איך עושים חשבון נפש? (חלק 2)

00:03 This is Igress, and we're continuing what we started yesterday. Yesterday, we got ourselves into trouble. We started talking about Cheshbon Nefesh, and we did it for like fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, and you can't talk about Cheshbon Nefesh for twenty minutes. It's one of the founding principles of Hasidism, so it can't be spoken about quickly. Uh, we decided to do a second share on Cheshbon Nefesh. That also won't suffice, but it'll get us a little bit closer, I think, to, uh, to understanding what our approach is to it, especially in the month of Elul. Cheshbon Nefesh is, of course, a, um, a self-examination. That's probably the best way to put it. A time when we take usually before Shema or during the Kriyat Shema of the bedtime Kriyat Shema, we take some time to think about how our day went and how it could be better tomorrow, and the month of Elul is a time specifically set aside for this. One letter I wanted to show you from the Rebbe that really spends a lot of time on this is not from our year at all. That was last, that was last year. This one, we're gonna look at a letter from Tav Shin Lamed, from Chayei Elul of Tav Shin Lamed, where the Rebbe discusses at length the importance of a Cheshbon Nefesh. It's a long letter. My hope is that we'll get through the letter, and then we'll have time to do some of these sources that we have on the source sheet. But

01:02 at the very least, it is an Igress here, so at the very least, we should do a letter. We have from the Rebbe Sholom Ubracha. This is a letter from Tav Shin Lamed Chayei Elul, and it's written to everybody. The time of Elul, what's it a time, what's it a time for? It's a time for Cheshbon Nefesh, for an accounting of the previous year. Also a time to prepare for the coming year. Um, sorry, there we go. The Rebbe says, "We wanna have a good year, a blessed year next year. We need to make sure that we have a Cheshbon Nefesh, that we have a calculation, a, uh..." I need a better translation for Cheshbon Nefesh I can keep using. Whatever. A Cheshbon Nefesh. A Cheshbon Nefesh on the past. So a Cheshbon Nefesh on the past is necessary in order to make sure that we have a good new year. So we have here is the Rebbe starting to explain what a Cheshbon Nefesh is exactly. That is, that is to say, what happened that wasn't appropriate? What still needs to be done? What have I not done yet? What am I able to do? There also has to be a strong , uh, to fix anything that needs fixing, to fix that which, to complete that which has not been done yet. The Rebbe's giving some tips here, how to think through a Cheshbon Nefesh. That is, to think about the things that I could have done differently, to think about the things

02:34 that still need to be done, and also to think about how I can use my own talents and my own personal abilities to be doing better. How my pur-- how my purpose in this world dictates that I could be doing better in certain areas. And then to lift us up so that next year is even better than the last year. to go from strength to strength, that's the Rebbe's summary of a Cheshbon Nefesh. Now, in the letter, it's a long letter. He keeps on going. He keeps on talking about the importance of it. He says, How important is it every single year for a person to make sure that they have a, that they have a Cheshbon Nefesh, an honest accounting, a Cheshbon Nefesh? Um, The Rebbe says, "You want to prove how important a Cheshbon Nefesh is for a person's life, you can look at just how many days of the year are set aside for Cheshbon Nefesh, a significant amount of the year, several holidays entirely for that. First of all, the entire month of Elul. Hashem set aside one twelfth of our calendar year just for Cheshbon Nefesh. Furthermore, there's the twelve days, or specifically, he says, specifically the twelve days from Chayei Elul until Rosh Hashanah. This is something we talked about yesterday. It's supposed to be a Cheshbon Nefesh on every single one of the days of the-- every single one of the months of the prior year. Then there's Rosh Hashanah Gufa. There's Rosh Hashanah itself. That is the

