Not Feeling Yourself?

One lesson to be learned from the teachings of the baalei mussar is the duality of the interplay between intellect and emotion. Even though emotions should not be allowed to dominate unchecked, they actually play an important role in a Jew’s spiritual and ethical life.

True, optimally the seichel rules over the heart, but emotions too are both useful and sacred. They give a person the capacity to experience life deeply and allow him to be transported far and high.

Seichel is the rider atop the horse, reining it in from straying wildly and making certain it gallops in the direction he needs to be heading. But once that horse acknowledges its human rider as master, nothing can compare to the sheer horsepower and raw energy of that lithe, muscular animal for helping its master get to his ultimate destination.

Rav Yisrael Salanter observed that there’s a chasm that’s even greater than the one between Heaven and earth — the distance between mind and heart. Our avodah in This World is that of V’yadata hayom v’hasheivosa el livavecha — to see to it that what I know intellectually to be true, makes its way into my heart and my consciousness as well. And yet, there is another avodah, too, a reverse process in which the feelings of the heart that are consonant with Torah fortify and invigorate the truths I already know in my brain.