An Unexpected Lesson in Breaking Habits
By Shlomo Elkan
Nearly three months into living in Israel, I'm still having trouble with Sundays.
I know perfectly well what day it is. I simply can't persuade the rest of me to believe that it's a regular workday.
For most of my life, Sunday occupied a particular place in the week. Even when I was working, which was often, it had a different feel. The world moved a little slower. There was time to recover from Shabbos, spend time with family, catch up on things, and perhaps accomplish absolutely nothing without feeling particularly guilty about it.
Here in Israel, Sunday morning arrives with all the enthusiasm and urgency of a Monday.
People go to work. Children go to school. The phone rings. Emails arrive. Everyone seems perfectly comfortable with this arrangement.
I'm still adjusting.
Friday doesn't quite make up for it either. Here, Friday is a mad dash toward Shabbos. There's shopping to finish, cooking to do, errands to run, and the ever-present awareness that the clock is ticking. The whole country seems to be moving toward the same deadline.
Then Shabbos arrives, and the change is unmistakable. The streets quiet down, the pace changes, and Jerusalem settles into a rhythm that I've come to appreciate enormously.
But then comes Motzei Shabbos, and suddenly the workweek is staring you in the face again.
Of all the adjustments involved in moving to a new country, this has been one of the more surprisingly stubborn ones.
Which got me thinking about habits.
There's nothing inherently correct about the American arrangement of the week. Nor is there anything particularly unreasonable about the Israeli one. They're simply different ways of organizing time.
Yet one feels perfectly natural to me, while the other still requires a conscious adjustment.
Because I've spent my life accustomed to one particular rhythm. Over time, that rhythm became so familiar that I stopped thinking of it as a convention. It simply became the way things were supposed to be.
And I wonder how many other aspects of our lives work exactly the same way.
We are creatures of habit, and thank goodness for that.
Imagine how exhausting life would be if we had to consciously deliberate over every little decision. How to make our coffee, which route to take, how to organize our mornings. Habits spare us an enormous amount of mental energy. They give our lives structure, predictability, and a certain measure of comfort.
But habits extend well beyond our daily routines.
We develop habitual ways of thinking, responding, and relating to the world.
Some people instinctively become defensive when challenged. Others withdraw. Some approach unfamiliar situations with curiosity, while others immediately begin imagining everything that could go wrong.
Our personalities and experiences certainly influence these reactions. But I suspect that a good deal of what we consider our natural disposition is actually the accumulation of behaviors we've repeated so often that they've become automatic.
At some point, "this is what I usually do" becomes "this is who I am."
And that's a rather consequential shift.
Because once we've accepted something as part of our nature, we tend to stop questioning whether it could be different.
There's a fascinating discussion in chapter 15 of Tanya that I've been thinking about in this context.
The Alter Rebbe examines a teaching from the Gemara in Chagigah that distinguishes between two people who study Torah.
One reviews his learning one hundred times.
The other reviews it one hundred and one times.
The Gemara draws an extraordinary distinction between them, associating the person who studies one hundred and one times with the description oved Elokim, one who serves Hashem.
At first glance, this seems rather unfair.
Surely someone who has reviewed his learning a hundred times has demonstrated extraordinary dedication. Why should a single additional repetition make such an enormous difference?
The Alter Rebbe explains that in the days being discussed, reviewing one's learning a hundred times was customary. It was the expected practice. Students were accustomed to doing it.
One hundred repetitions, remarkable as that sounds to us, had become routine.
The one hundred and first time required something different.
It meant pushing beyond what had become natural.
The Gemara illustrates this with an example from the marketplace. Donkey drivers would charge one zuz to travel ten parsas, but two zuzim to travel eleven.
Think about that for a moment.
Adding just one more stretch to the journey doubled the price!
That additional distance took them beyond the journey they were accustomed to making. The extra effort carried a value entirely disproportionate to the distance itself.
I suppose even the donkey drivers had their routines.
What I find particularly compelling about the Alter Rebbe's explanation is that the distinction doesn't depend on how much a person has accomplished in absolute terms.
Both individuals have learned an extraordinary amount. Both may be deeply committed to Torah study.
The difference lies in the effort required to move beyond what has become comfortable.
And there's another subtle point here.
The person who reviews his learning a hundred times may have worked very hard to develop that habit in the first place. What now comes naturally might once have required tremendous effort.
But having reached that point, the challenge changes.
Yesterday's accomplishment can become today's routine.
The discipline that once demanded great exertion can eventually feel effortless. That's a wonderful achievement, but it also raises an interesting question.
Now what?
