Tefillah - 040 Escaping The Self-Imposed Prison

Hashem Frees From Captivity

In the second blessing of Shemoneh Esrei, we say that Hashem isמתיר אסורים – He “frees the imprisoned”. We also make a morning blessing each day of ברוך את הי אלוקינו מלך העולם, מתיר אסורים – “Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the world, Who frees captives.”

A simple kind of jail is a physical kind of jail, such as the jail that Yosef was imprisoned in. When a person goes to sleep at night, it’s also like being in jail. When a person goes to sleep, the sefarim hakedoshim state that all the parts of soul enter the heart. It is written, “I am asleep, but my heart is awake.” Our heart stays awake as we sleep, because it contains our soul, and our soul never sleeps. Therefore, we thank Hashem in the morning when we say the blessing of מתיר אסורים, because Hashem frees our soul from its captivity.

Let us reflect on this concept of מתיר האסורים  what it means to be in “jail.”

The Jail Of The Body Over The Soul

The ultimate kind of ‘jail’ is the fact that our neshamah (soul) is in our body. Our neshamah came from Heaven, and it did not want to come down here. Our neshamah was placed by force into the body, and it feels that it has become enslaved to the body.[1] If anyone is in touch with his neshamah, he can feel like he is in a jail, that his neshamah is imprisoned by the body. He feels like the possuk, “I am a stranger in this land.”

Shabbos – When Our Neshamah Goes Free From The Body

When it comes Shabbos, we are able to enjoy spiritual pleasure and experience the light of our neshamah. One of the Shabbos Zemiros is, “Then [on Shabbos] you will rejoice in Hashem.” Shabbos is called yoma d’nishmasa, the “day of the neshamah”. The true oneg (pleasure) of Shabbos is that we can experience our neshamah’s pleasure in Hashem. The only reason why we have good food on Shabbos is to pacify our body and include it in the joy of Shabbos, but the real pleasure of Shabbos is our neshamah’s joy in Hashem, which is the special opportunity of Shabbos.

We have described so far two kinds of jail – when the soul is imprisoned in our body as we go to sleep, and when the soul feels imprisoned by the body in jail. These are both extreme kinds of jail, and not everyone feels it. But there is a third kind of jail, which applies to any kind of person, which we will now discuss.

The Inner Imprisonment – Forming Erroneous Beliefs

Each of us have different de’os (opinions) and middos (character traits). All of our various de’os and middos we have are actually like being imprisoned in a jail! There are people who are imprisoned by their various erroneous beliefs they have in their life. These can be beliefs they absorb from the particular sect of Judaism they are found in, or because of various beliefs they developed on their own. When this kind of person meets a person with different beliefs, he cannot understand how another person can act differently than what he thinks is right. “It has to be the way I think”, this person feels. He feels that only his opinions in life are right, and that everyone else who disagrees with him are wrong.

What happens to such a person in his life? As a person gets older and he has a family, he realizes that things don’t always go his way. He has a wife and children, and he realizes that he can’t always get what he wants, that he doesn’t control things. He gets a really frustrated whenever the members of his household don’t do like he wants.

(Sometimes he indeed goes through a very painful situation in the household – when a child doesn’t want to be religious. But we won’t address this problem. We will address a different kind of situation: when a child takes a different path of Yiddishkeit (religious, Torah Judaism) that the father doesn’t approve of.)

If the father is a very strong-minded person and he thinks that only his way in Yiddishkeit is the way to follow, he gets tremendously agonized from with child, who is taking a different path than the one which he wanted him to follow. Or, let’s say, the child isn’t learning as much as the father would like him to. The father suffers from this, because he expects his child to learn more – the child isn’t conforming to “his” rules and expectations.

People develop various beliefs about life, that “it has to be this way”, and their whole household has to suffer from these beliefs. The house becomes like a jail! The house will be run like a jail – everyone has to conform to the beliefs which this father has formed. The father feels, “It has to be my way”.

Let’s say a person has a few children, and he decides that “In my house, you have to make a siyum (complete a tractate of the Talmud) when you become bar mitzvah.” So his first child makes a siyum upon his bar mitzvah, then his second child becomes bar mitzvah and makes a siyum, then his third child, then his fourth child. Then his fifth child comes and doesn’t make a siyum, for whatever reason. The father can’t fall to sleep since he feels, “What’s going on over here? My child is going against my mesorah (tradition)!!”

This father decided that his children have to make a siyum upon their bar mitzvah; this is one of his beliefs about life. Therefore, his children have to suffer from him…

Besides for how this affects the home, a person can also develop a problem in which he is imprisoned inside himself, when he has to conform to a certain way which isn’t meant for him to be like.

Each of our Avos (forefathers) were different. Did Yitzchok Avinu have to do exactly what Avraham Avinu did? Did Yaakov Avinu have to do what Yitzchok Avinu did? No. Each of the Avos had their own unique way. Avraham Avinu’s path was chessed (kindness). Yitzchok Avinu took a different path – yirah (awe). Yaakov took a different path, emes (truth). Our own Avos did not follow the “mesorah” of their own fathers!

Of course, we all have to keep the Torah. “The Torah will not be exchanged.” But each of us has our own individual role in the Jewish people, and one’s individuality needs to be expressed - not suppressed.

Each of us has our own private aspirations, and we each have to be ourselves. We have to be ourselves in our ruchniyus.A person has to learn Torah in a way that defines his personality, and he has to daven in a way that defines his personality. A person has to do mitzvos and be himself when he does the mitzvos. The Torah should never be compromised as Chazal state: “This Torah will never be exchanged.” A person, however, still has to be himself when it comes to his own ruchniyus- not what others try to mold him into.