03:50 time that we have Tekiah Shofar. As Ramam himself says, Ramam's the Meira Hagdol, and he says, "Why do we blow Shofar on Rosh Hashanah? In order to inspire us, to inspire us to make a Cheshbon Nefesh." So first of all, we have the entire month of Elul, and then we have the two days of Rosh Hashanah, our most important day of the year in a lot of ways, set aside really for inspiration for Cheshbon Nefesh. Then there's Aseras Yemei Teshuva, ten days of Teshuva, also specifically set aside for Cheshbon Nefesh. And specifically between Rosh Hashanah and the Aseras Yemei Teshuva, you have seven days. Those seven days between R-- 'cause Rosh Hashanah is two of them and Yom Kippur is one. So that's three out of the ten, which means the seven days intervening between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, there's seven of them. One of them is supposed to be a Cheshbon Nefesh on every single one of the days of the week, one for all the Mondays, one for all the Tuesdays, I guess starting from Sunday. I sound very goyish. All from one, all the Sundays, then all the Mondays, then all the Tuesdays. That's what we use those seven days for. And then there's the Yemei HaKedoshim, HaKippurim. So if you really think about it, something like forty days. Hashem set aside something like forty days out of the calendar year specifically for Cheshbon Nefesh, which gives us an idea, the Rebbe says, of the importance of a Cheshbon Nefesh. The

04:46 Rebbe continues in this section, In order to figure out what I did properly and what I messed up, I need to have a Chesh-- I need to have a Cheshbon Nefesh. The problem is I am biased. I'm always gonna say I did fine. Uh, subjectivi. I'm not able to really look at myself sub-- Um, I'm only able to look at myself subjectively. I'm not able to look at myself objectively, so it's difficult to make your own Cheshbon Nefesh. I mix in my own thoughts. I mix in how much I like myself, and therefore, I'm going to lean in a direction that is not precise. So the Rebbe raises a problem. I need to make a Cheshbon Nefesh. It's very, very important. It guarantees me a good new year. There's forty days set aside for it in my calendar, and yet I'm I'm biased. I'm likely to do a pretty bad job. The Rebbe says, furthermore, another reason why I'm likely to do a bad job, when it comes to mortal intellect, it's limited. Mortal intellect, the way we think, it's limited. In a lot of cases, it's hard to figure out if I did the right thing or the wrong thing. In some cases, it's clear-cut. A person does a bad thing, it's bad. But in a lot of cases, there's shades of gray, right? And in a limited mind, my limited mind, I'm not able to figure out all the time whether I did a good thing or bad thing. So I look back

05:58 on my year, I say, "I did this. Was this good or was this bad? I don't know." Hashem created the world and people. He knows our mortality, and He knows its difficulties, so He gave us the Torah. Why'd He give us the Torah? And I know that we know this in the back of our heads, but for some reason, when I read this in this letter, it struck me in a way it hasn't struck me before. The Rebbe says, "Why did He, why did God give us the Torah? Specifically to solve that problem." The Torah is a non-biased third actor. I don't know how many people think of Torah that way, but it's a good way to start. That is that there's so much bias in the world. I'm biased toward myself. I'm biased toward my intellect. My intellect is limited. Other people in my life, they push ideas and their biases. We have all sorts of people with their own reasons for thinking things and reasons for wanting things. And God gave us the Torah as a non-biased third party, as a, uh, arbitration. The arbit-the arbitrator of our lives is the Torah, which is, uh, which is godly intellect. When a person accepts upon themselves Torah and mitzvahs with Kabbalah's oath, that is, I'm not gonna mix in my, my human intellect and my own biases. I get linked up with godly Sechel, and godly Sechel knows what it's doing, and then I can figure out the truth. So the Rebbe's answer to

07:02 this problem is that, yeah, it's true. If you rely on yourself, you're gonna get stuck in a Cheshbon Nefesh every single time because you're biased and also because your limited mind doesn't know right from wrong. But if you first have Kabbalah's oath and say, "I'm going to accept that no matter what I did, no matter how I feel what I did, if it was with the Torah, it was good, and if it was without the Torah, it was bad," that gives me a third party that can sort of arbitrate between my different voices in my head to figure out whether I did the right thing or the wrong thing in the prior year. And then the Rebbe goes through, uh, the which I would love to do with you, but I'm instead just going to pass it along to you as a PDF to look through 'cause otherwise we will spend our whole time on this very long letter. But I think the main points we want from this letter from the Rebbe is first of all, that Cheshbon Nefesh is required if we wanna have a good year. That's what he says up here. It is absolutely obligatory if we wanna have a good year next year for us to have a Cheshbon Nefesh from the past year. Then the Rebbe emphasizes that you can see throughout how many-- you can see by how many days God dedicates to Cheshbon Nefesh, that it is an absolute yesod of our practice. And for anybody who

