The Mud on Your Shoes

“What is the portion of Hashem from above, and the inheritance of the Almighty from on high?” Opening Picture a man coming home after a hard day. On the way he walked through a muddy field, and now his shoes are covered in mud. He is standing at the door of his home. One question: who is he? Is he the mud? Is he the shoe? Or is he the one walking, who in a moment will wipe off his shoe and go inside? Every young married man knows this sting. You fell. You shouted at the children. You looked at something you should not have seen. You slipped in your spiritual life. And then comes what follows. It is not only regret. It is something else, something heavier. An inner voice that says: this is who you are. This is you. That voice is what we will talk about here. First Step: You Are Not Your Clothing Hasidic teaching rests on one basic idea, and nothing in it makes sense without it. There is a sharp line between the soul’s core and the “clothing” the soul wears. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, author of the Tanya, the classic book of Hasidic thought, writes that the soul is “a piece of Hashem above, truly.” This is not a figure of speech. It is not a symbol. It is truly so. The Jewish soul is simply a spark of Hashem. That core cannot be stained. It does not change. It does not “fall.” So what does fall? The clothing. Thought, speech and action are the clothing of the soul. They are the tools it uses to act in the world. A sin is an event that sticks to the clothing, the way mud sticks to the sole of a shoe. The shoe is the clothing, the deed. But the real “I” is the one who walks. And the mud is not the one who walks. Listen to what the prophet Zechariah describes. Joshua the High Priest stands before the angel, and his clothes are filthy. What does Hashem do? He says: “Remove the filthy clothes from him.” He does not say “Remove him.” He says, remove the clothes. Joshua himself stays who he is. The filth is on the outside. The real person still stands. Second Step: The Evil Inclination’s Real Victory Is Not the Sin. It Is Despair Here is the new idea, and it is important to hear it well. The evil inclination is the inner voice that pulls us toward wrong. Its plan does not end when you do the wrong thing. That is where it begins. After the fall comes a second stage, quieter and more dangerous. It tries to convince you that the fall defines you. That you are the sin. That you are “finished,” “a failure,” “lost.” Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi writes in the Tanya that even the sadness and the low feeling about yourself that come after a sin can be used by the evil inclination. It pushes a person into depression so that he stops serving Hashem. And it is true. When a person identifies himself with his sins, he is completely trapped. How can he return from what he is? This is the point. It is not only about not sinning. It is about refusing to identify with the sin afterward. This is a battle over how you see yourself. King Solomon wrote: “A righteous person falls seven times and gets up.” The verse does not say, “A righteous person falls seven times and cries.” It also does not say, “A righteous person falls seven times and is ashamed.” It says he gets up. What comes after the fall is rising, not sinking. In Closing The whole power of returning to Hashem depends on this very idea. If you were the sin, there would be nowhere to return to. But the sin is only mud stuck to the sole. So you can always wipe it off. You can always keep walking.