The real joy of skeet shooting

‘And now Israel, what is the only thing that G-d asks of you?  To fear Hashem your G-d to go in his ways and to full him and serve with all of your heart and soul’  Devarim 10:12

Rashi: The Rabbis learn from here that everything is in the hands of heaven except for fear of Heaven

 ‘Pull’!  This is the skeet shooting command that sends a bright orange disk into the air. An outside observer sees a disk coasting lazily across the field, while the shooter sees an orange disk whizzing by.  It is the job of the shooter to line it up with the barrel of the shot gun. Two tiny notches in the barrel indicate whether the pellets will shoot straight. Now, depending on its momentum and trajectory the shooter needs to aim just above or just below the disk.  If done correctly, the hundreds of tiny pellets disperse towards the orange disk and smash it.  Concurrently, the sound of the gun races across the grassy field and ricochets back even louder from the forest at the other end of the range.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Surprisingly, I did hit a few of these disks at first before petering out to my real level of complete novice.   But, I knew that if I had the time and energy to put into it, with a few weeks, or at most months, of consistent practice I could be a competent skeet shooter.  It is a matter of refining timing and reflexes, and eventually technique at the higher levels.  A goal, some time and energy, and accomplishment equal joy, right? After all, why else would there be a skeet shooting club in the middle of the woods replete with a  skeet shooting magazine laying on the table in the club house if it didn’t bring people some joy? And joy is a function of personal accomplishment.[3]  

 Now there is a lot of joy in the formula above, but it is missing one crucial ingredient.  In order to have a complete joy, it needs to be accomplished completely by you.  No matter what the accomplishment is in life, whether it is skeet shooting, a job placement, or a degree they are incomplete joys to varying degrees because there is always an outside factor that aids you.  When it comes to a job, you had to be hired.  That means, it was someone else’s decision to hire you and that was dependent on national and world economies and only partially determined by your resume.  Therefore, when you get the job the joy of accomplishment is actually limited.  Or what will take away joy from any accomplishment to some degree is your health for health is largely not in your hands.  Therefore, to the extent that bodily health allows you to accomplish, this is particularly true for any physical accomplishment, again joy is reduced since the ‘you’ in the accomplishment is reduced.

There is only one complete ‘you’- a’ you’ that even G-d can’t touch.  That is the ‘you’ that decides to fear heaven. Fear is opposite of love.  Love is a desire for closeness that creates oneness between two things while fear creates a distance[4].  A healthy distance allows you to ‘see’ something clearly, which is why the word for ‘fear’ in Hebrew is the same as the word to see.  When we are close to things, we can’t see the whole picture, and therefore, there is no clarity. In other words, the whole goal of fearing heaven doesn’t mean to stand shaking in fear all day; rather, it is a desire to see G-d in an objective way, as part of reality.  Even G-d can’t help us, since any help would create closeness, the opposite of distance.  So inherently, it is entirely on us to decide to create that distance in order to see spirituality clearly.  And there is no other task in life that is completely us other than this one. Therefore, the potential for joy from accomplishment in this task is the highest since it involves the most you.  Luckily, in all aspects of life, even skeet shooting.  Even better than hitting the targets, even more joy can come from deciding to clean up the empty plastic shell casings as the range requested even when nobody is watching since with enough distance, a person can see that somebody else always is!

                                                                                                                                                      

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[1] In Hebrew, there are ten different words for happiness or joy since there are many types of joy.  However, perhaps the deepest seated joy is one of personal accomplishment based on a meaningful task.

[2] See Gur Aryeh Devarim 10:12

[3] In Hebrew, there are ten different words for happiness or joy since there are many types of joy.  However, perhaps the deepest seated joy is one of personal accomplishment based on a meaningful task.

[4] See Gur Aryeh Devarim 10:12

A good cry

Importance of a good cry[i]

                Is the following a sign of strength or a sign of deep, deep trouble?  A person puts his hand in a fire and does not flinch.  Or a person sticks a three inch needle deep into his palm without a wince.  I don’t care if the person looks like the hulk; this is a sign of severe nerve damage as he is too numb to feel anything.  This is where the Jews find themselves on the eve of another ninth of Av.  No one really cares, or even feels the lack of missing spirituality.

It all began in the desert a few thousand years ago.  Promised a land teeming with goodness, the Jews faltered and lost trust.  They sent in spies to the land to scope out the scene.  Had the spies come back and reported honestly, the mistake would have ended there.  Instead, the report itself came back largely on the negative side, and the Jews cried out.  The Talmud, taanis 29a, reports that since the Jews cried out for nothing on that day, that they would cry out for something on that day for the rest of history.  What appears to be a harsh condemnation for foolish behavior may actually be the remedy to a deep problem.

It is hard to place pain in a positive light outside the weight room or the doctor’s office, think shot.  However, there is one other place where a person can appreciate pain, and that is certain rehabilitation centers.  Pain after surgery, most people can do without, but the pain that one feels after ulk Hogan , this is not a good sign a possible spinal injury is welcome relief.  With that in mind, we can approach the day of T’sha B’av with one thing in mind- to feel some sort of pain!

                In other words, when the Talmud says that Jews will cry out from now on, it is not a curse that we will be given a reason to cry, rather it is an instruction of what we must do in order to reconcile the damage done.  When exiled, and there is a lack of closeness to G-d within our hearts, the cry of this distance is in itself the fix- the fact that we can cry over the distance!  The heart can then awaken and reconnect. 

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[i] Rav Dessler, Mictav M’eliyahu