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On My Mind

Mrs. Aliza Feder's Newsletter

Here’s a scenario that most recently returned seminary girls will relate to: an alumna who had recently gotten back came to see me, and as we spoke, she described a struggle that is probably familiar to many girls coming home after a year in Israel. She had spent the year learning beautiful ideas, meeting people who seemed to live with tremendous clarity, and seeing what a life built around Torah could look like. Then she returned home and discovered that she didn’t quite know how to fit all of that into her actual life. The ideas were still beautiful, and she still believed in them, but real life was considerably more complicated than they had appeared from the seminary classroom.

This is certainly a returning-from-seminary problem, but I don’t think it ends when we are nineteen. For the more idealistic among us, it comes up repeatedly throughout adult life. We learn about the highest expression of something—what complete bitachon might look like, what genuine tznius would be, what a home centered entirely around Torah feels like, what a life less dependent on technology means—and then we look at our own lives and realize that we cannot simply transfer the ideal wholesale into our present reality. Maybe we don’t have the emotional capacity, the financial circumstances, the family background, the support system, or even the personality that would make that life possible right now.

There are two common ways of responding to that gap. The first is to try to force ourselves into the ideal anyway. We decide that if this is the highest level, then anything less must be failure, and we push ourselves toward a life that we may not be capable of sustaining. When that inevitably becomes difficult, we feel guilty and disappointed in ourselves. We may even feel that we are somehow being dishonest or hypocritical in our avodas Hashem because we know what the ideal looks like, yet we are not living it.

But there is another response that is more subtle, and I suspect far more common. Instead of admitting that something may be higher than the level we are presently able or willing to live, we begin to devalue it. I’ve written about this before in terms of technology (read that newsletter here), but it’s an important concept to recognize in ourselves. If I can’t practically live without a smartphone, I decide that using a flip phone isn’t actually better. If another woman has taken on a legitimate step in tznius that I don’t keep, I begin explaining why it’s unnecessary, unhealthy and extreme. It’s really difficult to sit comfortably with the thought that someone else may be doing something better than I am in a particular area, and so, (often without realizing it,) I protect myself by deciding that what she is doing is not actually better at all.

The same thing can happen around the value of Torah learning. A woman may genuinely believe in the extraordinary value of building a home around full-time Torah learning, while also recognizing that she does not have the ability to assume the financial pressure, lifestyle, or degree of sacrifice that such a choice might require. That may be an honest assessment of who she is and what she can responsibly take on. But sometimes, instead of saying, “This is an extraordinary value, and it is not the life I am presently able to choose,” we feel compelled to say that it makes no difference at all, one isn’t better than the other. Every choice is simply another equally elevated path.

I think part of the problem is that we use the word “better” to mean several entirely different things. A particular choice can be better in one area without the person making that choice becoming a better person. Someone may be more careful about tznius than I am, more disciplined about technology than I am, or making greater sacrifices for Torah learning than I am. AND THAT’S OK. ( לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמֹר) Those are real distinctions, and we do not have to erase them. But none of them tells me the person’s standing before Hashem. I do not know where she began, what challenges she was given, what sacrifices her choices require, or what Hashem expected from her. And I certainly do not know whether Hashem considers her a “better person” than someone whose life looks less ideal from the outside.

There is yet another question: Even if something is objectively higher, is it what Hashem is asking of me right now? That question cannot be answered simply by identifying the highest imaginable level. Hashem created us with individual kochos, placed us into particular families and circumstances, and gave each of us responsibilities that are not interchangeable. Sometimes acknowledging our limitations is not a concession to weakness; it is part of being truthful about the avodah we were actually given. Even if it’s admitting that we are not at- or near!- the highest level. 

But once I have honestly recognized that something does express a real value, I should not need to tear down that value simply because I am not living it. I can say, “There is something beautiful here that I am not presently able to do.” I can admire another person’s choice without either imitating it inappropriately or explaining it away.

There is maturity required to hold both truths at once: This is the ideal, and I am not there. I am not going to pretend that my current level is the highest level, but I am also not going to pretend to be someone I am not, take on something I cannot sustain, or assume that Hashem expects every ideal to be fully realized in every stage of my life. And, obviously, this entire discussion applies only to choices and aspirations beyond the boundaries of halacha. When something is an actual halachic obligation, “This is not what Hashem wants from me right now” is not a determination we can simply make for ourselves.

