Acharei Mot – Kedoshim: Reading Between the Lines
I can hear many news outlets interviewing this war expert and that retired four star general, and they all sound pretty much the same. They are all in the prediction game and masters of opinion. The same is true with all articles you may read in whatever newspaper you pick up, conservative, liberal, secular or Jewish. All of them are filled with opinions trying to predict the future. Besides for it all being a waste of time and that those pundits are not worth the paper they are printed on, they are also a distraction from the truth that should be learned from war.
Everything we see has deeper meaning, if only we learn how to read between the lines. Take a simple argument between man and wife. Do you really think that if he truly loved her that he would ever allow himself to say the silly things he just said? Or if he would not be burdened with financial stress would he still get mad at the continuous spending? This is simple reading between the lines, but the truth is it goes much deeper than that.
Why would person A be delighted when a plate of fish is served before him while person B will be disgusted? The answer on the surface is that A likes it and B does not. But as we dig deeper we see that there are memories working in the background that are driving this response. Person A does not just have a liking to the taste. They have memories attached to this food going back years. Each time they even smell a hint of this dish or see a spice of this recipe on the grocery shelf, those memories attached to this dish activate.
A person I know hated black jelly beans, and rightly so. It was not just that they did not enjoy the taste. They did not want the other candy touching them. One day he dated his soon to be wife and along their way made a stop at a candy shop. She walked straight to the beans and picked those black ones straight out and smiled big. Needless to say, the taste never changed, but the love he had for her made it so that when he eats those jelly beans today, his heart fills with the most loving feelings toward her. Who knows? Maybe he was meant to hate it so much up until that moment in his life, so that she would be the only one he thinks of when he smells those jelly beans.
On the other hand person B has many memories that remove him from the fish. It may be that it was embedded within them from childhood since their father disliked it because his grandmother was allergic, and so the cookie crumbles for another generation. It may be that they witnessed someone choking on a bone, or maybe only heard of a possible incident that may or may not have happened with regard to this food. Either way, the simple idea of it awakens deep underlying memories, thoughts, experiences, and beliefs that drive their response.
Food is not the only example. It could be that the shape of the salesman’s eyes remind you of the bully in your class, and you will not just reject the sale. You will tumble that person out of your path unknowingly to yourself why you reacted so harshly. The example could be that a person with the scent of your grandmother’s perfume passed by and now you react with nostalgia and want to tell this stranger your entire life story. These layers go deep for every single topic that is not new, since anything that is new is seen with innocence. New concepts inaugurate new emotions, and firsts are always otherworldly.
Take an EMT for example. They must have normalized traumatic situations in their minds by studying, visualizing, practicing, and experiencing them so that they can remain collected during their tending. I would not call it desensitization since the reason for doing so is honorable. But there are those who have turned their emotions off even to murder, just by regulating themselves with such sights and thoughts. We may think that those people are sick, but we should take a deep look at ourselves and see what dirty habits we have become accustomed to over time.
Every experience carries an emotion with it. For example, when there is a war going on in the world, the strategies of offense bring along feelings of triumph and standing tall. This feeling is similar to the one we feel as we plot to topple the bully in our classroom at lunch, and the same feeling we feel when we resolve to fight the Yetzer Hara within us. But if we desensitize ourselves to the emotion in the reality before us we may never learn the lesson that lies there waiting for us.
When we see war we take lessons to ourselves. We ask ourselves questions like, “I wonder what I would do to protect myself if I were to be on the ground as a civilian?” “What would be my fighting strategy in order to come out on top?” and most of all, “Am I steadfast with the objective of this campaign, and do I believe that what I am doing has purpose and a possible eternal effect?”
The stories around us give us what to think about. When you hear a story about a person who had a wonderful business that went down the tubes since he took in a partner without a contract, what does this story tell you? “If I ever have such a situation I will know what to do!” The stories around us give us lessons. All we have to do is put ourselves into those shoes and walk ourselves through this story in our personal situations. The conversation goes somewhat like this, “Where in my life do I have a partner who drains my resources? Oh, that guy who gossips all day and fills me with rage! I either make a contract with him and say, if we remain friends I do not want this kind of relationship, or we gotta part ways.”
The point is we have to look out for our interests. This does not give us the right to be selfish and not care about other people, but those others have to do the same on their end. Hopefully with the right communication communities can grow together at peace and a flourishing and happy world can be built together. We need a defense strategy, in our war execution plan just as much as we need a strategy for offense. We take the stories of Tzaddikim and the Mitzvot they enacted and apply them to ourselves. We give Tzedakkah, we Daven, we learn Torah, to keep ourselves protected from the incoming missiles, and do even more to be on offense to fight to win the ultimate battle that rages in our hearts.
The first Rashi in the Parshah on the words, Acharei Mot Shnei Bnei Aharon, speaks of Rabbi Elazar Ben Azarya’s metaphor. “As Doctor A said not to eat cold food and sleep in dampened rooms, while Doctor B told him not to do the same or else he would die like someone who did not listen.” Each level of information adds major consequences to the next choice we take, and as deep as we allow ourselves to think the better off we are. We will avoid arguments when we are honest about our state of mind. We will remain focused even when the world seems to be falling apart around us, all because this is not our first rodeo in the ring. We have been here before. When? When we thought about it. Even the things that would rattle your mind and break you to pieces will not have anything on you next time, since the emotion activated is understood.
Shabbat Shalom
David Lemmer
LemmerHypnotherapy.com