One word: character.
Recently I was learning the teachings of the Mishnah in Bava Kama (26a) that a human being, unlike an animal, is always considered to be forewarned, a “Muad.” Therefore, whether the damage inflicted is unintentional or intentional, whether he was asleep at the time he caused the damage or awake, whether he blinded another person or broke vessels, he must pay the full cost of the damage. The Mishnah is unequivocal that taking personal responsibility for our actions is super important. So much so that the Meiri explains that this halacha applies to a drunk and sober person equally.
I think about character a lot. As a father raising five kinderlach, each on their own path, and as spiritual leader of my flock, I think about middos, or refined character traits, a lot and how important they are for the Jewish world and the world at large.
My beloved Bubbe Esther always used to tell me, “You know, Chaim Shaul, what the first commandment is? Thou shalt be a mensch.” Not to Heaven forbid minimize the infinity embedded in each of the six hundred and thirteen mitzvos and every mitzvah d’Rabbanan (rabbinic mitzvos), but the foundation needs to be truth honesty, kindness, and integrity.
The Rebbe, zt’l, was once talking very passionately to a rosh yeshiva from Eretz Yisrael about a certain Gadol in Eretz Yisrael who spent lots of time speaking negatively about other Jews, including lots of lashon ha’ra (the Rebbe didn’t mention him by name, of course). The Rebbe quoted the Gemara in Bechoros that says a person doesn’t have the audacity to lie about a matter that will likely be revealed. The Rebbe said that it says “Inshi,” a “person,” but when a person doesn’t act like a person, like a mensch, they are, sadly, capable of lying about something even if the truth will be revealed down the road.
This past Shabbos we hosted a wonderful family of Aleksander Chassidim from Boro Park who were at Yellowstone and Grand Teton, and joined us for Shabbos. During our many conversations, it became clear to me that these people are salt of the earth, just all-around genuine people. They are Chassidim through and through, the ahavas haTorah that the father exuded was insatiable, and our discussion about being “Ehrlich,” honest and straightforward and living with integrity, was reassuring for me. He kept reminding me that if we pay attention to the Nevi’im, the Books of the Prophets, many of which we read in the Shabbos Haftaras, it’s clear that Hashem wants us to be ethical and menschlich above all. In our pre-Havdalah chat we talked about the obsession with segulahs, and I mentioned that people are always busy finding segulahs for parnassah, financial livelihood, and wealth, like a schlissel challah, but I said, “There is also a segulah called going to work and working hard, the segulah that Hashem says to do in the Torah.” And we both laughed.
In this week’s parashah, Shelach, we read about the unfortunate tale of the spies. As we read the story, it becomes clear that character is something that everyone needs to work on 24/7, and if we drop the ball, there’s a good chance that our character is lost too. Here you have the leaders of the Jewish people, the crème de la crème of Am Yisrael, and through a slight misguidance, a little selfishness, an unhealthy view of their actual mission, they came back and sentenced the Jews to thirty-nine extra years in the desert. Instead of catching themselves after the first few statements, they kept going and going, ignoring Yehoshua and Caleb, arguing with Moshe, and not thinking about the ramifications of their choices.
After Caleb tries to silence the ten troublemaking spies, they continue by saying, “There we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, descended from the giants. In our eyes, we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.” Rashi explains that these giants “descended from [the fallen angel] Shamhazai (Niddah 61a) and Azael (Yoma 67b), who fell from heaven in the generation of Enosh.” So, Rashi seems to indicate that they were non-human creatures that weren’t born to conventional parents but fell from heaven.
At a farbrengen in the summer of 1982, the Rebbe, zt’l, asked why Rashi asserts that the “giants” were non-human, yet at the end of Parshas Bereishis, when the verse says before the great flood that “the Nephilim (giants) were on the earth in those days, and also afterward…” Rashi says: “They were called Nephilim because they fell and caused the world to fall,” clearly indicating that they were human beings who were spiritually dysfunctional. Why the different meanings? The Rebbe went on to explain that when the spies said earlier that there were giants, they were referring to human giants, like those mentioned at the flood in Genesis, but after Caleb shut that down, explaining to Jewry that these giants can be beat with Moshe’s G-dly superpowers, the spies didn’t back down. They came back and said that perhaps Moshe could take on the human giants, but there were also these heavenly, unnatural giants that fell from heaven and Moshe certainly doesn’t have the power to deal with them and therefore wouldn’t be able to conquer the land. This is why Rashi was certain that these Nephilim were not human this time around.
