Parsha Print-Me
Va’etchanan
There is a very common tension that is found in religious groups, organizations, and even marriages that appears in many forms, but inevitably has the same subtle subtext underneath. It is essential for one to be aware of this tension, as we spend a great deal of time dealing with it. When a business or non-profit initially forms, work is done to lay the ground work and create an identity within the organization. Once success is achieved, the group of individuals involved must lay out common rules in order to maintain the initial success, otherwise chaos and failure are immanent. This two step process reflects the progression of the middot of chesed and gevurah, as chesed is the initial creation – “giving” or “producing” and nurturing of an entity through great personal involvement and, in contrast, gevurah is the laying down of specific rules and guidelines (din – judgment or law, in Hebrew – which is a reflection of Yitzchak’s imitation of Avraham’s life) to ensure the created entity survives. After these initial steps, as time passes, new issues crow up and challenge the status quo. New technologies or beliefs or other innovations make a splash on the scene, forcing the group to evaluate how much should be assimilated into the group. New bugs crop up within the group, forcing the group to change or become blind to the issues. Something must happen. Moshe cautions Israel about this issue in the Torah Portion this week:“When you father children and grandchildren and grow old (v’noshantem) on the land in the land and self-destroy/debase yourselves and make an icon, an image of anything and do bad in the eyes of Hashem, your G-d, to anger Him.”
(Deut. 4:25)
What does it mean to “grow old on the land”? Also, why would old age cause one to sin? Moshe is addressing our point. Growing old here has the connotation of spending a tremendous amount of time in one place and can be understood in our vernacular to mean ‘growing stale.’ Growing stale and too much spending time doing the same thing in the same way usually causes a group to be blind to the bugs that have slowly cropped up. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this in the majority of organizations I have visited. Over time, the group knows that certain rules and guidelines are essential and immutable, but when new challenges arise and new bugs develop, there is a tension between modifying or changing the that way the group runs and keeping things the same to maintain stability. Stability is essential for a group to last. After all, when you start to change a few things people may jump in and try to change more and, possibly, so many that the essential, immutable rules are gone! The solution is to form a committee of individuals within an organization to act as a team of analysts, as well as utilizing consultants. The small group will spend time out of the daily hurly-burly and be able to stop and think about new issues, rather than get caught up in the normal cycle of events and conversations. The outside consultants give fresh new perspectives to the group and act as “outside eyes” as Yitro did for Moshe (Ex. 18), when he fixed Moshe’s organization issues. It may seem obvious that a small group of individuals can analyze their surroundings and give good advice based on that analysis. The insight is not in the group’s analysis, but in their existence. Most groups do not have such a team of evaluators. When a small group can evaluate and report to the larger group, the benefits are tremendous. The group can maintain its essential values and not “grow stale” over the years. The solution comes from the middah of yesod. As a model of this middah Yosef is a skilled director and consultant, underscoring the now-popular field of consulting. Yosef is called n’zir evhav by Ya’akov, which means “separate from his brothers.” As such, Yosef and yesods are endowed with special consulting talents; they are able to see an organization from inside and out and, because they are not fully enmeshed in organizations, they are able to advise groups on how to stick to preexisting rules while not ignoring new challenges. In The Home Time and time again, psychological studies show that it is important to create stability in one’s home through the creation of boundaries and regular rituals. The rules (gevurah), in a paradoxical way, foster security and growth (chesed). A lack of rules leads to insecurity and anarchy, not true freedom. Chesed and gevurah are very different from yesod, but each middah must be understood and utilized in correct proportion. One cannot solely promote one middah over the other, which is our natural tendency. For more on this, read the first interview of the yesod chapter of The Seven Ways, which is available for download on thesevenways.com or in your personal copy of The Seven Ways. And have a great Shabbis! IB