I participated in a study of leaders of Jewish institutions, examining what energizes us and what weighs us down. The goal was simple: to be more successful in our roles as leaders! I met with the seminar instructors later to review my own results. Very telling! They told me, “Here’s the bottom line. When it comes to organizing, creating and overseeing tasks, your energy level on a scale of 1-10… is 2-3, but when it comes to teaching Torah, it’s 9-10.”
So true! What energizes me is giving a shiur. After giving a good shiur, I feel totally energized even if I didn’t start that way. But when I need to look through lists for fundraising—for our dinner and building campaign—I start nodding off. I can only do that when I start at peak energy.
In Parshas Chayei Sarah, Eliezer asked Rivka to give him some water from a well. She hurried to pour water both for him and for his camels. She ran back and forth until he and all the camels drank their fill. She then ran home to tell her mother what happened.
There is another character in Parshas Chayei Sarah who ran—Lavan. When Rivka came home after meeting Eliezer, Lavan ran out to greet Eliezer by the well. Rashi says that when Lavan saw the jewelry Rivka received from Eliezer, he saw dollar signs in his eyes. “Eliezer has a lot of money, so I need to get to know him,” he thought. Lavan ran for money.
Rabbi Wolbe explains that the word ratzon—interest, contains the root word rutz—run. Because people run towards what interests them. Rivka and Lavan both ran. Rivka ran to do chesed and Lavan ran for money. They were brother and sister, but their interests were very different!
When you ask your teenage child to do something and she isn’t interested, you will often receive the following reply, “I’m tired, I don’t have the energy.” But when her friend calls and asks if she wants to go to the mall, all of sudden she jumps up with energy. “Bye! See you later, I’m going to the mall.”
We need to ask ourselves: What motivates us? What energizes us? We have to be real with ourselves when we answer! Sometimes we run to do good things when we feel motivated. But even if we’re not so excited to learn Torah and perform mitzvos at the moment, we should not despair.
The Gemara says that Hashem created the yetzer hara and created the Torah as its tavlin—its spice. Some translate the word tavlin as an antidote, but a more accurate translation of tavlin is a spice. The quality of spices is to bring out the delicious taste of a particular food. The yetzer hara is a force which normally can cause us to do unworthy things. However, the Torah is the spice which harnesses that force for the good.
The Gemara says a person should always learn Torah and perform mitzvos, even for ulterior motives, because that effort will eventually result in a person performing them with the correct motivations. I heard a shiur from Rav Meir Stern who explained from the Sefer Nefesh HaChaim that the Gemara is telling us an actual formula and it won’t work any other way: to excel in avodas Hashem, we need to use motivation and incentives. We need initial ulterior motives. But we need to have in mind that the goal is to eventually perform our religious obligations for the right reasons.
For our yeshiva’s Young Professionals Initiative, the learning groups and night seders come with delicious food. People ask me, “Why do you have to serve so much food?” The answer is that we need to harness the energy of people’s desire for delicious food and thereby incentivize them to learn words of Torah. It works!
Someone once asked the all-star basketball player, Dr. J, if he could touch the top of the backboard. He replied, “Place a $100 bill on top and let’s see.”
At a siyum, when a portion of Torah learning is completed, the following line is recited: “We run, and they run. We run towards eternal life, and they run for vanity.” When we see that our ratzon is not aligned to do the religious obligations that we know we should do, we need to find better ways of motivating ourselves and making our goals more interesting. These new approaches become valued tools to do additional mitzvos or learn more Torah. But after accomplishing our goals, we will eventually be performing our Avodas Hashem for all the right reasons.
Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is the associate rosh yeshiva of Passaic Torah Institute (PTI)/Yeshiva Ner Boruch. Rabbi Bodenheim can be reached at [email protected]. For more info about PTI and its Torah classes, visit www.pti.shulcloud.com