If we want to continue growing, at some point we need to move beyond the boundaries of what has become familiar.
I've been wondering how often we unknowingly establish those boundaries for ourselves.
We say things like, "I'm just not a morning person," or "I'm terrible at remembering names."
"I'm not particularly creative."
"I've never been good with change."
"That's just the way I am."
Perhaps some of those descriptions are entirely accurate. We certainly have different strengths, personalities, and dispositions.
But how often have we actually tested the assumptions we've made about ourselves?
How often do we confuse unfamiliarity with inability?
Think about something you once found terribly difficult that now comes almost automatically. Learning to drive, mastering a new skill, speaking a language, or navigating a complicated task at work.
At some point, through enough practice and repetition, the unfamiliar became familiar.
Yet when confronted with something new, we sometimes forget how many of our present abilities began as things we couldn't do.
And perhaps that's one of the dangers of becoming too comfortable with our habits. We begin to assume that the limits of our experience are also the limits of our abilities.
Of course, there's an important distinction between challenging a habit and abandoning it.
Jewish life places enormous value on consistency.
We daven at familiar times. We observe Shabbos each week. We return to the same Torah readings year after year. Our days, weeks, and seasons are shaped by practices repeated across generations.
There's tremendous beauty in that rhythm.
And the Alter Rebbe certainly isn't suggesting that the hundred repetitions are worthless. They establish the foundation that makes the hundred and first possible.
Still, even our most valuable habits can become so automatic that we stop paying attention to what we're doing.
We can become very good at repeating something without necessarily continuing to grow through it.
Moving to Israel has been an interesting exercise in discovering just how many routines I had accumulated without realizing it.
Some are relatively trivial, like Sunday.
Others are more substantial.
Things that once happened almost automatically now require conscious thought. Familiar solutions don't always work. Assumptions about how things ought to function are regularly challenged.
Sometimes it's a matter of language. Sometimes it's bureaucracy. Sometimes it's discovering that the most obvious way of accomplishing something is apparently the one way nobody here does it.
And sometimes it's simply having to admit that the way I've always done something might not be the best way to do it here.
I can't say I embrace all these discoveries with equal enthusiasm.
There's something deeply comforting about familiarity. Knowing how things work gives us a sense of confidence and control. When that familiarity disappears, even temporarily, it can be exhausting.
But it can also be instructive.
When our familiar patterns are interrupted, we have an opportunity to examine them.
Why do I do this particular thing this way?
Am I holding on to a certain routine because it serves me well, or because changing it would make me uncomfortable?
And perhaps most importantly, are there things I've convinced myself I cannot do simply because I've never seriously tried doing them differently?
I think there's value in asking those questions even when we're perfectly happy with our lives.
In fact, perhaps that's when we need to ask them most.
When something is obviously broken, we're generally motivated to fix it. But when a routine is functioning reasonably well, there's very little incentive to examine whether it could be better.
We become comfortable.
And comfort has a remarkable ability to convince us that we've arrived exactly where we need to be.
Which brings me back to the hundred and first repetition.
The student who has already reviewed his learning a hundred times has fulfilled what was expected of him. He could stop, perfectly satisfied with what he's accomplished.
Instead, he makes a conscious decision to go a little further.
There's something rather powerful about that choice.
It reminds me that growth doesn't always require a dramatic change in circumstances. Sometimes it can begin with a willingness to examine one familiar behavior.
Perhaps there's a conversation we've been avoiding because we assume we know how it will go. Perhaps there's something we've wanted to learn but keep putting off because we've convinced ourselves we're not particularly good at it.
Or perhaps there's a familiar response to frustration that we've repeated so many times we've forgotten that we could choose another.
Changing those patterns may require considerably more effort than continuing along the familiar path.
And perhaps that's precisely why the effort matters.
I imagine that sooner or later, the Israeli workweek will feel completely normal.
I'll wake up on Sunday morning, look at my schedule, and get on with the day without giving it a second thought.
And when that happens, I wonder whether I'll have grown or simply developed a new habit.
Perhaps the answer depends on what I take from the experience.
I'd like to think that having so many familiar routines interrupted has made me a little more willing to question the ones I still have.
The beauty of the hundred and first repetition is that it doesn't demand we discard the first hundred.
We carry everything we've learned with us.
We simply choose to go a little further.
And here it is, Sunday. I've already taught a class, had some meetings, and there's still plenty of work ahead of me.
A few months ago, that would have felt like my weekend being interrupted.
Today, it's beginning to feel rather ordinary.
Although I still wouldn't object to getting my Sundays back.