sholem aleichem,

Truly [Hashem] has comforted Zion,
Comforted all her ruins—
Made her wilderness like Eden,
Her desert like the Garden of GOD (JPS)

We chant a haftorah of comfort each of the seven shabbosim leading up to Rosh HaShanah. The last four of these weeks make up the month of Elul, itself named for God’s role as our Lover and Beloved.

I have a question for you, and I mean it genuinely: do you feel comforted? Is this a time of the year that you typically associate with comfort, with the closeness of Lover and Beloved?

I hope you do!

But when our Comfort comes to us with consolation during these weeks, I fear that many of us ignore Her. I know I do. We can be, I worry, too busy analyzing our own faults to greet our Lover, too concerned with our approaching trial to be a Beloved.

This is not to say, chas v’sholem, that we should avoid engaging in cheshbon hanefesh, the practice of making an honest accounting of our deeds and character. Avoidance would be false comfort, and the seal of our God is Truth.

But we must learn how to do so without rejecting the freely-given comfort of our Lover. Without turning aside from the true consolation flowing to us, every week, from the Wellspring of Compassion.

I’d like to offer two perspectives on the practice of cheshbon hanefesh that I’ve found helpful. One comes from the pragmatic world of mussar, the other from the heady spirituality of chassidus.

Mussar

R Menachem Mendel Levin was an early writer in the haskalah [enlightenment] and mussar [ethical improvement] movements.

In his book Cheshbon HaNefesh, R Levin calls the titular practice a “strategy that is most precious” and describes its function as follows: “by constantly reminding himself of his sin and reinforcing his remorse, [the practitioner] can insure that he will not stumble again” (p. 43 of Feldheim’s Torah Classics edition, translation based on R Shraga Silverstein’s).

It is difficult to find comfort in a practice of constant remorse and reflection on our sins. But R Levin’s view is not as simplistic and harsh as it sounds.

R Levin understands the practice of cheshbon hanefesh as one of raising and training our “animal bodysoul”: the part of us that chases pleasure and runs from pain, that follows the direction of “whichever [wind] is strongest at the moment” (p. 28).

This animal bodysoul is not evil, it is simply an animal being an animal. And it would be foolish, R Levin writes, to “overburden animals and stint on their provisions” (p. 33). Therefore, he says, we must go slowly in this work and “generously provide” for the needs of our animal natures.

He warns us that “it is quite common to find wonderful people who…singed by the flame of the fear of God…impulsively attempt to quickly eradicate the evil inclination…. What happens, however, is that that they end up sinking into depression…” (p. 49).

So R Levin asks us to engage in cheshbon hanefesh slowly and steadily, working on one character trait at a time, not all at once in Elul but a little bit every day of the year. He encourages us to care for our animal bodysouls during this process, and to not ask too much of them. He warns us against going too far, too fast, with too little support.

Chassidus

Where R Levin focuses on properly managing and training our animal nature, the modern Breslov teacher Rav Kluger emphasizes our divine nature: the spark of the Infinite within us, our constant connection to the deepest root of divinity.

“Everyone,” he writes in Yichud HaHisbodedus, “is used to interpreting cheshbon as a sum total… [so] when a Jew engages in cheshbon hanefesh, he is concerned with the sum of the deeds he has done and has not done, and with what he wants and hopes to do, and with asking the help of Heaven for all of it.”

What Rav Kluger is describing is exactly the practice of cheshbon hanefesh as we’ve been discussing it so far: a person reviews her deeds and character in order to understand where she needs to improve.

But, Rav Kluger says, there is another way to understand the phrase cheshbon hanefesh. The word cheshbon, which we’ve been translating as “accounting” or “sum”, is also closely related to the word machshavah, or “thought.”

“Cheshbon hanefesh,” Rav Kluger says, literally means “a thought of the bodysoul, in its deepest and fullest connection to its Creator.”

The temptation at this time of the year is to do more self-analysis, to do more thinking and more journaling and more studying. But when we fill our time and our minds with constant analysis of our deeds, we risk drowning out the literal voice of God within us.

Rav Kluger’s teaching asks us to try doing less. To make less of our own noise in order to make more space for our soul to speak. To quiet our own thinking so that we can hear the thoughts of the Infinite within, rising “like a mist, from the deep valley of the heart”.

In Sum

R Levin and R Kluger have very different perspectives and come from very different traditions. But I think we would do well to learn from them both.

As we’re thinking about how to approach this season of teshuvah, we should accept the comfort that our Lover is giving us. We should take our active cheshbon hanefesh slowly and steadily, caring deeply and generously for our animal bodysouls in the process. And we should refrain from entirely filling our minds and ears with our own activity of cheshbon. Instead, we should make space and silence for our divine bodysoul to speak its thoughts, to offer its advice, to ask for its needs.

A tkhine

My Lover and my Beloved, my Comfort and Consolation: please help me to accept Your comfort in these times. May it be revealed and known before You that my desire is to strengthen myself in Your holy service — only, sometimes, I stumble in the urgency of my desire, treating myself poorly and turning away from Your compassion. Grant me the strength and restraint to know You as a Lover even as I am in awe of You as my Judge. Grant to this student of Your prophet Eliyahu the ability to hear, in the storm of this world, Your still small voice, the thoughts of Your divine spark within. May I do more good today than I have done yesterday, and may the good I do every moment bring more of Your good to the world and to all that fills it. Amen.

good shabbos,

ada

p.s. This is the 100th edition of etz hi, and I’m so grateful to everyone who has read any of these drasheles. I was going to try to do something special for the occasion, but there is no time!

p.p.s. R Levin notes how the practice of cheshbon hanefesh changes in each generation, according to the needs of that generation. If what I’ve written here doesn’t fit your experience or doesn’t work for you, follow what does work for you. We have much to learn from R Levin’s pragmatism in self-improvement! Do what works, not what sounds good!