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By Modya Silver, Co-President Today is the third day of Passover. That means that by the time you read this you should have sobered up from drinking eight glasses of wine and had your fill of matzah, maror and many other things that are an assault on our bodies. Also, it’s only one month after we over-loaded our bodies at Purim by over-drinking. It’s funny that many of our Holy Days seem to be laced with extreme measures and yet our teachings from the Mussar tradition preach moderation and finding the middle way. This dichotomy seems to run through everything we do in life and provides an interesting point of reflection for us in developing our character traits. The insight comes from a term that plays a central role in Mussar. Hishtadlut is translated as right effort and we are encouraged to exert maximum hishtadlut. The question though is how do we know when we’ve given our all? The other challenge with hishtadlut is in the role it plays in our relationship with Hashem. Hashem determines what we will receive and when. If we don’t put in effort to maximize our potential in life, then for sure we won’t get the gifts from Hashem. However, if we do put in effort, it’s no guarantee that we’ll receive what we think we have coming to us. Motivation to act could then become a problem because we’re so conditioned to work for tangible rewards. With that background, I am using the rest of Passover as a time to reflect on whether I think I’m putting in my maximum effort. Part of the effort I hope to evaluate is with my role on the Board of The Mussar Institute. There are so many competing interests in my life, each one worthy. Yet, I’ve made a commitment to continue in a leadership role for The Mussar Institute and that means other interests take a back seat for now. As you all know we have a very capable and active board, each one a volunteer, and each with many other competing interests for his or her limited time. Yet, each person makes a commitment to dig deeper and give to our community. The same is said for our many volunteers who work tirelessly, or perhaps tiredly, for the benefit of the larger community. That’s maximum hishtadlut. And I would say that the reason we are successful is that we spread the workload across the entire board and volunteer organization. That’s what Mussar teaches us. If we wish to make progress, we need to parcel the task into small packages and tackle one small package at a time. It becomes about effort at the micro level and it all adds up to macro success. It perhaps suggests that the idea of maximum effort cannot be understood by only looking at one’s own effort. It’s about a collective and cumulative effort from the whole community. I would like then to point out one new program that was launched in February. Middah A Month is a small-parcel program. To be part of the program, you don’t have to carve out a lot of time each month and you don’t have to wait a long time to start the program. It’s designed to allow serious students of Mussar the chance to take small nibbles – each day, over the course of a month and share that meal with hundreds of others who are sitting at the same table. It’s a perfect Mussar program since it asks for maximum hishtadlut, and it does so in the framework of community, honoring the reality that success comes from small steps. By taking the small steps available through the program, I would, perhaps too boldly, suggest that you are also serving Hashem in a way that would likely be considered maximum hishtadlut. Consider signing up for the course if you haven’t already. And I, along with the board and all our volunteers, wish you a continued happy Passover. Chag sameach.
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