One of the striking features of this season, our window of repentance and change, is that there is real value in taking on practices we would not ordinarily keep. The Shulchan Aruch(OC 603:1) tells us, for instance, that a person who does not normally observe the laws of Pas Yisrael should take that stringency on now, even though the alternative is perfectly kosher year-round. It seems that between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur it is important to step things up.
The obvious question is why. If I am only acting exemplary when I am being examined, that does not seem an honest assessment of value. It seems to me that would be like only flossing the night before the dentist appointment. Such a superficial action should not change the state of my teeth. So why would it help to take on all these good behaviors for this short 10 day period?
A profound answer emerges from an unexpected place. The Mishnah (Keilim 17:13) teaches kol shebayam tahor. Anything that lives in the sea is pure. If you take the hide of a sea creature and fashion it into a vessel, that vessel cannot become impure. Land creatures are different. Their hides do receive impurity.
But the Mishnah carves out an exception: chutz mikelev hayam, the sea dog, most likely the sea lion. Here is a creature that swims in the sea and yet also climbs onto the rocks. So is it a sea creature or terrestrial animal? Rabbi Akiva rules that it is treated as a land animal. His reason is remarkable. When the creature is chased, when predators close in, it flees to the land. That is what settles the question of what it truly is.
There is a deep insight here into who we are. Much of the time we aspire. We want to be good, and we want the world to see us as better. And yet we make mistakes. We get angry and lash out. We act irrationally and make impetuous decisions. So which is it? Are we essentially the aspirational person who sometimes stumbles, or essentially a failure who occasionally has a moment of grace?
The Mishnah is telling us that the answer lies in where we run when we are under threat. That is the definition of who we are at heart.
This season, when so much is on the line, is exactly such a moment. The judgement on our lives and the lives of our loved ones is on the line. Where we flee to now, what we reach for when we feel exposed, is not a superficial mask we put on before an examination. It is an indication of what actually matters to us.
This week is the time to ask where we are running. If this feels like a regular week, if nothing in it presses on us, that itself is a sad piece of information. But if we feel agitated, a little more anxious, pulled to wake up earlier, to pray more, to care more and to add something to our lives, then that is who we are. Everything else is the exception. This is a week we get to decide who we really are and what really matters.
Photo by Diego F. Parra from Pexels