The de’os (formed beliefs) that a person develops can put himself in his own inner imprisonment, and he also causes others to suffer. If others aren’t doing what he believes in, then he sees others as “separating from society”. He might even think this way even if most people don’t do like him.

“This is how it is done in the family,” he feels. If he gets a new son-in-law or a new daughter-in-law in his family, he makes them do things the way it’s done in his house, because “This is how it’s done in this family. Therefore, you must conform.” There are people who lay down all sorts of rules to their newly married children-in-law and give them very specific “rules” of what they have to do now, now that they have married into his family….all kinds of rules.

Such behavior greatly weakens the relationship between the father and the children. People do this stubbornly, all in the name of “It’s a minhag in Yisrael, which is Torah.” If others don’t do like his minhag, he views them as doing the wrong thing. This is an inner kind of imprisonment that a person places himself in! The person confines others to his rules simply because “This is how it has to be”, since he is firm in his beliefs.

People turn their formed beliefs into matters which they consider are the most important in Yiddishkeit; often people make up all kinds of silly ‘minhagim’ that their family has to follow and they confuse their children in the process.

Getting Our Priorities Straight

What, indeed, is the main thing we must emphasize in Yiddishkeit? The main things are Torah, closeness to Hashem, to love Hashem, to do mitzvos, to do chessed – and in a true way.  Those should be our priorities in Yiddishkeit. Often, the matters which should really be important to us usually evade us - while the various formed beliefs people have in their Yiddishkeit are what they place emphasis on, and often these are silly kinds of ‘minhagim’ which they feel that others need to do.

Of course, as we said, the Torah can never be compromised – that is, if it is a minhag which clearly comes from our Sages. But this is only if it is a minhag based on holiness, not on some empty “minhag” that a person comes up with which he believes others have to do.

We are living in a generation of a new kind of ‘jail’. Our soul is imprisoned in our body, but now we have another kind of jail in this generation – that people are imprisoned in their various de’os\beliefs they have formed. It’s nothing less than a jail.

Imprisoned By Personal Weakness

Until now we spoke of how a person’s de’os (opinions\formed beliefs). Earlier, we mentioned that a person can also get imprisoned by his own middos. Now we will explain how people get imprisoned by their middos (personality\character traits) as well.

Each of us possess middos that haven’t yet been perfected. Besides for the fact that we have a general avodah to work on our middos, we each have particular middos that are imprisoning us when they are left unfixed.

For example, a person can be obsessed with running after kavod (honor). It’s not just that he wants kavod; it goes more than that. His entire life is centered around how he can always get more kavod.

When his daughter enters shidduchim, he is interested solely in one thing – that his daughter should marry into a certain dignified family, so that he will receive a lot of honor from the shidduch. From the time his daughter is young, the father might have his eyes on a certain family which is known in the community as a very prominent family, which he hopes to marry his daughter off to. Therefore, no other family is good enough for him.

He also decides that his daughter has to live in a certain community, even if he knows if it’s not good for her. “Too bad. Let her figure it out how to survive”, he feels.

He decides that his son has to learn in a certain yeshivah, even if not’s good for the child, because it’s considered a prominent yeshivah. But he is told that his child won’t succeed in that yeshivah! “Too bad”, he thinks. “The main thing is the honor I will get from it - that everyone knows that my child is in this prominent yeshivah. His success in learning will eventually come; honor doesn’t come so fast.” That’s what he thinks.

He sends his children to certain yeshivos because it will look better for his children’s shidduchim, even if he knows those schools aren’t good for his children. All his decisions are centered around what will give him the most kavod.

These are just a few examples of how a person’s life can be entirely centered around one bad middah that he has. My point here is not that we have to fix our bad middos and our weaknesses; that is also true. We all have certain bad middos and reoccurring weaknesses which we need to fix. My point is rather that a person can be living in a prison-like kind of life, because he becomes imprisoned to that particular bad middah which is dominant in his life. It’s a different point. Our worst weaknesses don’t just cause us to do the wrong thing every once in a while - they can be ruling our entire life, keeping us in a kind of inner imprisonment.

Going Free From Inner Imprisonment

We must wish to go free from all the imprisonment which we put ourselves into. Of course, we need to make sure that we are always keeping the Torah. The Torah’s rules are clearly the kind of confinement that we need in our life and help us live a good life.

But if someone searches for truth, we must realize how many kinds of superficial beliefs that we have incorporated into our life. Imagine how your life would look like if all those formed beliefs in your life would go away. It would be like going free from a jail!

Again, let me emphasize that there are some things which we can never compromise. Anything we do which is clearly the will of Hashem is genuine Torah, and those things we do should not be given up for anything, no matter how confined it makes us feel. This is a kind of confinement we need, and we should accept it lovingly, because it is good for us. There are also some rules that we improvised which are indeed needed in our life.

But if we want to leave our inner imprisonment – the extra rules we placed on our life which are not really necessary according to the Torah – then imagine how your life would look like without all those rules you placed on yourself. Then, go through each of the rules you came up with in your life, and analyze each one of them, and think about how much each of them are truly necessary to keep, or if they are just formed beliefs that are only imprisoning you.

We will then be able to mean the words when we say each morning, מתיר איסורים.  May we merit help from Hashem to go free from the unnecessary imprisonment we place upon ourselves, together with accepting the Torah’s rules with love. May we merit from Hashem to truly be ourselves – this is the true meaning of מתיר אסורים.