Eikev - The Torah guides us toward developing the ability to stand at a bit of a distance
Deuteronomy 7:12 - 11:25 | Isaiah 49:14 - 51:3
Summary: This week’s parsha talks about yir’ah - the ability to stand at enough of a distance in order to see what is actually going on. And we’ll need to apply that to the frustrations and speedbumps that occur within our regular daily lives.
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Despite everything we may be doing to avoid it, we must come to terms with the fact that Rosh Hashanah is more or less next week. Maybe it’s the week after. I don’t know. I refuse to look at a calendar.
For those of you who don’t know, I try to go to Uman, where Rebbe Nachman is buried, to ring in the new year, watch the ball drop, etc. In reality, it is an unwieldy trip, and I wouldn’t say that I look forward to it in the same way that someone might look forward to, say, going to Disney World. There are a lot of pieces around the trip that are difficult or messy or both (not in any specific order): the need for direct and courageous conversations around taking time off of work, arranging for substitutes for my classes, the stark reality that I am leaving my family for that time, the actual stress of travel, arranging for food, the expenses, COVID concerns, anticipating lack of sleep and so much more.
But when I look at those things from a slightly deeper place, I see all that tumult as oddly welcome. In addition to the sweetness, the gratitude and the sense of possibility that Rosh Hashanah presents, there is also a real and important sense of disruption that rears its beautiful head at this time of year. That’s because, for this special day to do its job to the fullest, there needs to be some tilling of the ground and clearing of last year’s plantings in order for those new possibilities to take root. The tumult and disruption offer the chance to observe and to wonder about underlying assumptions, fixations and fears that are taking up space.
Each of those challenges really is an opportunity to touch on an area of my life where there is work to do and real questions should be asked. Do I effectively communicate my needs and values at my place of work? Is this actually important enough to not be home for Rosh Hashanah? Is it important enough to spend my hard-earned money? Is it safe? How do my values interact with one another? Who gets to decide? Why?
This is the kind of work that Rosh Hashanah spotlights - facing our values and assumptions and fears and figuring out whether/how we should move within or beyond them. And the time leading up to Rosh Hashanah usually provides all the opportunities we need in order to do that kind of work. We don’t need to go looking for the work we need to do around the new year - just observe our conversations, our thoughts, the decisions we have to make, concerns we harbor, and hopes we are holding, with a few inches of distance, and we’ll see more than enough of ourselves.
That last part is the key - a few inches of distance. We need to somehow “stand” at enough of a distance in order to see the choices we have thus far made as choices that have been made, and not as automatic, inevitable necessities. That is literally the key - the essential capacity that determines whether we will continue investing in bad habits or change them, see failures as growth opportunities or opportunities to wallow, hear and digest feedback or reject it and defend against it, succeed in new endeavors or stay home, love or grow cold, be young or be old, open or close. It all rests on this one capacity.
The Torah knows that. Moshe sums it up in this week’s Torah reading. “Now, Israel, what does God want from you, except to do yir’ah?” Yir’ah is that capacity to pivot, to accept not-knowing, to wonder, to observe, to believe that there is mystery where no mystery can readily be seen, to imagine other possibilities, to recognize the limits of our own cognition while acknowledging that there is reality beyond those limits. All of those are summed up in this one “skill” and this is “all that God wants from us.”
Yir’ah is that lynchpin capacity that allows a person to become kinder, clearer, more committed, fitter, more invested, etc. because it is the capacity to hear and internalize feedback that I am not there yet. Without this “receptor” we don’t hear beyond what we want to hear. With this “receptor” we can stand at enough of a distance in order to pivot and grow in a new direction.
Stop there, or read on for some technical brass tacks material on this topic
The big question, then, is how do you “work on yir’ah?” How do you get better at it? How do you work this muscle? Interestingly enough, the Torah has an answer for that, too - anavah. Proverbs: “Because of anavah a person can reach yir’ah.”(I’m intentionally using the Hebrew of essential words like yir’ah and anavah. Yir’ah, though untranslatable, is usually rendered as “fear” or “awe”, both of which are so easily misunderstood as to render the essential skill of yir’ah as basically inert. Anavah is usually translated as humility, which also connotes so many things for people, very few of which have anything to do with what the Torah means by that word.)
Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kosov writes that anavah means being able to reduce yourself down to a single point, shedding all external and excessive points of identification. This would allow you to pivot more easily in a new direction, like a point on a graph that can connect to all other points. When I am smaller, there is more room for more input and information.
How do you get smaller? I don’t know. Gaze upon the stars. Notice that other people are also smart. List the last 10 smart things someone else said that you didn’t know. Spend five minutes at the end of the day thinking of the top ten moments when you spoke instead of listening. Imagine giving away 10 items in your house. Maybe 20. Consider who you’d be if you didn’t have some of the opinions you hold dear. Look at your family tree. Recall a moment when you pivoted, and what led up to that moment. Pray.