Smash and Fix: Two Approaches to Problem Solving

The end of Parshat Shemini discusses what happens to vessels that become ritually impure. It depends on the composition of the vessel. If the vessel is made of cloth or leather or wood, then it can be ritually purified by immersion in a mikvah and waiting until nightfall (11:32). If it’s made of clay, then there is no way to purify that vessel and remove its impurity; the only recourse is to smash the vessel (11:33). Rav Soloveitchik (quoted by Rav Schachter in Mipninei HaRav) suggests that these rules can guide us in our thinking of how to rectify mistakes that we make or character flaws that we have. Sometimes it is possible to rectify a situation by making slight changes or alterations. Sometimes if we make the adjustments and give it some time, then the desired change will emerge. That is the lesson we learn from wood, cloth and leather vessels. But there are other times when slight adjustments are not enough. We need to be willing to “cut our losses” smash what we have and start from scratch.

I think that both lessons must be reinforced, because we often get stuck in one type of thinking or the other. Sometimes we are hypercritical of ourselves and our actions. If we notice something lacking we immediately think that all is lost. We seek to throw the baby out with the bath water. In a knee-jerk fashion we tell ourselves that we must start over- yet again. The lesson of the wood, cloth and leather vessels is that sometimes only minor adjustments are needed, and in such cases we should be proud of the positive elements while committing to make the necessary changes.

 But sometimes we get overly invested in a certain perspective or way of doing things. When the flaws are pointed out, the most we can do is admit that slight adjustments are needed but overall things are fine. The lesson of the clay vessel is that we sometimes have to smash our past ways of thinking/ ways of doing things and start from scratch. We must be honest enough to sometimes say, “This is not working. I can’t make changes to fix it. I need to start over.”

Each of us is a vessel that needs to be optimally utilized to fulfill our potentials as God intended. We must learn the lesson of both types of vessels so that we are proud of our accomplishments yet willing to make adjustments, both great and small, when needed.