There is a Jewish practice called Shovavim. The name שובבי''ם is an abbreviation made up of the first letters of the parshiyos of תרוישלח בא בארא ומות ש שפטיםמ. The practice of Shovavim has its roots in the Kabbalistic writings of the Arizal, which say that a person should make special efforts to do teshuvah for certain aveiros during these weeks.
In earlier generations there were people who fasted and made a big deal of Shovavim. When I grew up I did not see a special atmosphere during these weeks even among bnei Torah. According to Kabbalah, one should try to fast eighty-four times. But there is a shortcut, which is to fast two days straight. I know someone who fasted two days straight, and he did it three times. He did this every year, together with other talmidei chachamim. They recited selichos and did teshuvah. He got up one time at midnight and simply fainted. I ran over to him to tell him to stop fasting, but he did not want to listen to me.
There are still people in our generation who make a big deal out of Shovavim. I want to tell you an easy way by which we can connect to this matter of Shovavim, which was practiced by Jews throughout the generations.
It is very interesting that great tzaddikim would tremble before yom hadin, and simple people were not as worried about it. Most of us feel that we are neither super great, spiritually speaking, nor super terrible. We tend to feel that we are not perfect but we are not in such bad shape either. We live a Jewish lifestyle. We don’t do big aveiros.
On the other hand, there are tzaddikim whose kedushah and taharah cannot even be described. When yom hadin approaches they weep to Hashem and beg of Him to grant them purity: א ר ב הו ב ט ל י ב ר ק ב ש ד ן ח כו נ ח רו קים ו ל י א ל! They seek ways to attain atonement for their sins.
Shovavim is a special opportunity to be cleansed, to gain purity and atonement.
The Torah describes the exile in Egypt as kur habarzel, the “iron crucible.” Hashem put the Jewish people in Mitzrayim to cleanse them in preparation for receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. When we read these parshiyos we try to connect to this process of purification and refinement that is in the air at this time due to the parshiyos of Yetzias Mitzrayim.
Do I Need This?
The question in our minds at such a time probably goes this: Do I actually need this cleansing process? Is my neshamah so stained?
As an introduction to the answer, let’s talk in general about the subject of educating our children.
Chazal say regarding the first Torah subject that children should study:
Let those who are pure come and occupy themselves with taharos, with that which is pure.
Children are pure. And they are to learn taharos, “that which is pure,” meaning korbanos. The offerings in Beis Hamikdash were maintained on the highest level of purity. Korbanos are traditionally the first Torah subject that Jewish children learn. We will explain why.
Let’s say a person has a rash on his skin that doesn’t go away. He pays a visit to the doctor and expects to get a skin cream. But the doctor sends him to the pharmacy with a prescription for a tablet that he needs to take every few hours.
The patient is surprised. He doesn’t understand what a tablet will help him. The doctor explains that the problem is not a superficial skin condition. It’s something internal, in his blood. The rash is caused by a bacterial infection. Rubbing a cream on it might make it go away in that particular place on the skin, but it will reappear somewhere else. Whereas if the infection itself is treated, the skin will heal and become as clear as a baby’s skin.
Sometimes treating a problem superficially is not the right approach. We need to dig deeper and get to the source of the problem.
Now let’s apply this to a different type of problem, to chinuch. Let’s say you have a child who just can’t sit still. He jumps around all the time, he bothers his brothers and sisters, when he is put in the chair to eat he jumps out of the seat a second later. What should you do? Buy glue to fasten him to his seat? That won’t help. He will jump with the seat. So what’s the solution – bolt his seat down to the floor? Obviously that is not the solution either. Because the problem is not the jumping itself. The problem is deeper. Perhaps there is an emotional issue or a neurological issue. Gluing him down or bolting his chair is not treating the problem.
Now let’s say a child speaks up rudely to his parents and teachers. Some teachers will just tell him to sit down and keep his mouth shut. That is like gluing the hyperactive child to his chair. The problem is not that the child gets up and rudely opens his mouth. The problem is deeper than that.
Or let’s say a child steals. What should you do – tie his hands? Nowadays in our “enlightened” era, when theft becomes too prevalent they put more police officers on duty. So what happens? The phenomenon develops that police officers themselves steal. We don’t solve the problem by increasing police presence.
These problems are not superficial; they are rooted in the neshamah. Who knows and understands souls? Hashem does.
אלקי נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא – “My G-d, the soul that you placed within me is pure.” This neshamah needs nourishment. It needs purity. Hashem tells us that when a young child jumps and is overactive, he needs Chumash Vayikra, he needs to learn korbanos.
I will give you a different allegory to illustrate the point. Someone buys a new luxury car. He turns the key and nothing happens. He goes back to the car dealer and says, “What did you sell me? The car doesn’t work.”
