When a child is growing up, he or she just assumes that how they are raised and what goes on in their home is how things are supposed to be. That is why abuse in the home is referred to as the “gift that keeps on giving”. Children emulate what they experienced when they were young.
Sometimes such experiences are not all that bad.
My childhood Jewish educational experiences probably seem by today’s standards to be a bit much. Monday through Thursday we attended Talmud Torah after public school. Friday night was services. Saturday morning was services, and then, after meal and discussion at the shul, we would walk with the rabbi to his house where we would continue to study and would beg Rabbi to teach the Rebbitzen how to cook. She was very smart, according to our mothers, but not a good wife, because she was a bad cook and an even worse housekeeper. After Havdalah we would go home and have Sunday School the next day.
We did not think there was anything wrong or unusual about this routine. This is just what we did. Didn’t everyone?
One of our practices, which had its origins in the Sephardi and Mizrachi worlds, was to have a brief-ish Selichot service at midnight every day (except Shabbat) for the entire month of Elul, the month right before the High Holy Days. Part of this approach to the Days of Awe was the appointment of an Angel of Justice and an Angel of Compassion, who would accompany us until Rosh Hashanah. As we examined how we had behaved in the previous year, we would wrestle with the question of whether any individual act merited compassion by the Almighty, or rather, merited justice. As we looked at our own actions, we had to decide if there were extenuating circumstances that mitigated the judgment towards compassion.
Our Angels helped us understand what it meant to stand before the Divine facing judgment. Were we worthy of compassion?
And if we ask the Divine for compassion, how can we not offer it to others, who, like ourselves, wrestle with their own flaws?
In the first century, the noted Rabbi Hillel wrote that whatever is hateful to us, we must not do to others. We are obligated to treat others with the same compassion with which we want to be treated. Perhaps, this is the most important way to begin to change as we enter the New Year.
May you and your have a safe and healthy New Year.
Shana Tova,
Rabbi Stanley Halpern