07:55 thinks Cheshbon Nefesh isn't the avoda that we do anymore, I would remind you, those forty days still exist. So as long as forty days of our calendar year is set aside for this, this is the yesod of Hasidism. How many days are dedicated to Pesach? I mean, we have a whole but Pesach at the end of the day takes up a week of our lives. For a lot of us, it takes up a month before and a month after, but in Misnah Chaggigah it's a week of our lives. If you wanna know the importance of something, look at how much time God dedicates to it. Cheshbon Nefesh gets forty days. Nothing gets forty days. Uh, then the Rebbe gives some practical advice on how to get around our own human limitations when it comes to Cheshbon Nefesh, and the basic practical advice is accept the Torah as the arbitrator on these issues. So now we've fulfilled kind of our obligation of doing a letter. Now that we've done an official letter, let's do some things that are not quite letters to expand upon the, uh, the Cheshbon Nefesh discussion. I first wanna draw your attention to some earlier sources. Uh, first of all, it's in Tanya, in Igeres HaTshuva chapter zayin. I brought you a little excerpt here, we're gonna read it together. That's probably the first time we hear about the very serious importance. In Tanya, it's mentioned the importance of Cheshbon Tzedek, but I think it's really driven home the most in Igeres

08:53 HaTshuva. This might be our only, our earliest Chabad source for its importance. If you want to subjugate the heart, if you wanna break the heart a little, and you wanna remove any spirit of impurity or spirit of the other side, if you wanna fix your problems... And by the way, in Igeres HaTshuva, I hate to make things too practical, and I really hate to make Hasidism into a psychology discussion, but every time that Tanya talks about a ruach hatumah or a yetzer hara, in addition to talking about the spiritual ills, it's talking about habit. That's what it really means, habit. Is that I have avodas I do, and I have things that I habitually do. The habitual things that I do that are bad are my ruach hatumah. That's the spirit of impurity. That's the, when Tanya says spirit of impurity, I'm sure it means a real spirit of impurity, but it also means bad habits. So how do I get out of my bad habits? Well, the that is to be a master of calculation, the master of a Cheshbon. And really thinking deeply about how to make a Cheshbon Nefesh. That is, the better I get at a Cheshbon Nefesh, the better I'll be at breaking my bad habits and removing any spirits of impurity from myself. He wants a whole hour of work on this, an entire hour every single day or every single night, up to you, before Tikkun Chatzos. To really think deeply about what I did by doing sins

10:02 and by removing the Shechinah, by exiling the Shechinah through my sins. The fact that when I did these sins, I uprooted my soul and my godly soul from the life of all life, may he be blessed. And then dragged it down, but dragged my poor soul down to a Makom Tumah, a place of impurity, a place of death. That's heavy stuff. That's not necessarily the Rebbe's Cheshbon Nefesh that we talked about yesterday. I think we have a sort of different version of that nowadays, but this is the, uh, Tanya's Tanya. So what is a Cheshbon Tzedek according to the Alter Rebbe in Igeres HaTshuva? That is me thinking about the gravity of a sin, is that I think about the thing that I did, and I think about how much it damaged me and how far it's taken me away from what I really should be. Kuntress HaTefilah, which the Rebbe recommends often for people who want to learn how to daven and be better in their ways of avoda. This is from the Rebbe Rashab. There's a, there's a kata from Kuntress HaTefilah. The Rebbe Rashab says, of course, you can only daven if you first take things seriously. I wanna jump to the middle here, though. Even if a person learns a lot of Torah, the Torah that you learn will not light up inside you. Sometimes a person learns a lot of Torah, but it doesn't change them. They don't get any better. They're involved in Torah, they're involved in mitzvahs, they're

