The Righteous Road
Now in order to understand this subject of leitzanus a little bit better we should listen to the words of the Mesillas Yesharim. The Mesillas Yesharim, you know, is a sefer of instructions on how to travel the path to success. That’s why it’s called Mesillas Yesharim, The Path of the Righteous; because that’s what it’s intended to be.
And he tells us that the first step, the first step in the right direction, is to acquire the quality called zehirus. Zehirus means awareness; from the word zohar. It means illumination of the mind, to develop a certain awareness. Because you cannot travel anywhere unless you know where you want to go. If you’re setting out in a certain direction, you have to know, “Where am I headed?” That’s the minimum awareness.
And even if you know already, even if you’re already on the right path, it’s a path of twists and turns, so you need to be focused. There are also obstacles that might cause you to trip, and so zehirus is the first requirement. Like the world says, ‘Keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel.’ That’s zehirus.
Obstacles on the Road
Now, the Mesillas Yesharim explains that there are three mafsidim, three big obstacles, for those who begin this career of traveling towards Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Now, we're going to deal with one of them tonight but the other two we'll enumerate briefly. The first one is והטרדה הטיפול, when you have no time; when you’re too busy to think. You must take some time out to think. When people are busy with many things, their minds are occupied and it becomes impossible to see clearly. That’s the first big hurdle that everyone must overcome.
Another obstacle he says is החברה הרעה, wrong company. Whom you associate with is of the utmost importance in shaping your character and your neshamah, your nitzchiyus; because a person is what his associates are. He thinks according to his environment. It's not impossible but it's next to impossible to be independent of your environment and the people around you – your friends, your employees, your neighbors – and therefore, unless you choose very carefully, your environment will be an obstacle to your success.
The Difficult Obstacle
Now, these two are very important and they deserve a great deal of talk, but tonight we’re going to discuss the one that the Mesillas Yesharim says is קשה מאד, very difficult. It means that this mafsid, this obstacle, is very serious; it’s the most perilous of the three. It makes achievement very difficult to gain and it’s difficult to overcome.
What is it? הוא השחוק והלצון – It’s laughter and jesting, leitzanus; what we call in English kibbitzing. But the Mesillas Yesharim tells us that it’s much more than that – he says it’s sakonas nefashos. כי מי שטובע בם – Because someone who is sinking in leitzanus, הוא כמי שטובע בים הגדול – is like a man sinking in an ocean, שקשה מאד להמלט ממנו – which is very difficult to escape from (ibid.).
Who Are the Jesters?
Now, before we speak about what it means that a leitz is drowning, first we have to understand whom he is referring to here. Is he talking about vaudeville players, street corner men who are always standing around and joking? Is he talking about the jesters who like to pull out a chair from a man who’s about to sit down?
No. He’s talking about us. He’s talking about the majority of Orthodox Jews today who are going lost in an ocean of tzechok v’lotzon. It’s very prevalent everywhere, an attitude of laughing, joking, of sense of humor and making light of everything.
That’s why you’ll find that you walk into some synagogues and before they start davening they're sitting and talking. What is it? It's a moshav leitzim. This one makes a joke and this one comes back with his own wisecrack. Whatever it is, there's always laughing. Always an unserious attitude. Always chewing the rag.
The Sin of Unseriousness
Even at the mikveh; there’s always something to say. He’ll make a quip about the rabbi or about something that happened yesterday. Another one will speak about this and that. They come out of the mikveh worse than they came in. If you’ll listen to me you’ll go by yourself. Dunk yourself in the mikveh and then go out and go home. Don't sit around talking. Don't sit and talk and joke.
But it’s not only in the back of the shtiebel and in the mikveh. I’m only pointing out those places because even in the places of kedushah v’taharah you find such things. But it’s everywhere today; everyone loves a good joke, a good laugh, and if you’re the one who’s able to crack a sharp one, or better yet a quick comeback, a rejoinder, so you’re already from the ‘special’ ones. And that’s a big problem. We’re turning ourselves into leitzim.
Now, we have to ask the question that is niggling our minds: What’s so bad? What’s so bad about kibbitzing, about being a humorous person? And that it should be so bad that it’s like drowning in the ocean without a life-preserver? It’s a good question.
The answer is that leitzanus makes it impossible for a person to see anything clearly. When a person is a jokester, in a light frame of mind, that causes him to forget his purpose in life. The light frame of mind, the steady and constant unseriousness, ruins a man’s mind so that he’s no longer able to feel, to taste the things of idealism. If you’re not in a serious frame of mind, you can’t grasp the seriousness of life. And life is serious. Very serious! There’s nothing more serious!
Don’t Laugh, Be Happy
Now we’re not talking about being sad. Our subject has nothing to do with not having a happy disposition; it's not connected at all. A man should be cheerful and happy always. You must be happy because that gives you the dynamo, the energy, to make progress.
And you should make others happy too. You should smile at everyone. Not a stupid American grin – a warm smile. You should say words of cheer, even humor sometimes. If there’s a special purpose for it, a chessed, then it’s not wrong.
Let’s say if somebody is downcast and by saying a joke you can cheer them up. So it’s like taking licorice and mixing it with some sugar and putting it in a bottle and putting a label on it and making it look like some important medicine, and now the person who takes it feels good. You’re deceiving him into making him feel good. So the joke, although in itself it’s nothing at all, it’s a leitzanus, but if it makes a person’s spirits rise, it’s a mitzvah.
The Funny Father
So, if you come home in the evening from the office, let’s say, and your wife is worn out raw. The children were frazzling her nerves all day long. And therefore every little problem is magnified in her eyes. Little Chaim’l, he doesn’t eat, and it becomes such a major problem, that all the problems of the world are dwarfed in comparison.
And so the father has to make a joke out of it. Of course, he has to be careful to do it in such a way that his wife doesn’t become the butt of the joke. But it has to be a joke – “It’s not so serious; Chaim will one day be a big fat rabbi anyhow.” When it’s necessary to cheer up a fellow Jew, so you say some kind of bedichasa.
So it depends on the circumstances. Everything we say here has to be taken with a grain of salt – it means you have to know how to apply it. When and where and how. Even at home you have to be very careful not to be a leitz.
Because if it’s not needed – if nobody needs your milsa debedichasa – then keep far away from leitzanus. You want to be the life of the party? Or maybe someone else is cracking jokes and you want to show you can also crack them yourself? That’s a 100% waste of effort.
The Heavy Obstacle
And worse, it’s a 100% obstacle to greatness. Because the superficiality of leitzanus keeps a superficial froth on top of the mind so you think there's something there but underneath it's empty. And that ruins the ability to think. It takes away your concentration and makes you forget the purpose in life. It murders your mind.
It’s not an exaggeration! It murders your mind because you won’t take anything serious in life. When a person becomes lightheaded and silly then all of his great ideals tumble away into nothing. Any zehirus, any illumination of the mind, goes out the window. If you’re always grinning,
