The Carob Tree

It is one of the great ironies of life in New England that I just shoveled a foot of snow off my car for the third time in a week, and in two days we will celebrate Tu B'Shevat--the "new year of the trees."  The incongruity is striking, especially since all the trees I can see are coated with a thick, fluffy layer of white.  But, I love Tu B'Shevat, if for no other reason than because it promises warmer, sunnier, blossom-filled days to come.

Yesterday, a dear friend and I hosted a Tu B'Shevat seder at our shul in conjunction with an incredible organization in Israel called Livnot U'Lehibanot, of which we're both alums.  To support our efforts, Livnot provided us with beautiful Tu B'Shevat seder booklets, full of insights into the spiritual meanings behind all of the symbolic fruits and seeds we eat to celebrate the holiday.  One stood out, and I've been mulling it over since:  the carob.

The Hebrew name for carob is חרוב (charuv), which has several different meanings, all related to the themes of destruction and hardship.  This sounds depressing until you learn that in Judaism, struggles are seen as steps toward greater elevation and growth--not as reasons for despair.  The carob tree, therefore, represents resilience and the determination to stay the course through challenging times.  Additionally, according to the Talmud, the carob tree takes 70 years to bear its first fruits; cultivating a carob tree requires dedication to the cause despite not seeing results until far in the future.

Is it just me, or could carob be the ultimate symbol of recovery?

If there is one thing I can say about recovering from an eating disorder, it is that it often takes a long, long time.  Maybe not 70 years, but it can feel like 70 years when you're slogging through appointments and treatment programs and creeping toward health inch by painful inch.  Sometimes it feels like it would be easier to just give up, rather than continue the slow fight toward a life that you can't really visualize but that everyone says will be "better."  Remaining committed to recovery requires a belief that the challenges faced now will lead to a fuller and happier life later.  The entire process cultivates resiliency, courage, and faith--and the reward for sticking with it is a life that nourishes you, just as the carob tree nourishes those who are patient enough to grow it.

But what about carob as a symbol of deprivation and struggle?  How does one feel positive about that?  Well, Judaism teaches that although carob trees represent destruction, their roots extend deep down to the source of water underneath the earth:

"Rabbi Elazar, the son of Rabbi Shimon said: 'Carob and sycamore roots spread down to the groundwater.'" (Midrash Rabba 13:17)

What does this mean?  Perhaps it teaches us that sometimes, things have to fall apart before you can address the issues that are at the root of the problem.  Here is a quote that I love from the Livnot booklet:

"Sometimes when things break down, hardship serves as a red flag, telling us that the essence of our existence was out of tune all along.  According to Jewish spirituality, we are meant to practice seeing every experience as an opportunity to grow.  Sometimes we want to create and to make the world better, but the energy for our effort doesn't come from the right source.  One cannot expect to make peace only because of the fear of war, or to build strong relationships out of the fear of being alone.  So, we find ourselves in an endless struggle.  Instead of paying attention to the source, too many times we try quieting the symptoms.  In this case, we need to go through a process of deprivation, where all our tools are broken or abandoned, in order to connect our roots back to the groundwater."

My eating disorder was a huge red flag that something was very, very wrong.  At the time, I had no words--or even clear ideas--to explain what the real problems were.  The only way I could communicate that I was unhappy was through my body.  It wasn't until I had completely fallen apart, that I could start to get at the real issues at play.  But even then, recovery didn't happen just because I knew I didn't want to live with an eating disorder for the rest of my life.  In other words, treating the symptoms did not actually solve any of the problems.  Addressing the true roots of my unhappiness has required a lot of therapy and self-examination--all hard work that couldn't really begin until the symptoms were under control.  Despite the destruction that anorexia brought to my life, I am grateful that the struggle of emerging from my eating disorder allowed me to really see where my system was broken, because the process of repairing it has left me stronger than I otherwise would have been.

This Tu B'Shevat, I wish for all of us the strength and determination of the carob tree.  May we have the courage to stay the course and bring ourselves back to the groundwater that nourishes us!

Money is the New Food

I feel like I should apologize for having taken so long to write this post, but the truth is that I've been thinking about this post for a long time--almost a month, in fact.  I decided, at the beginning of January, that in 2015 I wanted to become "better" at giving tzedakah.  I do donate money to several charities every year, but it has never felt like enough, nor like I'm doing it in the right frame of mind.  I wanted giving tzedakah to feel more like a spiritual act, one in which I would engage regularly and to which I would commit more fully.  So, I planned to do some learning about tzedakah and research effective giving practices, and then I was going to write a post teaching about tzedakah and explaining how meaningful the whole process was for me.

