QUESTION:
Ten years ago, I made a choice — against most of my rabbis’ wishes — to leave kollel (a yeshiva for married men), and get a degree, so I could have a career. At the time, I was feeling increasingly anxious that I wouldn’t be able to support my family if I kept coasting like most of my peers, plus I felt that my strengths would be put to better use in the business world. The reality is I wasn’t learning very well at the time, and found myself more distracted and antsy than anything else…
Since then, I’ve thank God, done well for myself and my family. I went to law school, and now work as an in-house counsel for a big company. I still learn Talmud everyday, and try to raise my kids to love Judaism, which I I think they do…but recently, I’ve been having heart-pangs of what could have been had I taken a different route. I look at some of my friends who went on to become quite impressive talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars), and lead schools and communities. Maybe I should have just “sucked it up” and kept pushing, and been more idealistic.
Did I make a mistake?
ADVICE OF THE SAGES:
One of the odd features of our universe is that time only moves in one direction. This means that looking backwards with regret at decisions you made many years ago only leads to a cocktail of heartache about your past, and a sense of doom about your future.
It sounds to me that you made your decision to leave yeshiva and pursue a career based on a combination of very reasonable, practical concerns about making a living, and an honest self-awareness about what drives you personally. It is, after all, a personal decision. You did not describe anyone pressuring you into it. It came from you.
Now that you’ve established the kind of sturdy, responsible life that you set out to build for yourself, you have the luxury to ponder what “could have been” had you stayed in yeshiva, but keep in mind:
(a) your decision, as you retell it, was completely sensible,
and
(b) I’m not aware of any time machines in existence, so there’s no purpose in agonizing over (or even gently bemoaning) the past.
On the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we could mistakenly come to believe that these sorts of morose, remorseful feelings about our past decisions are a mitzvah.
They are not. In fact, these thoughts tend to have the opposite effect — they damn us to stay the same.
By saddling ourselves with guilt, we condemn ourselves to keep making bad decisions. After all, that’s what bad people do. Bad people make bad decisions.
And by searing ourselves with shame, we delude ourselves into thinking that we’ve somehow atoned through our suffering, and thereby avoid the much more important work of accepting our past and opening our eyes to the opportunities in front of us in our present (see last week’s XL called “Remorse”).
There are two levels of acceptance: 1) pragmatic acceptance, and 2) Divine acceptance. Pragmatic acceptance starts with realizing, as we’ve pointed out, that we can’t go back and rewrite history, and continues with soberly evaluating the options we have available today, given our abilities and experience. This is the important perspective of stoicism.
As wise and true as this perspective is, the human soul wants more out of life. We sense in our bones that life is a God-given gift, and therefore crave to have the confidence that the life we are leading is the best possible life for us. Not necessarily perfect for everyone, in a vacuum, because no life is — but perfect for us.
How can we come to accept our lives so profoundly?
Many people today speak about “self-love,” but what is self-love really?
If you truly love yourself, you see yourself as your Creator sees you — the One Who thought you into existence, and maintains you in it for you to lead the life only you can lead. There can be no love higher than this. If I could love myself so much that I would choose to make a human being just like me, I love myself as much as God did when He made me. If I could believe in myself, despite my past mistakes, whatever they may be, and not delete my life, and restart it without my mistakes, than I believe in myself as God does, Who wakes me up everyday for another day without deleting yesterday.
Sometimes, we can catch glimmers of this self-love, but it’s abstract. I might feel, for a moment, why God theoretically may have thought it worthwhile to create me. I had great potential once upon a time…
…but I blew it.
I made bad decisions that squandered my potential.
Truthfully, my great potential should be counted against me since I was capable of so much more…
Sukkot is a holiday of acceptance. Not our acceptance of God — this is what Passover is about. And not our acceptance of God’s Torah — this is what Shavuot is about. Sukkot is about accepting that God accepts us.1
One year, in my young-and-dumb, religious zeal, I shared with a mentor of mine, Yosef Kaufman, as we were walking to his Jerusalem home for break-fast after Yom Kippur services, that I didn’t feel that I had received atonement on Yom Kippur that year. (I felt quite holy and righteous as I uttered these words.) He furrowed his brow dramatically. His face of disapproval and disbelief is still etched in my memory. He said to me, “No, Jack, that’s not the way it works. Hashem accepted your teshuva. Your job now is to accept that He accepted it, and have a great year.”
Sukkot is a celebration of this acceptance in the eyes of God. It is customary to begin building one’s Sukkah that night that Yom Kippur ends. In doing so, he can start the year on the right foot with newfound confidence. Our year can only be as good as we feel about ourselves.
