Welcome to Mussar Moment, a new publication from HACD.
Each issue offers a few thoughtful questions to spark real conversation with your students about what’s happening in school and in their lives. Use it for a five-minute morning discussion, a homeroom check-in, a spontaneous teachable moment or a Shabbat table discussion.
Parshat Bereshit: Dust and Breath
Right at the start of the Torah, before we know anything else about the first human being, we get one striking detail: God forms Adam from the dust of the earth, then breathes into him the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). Dust and breath. Not one or the other — both, together, in the very same body.
That’s a pretty good description of what it feels like to be a person. Some days we feel like dust — small, ordinary, unsure we matter much. Other days we feel like we’re carrying something bigger than ourselves — an idea, a spark, a sense of purpose. The Torah’s answer is: you’re both, all the time. Humility and dignity aren’t opposites. They’re supposed to sit right next to each other.
There’s a teaching, attributed to Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, that a person should carry two slips of paper, one in each pocket. One says: “Bishvili nivra ha’olam” — “The world was created for my sake.” The other says: “V’anochi afar va’efer” — “I am but dust and ashes.” The wisdom isn’t in picking one. It’s in knowing which pocket to reach into, and when.
Later in this same parsha, after Adam and Chava eat from the tree, God doesn’t open with an accusation. God asks one question: “Ayeka?” — “Where are you?” Not “what did you do,” but where are you. It’s an invitation, not a trap. And what do Adam and Chava do with it? They point elsewhere — he blames her, she blames the serpent. Nobody just says, “Here I am. I made a choice.”
That’s maybe the oldest, most human move in the book: when something goes wrong, look for someone else to hold it. Mussar — the practice of working on our character — starts with resisting that move. It starts with being willing to answer Ayeka honestly, for ourselves, without needing anyone else’s failure to explain our own.
So here’s a question worth carrying out of the room today: When something goes wrong this week — a fight with a friend, a mistake on an assignment, a promise you didn’t keep — can you be the one who says “here I am,” before looking for someone to blame?
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Dr. David Bauman
