Each and every one of us needs a spiritual teacher and mentor, or a mashpiah, to help us maximize our soul’s potential in divine service, as it says in Ethics of the Fathers (1:6), “Make for yourself a teacher.”
Here are some of the reasons:
- The sages in the Mishnah tell us that “one cannot examine his own defects.” While the sages were referring to someone who wishes to diagnose himself with tzoraat, usually translated as leprosy, this statement is also understood allegorically and is explained that it is very difficult for us to be objective about our weaknesses (or, for that matter, about our strengths) and we often under-estimate or over-estimate what we can or cannot do. A mentor who knows us well can help us see ourselves objectively, and guide us to use our strengths and work on our weaknesses so that we grow in our Judaism.
- The Talmud tells us that “a prisoner cannot free himself from his prison.” So, too, a mentor provides us with the outside help that we need to lift ourselves up from the prison imposed upon us by our own destructive instincts.
- Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Chabad movement, explains in his classic work, the Tanya, that there are two distinct souls animating the body and fighting for its dominion: an “animal soul” and a “G‑dly soul.”
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