The dealer says, “Did you put gas in the tank?”
He says, “What’s that?”
The dealer goes and brings a gas cannister, and the customer starts shouting, “You’re going to put that stuff in my fancy car?!”
The dealer says, “Please understand. We work with the manufacturer of this car. We are the official dealers and we know how it works. And I am telling you, without gas in the tank, your car won’t work.”
Hashem says to us, so to speak: I manufactured this child. I created him. He has a neshamah that needs Chumash Vayikra, and the story of Yosef and his brothers. It may not sound logical to you, but that is what it needs. If you give the neshamah what it needs, you will see how this works wonders.
This is the basis of Jewish education. We learn Torah and keep mitzvos in order to penetrate deep in, to the neshamah, and solve the problems of the child and of the adult alike.
I remember when I was a child that my uncle R. Yaakov Weinberg, rosh yeshivah in Baltimore, would come to visit us. Every time he came he would start to talk in learning with my father, and within five minutes they started to shout, and then they chased one another around the table. If you go into a yeshivah you hear shouting. Why are they shouting? Because we want the kedushah to go really deep in, all the way to the neshamah.
Mitzvos Reach Deep
Now let’s return to the subject of Shovavim.
Mitzvos have a much deeper effect that we tend to think. It says in the Zohar that matzah is called nahama d’mehmnusa, “the bread of faithfulness,” because eating matzah gives us the spiritual strength of emunah, just as eating regular bread gives us physical strength. Matzah is also called nahamah d’asusa, “the bread of healing,” because it heals all our spiritual and emotional problems.
It’s the same with aveiros. If a person commits a sin it puts a stain on his neshamah that goes a lot deeper than we tend to think. An aveirah causes impurity to penetrate deep down to the neshamah. But I don’t want to talk about aveiros right now.
X-Ray of the Soul
Let us focus on our generation and try to evaluate whether Shovavim is for us or not.
My maternal grandfather was a great tzaddik. He came over from Europe, and in America he never ate meat that came from the butcher shop. He would take a live chicken over to a shochet that he knew personally because otherwise he did not feel that he could rely on the shechitah. He would remark that every American Jew (of that time) has a little pig in his stomach, because a person eats a candy that has a treif ingredient, and then he eats another something with another questionable ingredient, and over the years it adds up to become “a little chazir.”
We go down the street and see improper things, we hear improper things on the bus or the train or in the shopping center, and so forth. Do you realize what this does to our neshamah? Someone once told me, “You know why I stopped smoking? I was there at a lung operation one time, and I saw how the lung had turned completely black from cigarette smoke. I never imagined that smoking does such immense damage!”
As we mentioned before, the mitzvos we do have a deep effect on us that reaches all the way down to our very neshamos. And the same is true with negative things we encounter. They have a deep effect.
Just think what our neshamah looks like after everything we have taken in. You know what color it is? You know how many layers of filth it has?
We are covered by filth on top of filth, and then we open a Gemara and don’t understand why it doesn’t penetrate us, why it doesn’t get in. Why don’t we understand? Hashem says נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא – He put a pure and clean soul into us. But do you know how many layers have accumulated on it?
If a person is able to clean himself up, he should do so.
Cleaning Instructions for a Neshamah
How do you clean up a neshamah? There are people who fast, do teshuvah, weep to Hashem. This is a wonderful thing. But what I suggest for people like us is a little different. We, too, have a way that we can do it.
ה ב ה ה א ס כ ים ת ע ש ל פ ל כ ע ו – Love will cover up all sins.
This is a very important idea. Love of Hashem has the power to cover up all sins. To become cleansed by means of teshuvah and maasim tovim is the method of yiras Shamayim. It is a kind of purifying fire. But there is another type of fire: love. Love of Hashem, which is called שלהבת י־ה, “the flame of Hashem.” This fire of love has a special power. If a person loves Hashem, the love cleans up his neshamah.
What is love? Matan Torah was an expression of love. Love has two parts.
יהו ת פ יק ש נ י מ נ ק ש י – “May He kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.” This kiss was the Giving of the Torah. The Vilna Gaon asks why is the word “kisses” in the plural?
When husband and wife have a loving relationship, it stands on two foundations. The first is that the wife is faithful to her husband and doesn’t look to other men. The second is that the wife loves her husband.
“The kisses of His mouth” expresses these two foundations. It expresses the two fundamental commandments of לא יהיה לך לאלקים אחרים על פני – “You shall not have other gods beside Me.” And it expresses אנכי ה' אלקיך – “I am Hashem your G-d.” The first means we are faithful to Hashem and don’t look to other gods. The second means that Hashem is ours. We love him. “I am Hashem your G-d.”
This is what a loving relationship is based on. And a love relationship requires privacy.
What we need to do, at least, is to love Hashem.