Got it so far? Now let’s move on to the next trap: A person can come to the honest and perhaps entirely correct conclusion that a particular level is not what Hashem wants from her right now—and then allow the words “right now” to disappear. What began as a realistic accommodation to a particular stage of life slowly becomes a permanent settlement. She stops revisiting the question, stops wondering whether her circumstances or capacities have changed, and eventually lets go of the she’ifah entirely. The b’dieved no longer feels like the appropriate response to her present reality; it simply becomes the way things are.

Perhaps this is part of what makes holding these truths so difficult. We have to acknowledge that a certain level is not right for us now without using that acknowledgment to close the door on it forever. We have to make peace with our present reality without making such complete peace with it that we no longer hope to grow. She’ifah does not mean walking around in a constant state of guilt or dissatisfaction. It means remaining open. It means being willing to ask again, perhaps at a different age or stage, whether something that was once unrealistic has become possible, or whether an ideal that still cannot be fully realized might now have a little more room in our lives.

Maybe I can move one step closer. Maybe I can put one additional boundary in place, to reconsider something I have accepted too easily, or simply to remain open to a different choice at a later stage. And maybe it  means nothing more than that I continue to honor the ideal—that I not mock it, resent the people who live it, or rewrite my hashkafah in order to feel more comfortable with where I am. But even then, continuing to honor it means that I have not declared the conversation over (וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה).

I think this is particularly important as Elul begins. Elul can sometimes create a choking feeling that now we must confront every ideal we are not living and somehow become all of them at once. But honest teshuvah doesn't require us to pretend that we can immediately arrive at the highest level. It requires us to preserve our sense of direction while being truthful about where we are now. If I erase the ideal, I no longer know where I am going. But if I refuse to acknowledge where I actually am, I have no honest place from which to start. And if I turn my present location into my permanent destination, I have given up the possibility of ever moving forward.

The alumna who came to speak to me does not have to recreate her seminary year inside the life to which she returned. But neither does she have to decide that what she saw and learned was unrealistic or unimportant now that she’s in the ‘real world’. Those ideals are no less part of the real world. Her task now is to begin translating those ideals into the life she actually has—to ask what small piece of them she can carry forward without pretending that she has already become the person she still hopes to be. And part of that task is simply to hold on to the hope that the pieces she cannot carry yet may still find their place in her life one day.

This question—how to honor the ideal while discovering what Hashem is actually asking of me—is at the heart of my six-part course, Authentic Avodas Hashem. The course is not about handing every woman one more model of who she ought to become. It explores how to understand the particular kochos, challenges, circumstances, and stage of life Hashem has given each of us, and how to build an avodah that is both genuinely aspiring and genuinely our own. It is about growing without lowering the ideal, but also without borrowing someone else’s life.

Elul is an especially meaningful time for this work, because a real cheshbon hanefesh cannot ask only, “What is the highest level?” It must also ask, “Given who I am and where Hashem has placed me, what is my next honest step toward it?” You can learn more about Authentic Avodas Hashem here.

I would love to hear from you: Is there an ideal you have found yourself devaluing because it felt too difficult or unrealistic for your present life? I dare you to give me an honest answer:).

All the best,

Mrs. Aliza Feder

PS- the first source is from Parshas Vayikra, when it uses the words אִשֵּׁה רֵיחַ נִיחוֹחַ לַה׳ for an expensive animal offering, a less expensive bird, and a simple flour offering. In Menachos 110a, it explains: אֶחָד הַמַּרְבֶּה וְאֶחָד הַמַּמְעִיט, וּבִלְבַד שֶׁיְּכַוֵּן לִבּוֹ לַשָּׁמַיִם. The wealthy person’s offering is objectively larger, but that doesn’t mean that its owner is greater before Hashem. 

