It�s never a good idea to analyze a joke.� All the same, I recently found myself deconstructing a stand-up comedian�s one-liner quoted in a newspaper article.� It may have been because Rosh Hashana was approaching.
�I used to do drugs,� the hapless performer had deadpanned.� �I still do, but I used to, too.�
Why was the line funny?� It could be that the comedian had simply found an amusing, absurd way to characterize his long-time substance abuse.� But what I think he meant to communicate was something more: that he had once (perhaps more than once) quit his drugs, only to re-embrace them.� When he was clean, he �used to do drugs�; now, fallen off the wagon, he does them once again.
And so my thoughts, understandably (no?), went to the Yom HaDin and Aseres Y�mei Teshuva.
No, I don�t abuse drugs.� I take my daily blood-thinner responsibly, pop an occasional Tylenol and have a glass or two of red wine with Shabbos seudos, but that�s about it.� Nevertheless, I related well to the comedian�s self-description.� Because I find myself resolving each year to improve in some of the very same ways I had resolved to improve the year before.� Indeed, the years � plural � before, in more cases than I care to ponder.� I, too, �used to� do things that I currently do too.
Among the collected letters of Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt�l, is one that was written to a talmid whose own, earlier, letter to the Rosh Yeshiva had apparently evidenced the student�s despondence over his personal spiritual failures.� The Rosh Yeshiva�s response provides nourishing food for thought.
Citing the saying that one can �lose battles but win wars,� Rav Hutner explains that what makes life meaningful is not beatific basking in the exclusive company of one�s yetzer tov� but rather the dynamic struggle of one�s battle with the yetzer hora.
Shlomo Hamelech�s maxim that �Seven times does the righteous one fall and get up� (Mishlei, 24:16), continues Rav Hutner, does not mean that �even after falling seven times, the righteous one manages to gets up again.�� What it really means, he explains, is that it is only and precisely through repeated falls that a person truly achieves righteousness.� The struggles � even the failures � are inherent elements of what can, with determination and perseverance, become an ultimate victory.
Rav Hutner�s words are timely indeed at this Jewish season, as thoughtful Jews everywhere recall their own personal failures.� For facing our mistakes squarely, and feeling the regret that is the bedrock of repentance, carries a risk: despondence born of battles lost.� But allowing failures to breed hopelessness, says Rav Hutner, is both self-defeating and wrong.� A battle waged, even if lost, can be an integral step toward an ultimate victory to come.� No matter how many battles there may have been, the war is not over.�� We must pick ourselves up.� Again.�� And, if need be, again.
Still, it�s a balancing act.� The knowledge, after the fact, that falling isn�t forever cannot permit us to treat aveiros lightly.� Even while not allowing failures to leave us dejected, we must maintain the determination to be to be better people tomorrow than we are today.� If, after raising ourselves from the ground, we don�t renew the battle with resolve, if we become complacent about our sins, seeing them not as boons to redoubled effort but as fodder for jokes, we flirt with true failure � the ultimate kind.
The article containing the one-liner, as it happens, was an obituary.� The comedian who �used to do drugs� and still did died of an overdose, at 37.
� 2008 AM ECHAD RESOURCES
[Rabbi Shafran is director of public affairs for Agudath Israel of America.]