According to the Talmud, when the Torah describes the timing of Sukkot as the season in which “you gather [grain] from your threshing floor and [wine] from your winepress,” it’s alluding to the fact that Sukkot can and often are made from the stuff you would have otherwise thrown away: stalks, stems, leaves, etc. This stuff can’t be eaten, and can’t be brought to market, and yet you can use them to fulfill the magnificent mitzvah of building a sukkah.
It’s about being resourceful.
Being resourceful is living with a trust in God that whatever challenges life throws your way, you already possess the tools to handle them. Nothing is garbage. Everything is a resource.
Taking shelter in your Sukkah for a week is about feeling, as the Arizal explains, God’s embrace. Spending seven days of celebration in a shack you built out of the stuff you had lying around your property, helps you absorb into the depths of your psyche that you have everything you need.
You made a decision a long time ago, but you still have to accept that your life today is the best it can possibly be today. The brightest future for you and your family depends on you seeing the blessings around you as the perfect resources for you to continue building the best possible life for you.
I’ll end with a story from the Talmud, which isn’t about Sukkot per se, but I believe speaks precisely to your questions and self-doubts, and hopefully helps you in your journey to feel embraced by Hashem, and in turn, embrace your life, and live it to its fullest:
The Talmud recounts a story of two young Torah scholars, Yochanan and Ilfa, who both loved learning with all their hearts and souls, but eventually could not afford to continue living hand to mouth, and went into business.
On one business trip, they paused for a meal under a wall that happened to be on its last legs. As they sat there, Rabbi Yoḥanan overheard a conversation between two angels. One angel suggested bringing the wall down on them as a punishment for abandoning the eternal pursuit of Torah for the temporary gain of business. Thankfully, the other angel stopped him, saying, “One of these men still has a significant destiny ahead.”
Only Rabbi Yoḥanan heard this exchange. When he asked Ilfa if he had heard anything, and Ilfa said no, Rabbi Yohanan realized the message was meant for him. Recognizing that his future lay in the study of Torah, he immediately decided to return to the study hall, even if it meant continuing to struggle financially.
Ilfa, however, chose to continue with their original plan, venturing further into business. By the time he returned, Rabbi Yoḥanan had become the head of the academy, a position that brought him both respect and financial stability. Ilfa’s colleagues couldn’t help but point out, “If you had stayed with Torah, that could have been you.”
Determined to prove that he hadn’t lost his edge, Ilfa challenged anyone to raise a point in the vast legal literature of the Braita, and he would find it alluded to in the more concise and well-known work of the Mishna. It was important for him to show that despite his time in business, his Torah knowledge was as sharp as ever.
I’m sure that the parallels between this story with your question are clear, but there’s a nuance at the end that I found very relevant and very valuable.
I recently heard an interview with Rabbi Ari Bergmann, a hedge fund manager (Penso Advisors), Talmud scholar and teacher, and professor of Jewish thought and history of the Talmud at Yeshiva University, Penn and Harvard. I consider him a friend and teacher. Here’s what he pointed out:
At the end of the story, when Ilfa is proving that he’s still on his Talmud game despite being a “working guy,” he’s not merely showing off his memory. He wanted to show that precisely because he had less time to study as a businessman, he had to find strategies to get more learning out of less time. This is why he demonstrated that although he didn’t have the time to pore over the vast literature of the Braita — and BECAUSE he didn’t have the time — he was forced to find ways of more efficiently reading into the more concise literature of the Mishna.
For Ilfa, even having less time to study was an asset.
Instead of fighting his circumstances, Ilfa made his life decision and accepted it fully, allowing him to see every aspect of those circumstances as opportunities that were custom-fitted to his personal mission in life. He may have had less time to study, but this itself pushed him to learn in ways he wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise.
What are the blessings of your life circumstances?
What are the resources in your life that you may have thought of discarding, but may be a unique portfolio of untapped assets you’re sitting on?
The more you realize this, live in it, absorb it, the happier you will feel and the better and sweeter a year — and God-willing — life you will have.
Chag Sameach!
Jack
The Vilna Gaon famously figured out why the timing of the holiday of Sukkot is in the fall not the Spring, when we left Egypt. Sukkot is a celebration of the “Clouds of Glory” that surrounded and protected us in the desert from the moment we left Egypt (at Passover time). When we sinned with the Golden Calf that summer, the clouds disappeared, leaving the new nation exposed and afraid. On Yom Kippur that year, thanks to Moshe’s interceding on our behalf, we received forgiveness and atonement. In the days after, we received instructions for building the Mishkan, the temple in which we would be able to palpably feel Hashem’s Presence. And when we started building it, five days after Yom Kippur, the clouds came back, dissipating our fears, and helping us feel God’s approval and unconditional love.