דרך השם

הפקודות הנתינות לבני אדם בעולם הזה: הנה כבר הקדמנו שענין העבודה שנמסרה לאדם תלוי במה שנבראו בעולם עניני טוב ועניני רע והושם האדם ביניהם לבחור לו את הטוב 

והנה שיערה החכמה העליונה כל פרטי הענינים מזה המין שראוים למצא וליפול אפשרותם בחק האנושיות לפי התכלית העיקרי שזכרנו במקומו והמציא אותם כל בחינותיהם סבותיהם ומסובביהם וכל המתלוה להם וחקק אפשרותם באדם כמ״ש ואמנם לשימצאו כל אלה הענינים הוצרכו מצבים שונים בבני האדם שכולם יהיו נסיון להם במה שיתנו מקום לכל פרטי בחי׳ הרע האלה ומקום לאדם להתחזק כנגדם ולתפוס בטובות 

 ד״מ אם לא היו עשירים ועניים לא היה מקום לשיהיה האדם מרחם ולא אכזרי אך עתה הנה ינוסה העשיר בעשרו אם יתאכזר על העני הצריך לו או אם ירחם עליו וכן ינוסה העני אם יסתפק במועט שבידו ויודה לאלקיו או להפך. עוד יהיה העושר לעשיר נסיון לראות אם ירום בו לבו או אם ימשך בו אחר הבלי העולם ויעזוב את עבודת בוראו ואם עם כל עשרו יהיה עניו ונכנע ומואס בהבלי העולם ובוחר בתורה ועבודה וכן כל כיוצא בזה

ואמנם חילקה החכמה העליונה את מיני הנסיון האלה בין אישי מין האנושי כמו שגזרה בעומק עצתה היותו ראויי ונאות ונמצא לכל איש ואיש מבני האדם חלק מיוחד בניסיון ובמלחמת היצר והוא פקודתו ומשאו בעה״ז וצריך לעמוד בו כפי מה שהוא ויודנו מעשיו במדת דינו ית׳  כפי המשא אשר ניתן לו באמת בכל בחינותיו בתכלית הדקדוק והנה זה כעבדי המלך שכולם עומדים למשמעתו ובין כלם צריך שתשתלם עבודת מלכותו והנה הוא מפלג לכל א׳ מהם חלק מה עד שבין כלם ישתלמו כל החלקים המצטרכים לו והנה כל א׳ מהם מוטל עליו השלמת החלק ההוא אשר נמסר לו וכפי פעולתו בפקודתו כן יגמלהו המלך אך מדת החילוק הזה ודרכיו נשגבים מאד מהשגתנו וא״א לנו לעמוד עליהם כ״א החכמה העליונה הנשגבה מכל שכל היא שיערתם והיא סידרתם באופן היותר שלם

שמונה פרקים ד׳

וכאשר ראו הכסילים שהחסידים עשו אלה הפעולות ולא ידעו כונתם, חשבו שהן טובות וכונו אליהן, בחשבם שיהיו כמותם. ויענו את גופתם בכל מיני עינוי, ויחשבו שהם קנו לעצמם מעלה ומידה טובה ושעשו טובה, ושבזה יתקרב האדם לשם - כאלו השם יתברך שונא הגוף ורוצה לאבדו. והם לא ידעו שאלו הפעולות רע, ושבהן תגיע פחיתות מפחיתויות הנפש. ואין להמשילם אלא לאיש שאינו יודע במלאכת הרפואות, כשיראה בקיאים מהרופאים שהשקו חולים נוטים למות סמים הנקראים בערבית: שחם, חנטל ומחמודה, ובלע"ז - קולוקינטידא ואשקמוניא. והצבר, ובלע"ז - אולואי וכיוצא בהם. ופסקו מהם המזון, ונרפאו מחולים ונמלטו מן המות הצלה גמורה - ואמר הסכל ההוא: אחר שאלו הדברים מרפאים מן החולי, כל שכן שיעמידו הבריא על בריאותו, או יוסיפו כוח. והתחיל לקחת אותם תמיד ולהתנהג בהנהגות החולים, שהוא יחלה בלא ספק - כן הם חולי הנפשות אלו בלא ספק בלקחם הרפואות על הבריאות. 

(Here the Rambam is speaking about mindlessly copying spiritual practices of others, comparing it to taking the medicine of another person thinking it will help him because it helped his friend).