11:12 involved in Yiddishkeit. They're coming to shul, and they're doing what they're supposed to do, and somehow they don't get any better. Why does that happen? Says the Rebbe Rashab, it's because they're missing the Cheshbon Nefesh. The Cheshbon Nefesh, the Cheshbon Tzedek is the thing that takes all the theoretical and turns it practical. When a person does a serious, just accounting within their soul, each person knows their own problems. A person will become very bitter about all this. He's going to not like himself very much. He'll break his spirit a little bit, kirbek, or actually a lot, he doesn't say a little. He'll break his spirit inside himself. And once he breaks that part of himself, he becomes a kli to hold God's light inside him, so God's light doesn't just reflect off of him. We learn a lot of Hasidism, we learn a lot of Torah, we're involved in Yiddishkeit a lot, but a lot of times God's light reflects off of us and doesn't go inside of us. The reason why it doesn't go inside of us is 'cause we haven't cleaned out the vessel. The vessel has to be cleaned out, and the way the vessel is cleaned out is with a Cheshbon Nefesh. I have here from Likutey Diburim, volume one, page one hundred. The, uh, Friediker Rebbe quotes a maimar. He says in a maimar from, uh, Vayima Shmini Hatzaras, Once upon a time, there was a guy who had a very special vessel, or a gal, had a very special

12:27 vessel, fancy vase, and it got very messy And, uh, Tell me, Abdul Basakankasha. The truth is, uh, workers always worked hard, the Free Decadeba says, but things used to be different. In the past, people always worked hard, but in the past, a Baal Esek, he would work hard, but he would also , they would invest their Torah, their Torah behaviors into their jobs. Those who worked in their place, they didn't leave. Those who worked in their place didn't travel as much. They would keep Te-- They would keep Tefillah Betzibar three times a day. They would learn, uh, Shameless plug for Ayin Yaakov Shir. They were involved in Shirat Torah. Then Friday would come. After midday on Friday, they would start preparing for Shabbos. Shabbos was not just remembering Shabbos in a way of Shabbos. They didn't just remember that the day was Shabbos, it was also Shabbos. They also guarded it. The Shabbos would pass in a time of Tefillah and Torah. Metsa Shabbos was almost like an Isru Chag for Shabbos Kadesh, in that they would continue celebrating. The entire week, they would learn with the that they received from Shabbos. They people, they wor-- they always worked hard, but they used to care about Shabbos in a way that we don't. He's the way that he's going to say we don't anymore. Nowadays, not so much. Nowadays, people work all week very, very hard, and they need to make a living. The Rebbe is not, the Free Decadeba is not happy with the

16:26 phrase, "Make a living." In this paragraph here, he rails on the phrase. He says, How can you make a living for yourself? Whatever living you need, God's gonna give you anyway. In the world in general, and specifically in America, they make a mistake. They think that the harder that they work, that they're going to get more. So they decide, I can't study so much. I can't daven so much with the Tzibar. I can't daven with a Minyan. I need to work harder 'cause the harder I work, the more I'll make. Hard work is one of the principles of Western society. Free Decadeba says it's ridiculous. At the end, the Shemoneh Shabbos, they stop their jobs so that they can read Lecha Dodi. They don't prepare, uh, at midday for Shabbos. They roll into, uh, they roll into Kabbalah Shabbos to say Lecha Dodi. What do they do on Shabbos? They rest with their body. They eat, they sleep, they go on walks. The moment Shabbos is out, they run and grab their cell phones. That's not what he says, but that's what he means. They immediately strap themselves back into the yoke of Parnassah and making a living. Their Shabbos is a, is a, uh, a, a token Shabbos, but it's not a Shabbos. Says this should be part of the Cheshbon Nefesh of a Baal Esek. That the Baal Esek should be thinking about this problem and how he can fix this. He has to make everything, he has to make sure that everything

