I have a love-hate relationship with writing. Or maybe a hate-love relationship.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m driven to write and I love the creative energy of pushing out a well-crafted sentence, when it works. I love watching my vague thoughts pour out into concrete expression on the page. But it\u2019s incredibly painful when the words won\u2019t come, or won\u2019t come together.<\/p>\n
As a college student writing papers all the time, I discovered that I just couldn\u2019t write well the first time. I would write a bad essay and scrap it so I could write a good one. Sometimes I wrote two or three bad versions before hitting on something I could turn in without abject humiliation. As an adult dabbling in more and more professional writing, that hasn\u2019t really changed. When I submit an article, I often have three or four drafts behind it, not even counting the ongoing editing I do as I write each one. My own mother, when I once sent her a draft for input, thought it was so bad (it was) that she didn\u2019t even respond and risk hurting my feelings\u2026 and when I sent a new draft the next day, her immediate response was \u201cHow did you get from that<\/em> to this?!\u201d<\/p>\n Parshat Eikev<\/em> is full of mistakes. So is last week\u2019s parsha<\/em>, and the one before that\u2026 We\u2019ve made a lot of mistakes, as a nation and as individuals. It\u2019s bizarre, in fact, that we could have messed up quite so much as a nation, and so early in our history. As Moshe highlights over and over, the Jewish people saw such incredible miracles \u2013 G-d did so much for us \u2013 yet we kept challenging Him. Really, a Golden Calf just after hearing \u201cI am the Lord\u2026 You shall have no other gods before me?\u201d (Okay, it wasn\u2019t immediately<\/em> after \u2013 and yes, there are lots of explanations offered to understand what Bnei Yisrael could possibly have been thinking \u2013 but still!)<\/p>\n There are so many ways we might mess up in the future, too. Moshe outlines a few in this week\u2019s parsha, and I was particularly struck by a series of cautions against \u201cforgetting\u201d: When we\u2019re settled and happy and well-fed \u2013 we might forget G-d, attributing our success to our own abilities and forgetting that G-d gave us those abilities in the first place (Devarim 8:11-18). We might similarly forget G-d and, instead of replacing Him with ourselves, replace Him with other gods (ibid. 19).<\/p>\n We might even remember G-d but forget ourselves – forget our own history, our own failings, and think we can do no wrong. Don\u2019t<\/em> forget, Moshe cautions in 9:7. Don\u2019t forget that sin of the Golden Calf, or all the times we complained despite all the good G-d did for us. \u201cYou\u2019ve been defying G-d ever since I\u2019ve known you!\u201d (9:22)<\/p>\n And yet \u2013 even though we\u2019ve done so much wrong, Moshe prayed for us, and G-d forgave us, again and again. \u201cCarve yourself two luchos<\/em> like the first ones\u201d (10:1). Hashem gave Moshe the chance to write a second draft of our national story.<\/p>\n Why do we need it? Why was it so hard to just listen<\/em>? I ask my kids that all the time \u2013 \u201cWhy can\u2019t you just close the book and set the table the first time I say it?\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s so hard about what G-d asks of us? Just \u201cto fear Hashem, your G-d, to follow in all His ways and to love Him and to serve Hashem, your G-d, with all your heart and with all your soul\u201d (10:12)? It should be easy, right? Keeping mitzvot <\/em>is for our own good (v. 13)!<\/p>\n And yet, it\u2019s still so hard to do the right thing. To keep doing the right thing. To remember and not to forget, to shape our lives always in accordance with every mitzvah. (Like one of my kids always answers \u2013 \u201cOh! I forgot!\u201d)<\/p>\n Fearing G-d is actually a pretty tall order for most of us, as the Gemara points out (Berachot 33b). We have a yetzer hara<\/em>; there are other things we want to do. We don\u2019t want<\/em> to put down the book and set the table. We don\u2019t want<\/em> to acknowledge the Source of our good fortune; we\u2019d rather fit in with other nations, or take credit ourselves so we won\u2019t owe Anyone anything, or tell ourselves we\u2019re doing everything right and don\u2019t need to struggle to improve.<\/p>\n Of course, that yetzer hara<\/em> is part of G-d\u2019s plan for our growth. The Gemara in Kiddushin 30b alludes to this in the context of a mashal<\/em> illustrating a line we recite several times daily, from the end of Parshat Eikev<\/em>: \u201cPlace these, My words, upon your heart\u2026\u201d (11:18). Based on a play on words, the Gemara compares the words of Torah to a bandage, explaining that as long as we keep the bandage on, we can live our lives without fear. \u201cI created the yetzer hara<\/em>, and I created the Torah as its antidote.\u201d<\/p>\n So the obvious question is, why do we need the yetzer hara<\/em> at all? Why not just give us the Torah without any temptation to \u201cforget\u201d its laws?<\/p>\n And the obvious answer, perhaps, is that without the yetzer hara<\/em> \u2013 without sometimes failing \u2013 there is no growth. The complaints in the desert, the Golden Calf, forgetting to set the table the first time we\u2019re asked \u2013 these are all part of a process.<\/p>\n Like an essay – we can\u2019t be perfect the first time around. Nobody writes a bad draft on purpose, but we all do it sometimes. Some of us, a lot of the time. And then it\u2019s our challenge to find the lines that need to be cut, the points that need to be further developed, the phrases we really could have said better. (Like that one.)<\/p>\n And part of the challenge is recognizing the role of those first, second, maybe even twenty-fifth drafts in our growth. In college, I came to accept that writing a bad essay was not a waste of time, but was a necessary part of my writing process. I reminded myself not to beat myself up for the initial failure; as long as I didn\u2019t mistake it for a good paper and think I was done, it wasn\u2019t really a failure but a first step towards success.<\/p>\n And the same is true in much of our lives. We can\u2019t get everything right the first time, much as we try. We have a yetzer hara<\/em>; we forget things and get distracted by other things. Sometimes we even forget G-d and our responsibilities towards Him; sometimes we get distracted by our (positive) feelings of personal accomplishment and forget to appreciate His role.<\/p>\n Sometimes our choices make our days look like some really badly-written sentences.<\/p>\n But those bad sentences are a valuable part of the process. If we heed Moshe\u2019s warning not to forget our own mistakes, then we can use them. We can edit our days, keeping the good and scrapping the bad, so tomorrow is better. Tighter. More powerful. A really well-crafted statement of who we are and who we want to be \u2013 made all the stronger because of the words we tried and rejected along the way.<\/p>\n We can, perhaps, move our Father in Heaven to exclaim \u2013 like my mother did when she read that new draft \u2013 \u201cThis is excellent and also beautiful.\u201d Look at what you accomplished today, because of what you tried yesterday. And imagine what you can take from today to build for tomorrow.<\/p>\n Sarah C. Rudolph is a Jewish educator and freelance writer. She has been sharing her passion for Jewish texts of all kinds for over 15 years, with students of all ages. Sarah\u2019s essays have been published in a variety of internet and print media, including Times of Israel, Kveller,\u00a0Jewish Action<\/a>, The Lehrhaus, TorahMusings, and more. Sarah lives in Cleveland with her husband and four children, but is privileged to learn online with students all over the world through\u00a0www.TorahTutors.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0www.WebYeshiva.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have a love-hate relationship with writing. Or maybe a hate-love relationship. I\u2019m driven to write and I love the creative energy of pushing out a well-crafted sentence, when it works. I love watching my vague thoughts pour out into concrete expression on the page. But it\u2019s incredibly painful when the words won\u2019t come, or<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133529,"featured_media":60331,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n