It was a great plan...but it didn't quite work out.

First, let me back up and explain:  why the focus on  tzedakah?  Well, because it is one of the Jewish values and practices that I think is the most beautiful and the most just.  The Rambam (Maimonides) wrote extensively on tzedakah, and he explains that giving money to people who need it is the way to live out the Torah value of, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Vayikra 19:18):

"This is the commandment that we were commanded, to love each other just as we love ourselves.  That is to say that my concern and love for other Jews should be the same as my concern and love for myself--as far as both possessions and personal needs are involved...Whatever I want for myself, I want the same for that other person.  And whatever I do not want for myself or my friends, I do not want for that other person.  

This is the meaning of the verse, 'And you shall love the other person as yourself.'"

--Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot

I also fully believe in the Jewish idea that the money I have isn't really my money--it is G-d's money, given to me so that I might use it to better the world.  Obviously, I need to make sure my needs are met, but beyond that, I need to remember that the money has been entrusted to me--it doesn't belong to me.  

So, with all of that in mind, I was ready to dive into more mindful tzedakah giving...until I came face to face with a hard truth:

The way I relate to money mirrors the way I used to relate to food. 

Allow me to demonstrate with a little table:

Thoughts About Money	Old Thoughts About Food
Spend as little as you can. Save your money!  You never know when you might need it. That $2 you are about to spend on an iced coffee?  That REALLY MATTERS. If you wait long enough to buy something, eventually you will just stop wanting it. NO SPONTANEOUS SPENDING! Restriction, restriction, restriction!	Eat as little as you can. Save your food!  You never know--you might be hungrier later. Those few extra calories in that cracker you want?  Those REALLY MATTER. If you wait long enough before eating, eventually you’ll just stop being hungry. NO SPONTANEOUS EATING! Restriction, restriction, restriction!

Needless to say, when I sat down to figure out how much disposable income I actually have on a monthly basis so that I might better determine how much I could give away, I could feel my anxiety climb higher...and higher...and higher.  I am a public school teacher living in an expensive city.  After the fixed monthly deductions from my paycheck for things like taxes and health care, and after rent, utilities, gas, and food...there's very, very little left to work with.  As I crunched numbers with my parents, our conversation inevitably went from being about tzedakah, to being about my basic principle of financial restriction: 

Me:  "This is why I hate dealing with money.  It stresses me out to see that there's basically nothing left.  It's better if I don't know exact numbers and just try not to spend anything."

Parent:  "Well, but you're actually doing okay.  You certainly don't have to deny yourself things.  What if you set aside $X every month that you could just spend on yourself..."

Me: (in my thought bubble) "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!"

This conversation was an important moment, because it brought home for me that although I have done a LOT of work on dismantling my old thoughts about food, I have done relatively little work on challenging my approach to money...which, I think it's safe to say, could be characterized as obsessive and ultra-controlling.  And, while I do think that, values-wise, it's "more important" to give tzedakah than to spend money on myself, I recognize that this belief is also a way for me to avoid working on a huge challenge: "Normal Spending" (kind of like, "Normal Eating").  

At the end of the day, I realized that although I might want to dive right into giving away 10% of my income, as is suggested by Jewish law, I'm just not ready for that.  Similarly, though I always wanted to achieve Full Recovery, I wasn't ready for that right out of the gate, either.  Money and I have a lot of work to do, and it's going to take time--just like it also has with food. 

I did, in the end, come up with a respectable dollar amount that I could give to tzedakah each year without feeling like I'd have to compensate by never, ever buying myself anything.  It's a good starting point; I hope to be able to give more one day, but that will come with time.  For now, I'm going to try to feel satisfied with what I can do--and to commit to working on my "money issues," a little at a time.  

The Days of the Years

I find this week's parasha, Vayigash, to be one of the most moving in the Torah.  This is the parasha where Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers and reunites with Benjamin; Jacob learns that his treasured son, Joseph, is still alive; Jacob and his sons make the journey down to Egypt; and there is a beautiful, tearful reunion between father and long-lost son.

