By Cailin Acosta in San Diego
As Rosh Hashanah approaches, Director of Operation and Outreach Brandon Fisher’s “Four Elements of Teshuvah” series at Beth Jacob Congregation turned to air, or ruach, and the role confidence plays in helping people recognize and fulfill their God-given potential.
Beginning the fourth session, Fisher reviewed a central idea from the earlier classes: human potential is expansive. Yet people often begin limiting themselves at an early age as they discover what they believe they are good or bad at.
Fisher suggested that many of the mistakes for which people seek teshuvah stem from failing to live up to the potential Hashem has given them. The four elements provide a framework for understanding that potential. Fire represents control and momentum; water represents comfort, emotion and desire; air represents confidence; and earth, which will be explored in the next session, represents safety and grounded-ness.
“Air is confidence,” Fisher explained. The Hebrew word ruach can mean wind, spirit or breath. The class connected it to the biblical account of Hashem breathing a soul into humanity and to the uniquely human ability to communicate thoughts through speech. According to the teaching presented in class, thoughts remain abstract until they are expressed. Through speech, ideas can enter the physical world.
But air, like the other elements, can become destructive when it is out of balance. Too much air can manifest as haughtiness, boasting, idle talk and overconfidence. Fisher compared excessive confidence to a hurricane: a powerful force that can create chaos and push everything around it aside.
A person who believes he or she is better than everyone else leaves little room for others. There is also little room for acknowledging mistakes because excessive confidence can lead a person to believe that success is entirely self-created and failure is always someone else’s fault.
At the other extreme, too little air can leave a person trapped in doubt and insecurity. Without confidence, a person may not trust his or her ability to accomplish anything. Fisher compared this state to a place without air, uninhabitable and unable to sustain life.
The goal, therefore, is not to eliminate confidence but to find the proper balance. Healthy confidence means knowing one’s value and recognizing one’s abilities without believing that is the entire picture.
“You are a full piece of the puzzle, but not the whole puzzle,” Fisher said. That perspective allows a person to recognize that his or her abilities are gifts from Hashem and carry an obligation to use them. Fisher compared this balance to a delicate golf shot. A player cannot approach the shot timidly, but neither can the player simply use maximum force. Success requires complete commitment combined with finesse.
A similar example comes from the art of glassblowing. The glassblower uses air to shape a vessel, but the pressure must be precisely controlled. Too much or too little can prevent the vessel from taking its intended form.
Confidence works in much the same way. It requires enough force to move forward, but enough awareness to know when to slow down. The class also examined the relationship between ruach and curiosity. Constantly seeking new experiences can provide excitement, but endless movement does not necessarily lead to growth.
Fisher shared stories of people who repeatedly moved from one place or experience to another, eventually discovering that the same human challenges followed them wherever they went. Without remaining in one place long enough to develop relationships, face difficulties and put down roots, the search for something new can become a way of avoiding the deeper work of growth.
One participant offered a different perspective, describing how sitting outside and watching the clouds could create a profound sense of being grounded. The observation provided a natural bridge to the next element of the series: earth.
The class then turned to the relationship between confidence and the yetzer hara, the internal force that challenges a person’s growth. Fisher described the yetzer hara as a learning opponent. It recognizes a person’s patterns and adapts accordingly. When someone repeatedly encounters the same challenge, the solution may be to respond differently rather than continuing to fight the same battle in the same way.
That change can sometimes be surprisingly simple. It might mean taking a different route to avoid a recurring temptation, changing an expectation of another person or accepting someone as they are rather than repeatedly becoming frustrated that they do not behave differently.
The circumstances may not change. The person does. This is where ruach becomes particularly important to teshuvah. Confidence provides the ability to step back from an immediate struggle and gain perspective. From that vantage point, a person can recognize that a current challenge does not define the entirety of his or her life.
But gaining perspective does not mean avoiding the challenge. A person may be able to rise above the immediate struggle mentally, Fisher explained, but eventually must return to the ground and confront it.
The power of ruach, then, is not simply the confidence to believe that anything is possible. It is the ability to recognize one’s potential, understand one’s place within the larger picture and then bring that awareness into action.
As the High Holidays approach, the lesson offers a different way to think about teshuvah: not merely as correcting mistakes, but as becoming more fully the person Hashem has given each individual the ability to become.
Fisher’s “Four Elements of Teshuvah” series continues at 8:15 p.m., Tuesday, September 16 at Beth Jacob Congregation. Click here to join the WhatsApp group for more information.
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Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World.