Tefillah - 042 What It Means To Have Good Middos

Our Avodah To Resemble Hashem’s Middos

מי כמוך בעל גבורות ומי דומה לך  “Who is as mighty as You, and Who can resemble You?” We express how nobody is as mighty as Hashem, and that it is impossible for anyone to resemble Hashem.

What is the difference between these two terms? Why do we split this into two separate expressions of praise – first we say Hashem is mighty, and then we say that no one is comparable to Hashem?

Another question is that on one hand, we state here in Shemoneh Esrei that nobody can compare to Hashem. Yet, we also know that we have a general avodah to “resemble” Hashem – “hevay domeh Lo”, “You shall resemble Him”, through cleaving to the good middos of Hashem. This is a seeming contradiction.

Understanding Our Middos

[To know the answer to this, we must know the answer to a different question.]

[We just mentioned the concept that we are supposed to get our middos to resemble the middos of Hashem.] Why indeed must we acquire good middos? Does logic require us to work on our middos, because we are supposed to act with basic derech eretz (good manners), or is it because we are supposed to come to resemble Hashem?

Where do our middos come from? We have “good middos” which come from our nefesh habehaimis (our lower, “animalistic” layer of our soul) and we also have good middos which come from our lev – our heart. [1]

The “good middos” which come from our nefesh habehaimis are the middos which come from man’s aspect of adamah\earth; these middos are simply derech eretz, and they are middos which come the lower part of our soul.

But the higher part of our soul is in our heart, and this is the source of our higher “good middos”. Hashem is able to dwell in our heart; our heart is clearly the higher part of man. The middos which stem from our heart are the middos which we can be improved to resemble Hashem.

These are the two kinds of middos we have. The first kind of good middos are what we recognize as required “derech eretz”, to act with decent and proper behavior. This is the kind of good middos that Chazal say that we would have been able to learn from certain animals, had the Torah not been given. So these good middos are middos which even animals possess – hence they are called the middos of our nefesh habehaimis , the “animal” part of our soul.

Woe is to the person who only has good middos that even animals possess! These are middos that non-Jews can possess – they are good middos, but they are merely “derech Eretz”, and even animals possess them. If a Jew only develops these kinds of good middos, then he hasn’t developed the depth of his middos; he possesses mere derech eretz – which even animals can have.

There is a famous statement of Chazal, “Wisdom is found among the nations” (Chochmah B’Goyim Taamin). We must know what this statement means, however. There are many Jews today who unfortunately base their entire lives on this statement of Chazal, and they draw all their wisdom in life from non-Jewish knowledge. Thus, we have to know how to apply every statement of our Chazal, where and when it applies to; so we must know very well how to apply the statement of Chazal that “wisdom is found among the nations”, and what this really means!

We must be aware that we have higher middos in ourselves than the middos which non-Jews are capable of. We have in us higher middos that are able to resemble the middos of Hashem, and these are a whole different kind of “good middos” than the “good middos” which come from our nefesh habehaimis. [Therefore, we cannot learn about our middos from non-Jewish psychology about the soul.]

Psychology and Therapy Today

Even more so, the knowledge about our lower middos cannot apply to how we develop our higher middos. The lower middos, which are in our nefesh habehaimis, can be affected by our nefesh Elokis and become improved. But whatever we know about the nefesh habehaimis cannot help us develop the higher middos of our Nefesh Elokis.

There are people now from within our own people- I don’t want to say their names - who are trying to educate Klal Yisrael about the nefesh habehaimis, that we must all learn about what the nefesh hebehaimis is. They want Jews to learn about their nefesh habehaimis by learning about the nefesh habehaimis of a non-Jew. These people are uprooting our basic beliefs and lowering the Jewish people to the level of animals!

There is a famous saying of the Chasam Sofer[2] that we cannot bring proof even a non-Jew’s body to how we work with a Jew’s body. How much more so does this apply to our souls – we can’t learn about what a Jew’s soul is from learning about a non-Jew’s soul.

If we want to help a Jew develop his soul – whether we want to know about how to build our own soul, or whether we want to give therapy to a Jew who is going through stress – we can’t learn about this from knowing the psychology of a non-Jew’s soul. It is a very unfortunate situation that is occuring today, that Jews are being taught psychology about the non-Jewish soul so they can understand how the soul works. A non-Jew’s soul doesn’t teach us about a Jew’s soul!! Only the Rambam was able to study the souls of non-Jews and see which of the information could apply to us and which information could not.

The Two Stages of How A Jew Can Improve His Character

When we want to work to improve ourselves, we must realize that we have two parts in ourselves. The lower “good middos” in ourselves, which stem from our nefesh habehaimis, are the good middos which help us become a decent, “good” person. The higher middos in us are the part in us which helps us become closer to Hashem - through having good middos.

It is not enough to want to be a “good person”; a Jew has to become close to Hashem, and being a “good person” doesn’t always mean that he will aspire for closeness to Hashem. Therefore, to be a “good person” is a desire that comes from our nefesh hebahaimis, and it is not all there is to our good middos. Ultimately, we must become close to Hashem, and this utilizes the higher middos of our Nefesh Elokis.

If we want to work on our middos, practically speaking, we will need to first develop the lower part of our soul in order to get to the higher part of our soul. If we skip over developing the lower layer of the soul – if we neglect the development of our nefesh hebahaimis - we won’t be able to get close to Hashem. A person who wants to get close to Hashem, without first becoming a basically “good person”, is being delusional. We first have to become a “good person”, to begin with and then we can reach higher into our soul and become close to Hashem.

