Parshat
Nitzavim – 5779
Rabbi Shaanan
Gelman
The Little Things that Kill
Professor Robert Kelly is one of the foremost authorities on politics
within the Korean Peninsula. He had been
gearing up for what was likely the highest profile story of his career as a
talking head. It was March of 2017, the
Korean President, Park Geun-Hye had just been impeached, found guilty of abuse
of power and coercion, and he, Robert Kelly would have the first crack at
disseminating the story to the English-speaking world. The interview was viewed by close to 40,000,000
people worldwide – it was one of the most viral videos of 2017 and of all time.
Yet who among us recalls watching it?
Perhaps you’ll recall seeing the video when I fill in a few more
details. Prof. Kelly is seen on the
center of the screen when suddenly, his daughter, Marion, waltzes into the room
wearing a bright yellow shirt and continues to do a little jig until she is
right next to her father. As Kelly
attempts, in vain, to block Marion from the camera by awkwardly concealing her
face with his arm, the little brother James pops in through the door on a
rolling chair. As the comedy of errors
ensued, Kelly’s wife, Jung-a Kim, the children’s mother, dives headfirst into
the office and clumsily drags her two children out of the camera’s reach,
through the door, closing it behind her. The irony is that the reason his wife was not
able to catch the children in time was because she was busy recording the very
interview as it aired live, only noticing what had transpired on her TV set.
The conversation was about a pivotal moment in South Korean politics and
history, but all that we remember is a couple of kids who stole the show.
Why is it that none of us remember the substance of the interview, but we
all recall those adorable children?
דברים פרק כט
(יז)
פֶּן־יֵ֣שׁ בָּ֠כֶם אִ֣ישׁ אוֹ־אִשָּׁ֞ה א֧וֹ מִשְׁפָּחָ֣ה אוֹ־שֵׁ֗בֶט אֲשֶׁר֩
לְבָב֨וֹ פֹנֶ֤ה הַיּוֹם֙ מֵעִם֙ יְקֹוָ֣ק אֱלֹהֵ֔ינוּ לָלֶ֣כֶת לַעֲבֹ֔ד
אֶת־אֱלֹהֵ֖י הַגּוֹיִ֣ם הָהֵ֑ם פֶּן־יֵ֣שׁ בָּכֶ֗ם שֹׁ֛רֶשׁ פֹּרֶ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ
וְלַעֲנָֽה:
17 lest
there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart
turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go to serve the gods of those
nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;
Rashi elaborates on the definition of this שרש פרה ולענה:
רש"י דברים
פרשת נצבים פרק כט פסוק יז
שרש פרה ראש
ולענה - שרש מגדל עשב מרע כגידין, שהם מרים, כלומר מפרה ומרבה רשע בקרבכם:
According to Rashi, the שרש פרה ראש ולענה
is the bottom part of the iceberg that lurks underwater. On the surface you cannot detect a big
problem. Real change demands weeding out
the corrosive and poisonous root.
A bad trait for instance – jealousy, can bring a person to lashon hara
or God forbid violence. To the untrained
eye the problem is the external manifestation.
But it would be a tragic oversight to pretend that murder began with the
availability of weapons…the problem is deeper.
Hatred didn’t begin with twitter and social media; it also reared its
ugly head in the beer halls of Berlin and in Martin Luther’s infamous treatise
“On the Jews and their Lies”. To respond
to a nuance or subtlety in language, is to respond to the symptom alone.
Perhaps, though, there is an alternate meaning to שרש פרה ולענה. Maybe it’s not a reference to the big problems
which lurk in the dark corners, but maybe it is the tiny annoyances
which threaten to undermine everything good that you’ve built.
Rav Ovadiah Sforno hints at this when he notes that the verse is a
reference to the type of person who allows their own narrow-mindedness, their
petty frustration to poison the well for others:
ספורנו דברים פרק כט פסוק יז
פן יש בכם שרש פורה ראש ולענה. חושב להדיח רבים
אל דעותיו הנפסדות:
Don’t think of the root problem as the secret underbelly which becomes
revealed after deep soul searching, rather as the tiny amount of shmutz
under your fingernails. Only for some
reason, you can’t see anything but the filthy nails!
