Ready to go a little deep?

If you've been around this space for a while, you know that one of my favorite topics is the interplay between ruchniyus and gashmiyus in Yiddishkeit. We often speak about balancing the two, elevating the physical through the spiritual, or using the physical world as a vehicle for avodas Hashem. All of that is important. Yet there is another danger that receives far less attention: the tendency to reduce ruchniyus itself into just another form of gashmiyus. Stay with me.

I heard a shiur from Rabbi Wachsman years ago about how the Cheit Ha'Egel could possibly have happened.

The Jewish people had just stood at Har Sinai. They had heard Hashem's voice. They had experienced revelations unlike anything before or since. Chazal poetically describe the immense spiritual heights they reached at that moment. Now it’s true- according to the Midrash, the Eigel was not an ordinary idol- it appeared animated and miraculous. It could move. It could sing. It could dance.

Still- how does a nation that just experienced Matan Torah exchange all of that for a golden calf; even a singing and dancing calf?

The answer, I think, reveals something profound and somewhat frightening about human nature.

A person doesn’t need much in order to settle.

We tend to assume that people abandon great things because they have discovered something even greater. In reality, people often abandon the greatest things for something dramatically smaller. All they need is enough of a feeling, enough inspiration, enough excitement, enough of a lift to satisfy the immediate need. Once that need is met, they stop searching.

The tragedy of the Eigel was not that it rivaled Har Sinai and so they chose it. The tragedy was that Klal Yisrael were willing to accept such a poor substitute.

When a person becomes satisfied with a little emotional stimulation, he can trade away extraordinary things for trivial ones.

And if we are honest, we often do exactly the same thing.

Chazal tell us that Shabbos contains more ruchniyus than all of the Yamim Tovim. It’s one day each week when the demands of the outside world fall away and a person has the opportunity to reconnect with Hashem, with his family, and with his own inner life. Yet if someone were to ask us what we love most about Shabbos, many of us would immediately begin describing the food, the desserts, the coffee, the magazines, the nap, or the opportunity to finally detach from all of the demands of the outside world.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying those things. They are real parts of oneg Shabbos. The problem begins when they become the center of the experience rather than the accompaniment.

Imagine someone being given access to a magnificent palace and then spending the entire visit admiring the coat rack in the foyer. The coat rack may be lovely, but it is not the point.

Sometimes I wonder whether we approach much of Yiddishkeit this way. We enjoy the small emotional or physical benefits that surround spiritual experiences, while remaining largely unaware of the spiritual experience itself.

We enjoy Shabbos because we get to sleep, we enjoy davening when it leaves us feeling inspired, we enjoy yomtov because of the food, the family, or the atmosphere.

There is a subtle danger hidden within all of this. When we begin to relate to ruchniyus only through the lens of what it does for our gashmiyus,  everything becomes filtered through the question of how it makes us feel rather than what it is actually meant to accomplish.

As a result, even our spiritual lives can become centered around ourselves.

Life becomes an elaborate project of preserving our physical comforts while remaining technically compliant with halachah. Even our society’s relationship with gedolim can sometimes become focused on pictures, visits, and proximity rather than on absorbing their values and allowing ourselves to be changed by them. (This is not my ha’arah. Rabbi Wachsman said this originally, and it immediately resonated.The tzaddik as a photo-op, my entire relationship with and to him reduced to an 8x10 propped on a shelf.)

We become so accustomed to grasping things physically that we struggle to appreciate anything that cannot be measured, photographed, consumed, or immediately felt.

It is interesting that when people hear discussions in the Talmud about returning in a future life as an animal, they’re often horrified. Yet if physical pleasure were truly the highest value, becoming an animal should sound like a promotion- animals possess sensory capacities that totally dwarf our own. Their physical experiences are often far more intense than ours, they have thousands more taste buds for starters.

And no one wants to be an animal.

Why?

Because every human being intuitively understands that there is something within him that wants more than pleasure.

An animal can eat. It can sleep. It can experience fear, aggression, comfort, and desire. What it cannot do is grow. It cannot develop wisdom. It cannot transcend itself. It cannot choose meaning over instinct.

Rav Shalom Schwadron once described the pleasures available to animals so vividly that a student finally exclaimed that being an animal did not sound so bad after all. Rav Shalom's response was sharp: don’t worry, you are already living as an animal!

The point was not to insult the student. The point was to remind him that a human being always has a choice regarding which part of himself he wishes to cultivate.

Reb Bunim reportedly said that if people understood the pleasure experienced by true talmidei chachamim, they would run toward Torah out of pure ta'avah. The pleasure of Torah is real. The pleasure of understanding, growth, closeness to Hashem, and inner expansion is real. The problem is not that these pleasures don’t exist. The problem is that we have spent so much time training ourselves to enjoy lower pleasures that we have neglected our ability to appreciate higher ones.

Perhaps this helps explain why so many people feel dissatisfied despite living lives filled with comfort and convenience. A person can survive with very little physical pleasure. What he cannot endure indefinitely is living beneath what he was created to be.

We were not created merely to consume. We were created to understand, to love, to grow, and to connect ourselves to something infinitely larger than ourselves.

The avodah of life is therefore not simply to become more religious. It is to become more human. It is to slowly develop the capacity to enjoy the things that our neshamos were designed to enjoy.

That process happens gradually. It happens through more thoughtful davening, more attention to middos, more genuine learning, more giving, more awareness, and more willingness to engage with parts of Yiddishkeit that do not provide an immediate emotional payoff.

Because the goal of Yiddishkeit is not simply to take whatever feels good from Torah and mitzvos. The goal is to become the kind of person who can experience the infinitely deeper pleasure that Torah and mitzvos were always meant to provide.

The tragedy of the Eigel was not merely that the Jewish people chose the wrong thing. It was that they were willing to settle for so little when so much more was available to them.

The challenge for us is to make sure that we do not do the same.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Have you ever caught yourself enjoying the "accessories" of a mitzvah while forgetting the mitzvah itself? Or discovered an area of Yiddishkeit that only much later revealed a depth you hadn't realized was there? Just hit reply—I read every email, and your insights often shape future newsletters.

Looking forward to hearing from you, I know this was a bit heavy,

Mrs. Aliza Feder

PS

פרקי דרבי אליעזר מ״ה

רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר: סָמָאֵל נִכְנַס וְהָיָה גּוֹעֶה לְהַתְעוֹת אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר ״יָדַע שׁוֹר קוֹנֵהוּ וַחֲמוֹר אֵבוּס בְּעָלָיו״. וְרָאוּ כָל יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶת הָעֵגֶל וְתָעוּ אַחֲרָיו וַיִּשְׁתַּחֲווּ לוֹ וַיִּזְבְּחוּ לוֹ. 

ירמיהו ב׳, יג

כִּֽי־שְׁתַּ֥יִם רָע֖וֹת עָשָׂ֣ה עַמִּ֑י אֹתִ֨י עָזְב֜וּ מְק֣וֹר ׀ מַ֣יִם חַיִּ֗ים לַחְצֹ֤ב לָהֶם֙ בֹּאר֔וֹת בֹּארֹת֙ נִשְׁבָּרִ֔ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר

 לֹֽא־יָכִ֖לוּ הַמָּֽיִם׃

This pasuk isn’t mentioned in the newsletter, but it strikes me as the perfect example of trading a Source for a (broken) vessel.