because the more interesting we are to ourselves, the more we have to bring to the table in our relationships.”

Nadigel had come out west, lured by the Rocky Mountains. “From that moment on,” he said, “I knew I had to live near mountains, but also in close proximity to a Jewish community. Vancouver was an easy choice.”

He told the Independent, “It was a total ‘head west young man’ move. I was 30 years old. I sold everything I owned, loaded all of my guitars, some clothes and CDs (remember those?) and headed west. No job, no family, no relationship and only one friend in B.C.

“For money, I worked as a child protection worker, and then as an addiction therapist and family therapist…. Most importantly, I took courses at Emily Carr, composed music for films and learned how to mountain bike.”

He also came here to meet a local Jewish woman but, he said, “true to [his] commitment-phobic self,” he “couldn’t find anyone in Vancouver (or Victoria, Seattle or Calgary) to settle down with.” Eventually, on frumster.com, he met the woman who would become his wife, Dr. Aliza Israel – from Richmond. At the time, she was living and studying in Toronto. “Anyway, we dated long-distance (perfect for a commitment-phobe), and then I agreed to move wherever her residency would be. She was accepted into the Toronto psychiatry program, and the rest is history.”

The two were married in June 2007 at the J here because that’s where Nadigel first heard Freeman, which led to his rethinking about marriage and other things. “The JCC in Vancouver holds a very special place in my heart,” he said.

And so still does Freeman, one of the people to whom Learning to Commit is dedicated, “for providing me with a lighthouse; a way to navigate the rocky seas of my relationships.”

At least one of the ideas in the book seems counterintuitive – the admonition to not compromise.

“Too many relationship books/ speakers assume that compromise is the key to a successful relationship, and so our culture embraces this opinion – and that’s all it really is. And good people use this to avoid growing … discomfort, fear, etc.,” explained Nadigel. “Compromise is no virtue if it’s the first thing you reach for to avoid difficult discussions or situations. Now, more mature people are able to compromise without feeling like they’re betraying their values/principles, because they’re clear on what they stand for, and what they won’t put up with. They won’t compromise on big-ticket items, and will be willing to face the sting/consequence of staying true to their principles.”

In Learning to Commit, Nadigel writes, “According to Dr. Murray Bowen, togetherness and individuality are two opposing forces that we are all born with. We spend the rest of our lives trying to reconcile their often-contradictory impulses.” A well-differentiated person – someone who is confident of their values and principles, and doesn’t change their opinion or action “just to defuse tension” is able to balance those opposing forces.

“Differentiation is not selfishness,” stressed Nadigel. “It is not about a focus on my needs, damn everyone else. It’s about living a life guided by well-thought-out principles, some of which will address who I want to be/act/think with my partner, children, parents, colleagues, friends, etc. It’s about balancing feelings with good, clear thinking. Actually, one could say that immature, high-feeling-centric people are so fragile that the mere thought of considering another person’s point of view is crushing, whereas higher differentiated people can choose to be guided by their partner’s best interest. But the key here is choice!”

The lessons in Nadigel’s book are relevant for all relationships – in fact, he writes, “one of the main tenets of family systems theory [is]: ‘You will only succeed in future relationships in ways you have already succeeded with your parents, siblings and/or extended families.” They are also useful in dealing with controversy or difficult issues, in developing the ability to hear what you need to hear, even though you may not want to hear it.

To remain open, he explained, “you need two things – curiosity and (if possible) playfulness. These things are very hard to come by in high-tense situations, i.e. acrimonious marriage, Middle East discussions, anything involving high emotions mixed with perceived/real threats. Which is why I believe, as a blogger recently noted while discussing my book: ‘Doing some self-examination and exploration … while we are single might be the best marital therapy we’ll ever have.’ Curiosity and playfulness is much more likely when we’re single, or dating, than when mired in the marital muck of resentment, etc…. I think the best that one can do – in any area – is to share your thoughts as clearly as possible, and without any expectation that people are going to support your thinking or applaud your efforts. When you think about the qualities of great leaders/leadership, these attributes apply.”

For the full book festival schedule, visit jewishbookfestival.ca.