For example, let’s say a person doesn’t speak lashon hora (gossip). Why shouldn’t we speak lashon hora? Our soul should naturally recoil from speaking lashon hora, even if we aren’t yet perfected in our character and we’re not yet closer to Hashem through having refined middos. At a later stage, we can come close to Hashem through not speaking lashon hora, but first, we need to reach a basic level, in which we naturally recoil from lashon hora, because we should feel that we need to first become a “good person” – and we should feel that speaking lashon hora simply prevents us from being a “good person.”

So first, we need to develop a basic desire to become a “good person”. We should recoil from bad middos, simply because we want to become a good person.

However, this is only half the job. We must not remain with just the good middos of being a “good person”, because just to be a “good person” alone doesn’t get us close to Hashem. If we remain at the level of having good middos simply because we want to become a “good person”, we are remaining at the level of nefesh habehaimis.

The next part of our avodah, then, is to reach the higher part in ourselves, our Nefesh Elokis – the source of our higher middos, which are the middos that bring us closer to Hashem. This is when we get our middos to resemble Hashem’s middos. After the middos which come from our nefesh hebahaimis are improved, the middos of our Nefesh Elokus can now be properly developed, and it is these higher middos which will help us become closer to Hashem.

It is written, “And as for me, closeness to Hashem is good.” The only thing that speaks to our Nefesh Elokis is closeness to Hashem – that is the only thing that is truly “good”. A fundamental part of being close to Hashem is to have good middos that resemble Hashem’s middos. If we have bad middos that are left unfixed, we can’t get close to Hashem; our middos are like garments on top of us, so if we come to the King with bad middos, it’s like walking into the Palace of the King wearing sackcloth. The perspective of the Torah is that our bad middos prevent us from being close to Hashem, thus, we must fix our middos. Our Nefesh Elokis seeks to work on our middos because our soul has a deep yearning to get close to Hashem, and part of that involves working on our middos.

This is different than the desire of our nefesh habeheimis, which seeks self-improvement simply to become a “good person”, but not as a means of becoming close to Hashem. Our Nefesh Elokis seeks perfected middos as a tool to a greater end – to reach closeness with Hashem, which is impossible to reach with unfixed middos.

Knowing Your Motivations In Self-Improvement

Therefore, if we want to work on ourselves, we need to know what our motivations are. Why are we seeking to work on our middos? We need to figure out what our real motivations are in doing so. Do we simply want to become a “good person”…or is it because we want to have good middos so we will become closer to Hashem? That is the ultimate question a Jew needs to ask himself before he embarks on his journey of self-improvement.

Our Developed Good Middos Are A Spark of Hashem’s Middos

We can now understand the following. As we said, our nefesh  habehaimis  can feel like it wants to be a “good person” and thus seek to improve its middos, while our Nefesh  Elokis wants good middos because that will be a tool to get us close to Hashem. We have an avodah to get our middos to resemble Hashem’s middos, thus, working on our middos should be for that goal.

But here comes a question. We say in Shemoneh Esrei that nobody compares to Hashem ומידומה לך. If so, how can we ever come to get our middos to resemble Hashem?

The answer is: We do not really understand our middos. Our real middos of our soul are really the middos of Hashem, which we do not understand, because they are G-dly in their essence. Hashem’s middah of rachamim\compassion is what we must resemble, but we can only resemble the part of His middah which is within Creation. Beyond the compassion we need to have on others in Creation, we do not understand anything more about the middah of compassion, because Hashem’s middah of rachamim goes way beyond the bounds of Creation.

Therefore, we can understand the following. Chazal say that at first, Hashem wanted to create the world with middas hadin (attribute of judgment), but in the end He created it with the middas harachamim (attribute of mercy), because He saw the world would not last with middas hadin. Do we have to resemble the middas hadin of Hashem, and get our strictness to resemble Hashem’s strictness, just like we are supposed to resemble Hashem’s mercy? Our Rabbis wrote that resembling Hashem applies only to the middos of chessed\kindness and rachamim\compassion, but not the middas hadin. Why? Because Hashem did not end up using His middas hadin to create the world. The original thought in Hashem’s plan was to use middas hadin to create the world, but in the end, middas hadin was not used to create the world.

[This is the meaning of מי כמוך בעל גבורות ומי דומה לך  first we praise the gevurah\might of Hashem, which refers to His middas hadin; we are not supposed to resemble the middas hadin. Thus, we say afterwards ומי דומה לך even in the middos which we are supposed to resemble, the middas harachamim (trait of compassion), we still do not understand the middos of Hashem, and we can only resemble a mere sliver of Hashem’s compassion, by having compassion on others in Creation).

Why We Work On Our Middos

These are matters which are relevant to anyone who seeks to work on his middos and he wants to do it in the sensible, Torah approach, to go about it with daas (the true understanding of matters, based upon the Torah). We can’t just work on our middos without the proper understanding about what our middos are. The Vilna Gaon says that we live our life entirely to break our middos – therefore, we must really understand ourselves well in order to work on our middos.

We must realize that we have two parts to ourselves, the two sources for middos, which should not be confused with each other. These are fundamental understandings in how we work on our middos. First we must simply desire to become a “good person” and have refined character, but, we must not remain with this understanding. We must ultimately seek to become close to Hashem, and part of this requires you to work on your middos, to get your good middos to ‘resemble’ Hashem’s middos. That is the proper perspective to have on working on our middos.[3]