Droshos - Return to Our Simplicity

With the help of Hashem, we will try to speak about a certain fundamental and inner point.

The innermost point found in a person is called the power of temimus (wholesomeness, or simplicity, or earnestness). A person’s nature, since he is born, is to act with temimus. Temimus is what leads a person in how he acts. This is not only true with regards to one’s relationship with Hashem (as it is written, “You shall be tamim (wholesome) with Hashem your G-d”), but it is true as well with regards to all facets of life, that a person has a nature to act with temimus.

In the world today, though, temimus is something that people make fun of. When a person has temimus, people look at him with disdain, viewing him as someone who is losing out in life by having temimus.

In the kind of life that is going on today, we indeed must be very clever in order to learn how to avoid all the falsity going on in today’s world, and we cannot survive if we just go with temimus.

But at the same time, we must realize that it is not our nature to be cunning. Our nature we are born with is to act with temimus. Our nature is really not to have to resort to any kind of deviating cleverness.

In our original state, Adam lived only with Hashem. As long as Adam didn’t deviate from his simplicity, even the Snake wouldn’t have been able to tempt him. It is only after Chavah was created that the Snake could come and tempt Adam to question Hashem’s ways, because after Chavah was created, Adam was no longer “alone” with Hashem, and therefore he became vulnerable to the Snake’s clever arguments.

If a person is talking English to someone who speaks French, they can’t have a conversation. The same was true with Adam before the sin. Before the sin, Adam only conversed with Hashem; the language of the Snake, his clever arguments, did not speak to him. Adam only knew of earnest belief in Hashem’s will, and no other language spoke to him; he could not fathom being “clever” in any way and to deviate in the slightest way.

That is our natural state: “G-d created man upright, but they seek many calculations.” (Koheles 7:29).In our original state, we are upright. But now we are after the sin, after Adam listened to the clever arguments of the Snake. We can see clearly this now in our current generation, where cleverness (in Hebrew, armimus) is more dominant than temimus (earnestness).

The world today is full of falsity, and this is clear to all. Since that is the situation, we need to question things in life so that we can avoid danger. Ever since we are children, we begin to discover that we can’t survive when we only act with temimus. We learn that the world is not such an innocent place; people get hurt unless they learn how to defend themselves and avoid dangerous people. As we get older, we also find a need to discover our identity and where we fit in in life, because we begin to question things about life.

But this nature is actually a deviation from our original state that we were intended to live like. It is only the sin of Adam which caused people to have to question things ever since so we can avoid evil. If not for the sin, we would never have to question anything, for our temimus would have been retained, and the very rhythm that our life would always be with pure temimus.

Our avodah is to return to our original state of pre-sin, in which we only had temimus, because we were alone with Hashem. When a person loses temimus, he is not “with” Hashem, chas v’shalom. We need to return to temimus.

It is very hard nowadays to act with temimus. People disdain the concept of temimus; it has become a negative expression to say that someone is earnest.

Of course, there is such a thing as misusing temimus, such as when a person is simply naïve and immature. But this doesn’t invalidate our need for temimus. Just because there is such a thing as negative temimus doesn’t mean that temimus is to be totally abandoned. With temimus alone, we can’t survive. Yaakov Avinu, who epitomized a life of truthfulness and temimus, still had to resort to trickery in order to live with Lavan. When we deal with liars, Chazal say that we can’t act earnest with them, or else they will harm us with their trickery.

But the problem is that when people get used to lying so they can save themselves from harm, they still lose their temimus in the process. Our nature is to have temimus, and whenever we abandon our temimus, even in situations that we have no choice but to act a little dishonest, we are destroying our pure state of temimus more and more.

When people have to lie, like in situations when it is permissible to lie for the sake of Heaven, it might be permitted according to Halacha, but they inevitably will lose their temimus in the process, and they will have to work to get it back. The Baal Shem Tov once said that the only person who is allowed to lie for the sake of Heaven is if he never lied even once in his life. Why? Because he is losing his temimus!

We must realize that we need to return to temimus.

A person might learn Torah and do all the mitzvos. But does he understand that he needs to do all of this so that he can return to temimus? The Torah of Hashem is “temimah, meshivas nafesh” (“wholesome, and it settles the soul”). Learning the Torah is supposed to bring us back to our original state of temimus. If a person learns Torah and he doesn’t lead a life of temimus, he’s not going in the right direction. He will be like a person who is lost and cannot find the right direction. What does a person do when he can’t find the right direction? He has to go back to the beginning of his journey and start over again.

When a person feels that there’s nothing wrong in his life, as long as he learns Torah and does mitzvos he’s fine, then he doesn’t see the problem. But once a person realizes that we are missing our natural state we are meant to be in – the state of temimus – he sees what kind of situation we are in. And he will then feel the need to return to it.

From a superficial perspective, it seems that we are just speaking about another point about life, and that temimus is just some other point we hear about that we need to have in life. But this is all because a person doesn’t realize how important it is to have temimus. It is a childish outlook.

To illustrate what we mean, a child is observing some construction workers building a house. He sees a lot of commotion going on and people shouting at each other, beams moving around, but he doesn’t understand what all the commotion is about. He has no idea that they are building a house, which is something that everyone needs to live in. The child doesn’t register what he’s seeing, even though he’s seeing them build a house.

People act like this as well when it comes to how they view life. A person can very well have a very childish outlook toward life. In fact, today’s generation is almost totally devoid of “mature” adults. We don’t mean that there aren’t any adults in the world. There are definitely people growing up and becoming adults, but usually it is only on a physical level. It is rare to find someone who is an “adult” in the way he views life, someone who views life with a mature perspective.

Most people are looking at life very superficially. Even when people have a superficial perspective that’s correct, they aren’t aware that there are deeper understandings to what goes on in life.

