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Reflections from Kallah VI:
Mussar and Connection – Lifting the Veils
By Alan Morinis
The theme of this year’s Mussar Kallah last month was “Lifting the Barriers to Relationship,” the notion for which came from a chapter of a small book Maimonides wrote called “Eight Chapters” (“Shmoneh Perakim”). Chapter 7 is called “On the Veils and the Their Meaning.” We decided that the word “veils” is a loaded word in English, so we switched to a term that carriers the same sense of separation without the added meanings, which is “barriers.”
The barriers to relationship that we have in focus are central to our spiritual lives because the Mussar tradition wants us to recognize and make a priority of having three relationships in good working order. These are:
- bein adam l’nafsho – between a person and his or her own soul
- bein adam l’chaveiro – between a person and other people
- bein adam l’Makom – between a person and HaShem
What would it mean to have all of these primary relationships in “good working order”? There are many features to a good relationship, but Jewish tradition helps us understand the essential element of a good relationship is connection. A goal of our spiritual practice is to open and strengthen the connection between ourselves (or, more accurately, our Selves) and our own soul, other people and the divine
- To Your Own Soul
We get a hint as to what is involved in connecting to one’s own soul from the poem written by the medieval Jewish poet of Spain, R’ Avraham ibn Ezra (1089-1167). He writes:
In my body He has kindled a lamp from His glory;
It tells me of the paths of the wise.
It is the light which shines in the days
Of youth, and grows brighter in old age.
Were it not derived from the mystery of His light
It would fail with my strength and my years.
With it I search out the chamber of wisdom,
And I climb with no ladder to the garden of delights.
I have bolded two lines from the poem because the lines point to the relationship of the ego to the soul. If there is a good, open connection between you and your deeper, spiritual essence, then you can expect that your soul will “tell you of the paths of the wise.” In other words, the soul is a source of important guidance in our lives, but only when we are connected to our spiritual core and attentive to its quiet direction.
But the soul is not just a source of wisdom, it is also the seeker. “With it I search out the chambers of wisdom.” And, presumably, if you are not in touch with your soul you will not seek out the chambers of wisdom, which seems to be true. Look at how misled and misdirected people (including ourselves) can be when the things we seek are defined by ego and desire rather than by the deep source of guidance that ibn Ezra assures us lies within.
- To Another
Eliyahu da Vidas (1518-1592) was one of the great leaders of Kabbalistic studies in Sfat in the 16th century. In the “Gate of Love” in his Reishit Chochma [The Beginning of Wisdom], he writes:
“When your nefesh-soul becomes aroused to love a friend, your friend’s nefesh-soul will be equally aroused to love you in return until both of your souls are bound to form one single entity, as is described about the eternal friendship between David and Jonathan. David’s soul was bound to that of Jonathan and the latter loved David. David’s own love for Jonathan reflected that of his friend.”
The remarkable concept we are given here is that when two people love each other, their souls (at the level of nefesh) bond into a unique soul. I don’t think we are being led to believe that this merger eliminates the individual soul and replaces it with the merged soul, but rather that through the love of two people, a third and distinctive “soul of the relationship” is created.
We need each other, and life is arid without the love and engagement of other people. We know this to be true, and we spend so much of our lives seeking connection to other people, but often our inter-personal relationships are the most challenging thing in our lives. Parents to children and children to parents, spouses to each other, and employee to other workers, all these are sources of great satisfaction for us when our souls connect, and sources of great grief when they do not.
- To HaShem
There are a number of different ways in which closeness to HasShem is emphasized in Jewish thought and practice. Animal sacrifices, for example, are called korbanot, coming from the root k-r-b which means “close.” More relevant to we who live in a post-sacrificial age is the concept of devekut, which means “clinging” or “cleaving” to God. It may help you grasp this notion to know that in modern Hebrew, the word for “glue” is devek.
We are aided to understand how important this relationship is to our lives by the Slonimer Rebbe, Rabbi Sholom Noach Berezovsky (19__-2000), who headed a Chassidic dynasty that, unusually, gave a prominent place to Mussar in its educational methods. In his “Netivot Shalom” he writes:
“The six-hundred and thirteen commandments are all advice on how to fulfill the commandment of You shall hold close to Him. This is the purpose of the Torah and commandments.”
So we learn that holding close to HaShem is a goal, and that Torah and mitzvot are means to that end. The point is, though, that we need that open relationship to the divine Source. Because even fulfilling the mitzvot is a challenge to us (each in our own way), Jewish tradition has developed methods to help us open the way to connection. The Slonimer comments on this in the context of connecting to God:
“While the masters of Mussar greatly emphasize the importance of character refinement and consider one’s character to be the sum of his person, the Hassidic school places even greater emphasis on it. This is because of the importance of character traits in a person’s holding close to Hashem and holding close to Hashem is the purpose of Torah and commandments.”
So if connection to soul, other and HaShem is what we ought to seek, what is the obstacle? Why don’t we just turn and connect?
The answer lies in the Rambam’s concept of the “veils.” His specific subject in the seventh chapter of Shemonah Perakim is prophecy, but he drops some clear indications that the perspective he is offering applies not only to situations of prophecy but to all people who seek to connect. As the Alter of Novarodock says, “Everyone is anxious for prophetic visions (giluy Eliyahu), but this is in error. Instead, a person should strive to attain that perfection that leads to prophetic visions.”
And that, indeed, is the Rambam’s concern because he identifies the obstacles (or “veils”) that separate us as our middot, or, in his terms, “These moral habits and others like them are the veils of the prophets, peace be upon them. Thus, whoever has two or three moral habits not in the mean… is said to see God from behind two or three veils.”
He makes it clear that what he is referring to are inner traits within us that tend toward either extreme, of excess or deficiency. Too much anger is a veil, and too little anger is also a veil. Too much anxiety is as much a hindrance to connection as is too little concern. Patience is good in the mean, but to be overly patient is to be inactive, and the costs of impatience are well known. And so on, through all the other inner traits. It is the traits that are tending to either extreme that create the obstacles to connection in all three primary relationships. Middot out of the mean obstructs the connection to your own deep inner being, to the souls of other people, and to your Creator.
For those who attended the Kallah to learn and practice Mussar and to those who missed it this year but are committed as well to learning and practicing Mussar, my prayer is that your effort brings you closer to your own soul, to each other, and to God. To translate this teaching into practical terms, what we learn is that our objective is to hold close to the qualities of HaShem, and through that, come closer to HaShem, to your own soul, and to each other among us.
To cite the Slonimer again, he says that when the sages say, hold close to Him— “this means hold close to His qualities.”
This is not just the Slonimer’s teaching, because we learn in a midrash:
“Just as He is called ‘merciful,’ so should you be merciful; just as He is called ‘gracious,’ so should you be gracious ... just as He is called ‘righteous,’ so should you be righteous ... just as He is called ‘pious,’ so should you be pious.” (Sifri, Devarim 11:22; also Shabbat 133b)
At other times, Chazal interpret “walking in God’s ways” in terms of actions, but here it is character traits that we are meant to imitate.
Although it is closeness in relationship we seek, we get closer to that goal by focusing our footsteps on the pathway of the inner life that runs by way of our own personal spiritual curriculum. Learning and practicing in order to master those inner traits that tend to the extreme in your own life is what you need to do to lift the veils that cause separation, and one by one, the obstacles to connection disappear.
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