I always love when Elul approaches. All the decrees of last Rosh Hashanah that have yet to be fulfilled will unfold in the next few weeks, and so too, all the promises and resolutions I’ve undertaken back then should, at last, be implemented.

I am especially reminded of the Gemara in Baba Batra 10a. Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai had a dream that his nephews would be losing a total sum of seven hundred dinar. All year he made sure to collect money from them for different charities. By the time Rosh Hashanah of the next year arrived, he had already collected six hundred and eighty-three dinar from them. Erev Yom Kippur the Caesar’s tax collector came and took seventeen dinar from them. They were broken and upset, so their uncle, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai, tells them, “Don’t be afraid, it was only seventeen dinar.” They asked him how he knew, and he said, “I saw a dream.” “So why didn’t you tell us?” they asked. He answered, “I said to myself that Tzedakah is better off done Lishmah, with heartfelt intent.”

This Gemara always rings in my mind as we get closer to those high and holy days. Each year a different part of the story strikes me as interesting, but this year it is the last few words that caught my attention. Lishmah, proper intent: this concept is famously known from Mesechet Sanhedrin 105b. “Rabbi Yehuda says in the name of Rav, man should constantly involve himself with Torah and Mitzvah even with the improper intent, because through improper intent will proper intent come about, as we see, Ruth was born to Balak as a reward for the forty-two Karbanot he brought to Hashem.”

In life we find ourselves in situations where we may be operating with very low energy. We struggle to get out of bed and have a hard time giving compliments, let alone smiling, to others. The idea for this is to learn how to smile just because the smile itself will help us out with our misery and depression. But we may ask, “Isn’t this a form of flattery, that we smile at others while we are actually being selfish with our actions?” The answer is, “Flattery is when our selfish actions ask others to do........

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