Savlanut (Patience): My Greatest Personal Challenge

By Rabbi Debra Smith

Every day I wrestle with my personal angel. She is the angel of Patience, savlanut, and she is with me as I struggle through my frustrations of daily living: traffic delays, extended waiting on “hold” for business calls, technological challenges with all of my devices, interpersonal annoyances of many kinds, broken appliances…  My list is endless! How about yours?

Some days, my angel of Patience wins out, and I emerge from my frustrating experience in a positive light. Other days, despite the whisperings in my ear of my angel of Patience, I fail dreadfully at being patient.

In short, although there are some successes, Savlanut (Patience) is something I must work on all the time.

I am curious to gain wisdom from each of you on the techniques you use to advance your practice of patience. Has your patience increased or decreased as you have gotten older? What have you learned from your role models about being a patient person? Who supports you as you work on your practice of patience, and are you able to help support others who are trying to grow in this personal area?

Join us this Monday evening for our monthly Mussar class at 7:30 PM Eastern time in our Zoom room as we tackle this challenging Mussar middah. We will study texts from many sources and discuss a range of questions for our consideration as we examine the middah of Patience.  I look forward to seeing you on Zoom this Monday evening!