17:43 is Beseder. So a Cheshbon, Cheshbon Nefesh of a Baal Esek must be that this is not the way life should be. He first has to make sure that he's keeping all of his mitzvahs, and also that he's working honestly the way that he's supposed to. And also, he needs to make sure that he's, uh, setting aside time for Torah study and davening with the Tzibar because, uh, he says he doesn't have time for it, but he's wrong, because for Devarim B'Talum, he absolutely does have time. He then adds, there are some Baale, some Baal Esek who are not working honestly. They are their job, they're not working, they're, they're being dishonest in their work. Them, they need to do a different Cheshbon Nefesh. Their Cheshbon Nefesh needs to be on Teshuvah Gemara for the Averot that they're doing by not working honestly. So we have two kinds of Baal Esek. One is, uh, Chas VeShalom, unfortunately, a Baal Esek who is dishonest in his work. This person's Cheshbon Nefesh needs to be that he stops being so dishonest. Once somebody is an honest worker but works too hard, his Cheshbon Nefesh needs to be about how he's treating his Shabbos, how he's treating his Tefillah, how he's treating his Torah, and how he doesn't and how he fails to recognize that he could be doing a lot more and still would make the exact same amount of money. When it comes to the Yesh B'Ohel, he says, when it comes to somebody who studies Torah,

18:42 it's mainly a, it's mainly a Gaava problem. I'm gonna go down here a little bit. These are the problems Torah scholars have. That is, uh, they waste time, they are full of themselves, they lie, they speak Lashon Hara, they hate people for no reason, they get jealous. What do they do? They garb all of that in an . They garb that all into a rabbinic cloak and say that it's for the sake of heaven. This needs to be the Cheshbon Nefesh of people who learn Torah all day, is that they need to check their Middot and remind themselves that these Middot that they claim are ones that they're using in the name of Torah are not, in fact, in the name of Torah, and they have the same rules as everybody else. Now going over here, there is a minor from the 3D cutter where he says that these are all Cheshbon Nefesh. Everything we've described is the Cheshbon Nefesh of a normal person, a normal Bal Esek, a normal Yesh Ivayil. However, a Hasid has to have a completely different kind of Cheshbon Tzedek, and here's how that goes. has to be even deeper than the ones that we've been described. When he reads the Shema, he has to make a calculation of the entire day. Whether he was able to, what did he accomplish when it comes to Hasidus? What good attribute did he acquire today? What good thing did he do today? When it comes to himself and to other people. is

20:05 light, and he, is light, and it reveals that which damages, and it reveals that which is the upright path. So when it comes to a Hasid, there is a different, a deeper level of Cheshbon Tzedek, and that is that the Hasid thinks about what good Midas I acquired today, what, uh, good actions I did today for myself and for other people, and what I did to further the cause of Hasidus today. And I use Hasidus as a light to figure out which things will damage me and which things will lead me onto the correct path. Rav Shlomo Carlebach, there's a book about Rav Shlomo Carlebach. I wanna conclude with that for today. There's a book about Rav Shlomo Carlebach's life, and a lot of people don't read it because they think that's what it's about. They think it's a biography about Rav Shlomo Carlebach. I talked to most of you about this a hundred times. Uh, this particular book, it's a two-volume book you must get your hands on. It has a short biography of Rav Shlomo Carlebach, but most of the book is that his students got together and relayed all of his teachings in Avoda, how to do his , how to dive in like a mensch, how to practice this nowadays, how to do a Cheshbon Nefesh, how to say a with just lines and lines of advice on practical Avoda. And I don't know if there's a Mashpia nowadays handing out that advice. If he is, I'd like to meet him.

