The Power of Habit

This week’s haftarah, from the book of Isaiah, reassures us that God ultimately will comfort the children of Israel from the pain of exile and the destruction which they have suffered. When referring to the Jewish people’s pain, the haftarah relies on an interesting metaphor – a cup of wine. 

“Arise Jerusalem, which has drunk from the hand of God the cup of God’s anger; you have drained the dregs from the cup of pain (tarelah)… Listen, unhappy one, who is drunk, but not from wine. 

Thus saith the Lord, Your God who champions His people: 

Behold I take away from your hand the cup of pain, the cup of My wrath; 

You shall never drink it again”. (51:17, 21-22)

The cup of wine, usually a symbol of joy, here is a symbol of pain and confusion. Pain and drunkenness, laughing and crying, can look the same. Why does the prophet use a metaphor which potentially contains opposite images: joy and pain, comfort and torture? 

The cup of wine is the perfect metaphor, because, as the Malbim demonstrates, our own choices control our fate. We have the ability to pour the wine, what kind it will be, how to drink it and when. It is our choice to either drink the cup of joy or the cup of pain. We are in control of exile and redemption, guilt and merit – the nature of the cup we drink, the life we lead. 

Rarely do we think that our day-to-day decisions will direct the course of our lives. Instead, life is the product of myriad habits which, cumulatively, make our life the life it is. So we often find ourselves at a point in our lives without knowing how we got there. Like the drunk person in the haftarah, surprisingly here we are, perhaps the cup has been one of joy – of wine – or of tarelah – of pain and degradation.

After fifty years, the person who exercised for ten minutes a day is a different person than the one who did not. The person who flosses every night is going to have a different life than the one who does not. There are no guarantees, but as individuals and as a nation, time is the most potent and overlooked factor in our lives. We know it to be true when investing for retirement, but we often do not own up to it in our lives. Yes, Daf Yomi is hard to keep up with. But the person who learns two mishnahs a day, if it’s a habit it’s doable, will have finished all of mishnah at the end of six years. 

This is the true path of teshuvah. Not sweeping New Year’s resolutions, but small changes in habit which result, over time, in a life well lived. In the end, the Navi is saying we all wake up as if drunk, wondering how we got here, and where the time went. But there are two kinds of cups that we can drink: the cup of tarelah or the cup of nichamah, of comfort and joy. 

Teshuvah wakes us up from this drunkenness, shakes us and opens our eyes. In 2021, George Packer wrote the following in The Atlantic, which expresses this idea:

“September 11 dissolved this dream of being exempt from history. It had been a childish dream, and its end forced many Americans, perhaps for the first time, to consider the rest of the world.

That morning, an investment banker escaped Ground Zero and staggered uptown into a church in Greenwich Village, where he began to shake and sob.

A policeman put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Don’t worry, you’re in shock.’

The banker replied, ‘I’m not in shock. I like this state. I’ve never been more cognizant in my life.’”