Ashlyn Blocker was 8 months old when her parents took her to the eye doctor because they noticed her eye was red. "When they put the dye in her eye, everyone kind of gasped," John Blocker said. "She had a big corneal abrasion across her eye. They were just astonished that she wasn't in pain." Other babies cried from hunger or a diaper rash, but Ashlyn never cried.
Their friends were envious and thought, "what a good baby, why can't our baby be more like Ashlyn," but her parents knew something was wrong. Ashlyn has a rare genetic disorder called congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA). She is one of about 100 cases of individuals who simply cannot and do not feel any pain at all. While an inability to pain might sound attractive, consider that many people with the disorder suffer terribly because they have no alert system that something is wrong. Some pass away from undetected appendicitis, others have bone infections or internal bleeding and never know anything is wrong before it is too late.
Ashlyn is now 12 years old and she has learned to live with her disorder, but her toddler years were very difficult for her parents. She burned her hand, bit her lip, bruised her body and all the while didn't stop what she was doing because she didn't feel the pain and therefore didn't know anything was wrong. While parents desperately want to protect their children from pain, the capacity to feel pain may just be what our children need most.
In the seventh chapter of Hilchos Teshuva, the Rambam writes:
The manner of Baalei Teshuvah is to be very humble and modest. If fools shame them because of their previous deeds, saying to them: "Yesterday, you would commit such and such. Yesterday, you would commit this and that," they are not bothered by them. On the contrary, they will hear this abuse and rejoice, knowing that it is a merit for them. Whenever they are embarrassed for the deeds they committed and ashamed because of them, their merit increases and their level is raised.
In this halacha, the Rambam suggests something remarkable. If a true ba'al teshuva is inappropriately reminded of their past indiscretion or lifestyle, they will not feel angry or upset. The ba'al teshuva, the individual who has undergone an authentic process of change and improvement, will embrace the feelings of shame and embarrassment and recognize them as virtues.
The Rambam makes one other reference to shame in the very beginning of Hilchos Teshuva. He writes -
How does one confess? He proclaims, "Behold, I regret and am embarrassed for my deeds. I promise never to repeat this act again."
For the Rambam, busha, feeling ashamed is a necessary component of teshuva. Shame is a prerequisite to real change and without it, change is inauthentic, counterfeit and short-lived.
The question I would like to ask you today, on Rosh Hashana, is what virtue is there in shame? In fact, don't we see shame as a negative attribute? Shame paralyzes, it incapacitates. Shame makes people feel despondent or defeatist. Shame can undermine self-esteem and self-worth. Indeed, every Shabbos mevorchim ha'chodesh we daven that we be spared shame as we ask for "chaim she'ein bahem busha u'chlima, a life that has no shame or humiliation." Friday nights we sing "lo seivoshi v'lo sikalmi, feel not ashamed and be not humiliated."
So why does the Rambam celebrate shame as a positive quality? The truth is our question is not on the Rambam, it is on the Talmud itself which goes even further when it says in Berachos 12b: "kol ha'oseh dvar aveira u'misbayeish bo mochlin lo al kol avonosav. Whoever violates an aveira and is ashamed and embarrassed by it, is forgiven for all of his transgressions." Now, I understand if reacting with shame atones for the particular indiscretion or mistake one is ashamed of. But, why should someone who feels shame for one act become forgiven for all of his or her past mistakes?
It seems to me that in truth there are two types of shame. Unhealthy shame, in which we beat ourselves up over that we cannot control or be responsible for, is indeed incapacitating and destructive. But does that mean that we don't need shame at all? Would we really want to live in a society that is shameless? Would we want to be around people living shamelessly?
Steven Pressfield is an author of historical fiction who has published many books, some of which you undoubtedly have heard of. To be honest, I haven't read any, but I did read an article he wrote about shame that I believe eloquently articulates and captures exactly what makes shame such a virtue in our lives. He writes:
Shame is good. Shame is a tremendous weapon against resistance...What is shame? Shame is the emotion we feel when we are guilty of acts that are unworthy of us... When the threshold of shame has been crossed, self-respect kicks in. Self-respect is good. We want self-respect. When we feel self-respect, we say to ourselves, "This act is unworthy of me. I'm better than this." Shame steps up and slaps us across the face...