21:08 Uh, in the meantime, there's a book about one, and it is absolutely incredible. So these are taken from the book. This is Rav Shlomo Carlebach, chapter ten, is all about Cheshbon Nefesh. These are some of the things that I found in the book. One is a quote from Rav Shlomo Carlebach. He said that this was a well-known quote. He would repeat it, but it was apparently known before him that someone who lives without Cheshbon Nefesh will die without doing Teshuvah. It's harsh, these words, but he explains why in one of his fabregans. Someone who lives without a Cheshbon Nefesh will come to the conclusion that they're more or less okay. Such a person doesn't do Teshuvah. So a person who lives their life without constantly thinking about where they're holding, ultimately will die without ever repenting for the things that they needed to repent for. A major focus of Rav Shlomo Carlebach, and also, I mean, he didn't make this up, this comes directly from Igeres HaRachamim Tanya, is that we focus on forward-facing things, and we focus much less on the past. A Cheshbon Nefesh is much less about thinking about how bad the things I did were and much more about thinking about how I can change things in the future. I will note that in of Tanya Igeres HaRachamim, it does sound like we're focusing quite a bit on the past and how negative it was. But definitely the main thrust of Cheshbon Nefesh is making Achlatus practical resolutions to improve in

22:07 the future. Uh, two different students write in their book about Rav Shlomo Carlebach that they went to him for practical, how do I live? Well, literally, what do I think about at night advice. He gave two similar ones, but these were the two ones he gave. One student he told that he should go-- that he should ask himself three questions every night before he goes to bed. He should say, "What caused me to be Nichshol? What caused me to be Nichshol today? What made me fail? What caused me to progress today? What caused me to do well so I can find which trends in my life are positive for me and which ones are negative for me?" And the third one, given who I am specifically and what my specific talents and abilities are, did I use them properly? Did I act like someone should, given the talents I have? So those are the three steps he gave one student. Step one, what got in my way? Step two, what moved me forward? And step three, given who I am specifically, did I use my talents properly? Another student asked him for similar advice, and he got a slightly different one. This one's directly from the Rabbi Rashab. I put the Yiddish down there for Sruli because I know Sruli's always happy when he gets to see the original Yiddish on the page. There it is. This is a rough translation of the Yiddish, and that is, what must it be? What practically can it

23:02 be? And what was it, L'maisa? That first I ask myself, what, uh, first I ask myself, what should I be? What should I be as a, as, as a Jew, as a father, as a, as a, as a parent, as a child? What should I be doing according to Halacha? And then I come to the realization that I'm not meeting that. So then I say, "Okay, well, what, what practically can I be? I'm probably not gonna... What should I be? I should be a Tzadik. I'm not a Tzadik. Uh, so what can I be? Pra-- What practically could I be? I could be a Benei. That's what it says in Tanya. I could be. L'maisa, what was I? I don't wanna share, but I think maybe you can guess. L'maisa, what was I? He, uh, somebody asked Rav Shlomo Carlebach at a fabrengen once, why you do step one? Why even bother with step one? Why say what it must be if that's something I can't be? Why not start with what could I be versus what was it? And he said, "If I have an, if I have an honest stage one and I really think about what I, what, what God wants me to be, that will make me be significantly more demanding in stage two, where I ask what practically can I be. So if I come to the conclusion that what God really wants from me is to be a Tzadik, and I think about that level, and then I realize

23:54 I'm not at that level, I much more seriously can say, what practically can I be? I can at least be a Benei because given He, He wants me to be a Tzadik. L'maisa, I have to be honest with what I was and start working on how I can make that a little bit better." Final thing I wanna mention is that Rav Shlomo Carlebach recommended four Maimon from the Filia Keraba that focus exclusively on the Avoda of Cheshbon Nefesh. He would tell young students when they were first learning how to do Cheshbon Nefesh to learn these four Maimon well, and he would chazen them with them. If you're interested in learning Hasidus on Cheshbon Nefesh and how to get better at it, those four Maimon are all found in Tafresh Tzadik Alef from the Filia Keraba. They are printed in Sefer Maimon, Contrese in Chelek Alef. The These four Maimon are from Tafresh Tzadik Alef, and they explain at length the exact process, Avoda, and meaning of Cheshbon Nefesh. That's it for today. Thank you all very much.