Cheshbon Hanefesh: A SWOT of Ner Tamid
In 1812, a small Jewish book was published by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Levin, titled, Cheshbon Hanefesh, Spiritual Accounting. It became a classic, studied in many yeshivos and beyond, really anyone looking to develop their character and track it, would turn to this small guide. He acknowledges in his introduction that it is not an original method, and he “borrowed” it from someone else, but he does not tell us who. It turns out the man behind this method is none other than Benjamin Franklin. Though Franklin was a deist and did not believe in an all-knowing and caring G-d, he still believed in taking stock of who we are and how we are doing morally and ethically.
I’ve never read the book, but I do love its title – Spiritual Accounting. Life is so busy, so distracting, that it’s hard to stop and assess if we’ve grown or if our spiritual stock has gone down, if we’re closer to our life goals or if we’ve lost sight of them. Most of us rarely do a spiritual accounting. But G-d in His infinite kindness gave us a season for Cheshbon Hanefesh. These next weeks are a special time for introspection.
Now Cheshbon Hanefesh is exceptionally subjective and personal; one person’s growth is another person’s failure. But there is also a collective spiritual accounting that should take place every year. We should ask ourselves, as a nation, how are we doing? Which way are we trending? And it’s also important to do as a community, and that’s what I’d like to do this morning, to make a Cheshbon Hanefesh for our shul, for Ner Tamid. How are we doing? Which way are we trending?
In the corporate world, there is a simple assessment, far simpler than the one promoted by Benjamin Franklin, called a SWOT. You review the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – SWOT.
So let’s start with STRENGTHS: One of the greatest strengths of our shul is its friendliness and warmth; people come here and feel seen, feel accepted, and that is precious. It’s one of the things that makes our shul so attractive. However, and here we venture into WEAKNESS territory, as the shul grows, as there are more and more people here on a Shabbos morning, it gets harder to say hello to every new person.
As you can see on the front of our bulletin, 35 membership units joined this year. Half of those units are families, half of those units are singles. Half of those units are older than 40, the other half are younger. I would describe that as exceptional growth. Baruch Hashem! And yet, I was just speaking to someone who told me he came to the shul twice in the past two months and I totally missed him. I don’t think I’m the only one. We are all missing people every Shabbos who are new to the shul or almost new to the shul. If what attracted us to this shul was its warmth, if what makes us proud of our shul is the friendliness, then we really need to strengthen our great strength.
I was just speaking to a colleague who was commenting on how important kiddush is. We have such limited human interaction these days and kiddush is the few minutes every week that people have a chance to just shmooze. It makes so much sense that we want to get together with our friends and catch up. But can we take two minutes every Shabbos before we join our friends to look around and say hello to a stranger?
Being a diverse, welcoming, caring, come-as-you-are shul is so rare these days. We have something so precious going on for us. We can also do better. And so I asked Jeff to order many more red cups. If you are new to the shul, and for this Shabbos only, if you joined the shul anytime in the past year, please pick up a red cup. And everyone else, you know what to do. Let’s find those red cups and give our new friends a proper Ner Tamid welcome.
Le’s now move on to our Weaknesses.
Two years ago, if you were to ask me what a weakness of the shul is, I would say, Torah learning. There was not too much of it going on, it was just not our strength. The past two years have been mind-blowing. The amount of men, women, and teens, learning in our shul daily is off the charts. Show of hands, who learned more these past two years than they have over the past decade?
Each of you have elevated the shul immeasurably; the collective knowledge base of the shul – the questions I’ve been getting the past two years have really made me sweat! (I never learned Zevachim! Stop asking me questions on the daf!) The model for the children watching adults study. It is nothing short of a spiritual revolution in these walls. Torah learning is no longer a weakness; it is a strength!
But there is a weakness I do want to focus on. Last year, on Rosh Hashana, I spoke about prayer. I put my heart and soul into writing a sermon on the topic. The takeaway was, we are going to work on prayer as a community; louder davening and more heartfelt prayer. I even committed to writing a weekly piece on prayer. I stopped a few weeks in and you know how many people reached out to tell me they missed it? Zero. That’s not your fault, that is my fault. The entire initiative flopped.
