Ki Teitzei: Measuring Compassion

Practice is inherent in the Mussar tradition. In order to develop, change, or transform on a journey toward holiness, knowledge in itself, is inadequate. While the pathway starts with learning, knowledge needs to come to life. Practice is what embeds the learning in the heart so that it becomes the fabric of who you are. For example, the lazy person becomes energetic; the miserly person becomes generous.

Mussar students practice one trait for one or two weeks, often in a series of 13, moving through 4 cycles of 13 traits in a year.

Mussar practice involves three core practices.

In the morning, students focus on one selected soul trait or middah. They use a phrase, often in Hebrew, to recite in such a way as to enliven and energize the soul.In the evening, the practice is to keep a journal. Students look back over the day and record the events of the day where the middah showed up. I would ask myself, if I were working on generosity, where did it show up? How did I react? I would write about the situation in an objective way. The journal is a way of highlighting the experience so that as time goes on one starts to see a pattern. Once you know you are going to be keeping a journal, as the day plays out, the thought of keeping a journal will “flag” your experience. It will help you build awareness. Journaling is an effective practice as long as it is done regularly.

Between the morning and the evening, the Mussar student gives himself or is assigned an exercise, a kaballah. For example, you might do three generous acts today. One day, generosity with your money, another, your feelings, another, your possessions. You can be generous in so many ways. The goal is not the practice per se, it is to transform the inner being of the individual so that you move closer to the ideal of what a human being can be. For every quality, we know there are exercises from the 19^th century and earlier. From the video, Mussar Practice, with Dr. Alan Morinis, Founder, The Mussar Institute.

WHAT ARE MUSSAR MIDDOT?

Humility: ענוה – Anavah (often spelled with two vavs as ענווה )Patience: סבלנות – SavlanutGratitude: הכרת הטוב – Hakarat Ha’TovCompassion: רחמים – RachamimOrder: סדר – SederEquinimity: מנוחת הנפש – Menuchat Ha’NefeshHonor: כבוד– KovodSimplicity: הסתפקות – HistapkutEnthusiasm: זריזות – ZerizutSilence: שתיקה – Sh’tikahGenerosity: נדיבות – NedivutTruth: אמת – EmetModeration: שביל הזהב – Shevil Ha’zahovLoving Kindness: חסד – ChesedResponsibility: אחריות – AchrayutTrust: בטחון – BitchonFaith: אמונה – EmunahAwe: יראה Yirah – *No English translation is accurate. A close association is fear/awe.https://mussarinstitute.org/what-are-mussar-middot/

Compassion may indeed involve feeling. It also may breed action. But these qualities do not take the definition far enough. The soul-trait of compassion may be more accurately defined as the inner experience of touching another being so closely that you no longer perceive the other one as separate from you.

Rachamim—compassion—does not come into being just by feeling empathy. The depth and richness of the emotional connection must be translated into action that expresses concretely how truly moved you are to take care of the other.

Though it is not its defining characteristic, compassion does have an important emotional component. My oneness with you means that whatever you are feeling is also stirred within me as my own emotional experience. Your sadness is my sadness. Your pain is my pain. Your confusion is my confusion. Your joy is my joy. Compassion may not be an emotion, but it cannot exist without full emotional contact with the other.

Morinis, Alan. Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar (p. 80-81). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

Parashat Ki Teitzei, which we read during the third week of Elul, also (like the previous portion Shoftim) derives a lesson in the kind of mindfulness we are trying to cultivate during this month from the laws of war. Images of war abound during Elul. On the first day of Elul we begin to add the 27th Psalm to our morning and evening prayers. (See quote below.) It is as if the tradition is trying to tell us, "This business of becoming aware of ourselves is a matter of life and death. This business of finding out who we are needs to be approached with the focus and energy of a military campaign."~This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew, p. 85

Since we can't and probably shouldn't repress our desires, and since it is so often a calamity when we follow them, what should we do? The passage from Ki Teitzei points us to an answer. First of all, we watch our desires arise. The soldier at the beginning of Ki Teitzei has to live with his desire, to watch it as it evolves without acting on it, for a full month. And the second thing we can learn from him is that once we have our desires firmly in view, we can then strip them of their exotic dress. We can make them cut off their fingernails and their hair, we can make them take off that revealing frock they are wearing when we first saw them. In other words, we can see them for what they really are.

Why do we run after ambition? Why do we need fame and fortune? ... If we try to put these desires down, they'll only come up somewhere else. If we kill them off altogether, we may be doing violence to ourselves; we may be killing off the basis of our real creativity.

Better to simply strip these desires of their romance and then watch them for a month before acting on them, before taking them to yourself. And what better time to do this than the month of Elul, the month we are supposed to devote to the regular cultivation of self-awareness, the month in which we begin the process of Teshuvah by shifting our gaze from the world outside to the consciousness through which we view that worlds. Certainly desire is a significant component of that consciousness, perhaps the most significant component.~This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew, p. 89-91

Because Jews once knew hunger and experienced what it was like to dwell as strangers on the margins of society, we are commanded to create a society in which the marginal are cared for and the hungry are provided with food.

The memory of Miriam's skin condition (tzaraat) is still another kind of memory, a highly truncated one. Already in the book of Exodus when Miriam is introduced, it seems clear she is not being remembered fully. She appears suddenly, leading the women in song at a central moment of the people Israel's history (Exodus 15:20-21) as if she materialized out of the desert sands. Later, her death and burial are recorded over one verse (Numbers 20:1). There is no account of her passing or of the community's response; she vanishes, disappearing as it were, into the desert sands. ~Judith Plaskow, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p.1188

In this parashah, her tzaraat is remembered but not her leadership; her punishment is recalled, but not the challenge to Moses' authority that she mounts with Aaron (Numbers 12:1-2)

If memory is foundational to Jewish community, then perhaps this one-sided memory of a very important woman in the Torah is part of what creates the preconditions for some of the sexual legislation in the parashah. It makes sense that a community that cannot remember its central female figures in all their roundedness will also have difficulty imagining women as agents of their own sexuality—and thus will repeatedly subordinate their interests to those of fathers and husbands. ~Judith Plaskow, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, p.1188

From the reading:Reflect on a time where you heart was moved by someone who was in pain. Is it possible that in your desire to empathetically connect with them, another person may have been hurt? What would have been different had you reflected on the need for justice for all of the individuals in this scenario? (or the need for compassion)

You want what is fair and what is right. You know who is the victim and who is the perpetrator, and you desire to see the perpetrator brought to justice. Is it possible that there is some space in your heart to empathize with the individual you have identified as the wrongdoer? Can you imagine yourself in their place and try to understand the choices that they made?