For example, a person who only goes to a Daf Yomi shiur at night might think he knows the depth of what Torah is, and he is unaware that there is more depth to Torah than a Daf Yomi shiur given for an hour a day. People who are learning Torah all day, in-depth, see a whole different depth to the Torah than those who only get to learn it for an hour.

We need to understand that life as well contains depth within depth. We need to always enter more inward into the depth of life. We need to mature from the perspectives we had when we were children. We need to realize that whatever we have gotten used to since we were children, even the Torah and mitzvos we learned and did, cannot remain that way. If we just remain with the same perspectives we had since we were children towards Torah and mitzvos, then even if a person is fifty years old, he’s basically a five year old living in the body of a fifty year old.

A child doesn’t understand why people go to work. He doesn’t know why his father is working. He gets older and he begins to realize that if you don’t work, you won’t have money to live. He begins to realize that his father is the provider of his family. When he turns ten years old, he still has no concept of money. His shoes are torn and he asks his mother for new shoes, and he asks for 200 dollar shoes. He doesn’t even realize that he’s asking his mother for 200 dollar shoes and what that means; he’s just thinking that he needs new shoes.

When it comes to the physical world, we all understand that we need to become mature. Anyone who begins a business suddenly realizes what it entails, and that it’s not so simple. He makes mistakes and he learns from them; “There is no one wiser than someone who went through difficulties.” He realizes as well that other areas in his life need a more mature outlook, and that he has to make the transition from child to adult. He realizes that taking care of a family and raising children takes hard work. He matures.

But when it comes to our spiritual situation, is there anyone who realizes that he needs to mature? Does he still view learning Torah and doing the mitzvos with the same perspective he had when he was a child? Is there anyone who realizes that he needs to return to his original, pure state of the soul, and that this takes an entire lifetime?

Without a mature perspective towards spiritual growth, a person thinks very superficially about life: “We have to learn Torah. We have to do the mitzvos. We have to love Jews, we have to love Torah, and we have to love Hashem, etc.” It’s true, but there’s a lot more to life. All of these things we do are supposed to lead us to a certain inner point.

Without deeply reflecting into this concept, a person will naturally live life and never think about what is being said here. He will merely go through life and take it as it comes, living an entirely superficial kind of life. What will happen? When troubles enter the person’s life, and we all have troubles – each to his own - the person will find that he has no time to think deeply about what life is about. He will try to learn Torah and do all the mitzvos according to his capacity, but he won’t find any time to think deeply. He doesn’t even know why he has to think in the first place: “What is there to even think about…??”

Life is a deep sugya. We need to probe into the depth of life. If someone still remains as an adult with the same perspectives toward life that he had when he was a child, there is a big question on him. As we go through life, we are supposed to develop a more mature perspective, and see life through a totally different perspective than before. Each year, a person needs to be a totally different kind of person than the person he was a year ago, having matured his perspective towards life. This is because life is so deep. The more a person matures in his perspective, the more he will become attuned to the inner, spiritual world.

When a person hears about this, he shouldn’t think that these words are a totally new concept. The fact that we have to return to our temimus is nothing new; it is written in the possuk (“You shall be “tamim”\wholesome with Hashem”), and it is mentioned many times in Chazal.

A child cannot understand what he reads, even though he’s reading the words. In the same way, a fully grown adult might be reading a Gemara and thinking that he understands it, but he is unaware that he has a very immature understanding of the matter. When a person learns the words of Rashi in the weekly Parshah, a year later he should be having a whole deeper kind of understanding of the words he read a year ago.

Chazal say that every day, one should view the Torah as new. This shows us that we always need to develop a deeper understanding to how we view the same matters. We can never remain with the same way we understood it a while ago. There is always more depth that can be revealed to what we learn about in the Torah. If we aren’t uncovering deeper levels of understanding in what we learn, we need to figure out how we can get there and deepen our understanding.

We gain a deeper understanding of things only if we are having spiritual progress and growth. The more we grow in spirituality, the more we see. It’s like a person who grows taller, who can now see a bigger view.

The inner perspective to have on life is when we view life through the perspective of temimus. When we have temimus, we see a whole different kind of life than those who live life superficially.

We are living in a world in which there is very little truth; Chazal (Sotah 49a) say that in the generations before Moshiach, truth will vanish from the world. Truth is emes in Hebrew, which stands for aleph tam – in other words, if a person is a tam (earnest), he is the true aleph, which stands for adam, man – he is the true “man.”

The true depth of life is only revealed to someone who is willing to dedicate his life for this – to deepen the actions (mitzvos) that he performs, as well as to deepen his understanding in the words of Chazal we learn. We should realize that the life we see going on today is as superficial as it gets.

The depth of life is available to all of us, but each person on a private level needs to make the choice if he is willing to leave the superficial kind of life and enter deeper. He has to be willing to dedicate his entire life towards it.

We are in a generation in which we have instant gratification. As soon as we want to buy something, a few seconds later we have what we want, for a few coins. Because we are used to instantly getting what we want, it makes it hard for us to progress in spirituality, because we want instant results in our spirituality as well. We want it to go easy for us, or else we lose patience and give up right away.

To illustrate, if we see someone walking around with a soda can, either we can look at this superficially, that he’s merely holding a soda can that costs maybe five shekel. But if we probe deeper, we realizing that he’s holding one of a few million soda cans that were produced, and every soda can being bought for five shekel adds up, and the company makes millions.

The lesson from the above example is that we must realize that life – our spiritual job in life, that is – is that very same million-dollar investment. In order to be successful, we need to probe deeper into life. We must have a more mature perspective towards our life and not remain satisfied with our child perspective towards things.

If we really decide that we will dedicate our lives to uncovering the depth of life, and if we really seek Hashem, Hashem will merit us to get there.