Three big no-nos: not so bad after all

Here we are in the month of Elul, when all Jews who take their religion seriously prepare for the impending Days of Awe, for repentance, divine judgement and a chance to start the new year with a clean slate. Many of us undergo a sort of spiritual spring-clean, shaking the dust off our complacency, throwing out old bad habits and ideally exchanging them for brand new, good ones. This exercise comes with a caution: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Netivot Shalom, writing on last week’s Torah reading from Parashat Shofetim, reminds us that everything we have comes from God, and that includes our bad habits too. Since it is axiomatic that, God being good, everything that emanates from Him is good too, we must remember to check out the inherent virtue in even our character traits that are ostensibly bad.

By way of example he cites the Mishnah at Avot 4:48 at which Rabbi Elazar HaKappar says: “Jealousy, lust and glory remove a person from the world”. Yes, they do—but only if they are abused. Jealousy between scholars leads to more scholarship, and not only among Torah scholars. Lust is a precondition for the continued repopulation of the world. The Netivot Shalom gives no example of the benefits of glory, but the Hebrew word in the Mishnah, kavod, equally well translates as “honour” or “respect”, both of which are fine if you give them to others and only damaging when you seek to receive them.

So, when checking out even your worst tendencies and habits, don’t eliminate them from your behavioural make-up without first seeing which bits of them can be put to good use.