One of my favorite moments is when Joseph presents Jacob, his elderly father, to Pharaoh.  It's clear that there is mutual respect between Pharaoh and Jacob, that each man recognizes the power within the other.  Pharaoh asks Jacob,

כמה ימי שני חייך

How many are the days of the years of your life? (Bereishit 47:8)

Many commentators note that it's a little odd for Pharaoh to inquire about the age of his visitor, and Rav Hirsch offers an interesting explanation.  He points out that Pharaoh distinguishes between days and years; he takes this to mean that Pharaoh recognizes that a person can live a long life while only truly making full use of a few of his days.  In other words, the years of one's life represent the sum total of time lived, while the days of one's life are only those times when one lives up to one's full potential.  Jacob, too, understands this subtle distinction.  He replies, 

מעט ורעים היו ימי שני חיי ולא השיגו את–ימי שני חיי אבתי בימי מגוריהם

Few and bad have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not reached the life spans of my forefathers in the days of their sojourns. (47:9)

When evaluating the qualitative nature of his life, Jacob feels that he has fallen short.  Compared to his forefathers, Jacob believes he has not truly lived his life to its greatest potential, and this pains him.

I find it humbling and somehow reassuring that Jacob, one of the great fathers of the Jewish people, judged himself so modestly and struggled with the feeling that he had not lived his life as well as he would have liked.  Personally, I spend a lot of time on the mental hamster wheel of, "Am I doing a good job with my life?"  There are a lot of factors:  Am I happy?  Am I making other people's lives better?  Do I express enough gratitude?  Do I spend enough time on worthy pursuits?  Am I stretching and challenging myself enough?  Inevitably, I will answer, "no," to at least one of those questions, thus sending myself into a spin of shame and fear that I am wasting time, that I am not using this life that I have as well as I could--should--be using it.  It is a very fine line between healthy self-evaluation and unproductive self-shaming, and I am the first to admit that I do not always walk it successfully.

I have been thinking about this a lot recently because my grandmother passed away on erev Chanukah this year, twelve days shy of her 101st birthday.  My Nana was, to use her own terminology, "a hot ticket."  She was an athlete; she got a college education when few women were doing so; she volunteered at causes that were important to her; she gave generously of her time and her money; she never lost touch with anyone.  At least in my mind, my Nana was someone who made full use of most of her days.  She lived a long life, and she lived it well.  In the days since her death, I've been thinking a lot about how, when I am ready to leave this world, I want to look back on my own life and believe that I used it as well as my Nana used hers.

Recovery is about putting the days back into the years.  When I was really struggling with my eating disorder, I spent years existing but didn't truly live even one of those days.  Now, I have the chance to live my life so that when I get to the end of my years, I'll be able to say that I lived the days well.  To be honest, sometimes it feels like a lot of pressure.  But it also feels like an incredible opportunity.  To keep it manageable, I need to start small--take it day by day, little by little.  Since we are about to begin a new calendar year, I encourage all of us to think about the concept of, "days and years," and try to infuse our days with more meaning.  As we enter 2015, I wish all of us a year of days well lived!    

Out of the Cave

Sometimes, you don't even realize how thirsty you are until you take that first sip of water, and suddenly it's like you can't get enough--you've been waiting for that water forever.  That's how I felt this past weekend when I attended a Limmud conference and had my first real Jewish learning experience since returning from Israel this past summer.  Returning to studying Jewish texts and history felt exciting, satisfying, and comforting--and the best part was that one of my amazing teachers from the Pardes Institute was there, so she and I got to learn together and enjoy some quality catch-up time.  Soul nourished, bucket filled.

During the last session, I went to my teacher's class on Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, a great sage who lived in the Tannaitic period (10-220 C.E.).  My teacher opened the class by describing Rabbi Shimon as someone who was "zealous and inflexible," but had to soften his positions a bit due to his life experiences.  Rabbi Shimon thought learning Torah was absolutely the most important pursuit a person could undertake--certainly more vital than farming, which one could argue was essential for survival.  He even prioritized Torah over saying the Shema--the Talmud Yerushalmi (Brachot) cites the famous dispute among the sages regarding the appropriate time for saying Shema, and Rabbi Shimon asserts that if one is learning Torah, he should not stop even for the Shema.  Since one is required to say Shema twice a day within specific time windows, that's making a pretty bold statement.