Reality TV shows are all about shamelessness. The spectacle of contestants eating worms and bugs to gain their fifteen minutes of fame is like a car crash that we can't look away from. The producers contrive situations whose aim is to produce from real people, not actors, acts of shamelessness-lying, cheating, back-stabbing another contestant-which can be taped and broadcast for our delectation. It's nauseating, isn't it? Real work, of course, is the opposite of a reality show. Real work is not a stunt. It's not a cheap shot or a shortcut. Shamelessness gets us nowhere in the world of real work. We need real, old-fashioned shame.
Teshuva is the world of real work, perhaps the hardest work we ever do and that is the work of change. We cannot hope to change and we cannot begin to change if we don't acknowledge that what we did was beneath us, unworthy of us and deserving of feeling ashamed. Our parents and grandparents had an expression - "pas nisht" - to describe behavior, conduct, an appearance or a personal choice that is unworthy and unacceptable.
If we don't feel a least a tinge of shame, if we don't sense at least a hint of personal embarrassment for mistakes we have made and errors in judgment we have displayed, how can we know that we truly regret the misdeeds? Shame is the affirmation that a line has been crossed, a boundary has been violated, and that such conduct was simply unworthy of me.
But shame goes even further. Shame means knowing that some things are out of bounds and when we do them, or they are done in our presence, we are uncomfortable, agitated, and perhaps even embarrassed.
Chazal tell us seichel hu ha'busha v'habusha hu ha'seichel. Discernment and embarrassment go hand in hand. A discerning individual feels a natural sense of discomfort and disgrace when a boundary of appropriateness has been violated.
In her book, "A Return to Modesty," Wendy Shalit writes, "Embarrassment is actually a wonderful thing, signaling that something very strange or very significant is going on, that some boundary is being threatened - either by you or by others." "Without embarrassment," she writes, "kids are weaker, more vulnerable to pregnancy, disease and heartbreak."
Just as pain, while unwelcome and unappreciated, is a necessary component of protecting the body, so too shame and the capacity to blush are necessary components of protecting the spirit and the soul. Shame is the pain of the neshama, alerting us to something being wrong, a line being crossed, a boundary being violated. Ashlyn's life is in danger because her pain sensors are broken and she doesn't know if something is wrong or threatening her well-being. Our lives are in danger if our spiritual pain sensors are malfunctioning and failing to alert us to something morally wrong, behavior that is indecent that threatens our spiritual well-being.
Perhaps when we exhibit embarrassment about an indiscretion, when we feel a sense of shame in having committed an error in judgment, we are forgiven for all our sins because we proclaim that our spiritual nervous system is intact and working. Shame is the acknowledgment of boundaries in our lives and the recognition of the danger that arises when they are crossed.
My friends, we are living in what to a large degree could be described as a shameless society. Salacious and humiliating scandals don't prevent a shameless politician from running for mayor. A formerly beloved, supposedly pure child actress behaves disgracefully on stage at an award show shamelessly. But shamelessness is not reserved for politicians, celebrities, and athletes alone.
I fear shamelessness has crept into our lives and our sensitivities have become frayed and dulled. When we post to Facebook with a link we should be embarrassed to have seen, let alone to share publicly, we are acting shamelessly. When we forward emails that contain inappropriate images, or an offensive joke, or language that we should not use or be associated with, we are acting shamelessly.
Shame is something we should feel, even for something we ourselves are not doing. The Torah's commitment to innocence and purity are designed to refine us to the point that we should recoil if we hear explicit curses we would never say, and we are to be repulsed by images of licentiousness or people acting lewdly. Once upon a time, we actually blushed just by being in the presence of behavior that was indecent.
Today, we must ask ourselves, if we are in the presence of someone speaking lewdly or cursing explicitly, do we react with antipathy and indifference? Does it even faze us? If we don't recoil with disgust we must be concerned with our sense of shame. What has become of our sense of decency?
