פרשת האזינו (שבת שובה) וענייני ראש השנה
This week’s Parsha relates the poetic song which Moshe Rabenu relates to the Jewish people and which mainly consists of him reiterating all the bad things that will happen to the Jewish people if they don’t listen to the Torah. The Abarbanel asks an interesting question. The verse at the end of last week’s Parsha relates that Moshe told over everything that God had told him to without leaving anything out. The Abarbanel asks, what is the “Hava Amina” that Moshe would have left anything out from what God had personally told him? The Abarbanel explains that although most of this week’s “song” consists of God’s attempt to dissuade us from sin by laying out the horrifying punishment that one will receive for sin, the end of the song consists of a few verses which promise how good things will be if we keep the Torah and merit the final redemption. So one would have thought that since the obvious emphasis of Moshe and Hashem is on the negative results of sin, perhaps Moshe would have left those few verses of reward out, this is why the Torah had to tell us that Moshe relayed to the Jews the entire song as it was told over to him by Hashem.
From this Abarbanel, we learn an important lesson in human nature. Although we certainly need to be discouraged from doing the wrong thing, because that is our temperament, it is also important that we know how good it will feel to do the right thing and that if we return to Hashem, we have the ability to attain the same level that we were at before we erred and chose the improper path. This knowledge is crucial to achieve a successful repentance and return to God.
A similar concept is expressed in the Rambam in the second chapter of Hilchos Teshuva. The Rambam writes that a person who wishes to repent, must cry out to Hashem in remorse for his sin, and must keep the memory of his mistake in front of his eyes at all times, even for past sins that he already repented for. Yet the Rambam in Chapter 7 writes, “Let not a person imagine that he is distant from becoming a completely righteous person even though he had sinned, for this is not so, rather he is close and beloved to his creator at all times, even though he has deviated, and Hashem is merely waiting for him to return and when he does, he will be considered even greater then the righteous as it says, ‘In the place where the Baalei Teshuva stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand’”. It comes out from these two Rambams, that although a person must certainly feel regret for any sin he has transgressed, he must never fall into the pit of despair in which he feels that there is no hope for his successful return, and that he is beyond the point in which Hashem will take him back, for this is just another dirty tactic of the Yetzer Hara to generate paralysis and lack of forward momentum.
Most people in the world are convinced by their evil inclination that they cannot change because they have fallen too far, and therefore they never bother trying, in order not to be disappointed by failure. This was also the way of Adam. When Adam sinned, he thought there was no way for him to return to God, due to the severity of his sin, and so he didn’t bother trying. Even when Hashem twice attempted to approach him and offer him the chance to repent and admit his sins, he didn’t respond, apparently not feeling confident that he would succeed. Instead he responded, “But I am unclothed”, which Chazal explain to mean that he was naked from Mitzvos. But Hashem responded, “Who told you that you are unclothed?” Meaning to say, even now, I do not look at you any different and you still have every ability to draw close to Me.
Just like Adam, we too have difficulty believing in the Teshuva process and that Hashem will ever really accept us the way we were prior to the sin and wipe our slates completely clean. I was once with a certain young man visiting one of the leaders of our generation and this young man went on and on enumerating a vast array of heinous sins that he had committed in his “previous” life. The Rabbi, completely nonplussed, responded, don’t worry about it, you did Teshuva and it is all in the past. None of it will be held against you. But this young man, apparently unable to accept the Rabbi’s words, repeated no less the ten more times how it was impossible that God would forgive him if the Rabbi truly understood what he had done. We must not make this same mistake. We are required to believe in the power of Teshuva and more importantly, in the word of the One who commanded the Teshuva that it is effective and successful in completely eradicating all traces of sin from our record and more importantly, from our hearts.
There is another aspect of Teshuva which is difficult for a person to accept. Many people believe that they have been doing the same thing wrong for so many years that the sin has become an integral part of them. A person must also believe that he himself has the ability to change, and the sin is not surgically bonded to his personality. The verse in the weeks Haftara, (for which this Shabbos is named), says, “Return to your God, oh Israel, for you have stumbled in sin”. The Sefas Emes explains, that the word “stumbled” has a connotation of not a major felony, but rather a minor infraction. A person must understand that if they have sinned, the root of the sin is merely superficial and does not affect his core. The Sefas Emes is encouraging us that even when a person develops bad habits, in his heart, he was always with Hashem, and these bad habits can easily be fixed with a little bit of toil because they were never really internal problems. Similarly, the Gemorah in Kidushin says, “A person doesn’t sin unless he is under temporary insanity”. This Gemorah is saying that sin is a mental slip, and not a well laid out, maliciously evil plot. And finally we must know that if we even attempt to come close to God, he will help us so much as the Gemorah says, “Open up your hearts a hair’s breadth, and I will open them up like a wide open space”. And the verse says, “And God will circumcise your hearts for you and your children after you, forever”.
May we all merit to believe in the power of prayer and repentance and return to Hashem and merit a sweet and wonderful year!