Days of Love, Days of Hate     

InSefer Hayashar (shaar shishi), Rabbeinu Tam, a 12th-century Tosafist, and a grandson of Rashi, details four elements necessary for success in avodas Hashem:

1. Know your spiritual goal.

2. Create good habits to achieve that goal, consistency being the most critical one.

3. Develop a sechel tov, a positive intellectual understanding of and appreciation for your spiritual goal.

4. Understand the ebb and flow of feelings, the cycling between “Days of Love” and “Days of Hate,” and do what you can to increase the Days of Love.

Let’s explain each point Rabbeinu Tam makes (according to my understanding) and describe what this might look like in real life.

1) Know Your Goal

When we undertake a project that has a spiritual component, we need to have our goal clear in our mind. We should contemplate the great benefit we’ll have if we succeed in achieving our goal, and how we’ll lose out if we don’t.

Take this scenario as an example. Yosef and Shoshana struggled economically for many years, and felt somewhat “less than” in their mostly affluent neighborhood. During the last two years, Yosef’s business took off, and they’ve been making up for lost time. They called in an architect and a contractor. They’ve taken vacations, refurbished their wardrobes, and made a lavish bar mitzvah. They gave tzedakah here and there, but in keeping with their newly relaxed attitude toward spending, didn’t track what they gave.

They’ve come to realize that their entire shift in lifestyle needs to be reined in if they want to build the kind of home and family they always dreamed of. They’re seeing changes in their children, particularly their bar mitzvah boy, who saw his lavish bar mitzvah as a matter of course. They don’t recall him even saying thank you. They realize they made a wrong turn, and have to have much more forethought before they spend money. They’re horrified that in enjoying the largesse Hashem sent their way, they didn’t pay attention to giving the minimum requirement of tzedakah and want to become more careful about meeting their tzedakah obligations.

2) Create Good Habits

Turning over a new leaf is hard; the effort required often seems enormous, and the work involved not necessarily enjoyable. It’s ideal to move from taking on easier challenges to harder ones, and to keep building on what we’ve already accomplished. Though it’s important to work hard, this has to be monitored to see that it doesn’t overwhelm us and burn us out, leading us to abandon the project.