Clipboard

Last week, the biblical portion of the week was Ki Tisa, which narrated the story of the Golden Calf.  It was probably written as a polemic against idol worship, which persisted among the Israelites at least until the sixth century BCE, but in its own terms it carries significant psychological weight.  It shows how hard it is to change one's behaviors.

My wife, an expert in asking inconvenient questions, asked me on our way home from the synagogue if there were any personal behaviors I found difficult to change.  Yes.  I find myself criticizing the appearance of perfect strangers.  She’s too fat.  Why doesn’t he stand up straight?  Her hair’s a mess.  Doesn’t he realize his comb over isn't fooling anyone?  And so forth.  This is a common fault that we discussed last year in our Mussar group, in connection with the trait of giving honor to others, a fault that I struggled to correct at the time. 

Then we turned to a new trait, I forgot about the old one, and I reverted to my continual criticism, as if I had a mental clipboard on which I was judging the world’s appearance.  But now, in this year’s Mussar group, we’ve returned to the trait of honor and I find myself ashamed that I’ve changed so little, indeed not at all, with respect to these gratuitous criticisms, which surely are a creature of my own insecurities.  And then I felt ashamed of a recent post in which I described three men as “ugly.”  Who am I to judge their appearance?  Was I ever the dream of the year?  And if I wasn’t one at the age of twenty, surely this bent, wizened 80-year old man is not.  But even an Adonis is not entitled to dish out such criticism, for appearance provides little guide to an individual’s character. 

All change is hard, especially when there’s no Moses to keep me in shape.  Even so, I’ll do my best to concentrate on the positive if I can't resist assessing others and to consider my own defects before criticizing others for theirs.



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