It really isn’t too important, but because it bothers us, we assign meaning
to it, we grant it the license to destroy us from inside out. The little shmutz not only occupies
our thoughts, but it serves as a cue to the rest of our sense of self – that
maybe we are filthy from head to toe, maybe we are even corrupted on the
inside. And this can eat away at the
soul.
This concept, of the “little things that kill” was essentially the impetus
behind one of the greatest reversals in crime rates in recent history. Those of us who recall New York City in the
early and mid-1980’s know well that there were simply places that were patently
unsafe to walk or to live. The subway in
particular, was a rotting cesspool, in which attacks and muggings were part of
the daily expectations. But then
something began to change. In his book “The Tipping Point”, Malcolm Gladwell
dubs it the “Broken Window Theory”: New York State officials began to realize
that the tiny irritants were a key component to solving the problem. Because if you walk around and see nothing
but graffiti, broken windows and squeegee men at every red light, you begin to
think of yourself as a city as a lost cause. Under the guidance of William
Bratton, the transit authority began cleaning up the graffiti from the
trains. Next they began arresting those
who jumped the turnstiles of the subways and prosecuting drunken and lewd
behavior. All tiny misdemeanors, but
these petty little details led the city down a path where it eventually thought
more if itself. Ultimately, Bratton was
appointed by Mayor Guiliani to head of NYC Police Department where he applied
the same strategy to the squeegee men.
These “quality of life crimes” were the שֹׁ֛רֶשׁ
פֹּרֶ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ וְלַעֲנָֽה , and eventually all crime went down
dramatically. Bratton understood that
you can’t deal with the big picture if the minor irritants are front and
center.
We may apply this in our own soul searching as well. Think about those items which are trivial and
annoying that get in the way of greater vision and everyday functionality.
For instance, there’s the guy who keeps signing me up for WhatsApp groups,
and now I spend half my time worrying about how I’m going to leave the group
and spare their feelings, or
Then there’s the person who holds hands awkwardly during dancing at a
wedding, or they are too sweaty and squeeze too tight, and you become so fixated
on which way to turn your own hand in response, such that you can’t focus on
the simcha.
And then there are things that annoy us at shul – the person who has too
many names on his misheberach list, the off-key singer who doesn’t know that
they are off key, the person who sits in my seat, the kids who takes all of the
drumettes at kiddush, though rarely finishes what’s on their plates. This too is a שֹׁ֛רֶשׁ
פֹּרֶ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ וְלַעֲנָֽה.
You can let it become the obsession, the focal point that ruins everything
bigger and more central.
It’s no different than an itch on the bottom of your heel, that ruins an
entire shemoneh esrei? The Mishna
in Berachot writes that even if a King stops you to
say Shalom Aleichem, or an anaconda wraps itself around your leg you shouldn’t
interrupt your prayers:
תלמוד בבלי מסכת ברכות דף ל עמוד ב
אפילו המלך שואל בשלומו לא ישיבנו, ואפילו
נחש כרוך על עקבו לא יפסיק.
Have you ever been unable to help your children with homework because
someone said something off putting at work earlier that day?
There’s the spouse who squeezes the toothpaste from the center as opposed
to the end of the tube, and the one who returns the Britta into the
refrigerator with only a drop of water left – John Gottman, famed author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work noted that nearly 70% of
relationship problems consist of unresolvable issues, including the little
things about the other person that rubs you the wrong way. Nit picking is corrosive, instead of being
overly critical of others. Gottman
suggests that we learn to pick our battles and save our arguments for the big
issues.[1]
But here is the thing about distraction - you can’t free your thoughts to
work on real challenges if your mind is preoccupied with minor annoyances – fix
them if you are able or let them go, but don’t waste time on
them, or you will never rise to greatness.
Remember[2]
that the סופי תיבות of שֹׁ֛רֶשׁ פֹּרֶ֥ה רֹ֖אשׁ
וְלַעֲנָֽה
spells out the word שופר, the magical instrument we will sound only 48
hours from today. It is that call the
Teshuva which beckons us to do more than focus on the infinitesimal minor
irritants. Perhaps we make use of Erev
Rosh Hashana to ask, “what are my main concerns, and what doesn’t matter all
too much?” “How am I going to stay
focused on that which is most crucial in my life for this coming year?”
So, go home tonight and make a list – “the five most important things to
me, and then another list, five things that distract me. Hold them side by side and look at them
carefully, they are your שעיר לה' ושעיר לעזאזל. Let’s keep our eye on the prize..
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