Rabbi Twerski on Middot (Click on Title To Hear Powerful Audio)

It's important to not be satisfied with the status-quo. If you don't move ahead you slip backwards. We need to be careful to counter the foreign forces around us.

Sar Shalom of Belz said that there are three types of galus: from non-Jews, from other Jews, from ourselves. Our soul can be oppressed - by our own selves. The Chinuch says that how we act determines how we feel. The Ramban says to review his letter to his son regularly. He starts saying to work on acting on anger and rage. If you're careful with that then you'll be brought to humility and that's the finest of traits. The reason why he doesn't start with humility is because you can't mandate how to feel, only how to act. And controlled behavior leads to good middot.

Mitzvot are the foundation of the house. Mitvot are the bricks, but they are help up by middot. Ramchal says in Mesilat Yesharim that the basis of Torah is middot.

Rav Chaim Vital (outstanding student and successor of Arizal) says that middot are not ordained in the Torah because they are the needed preface to observance of mitzvot. He says that bad character traits are much worse than actual aveirot and this explains why Chazal say if anyone goes into rage he is actually (mamash) an oveid avodah zarah - which is the worst of all sins. One who has gasat ruach - thinks he's better than others - is a denier of G-d (kofeir be'ikar). One must be more careful with bad character traits than with mitzvot asei and lo ta'asei because if you have good traits you'll keep all the mitzvot. Rav Chaim Vital is saying that if you lose your temper and other such errors you are doing terrible aveirot.

Reb Yerucham (100 years ago) wrote that the world was given to the satan. We see this because after forty days he showed the people that Moshe had died. He was given the power to delude us, still today. We see hallucinations via the satan, as he was given by G-d this power. Today it's a thousand times worse. We have only one defense - to bind ourselves to Torah in its entirety.

As a child in public school he learned a story about a Greek hero that's stayed with him. Ulysses heard that there was a harbor where one could hear the amazing music of the sirens. If you heard it you'd be drawn to the shore. Many ships were pulled there and hit the sharp reefs and were destroyed. He stuffed his sailors' ears with wax. And he tied himself with strong ropes to the mast and told them to keep rowing no matter what. When they passed the harbor and only he heard the music he started screaming to them to go to the shore. He insisted, tried to break free. They went on. When they were in a quiet place he realized the binding ropes saved his life.

Today the powerful music of the sirens is everywhere, attracting many people and leading them to disasters. We need the ropes of Torah and middot to protect us. We must keep on our tables and learn and discuss and live through hard work the middot explained in Mesillat Yesharim, Orchot Tzadikim, Maalot HaMiddot, works of Rav Dessler, works of Rav Wolbe. We need to practice our middot with great care, to fight losing our temper - specifically at times of stress, and truth, and humility. When children see parents lie they are lost. Many "off the derech" people say they see frumkeit as externals without true middot.

If a frum person abuses their spouse they are not frum, just like if they ate a cheeseburger. Rav Chaim Vital says that someone does a wealth of chesed and after 120 does to Heaven, "Let him know for sure that they will check how he behaved toward his wife. If he behaved toward her with kindness he will have a great share in Heaven, but if he is angry and unhelpful then he will be judged based on that and all the kindness he did all the years of his life will not be counted. Other aveirot do not cancel out chesed in this way.

The Ramban says the mitzvah of being holy is above the 613, without that mitzvah de'oraitah one can be abhorrent in behavior. Without A Job Who Am I? That's a book he wrote and the answer is that who you are is how you behave not what you do for a living. How you act will be how you feel. The Gemorah says that the command to love G-d means to act in a way that leads others to love G-d. The world around us has lost middot and replaced it with gratification of animal desires. Raising children in this world is hard and must begin with middot at home. Mussar sefarim need to always be out on the table.