"WELL-ROUNDED AND WELL-GROUNDED"

Reb Noson writes in "Likutei Halochos" ("Hilchos Nedarim 4") that a person shouldn't want to be entirely spiritual, without eating, sleeping, and building a family with all that entails. One of the explanations of why it's wrong is that such ungrounded spirituality is, in fact, illusory. Rabbienu himself stresses in Torah 7 Tinyana, on which this Halacha is based, that a Jew should live both "above" and "below" because without "below", there is no "above". 

This idea struck me today during our daily ZOOM class with R' Nasan Maimon, probably because R' Nasan was very successful in really bringing it home. Then I remembered that he had a great mesorah for it: his teacher, Rav Rosenfeld, who had single-handedly brought Breslov to America, did indeed guide his young students to be both "above" and "below": not only to be serious in their commitment to Torah and mitzvos, but also to find a job and get married (in that order). He realized that while physical without spiritual is meaningless, spiritual without physical lacks consistency and stability. 

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is the true path to follow. Then I decided to look through the book about Rav Rosenseld in search of some more inspiration, and right away my eyes fell on the following sentence, "Rabbi Rosenfeld's success in molding his talmidim into well-rounded, dedicated Jews lay in his having created a strong, well-grounded community."

So this is going to be my next goal to strive for: to become "well-rounded and well-grounded". Right now I'm still very, very far from it; it's like a high peak on the horizon: tempting but barely attainable. Since, unlike Rav Rosenfeld's students, I'm young at heart but rather mature in age, I'll probably have to go it alone, without a teacher to guide me along the way. On the other hand, I know full well that "G-d is everywhere and Rabbi Nachman is here", so I'm certainly going to get all the help I need.

P. S. I've just recalled what R' Nasan's other teacher, Reb Michel Dorfman, used to say: that a person should be "both in this world and out of this world". I just love it: the more I'm thinking about my new goal, the more different ways to phrase it can I find! This means that it, too, is becoming "well-rounded and well-grounded". 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WELL-GROUNDED VS. FLOATING AND DROWNING

The famous Jerusalem tzaddik Rabbi Arye Levin once said (I'm quoting from memory, so this just the idea that caught my attention and not his exact words), "When good and righteous people dream, their visions can reach Heavens but they are still firmly planted on the ground, like the ladder seen by Yaakov Avinu. Yet when evil people dream, their dreams are neither above nor below, neither reaching high nor rooted in reality; when Pharaoh had his dream, he saw himself standing at the edge of a river - neither here nor there." When I started writing for the Nanach blog, one of the conditions was that I wasn't allowed to mention any "contemporary Rabbis", which obviously included my teachers in Breslov. At first it was fun, "Hey, I have so many ideas of my own that I can write tons of posts without ever mentioning anybody else!" I saw it as an interesting challenge, and I wanted to prove that I could do this. Yet, after a while, I started to get a nagg...
Read more

"AND KNOW..."

  I was reading a Hebrew book on Halacha today and came upon the phrase ודע ("and know"). And I couldn't help thinking, "How fortunate we are!" When this phrase appears in any other book except for "Likutei Moharan", what follows is just information, however important or even vital it might be. But when Rabbeinu uses this phrase, we can be sure that he is now going to convey a revelation straight from the Olam HaAtzilus.
Read more

REJOINING THE WORLD

I never felt part of the world and never had any sense of belonging.  This is probably understandable, considering that I grew up in a Russian working-class neighborhood, with practically no Jews around but with a lot of Anti-Semitism (or maybe just plain xenophobia). This made an indelible impression upon me, and, try as I might, I could never really shake it off. When I was very young, I still tried to fit in, but, after I came to America with my parents at the age of 22, it became too hard. After a few feeble attempts, I totally gave up on being part of the world and sunk into a deep depression. After a few years, I came back to Russia but couldn't find a place for myself there, either. I had a felling that, if I ever allowed myself to become part of the world, it would somehow destroy me. For this reason, I was mortally afraid of getting a full-time job; I earned some money (not much) by giving private English lessons, but, for the most part, I was supported by my father. Then,...
Read more