More people come to services but that’s not what I was focusing on. The energy level, the participation, the sense of connection to the tefilos does not feel very different than it was last year.
I’ve been wondering why. Why when we encouraged people to learn Torah, which takes a lot of brainpower and time, so many people jumped in, and when it came to increasing the energy for davening – which you’re here for anyway! it fizzled.
Recently someone told me about a fascinating book called, “Change or Die”. The book opens with the example of individuals suffering from serious and terminal diseases that had been brought on by lifestyle choices that they can still change – but they don’t. Their doctors tell them, “If you want to stop the course of your heart disease before it kills you, then you have to stop smoking, stop drinking, stop overeating, start exercising, and relieve your stress.” But very few do. Even two years after bypass surgery, 90% of the patients have not changed the lifestyle that brought on the disease. Facts, fear, and even force do not get people to implement lasting change.
There is one thing that works. If they join a group committed to the same goal they succeed.
That’s the magic sauce. Joining a group of people committed to the same goal.
There is a delightful and sometimes annoying WhatsApp chat for our shul in which people post when they learn. For example, on Thursday, Gabe Lewin, David Maine, Marc Berman, Bruce Blumenthal, Ilene Heneson, Howard Elbaum, and Gavi Deppin posted that they learned a page of Zevachim for Daf Yomi, Ken and Susan Besser posted they learned the Daf, Nach Yomi, and Live the Blessing, Tova Friedman, Max Shapiro, and Adina B, posted that they did Amud Yomi. People like Sandra Burstyn, Adam Plunka, Joel Carter, and Tamar Frydman always make the rest of feel like we could do better as they list DY, AY, MY, NY, and LTB. There are more people, but you get it.
The point is that we are working together as a group, we are part of something, and as all the research indicates, when you do something together, your chances of success are so much higher.
So allow me to do public teshuva. I tried to enhance the davening of our shul last year and I fell short. Let me try again and present to you an opportunity of a lifetime.
To pray with real intention is not easy. They say a story about the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the Chassidic movement, how his followers once approached him. There was a new rabbi that everyone was talking about, they said he was a miracle worker who had solutions for everything. They asked the Baal Shem Tov how to test him to see if he was legit. The Baal Shem Tov said, “Ask him for a method to have perfect kavannah, perfect intention during prayer. If he says he has a method, he’s a fraud. There is no such thing.”
It’s hard but we often make a mistake and think that if we can’t focus, if we don’t understand all the words, or don’t know when to stand or bow, or we do but we have a hard time concentrating, then davening is not for us. That is false.
Prayer is described as avodah she’b’lev, it is the service of the heart, and every one of us have a heart. The highest level of prayer is to pour our hearts out to G-d, with sincerity. We all have the capacity. What we need are reminders to nudge us along. What we really need is a community of people doing the same thing.
So here’s the opportunity. With a big thank you to Ari Weiss, the new book that we are going to be studying as a shul is not about Lashon Hara or about making peace. It is about prayer. Some pieces will speak to you, others won’t. It doesn’t matter! The main thing is that it will give you a little nudge. The books are free and the new cycle starts Rosh Hashana. And then, after Shabbos, I beg of you, join our whatsapp chat and post when you learn. Because when we do this together, it will work.
To round out our analysis, I am supposed to share a threat. But there is none. The Medrash (Shir Hashirim) records G-d as saying to us, “P’sach li p’sach shel machat, open a small tiny hole in your heart, the size of a needle, ve’Ani potei’ach lachem petachim shetiheyu agalot nichnasot bo,” and I will rip your harts so wide open that wagons can travel through them.” There is nothing standing before us; we just need to take one small step in the right direction. G-d will do the rest.
We have what it takes. The proof is Neilah; when everyone sings along and davens so beautifully. We don’t have to wait until then. Whether you have a great voice or not, sing with the chazzan! It lifts us all up! Imagine if already on Rosh Hashana, everyone is really singing along. How powerful would that be!
The truth is, we don’t have to wait until then – let’s open that heart of ours just a tiny little crack right now…