Perhaps the most famous story about Rabbi Shimon is the one in which he hid in a cave with his son for twelve years to escape execution by the Romans.  A miraculous carob tree and water well appeared in the cave, providing Rabbi Shimon and his son with food and drink while they hid in the cave, day in and day out, studying Torah and praying.  When they finally emerged from the cave at the end of the twelve years, Rabbi Shimon was so distraught at the sight of people engaged in mundane daily activities (as opposed to learning Torah), that his eyes burned up everything he saw.  As punishment for destroying His world, Hashem banished Rabbi Shimon and his son back to the cave for an additional twelve months.  Upon exiting the cave for the second time, they saw a man running with two bundles of myrtle in his hands.  When they learned that the two bundles were in honor of Shabbat--one for shamor and one for zachor--Rabbi Shimon finally realized that the "simple people" who engaged in day-to-day living weren't forgetting G-d at all--in fact, they were sanctifying Him.

I couldn't begin to tease apart all there is to learn from this story, but one element that I love is how Rabbi Shimon in many ways epitomizes cognitive rigidity, but ultimately learns to adjust his worldview to allow for some gray in between the black and white.  Personally, I am no stranger to black-or-white thinking--it's something I still struggle with, particularly around topics that are emotionally charged.  When my eating disorder began during my freshman year in college, I had to eat dinner at 6:00 pm exactly, no matter what.  That was the Right Time, and any other time was the Wrong Time.  This meant that I often ate dinner alone, because most people vary their dinner times based on other activities or with whom they'd like to eat, but I could not be flexible.  If the choice was, eat with friends at 6:30 or eat alone at 6:00, I chose the latter every time.  I had rules for everything:  rules for eating, rules for exercising, rules for studying--and anyone who didn't follow the same rules was obviously doing it wrong.  In hindsight, I can see that my eating disordered response to "rule breaking" was similar to Rabbi Shimon's:  contempt, disapproval, anger, and fear.  That led to a lot of loss--I spoiled many relationships, lost opportunities for connection, and missed out on fun because I could not bring myself to be flexible.

My favorite part of the story of Rabbi Shimon is that when Hashem sent him and his son back into the cave as punishment, they understood that it was punitive and they wanted to come out, which was why their sentence was only twelve months long.  When they were allowed out, Rabbi Shimon was finally ready to be flexible.  He didn't throw his standards and priorities to the wind, but he was able to see the gray area in between the two extremes.  Reflecting on my own experiences, I see that when I was really "in" the rigidity of my eating disorder, I didn't even realize how stuck I was, nor was I ready to contemplate change.  But once I'd had my first taste of recovery, I no longer wanted to go back to that same level of inflexibility.  When I did slip back, I understood that it was a setback and I wanted to move forward.  That's how I learned to make room for the gray, little by little.

At the end of the class, my teacher left us with this lesson:  "Ultimately, you have to come out of the cave."  A life lived in rigidity and extremes is not compatible with the rest of the world, and if you want to be able to relate to other people, you have to be willing to let go, at least a little bit.  For me, recovery has been my process of "coming out of the cave," and I've found that it's beautiful out here in the world.  May we all be able to experience the pleasure of life lived in the gray zone!

Vulnerability

"Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection."

--Brené Brown

Every morning, my wake-up routine is the same:  1) Modeh Ani;  2) hand washing and netilat yadayim; 3) turn on the light (whimper); 4) make the bed; and, 5) wake up my iPhone to see if there are any breaking news headlines from Israel on my lock screen.  This past Tuesday, November 18, I groggily went through the motions like I do every day, until I got to step 5, at which point I saw the following: "Jerusalem synagogue attacked, four killed."

All day at work--before school, in between lessons, at snack time, at lunch--I scoured the Israeli news sites for the latest information on the terrorist attack in Jerusalem.  By the end of the day it was clear that along with four rabbis--Rabbi Moshe Twersky, Rabbi Aryeh Kopinsky, Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Goldberg, and Rabbi Calman Levine--a Druze police officer, Officer Zidan Saif, was also dead, having been killed in the line of duty by the two terrorists.  

I have spent all week trying to come up with something to write that would capture the heartbreak, grief, and fear that I, along with the Jewish community at large, felt in the wake of this horrific event. I've tried to think of something I could write that would be a fitting tribute to the men who were cut down while davening Shacharit, and to the brave police officer who died trying to stop the slaughter.  After five days of thinking, I've come up empty, not because there isn't anything to say but because I can't find the words.  Who am I, after all, to write in honor of men I've never met; who am I to try to put words to pain large enough to engulf an entire nation?