When is the last time we have seen or heard something so disturbing, so indecent that it made us blush? Shame and embarrassment are not qualities we should run away from or try to avoid. They are virtues that we should embrace and recognize as healthy for us and for our children.
New research from the University of California, Berkeley found that people who are easily embarrassed are more trustworthy and more generous. Dr. Matthew Feinberg, the author of the study, writes, "Moderate levels of embarrassment are signs of virtue. Our data suggests embarrassment is a good thing, not something you should fight."
The world we live in embraces and promotes shamelessness. Countless websites and even mental health professionals today endorse a shameless lifestyle: Never be ashamed - dress as you want, live as you want, behave as you want, appear as you want, do what you want, with whom you want, anywhere you want and never, ever feel ashamed. Shamelessness, they say, is liberating and cathartic.
While the rest of the world moves towards shamelessness, we must remember that we, the Jewish people, are to distinguish ourselves specifically through the quality of shame and the capacity to feel ashamed. The Talmud in Yevamos 79a states: "ha'banim ha'kesheirim ha'busha nir'ah al pneiheim ki mi she'hu byshan hu siman she'hu mizerah Avraham, Yitzchak v'Ya'akov.
We, the Jewish people can be identified by our natural inclination towards blushing when something is prust, inappropriate or improper. Let me be perfectly clear: a byshan is not a prude. Rather, he or she is one who has maintained a pristine quality, a natural alert system of when a boundary has been crossed and when a border has been violated.
Today we are celebrating the birthday of man, the anniversary of our creation. Human beings are unique in many ways, and one of them is that Homo sapiens are the only species on the planet that wear clothing. When anthropologists studied primitive tribes in even the warmest climates they saw that people covered their private areas in virtually every human society. Clothing is intrinsically connected to the concept of shame and of basic dignity. This is expressed by the very etymology of the Hebrew words for clothing.
The Hebrew word for garment is levush. This comes from the word bush which means to be ashamed. The very structure of the Hebrew language indicates that clothing is worn to protect us not only from the elements, but more importantly from the natural, God-given feeling of busha, of the shame of being uncovered. Levush protects us from feeling busha, the crossing of an inappropriate boundary like overexposure. We would never walk around without our levush, uncovered or fully exposed, and we must not walk around with our neshamos fully exposed to every form of speech, every image, every joke, and everything the world throws our way.
The basic human qualities of decency and dignity as protected through busha - shame, are threatened in our society today. There is another Hebrew word for a garment and that is a beged. Beged comes from the word bogeid - to rebel or revolt. Sometimes people, particularly children, instead of using clothing as levush to protect ourselves from the busha of crossing the line of decency, use clothing as a beged to rebel against boundaries and rules altogether.
We cannot and must not lose the trait that identifies us as the children of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'akov, the trait of busha, of shame and of embarrassment. We must not become desensitized and numb to the distortion of levush into beged and by a culture that assaults us with the message that we never have anything at all to feel embarrassed or ashamed about.
The culture today is to share the intimate details of your life with friends over coffee or with coworkers at the water cooler or in real time over Facebook. What happened to modesty, to privacy, and to a sense of shame that some things are not meant to be shared with the world?
If we become numb and oblivious to the distortion of decency, if we lose our busha, then we lose our seichel, our ability to discern between right and wrong, correct and incorrect, between appropriate and inappropriate.
Rav Nachman of Breslov explained that shame and teshuva are inextricably linked as evidenced through the letters of the two words. Boshes is spelled beis, shin, tav, which are the same letters that spell tashuv, to return. Said Rav Nachman, when the ba'al tokei is blowing the shofar, in the effort to produce the sound, his face turns red, like a person who is embarrassed or blushing. As we hear the sound of the shofar today, we are to be reminded of the capacity to feel shame, we are to be embarrassed by our past indiscretions and be inspired to teshuva, to grow and to change.
Today, on this Rosh Hashana, let's make a new year's pledge to recalibrate our moral compasses. Let's repair and renew the feeling in our spiritual nerve endings. Let's recapture the capacity to blush and reinstate the very trait that makes us proud descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.