When one loses their character, the sky’s the limit for the excuses they will come up with to justify their misguided ideas. The spies had a few opportunities to re-focus, to get back on the G-d bandwagon, and listen to Joshua and Caleb and save themselves and our people, but they fell from character, from grace, and it’s super hard to get back up. The spies made it clear that one can be frum without having character, be religious and lack values, seem holy, yet be an unrefined human being, doing all the right things while your heart is mired in falsehood.
Last week Chavie and I celebrated Chaya’s graduation from the Nigri Shluchim Online School, operated by Rabbi Gedalya and Bassie Shemtov and the Shluchim Office in New York. Though she attended Longfellow and Headwaters, local non-Jewish schools, for secular studies, she also put in crazy hours and attended the online school for the shluchim’s children with classmates from Canada, Mexico, Finland, Scotland, France, and the U.S.A. Next year, she’ll be off to a Lubavitch High School in Chicago and it’s with a sense of nachas that we see her and her online school friends displaying such impeccable values and middos, knowing what it means to be a Yid and a Lubavitcher Chassid. It’s not just about academics; it’s a worldview that is so important for the fabric of Klal Yisroel.
On the topic of character: A couple of months ago I received an email from Larry Reed asking a question about the Jewish population in Montana for an article he was going to write. Larry is a famous economist who’s the board member of a Montana think tank called The Frontier Institute. In his email, he wrote, “I am writing to each of your local organizations because I’m planning a column for the month of June that touches on two subjects: Montana’s Jewish population and my long friendship with the late Sir Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 Jewish children from the Nazis in 1939. He passed away in 2015 at the age of 106.” I had heard about Sir Nicholas, and watched a few clips about him, but chatting with someone who actually knew him was amazing. I answered his question about Jewish life in Montana and then asked him if he’d be willing to speak at our shul the next time he visited Montana and he graciously accepted.
So, this past Shabbos during the Kiddush lunch, the twenty-five Jews who joined us got to hear first-hand from someone who was close with Nicky Winton, and it was inspiring, gut-wrenching, and so powerful. Everyone in the room, including Zeesy and Menny, listened to Larry’s entire talk and you could just see them taking in each word. In case you don’t know Nicky’s story, I highly recommend you watch the documentary “The Power of Good” and the more recent film “One Life.” The point is that a twenty-nine-year-old decided in 1939 to save as many children as he could from the Nazis and thanks to him there are currently over seven thousand humans roaming the world that would not be alive if he hadn’t been a person of enormous character and values.
At the end of Larry’s talk, he said that what he learned from Nicky is that for a nation to survive, its most foundational necessity is character. We must and can deal with issues like taxes, pollution, crime, and border security, but without a healthy character, our nation will not survive. If the people still have unbreakable values, truths that are absolute and not subjective (“my truths” and not “your truths”) then it can survive, but without character, no nation can make it.
On Sunday, after sending Chaya off to be a junior counselor at my in-laws’ Camp Gan Israel in San Antonio, Chavie and I took the kids up to Fairy Lake. It’s about an hour drive from our home, mostly because 6.5 miles of it is on a dirt road that is full of potholes. While driving there, we listened to the Marvelous Middos Machine, which is still teaching our kids middos as it did for us when we were children in the 80s and 90s. It’s the name of the game: middos, middos, and more middos.
Let’s all resolve to live by example, with responsibility, honesty, integrity, and truth, and raise our children and students to live that way. As our sages say “Derech eretz kodmah l’Torah.”
It’s the life of a Jew.
Rabbi Chaim Bruk is co-CEO of Chabad Lubavitch of Montana and spiritual leader of The Shul of Bozeman. For comments or to partner in our holy work, e-mail rabbi@jewishmontana.com or visit JewishMontana.com/Donate.