In the end, all I can do is write about my own little corner of the experience--what it's like for me, an American Jewish woman, to watch tragedy unfold in the nation I consider my second home.  I can think of many words for that, but the one that comes up the most is: vulnerability.  This is ironic, because vulnerability is something that historically I've tried to avoid at all costs.  Back when my maladaptive protective strategies were at their apex, I used to watch other people get smacked in the face by vulnerability and think, "Ha.  Suckers."  At the time, it never occurred to me that you can't shut out vulnerability without sacrificing connection.  It's no coincidence that I only fell in love with Israel, and got reconnected to Judaism, once I was in recovery--once I was ready to open myself to connection and the vulnerability that inevitably follows.

For me, loving Israel wholeheartedly is one giant exercise in vulnerability.  It is emotionally risky to be so invested in a place where terror could strike at any moment and where war is always potentially around the corner.  Caring deeply about people who live in such a place means that I send a lot of emails and text messages that begin with, "Are you okay?"  It means being willing to remain engaged with the land and its politics, even when those politics frustrate or disappoint me.  And, as Tuesday's attack reminds me, it means that being an openly observant Jew in a world that often does not like openly observant Jews or Israel, can be (sadly) an inherently vulnerable position in itself.  

But.

Although the price is vulnerability and vulnerability is often uncomfortable, the reward is connection that is some of the sweetest I've ever felt.  Although I've never liked discomfort or uncertainty (who does?), I can't imagine disengaging if it would also mean severing my connections to a land and to communities that bring me so much joy and light. 

Brené Brown, vulnerability researcher extraordinaire, teaches that we are hardwired for connection; in fact, we can't live healthy lives without it--and, as a result, we also can't escape vulnerability.  For me, living a life in recovery means that I am both connected and vulnerable, for good and for bad.  Sometimes, like this past Tuesday, being connected means taking part in collective grief as your team suffers.  But even in times like that, it is worth being vulnerable to hurt if it means also feeling the sweetness of being part of a whole.  I am grateful every day that I am finally in a position to start leaning into vulnerability without shrinking away, and I wish for all of us the courage to remain open, even when there are fresh wounds.  Stay connected; don't disengage.  You need your team, and your team needs you!

   

Leaving with Wealth

I find going back to Sefer Bereishit to be quite satisfying--you just can't beat the narratives, and reuniting with some of the key figures in the collective history of the Jewish people is very sweet, indeed.  This week's parasha, Lech Lecha, has SO much packed into it that it's hard to know where to start.  In the spirit of finding something new with each read of the Torah, this week I'm going to explore an angle of Lech Lecha that I previously often passed by:  The Covenant Between the Parts.  In this covenant, Hashem promises Abraham that the Jewish people will inherit the Land of Israel, but first they will go through a painful period of exile and slavery.

"And He said to Abram, 'Know with certainty that your offspring shall be aliens in a land not their own--and they will serve them, and they will oppress them--four hundred years...and afterwards they will leave with great wealth." (Bereishit 15:13-14)

The Talmud teaches that the Jewish people were exiled and scattered throughout the world only so that converts might join them.  On one level, this could be referring to the many people throughout history who were born non-Jewish but chose to convert to Judaism.  But there is a Chassidic interpretation that I like even better:  that the "converts" are actually sparks of holiness that have been dispersed far and wide.  The idea is that every soul has its own sparks strewn about the world, and it is only by traveling through life--a journey that is often rocky--that one gathers up all of one's sparks.  All the struggles and challenges we face, which might feel like random bad luck, are actually given to us with the purpose of allowing us to extract from those experiences the sparks that complete our souls.

Developing an eating disorder is like going into exile from one's true self and entering a harsh world of isolation, desperation, and fear.  When one is in that state, it is difficult to imagine that anything good could come out of it.  "I'll be lucky to get out of this alive," you might think, "Forget about leaving with riches."  But, Chassidut teaches that perhaps the eating disorder isn't random bad luck, at all; rather, it is an experience given to a person in order to grant him or her sparks of insight and strength upon emerging from it.

Personally, I would not wish an eating disorder on anyone, but I also would not trade for anything the blessings I've gained in recovery.  Because I struggled with an eating disorder, I am more thoughtful, courageous, and resilient than I would have been had I not had that painful experience.  Recovery has given me the ability to go beyond the food and body obsessions that plague so much of the general population--I see that for what it is, and I'm not falling for it.  I am able to name my feelings and sit with them, rather than numbing myself with distraction after distraction.  Years of therapy have allowed me to understand myself and my own strengths and weaknesses much more clearly than I ever would have otherwise.  And, along the way I have connected with many special people--friends, mentors, and clinicians--who have brought much love, light, and truth to my life.  Was life in the eating disorder miserable?  For sure.  But I truly believe I have emerged with great wealth.

