Deb Hirschhorn, Ph.D.
TJH Staff
Does G-d Want Us to Live in the Present? the insurance won’t pay. What do you suggest we do next? Donny: (with a deep sigh) That is an excellent question. I have no idea. I need to sleep on it. Chami: Yeah, me too. Let’s try to rest well, too. There is no sense in losing that precious sleep over it. In fact, if we lose sleep worrying, we won’t be able to sleep on it! Donny: (laughing) Good point. G’night. Chami: G’night. With the finger-pointing over the past eliminated, they can be friends. Maybe in the morning one of them will think of contacting FEMA. They will think of something, rest assured. We have some evidence that HaKodosh Baruch Hu wants us to live in the present. In Pirkei Avos, Chapter 2, Mishna 21, Rabbi Tarphon says, “You are not required to complete the task, but you aren’t free to withdraw from it.” We are here to do a job, which, I
Baruch Hu for us to focus on; we are not given the responsibility of deciding what the elements of a holiday are. Imagine if Chami and Donny were told to select what would be covered at the seder! She would say she thought the part about going into the neighbor’s houses during makkas choshech and making a mental note for later as to their gold and silver was the coolest and should be incorporated into the seder, maybe with a pretty gold fork on the table. Donny would say that was ridiculous and the hundreds of mules per person was the real geshmack part
Every chag has this directive: Extract the value and apply it to your life. In the present.
think, is to make the world a better place. Each of us has a skill or talent that Hashem gave us which we use to do our job. But the key words here are to recognize that the job is an ongoing one, a work in progress. Interestingly, you would think that we should be measured by results, but that is not the case. The job is the doing of the job, not getting it done. And “doing” is a word in the present tense. It’s all about now, not tomorrow and not yesterday. So where do chagim come in? Aren’t they a trip down memory lane? I think not. I think our holidays would not have meaning if we didn’t apply their lessons to the moment. We only look over our shoulders to pick out specific elements in them to use now. What’s more, everything we look backward at when we celebrate the yom tovim was selected by HaKadosh
of yetzias mitzrayim. Maybe get a mule for the evening? You can see why G-d did not leave the creation of the seder to us. In other words, we don’t have to pick and choose from the past as to what was important: Hashem did that job for us. Our job is to take the symbols He gave us and apply them to the here and now. Every chag has this directive: Extract the value and apply it to your life. In the present. If Chami and Donny understand that, they would never argue again about who did what in the past. As Rabbi Tarphon said in Mishnah 20, “The day is short; the job is huge”: There is no time to waste bickering when there’s work to be done! Instead, here is how the seder might help them with their current situation: They would surely empathize
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f holidays are meant to recapitulate something important from our collective past, nothing does it like Pesach. Not only are we talking about our forefathers, but we are actually supposed to say, “When we went out of Egypt.” The past becomes the present for us as we sit around our seder tables. So my question is: With all the holidays and their trips down memory lane, what relationship, exactly, does Hashem want us to have with the present? And why is this question important anyway? To answer the second question, imagine the following conversation between Chami and Donny: Donny: You were the one who wanted the big house! If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this terrible predicament. Chami: Me? Who are you kidding? Don’t you remember that when we went to visit your brother, Aaron, you said – and I quote, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a house like this?” Donny: Wait a minute. Just because I was fantasizing doesn’t mean I was ready to spend that kind of money . . . And on and on they go. Where they stop – well, they won’t stop because that is the nature of arguments about the past. Everyone has a different recollection about what really happened and these arguments never get resolved. (Please see my blog article, “Memory and Logic: Don’t Rely on them” for the neuroscience as to why you cannot go back down memory lane with accuracy.) From this, it sounds like trying to remember the past is not such a great idea. For the sake of shalom bayis, couples should never try to resolve differences the way Chami and Donny are doing it. In fact, from the perspective of shalom bayis, the present is the exact right place to be. There is no sense in trying to figure out who is to blame for mistakes in the past; the idea is to join forces as a team to resolve them in the present. Let’s suppose that Chami and Donny get this. How would their conversation go? Chami: So here we are with a house that is large, expensive, drowned, and
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with their fellow Jews of old leaving Mitzrayim because it is now evident that they must leave their own home. In fact, if they have already left, their seder will be that much more poignant to them. They might hope that within the catastrophe of a ruined house and great losses is something good that Hashem has in store for them just as He did for the Jews who camped around Har Sinai. They might appreciate that they are still alive and well and able to enjoy the seder. They might feel closer to others who had similar experiences and perhaps closer to the Jews of ancient times as well. It is even possible that Chami and Donny will feel that Hashem is in their midst in spite of – or maybe because of – the trauma they have gone through just as He was for us in the past. Revisiting the past on chagim is all about bringing it into the present and making it meaningful right now. Chag kosher v’sameach!
Dr. Deb Hirschhorn has had over 35 years clinical experience. She has been in numerous publications, both professional and for the public, and has appeared on TV and has been featured on radio. She practices Marriage-Friendly Therapy. She has a local practice in Woodmere, N.Y. See her website, http://drdeb.com, or call her at 646-54-DRDEB.