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Thursday, January 03, 2008

Caring for Sheep

One of the many stories in the Torah that I find particularly meaningful is the verses and Midrashim that explain why Moshe was selected to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Despite his many great qualities, spiritual, physical and socio-political, it was his concern for the well being of his sheep that made him ideal for the task. Now I like this story for many reasons, not least of which because it is good for the New Zealand sheep business. But the message is so powerful and so timely. To be able to lead others, you have to care about them. And to care about them means to worry if they don’t have enough food, drink, friends, love etc.

A good friend just lent me “The Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis, which is a fantastic mussar sefer (even if it is Xtian). Screwtape is a demon who is writing to his nephew, Wormwood, advising him on how best to ensure that the ‘patient’ ends up in Hell. Lewis captures very well the emotions and thoughts that lead a person away from G-d, and those which can bring a person closer to G-d. There is a pasage there in the third letter (I’ve only just started reading the book, and haven’t got very far yet), which says:

It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very “spiritual”, that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother—the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment’s notice from impassioned prayer for a wife’s or son’s “soul” to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.

Looking around us, we see so many instances of ‘frum’ people caring so deeply about the spiritual wellbeing of others that they happily ‘beat’ or ‘insult’ without qualm. It is all very well to put up posters about modesty and separate bus lines, kashrus and putting books in cherem. But do they also care about the people themselves?

So, best line of the day so far, and one which will guarantee a place in hell is:

Make sure that you are always very “spiritual”, that you is always concerned with the state of others’ souls and never with their rheumatism