For all of us who are in exile in one form or another, I wish for us the ability to appreciate the riches we're accumulating as we go through our experiences.  Persevere through struggle, and gather your sparks--it's wealth you can't get any other way, and it's 100% worth it.

The Challenge of Vows

Two three-day yom tovs down, one to go...Cheshvan is around the corner!

It's this time of year when the "religious/secular dichotomy" in my life feels most pronounced.  On the one hand, this is the marathon holiday season full of rituals and observances designed to mark sacred time.  On the other hand, I live and work in a completely secular environment that is not particularly attuned to the rhythms of the Jewish calendar.  In order to keep my head at least partly in the realm of the chaggim, I need to make an effort to find some outside inspiration.  As I've mentioned, this year's source has been the book, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew.  I particularly connected with his chapter on Kol Nidre, and I've been wanting to write about it ever since Yom Kippur but haven't had time because of all the holidays!  Sigh.

While discussing the nature of vows and what happens when we inevitably make a vow that we are unable to keep, Lew cites parasha Mattot, which deals with a woman who makes a vow and then can't keep it because she is living under the control of a man (husband, father) who won't let her follow through.  When this happens, the Torah's stance is to forgive the woman for not keeping her vow.  Lew notes that the Torah pushes for the ideal situation in which one would always be free to keep one's vows.  However, as a historical document, the Torah came about in a time when women did not have that freedom, and the Torah recognized this and made an allowance for it.  The Torah doesn't compromise on its values, but it does leave room for people to operate in an imperfect system, with the idea being that over time, the values would win out and the system would change.

Lew then turns to the commentaries of the medieval Spanish kabbalist Ibn Gikatilla, who interprets this story on another level.  Gikatilla sees the woman in the above situation as not an actual woman, but as the neshama, or soul, inside each person.  The domineering man who won't let the woman keep her vow is not actually a man, but the yetzer hara, the evil inclination.  In other words, the neshama is the Divine spark inside each of us that represents the will of Hashem, and the yetzer hara is the negative impulse we have that often leads us to act counter to that will.  Our innermost voice, the voice of our core, always comes from the neshama, from Hashem.  However, because we live in a world full of stimuli that bring out our negative impulses and dysfunctional behaviors, we often can't follow through on what we know we should do.

Gikatilla says that in such a case, we are not to be blamed, for we are just like the woman who can't fulfill a vow because she is overpowered by someone else.  We don't need to be punished (or punish ourselves), because in that moment there may be nothing we can do about it.  However, Gikatilla continues, what we can do is build up the neshama so it can become strong enough to resist the yetzer hara.  How do we do this?  There are many options:  prayer, meditation, performing acts of kindness--whatever keeps us aligned with our core.  If we do enough of those things, our neshamas will be strong enough to resist negative impulses and we will be able to act in alignment with our souls and with Hashem.

This perspective resonates with me deeply because it offers another paradigm through which to view the inevitable "slips" in recovery.  Speaking from personal experience, I can say that on my long journey through recovery there have been many, many bumps in the road, many times when I've known the right thing to do but haven't done it.  Every time that happened, I would be frustrated and angry with myself and would try to discipline myself through negative self-talk.  I would also worry that Hashem was disappointed in me because I had failed, yet again, to stay the course of recovery.  Needless to say, all that self-castigating and worrying helped not a whit; it felt "right" because I believed I deserved it, but it never helped me make different choices in the future.  I know many, many people in various stages of recovery who, from time to time, act out of sync with their recovery core values, and not one of them would say that self-punishment brought them lasting positive change.  Instead, a more productive approach would be Gikatilla's:  recognize that we are not to blame because in the moment we are overpowered; but at the same time, actively work to strengthen ourselves so that in the future we will be able to resist negative influences.  Personally, I find this a much more compassionate and empowering operating system than the endless cycle of, "try, fail, frustrate."

So, in this new year, wherever we are in our journeys, let's all work to strengthen our neshamas so that we can withstand the negative forces in our lives, in whatever form they come, so that we can live true to our vows and our commitments to a positive life.

Chag sameach and shana tovah umetukah!