A Different Door

By Rabbi Moshe Krieger, Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah (www.bircas.org)

On Yom Kippur there is a special mitzvah to do teshuvah. The pasuk says, “Lifnei Hashem titaharu” — before Hashem you shall be purified (Vayikra 16:30). The Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 2:7) calls this our last chance of the year to do teshuvah. We have to work very hard to truly repent and that’s why we go over the vidui — confession — again and again, to make sure it’s real.

But we have a problem. Even when we do teshuvah and take on a few kabbalos — resolutions — it’s hard to make them last. Most of us, by the time Sukkos comes, we have already let them go. There is a vidui that we say called vidui she’bapeh — confession that stays only in the mouth, we say words and we go right back to doing the same thing. The Rambam (Hilchos Teshuvah 2:2) sets the bar even higher: complete teshuvah is only when Hashem Himself could testify that you will never go back to that sin. How are we supposed to reach that kind of certainty, when experience keeps telling us we’ll probably slip again?

Rav Yehuda Cabeza gives an answer that changes the whole picture. Teshuvah, he says, doesn’t have to mean complete teshuvah on everything at once. It means teshuvah on your nekudas habechirah — your own personal point of real choice. Different people have different points of choice. For some it might be something as basic as keeping Shabbos; baruch Hashem, most of us aren’t struggling there. But maybe the real struggle is something smaller — will I make it to minyan, or will I have real kavanah — concentration — when I stand up to daven, or will I just go through the motions? Teshuvah in the place where you actually struggle, your own nekudas habechirah, is real teshuvah — even if, from the outside, it looks small.

So make one kabbalah, right in that place. If it’s minyan, set an alarm clock. If it’s kavanah, prepare yourself a little before you daven. You won’t succeed every single day — that’s not the test. The test is: check yourself every few weeks. Did I keep this a little more than before? If yes, that itself is teshuvah. Maybe, little by little, you’ll climb even higher. Rav Yehuda Cabeza added one more piece: while you’re making and checking this kabbalah, think about all the kindness Hashem has done for you this past year — your health, your family, everything that’s been going well. You don’t really deserve any of it. What you’re doing with this small kabbalah is paying, in a small way, a debt you could never fully repay.

There’s a second Rambam that pushes this further (Hilchos Teshuvah 7:3). Teshuvah, he writes, isn’t only about actions — theft, dishonesty, things like that. It’s also about middos — character traits: anger, jealousy, hatred, running after money, running after honor, even running after food. The Rambam says this is very hard, because these things have become so much a part of who we are. And yet the halachah — Jewish law — is clear. As the pasuk says, “Ya’azov rasha darko” — let the wicked forsake his way — a person has to abandon his whole way of doing things and change.

So how do we actually do that? How do we work on changing our nature? The Rambam (Hilchos De’os 2:2) says: recalibrate. Go to the opposite extreme for a while, until you settle somewhere in the middle. Someone who gets angry easily, for example, should act for a period as if nothing bothers him at all — not react to a single thing — until he finds his balance. This is good advice but for some of us going to the other extreme seems impossible. What about something like food? Are we supposed to stop eating? Or stop having any desire to eat at all? That’s not realistic. Rav Yitzchak Kapelman, Rosh Yeshivah of Lucerne, gives us some practical advice: get used to a little self-control even in things you’re fully permitted to have. With food, skip an extra piece, even though nothing is stopping you. With money, if you have real questions, ask a rav instead of only trusting your own judgment. With honor, don’t always the crowd, that will pay attention to you — stay a little to the side. None of this is forbidden. But this everyday practice in small restraint gives you the strength to hold back when it really counts.

The Gemara in Menachos (29b) offers some different advice. The Gemara says that the world was created with the letter heh — from the word “behibar’am,” (Bereishis 2:4) which can be read as “with a heh He created them.” Look at the shape of that letter: open along the bottom, with just a small opening near the top. Hashem left the bottom open — if a person wants to go out and sin, the door is wide open, easy to find. But Hashem also left a small opening at the top, so that a person who wants to come back can come back.

The Gemara asks: why not just go back in through the same door at the bottom? It answers: because you’re already used to sinning through that door, and the yetzer hara — the evil inclination — won’t let you succeed going back in that way. You need a different route, a different door. Find the small opening at the top, and go in from there.

Rav Elefant, the mashgiach of Yeshivas Keter Torah, explained what this means in practice. Sometimes you can’t fix a problem by attacking it head on. Take someone who can’t get himself up for minyan in the morning. Yes, he has to work on the laziness itself, a little. But that alone won’t be enough. What will actually help is coming in from a completely different angle — building up a real understanding of what tefillah — prayer — really is. Everything depends on Hashem. What we’re doing is such a small thing, and without Him nothing would help at all. There’s a Gemara in Berachos (6a) that says tefillah is truly heard specifically in a shul. Learn these things and absorb them — that’s a different route into the very same problem, one that works on the laziness in a way attacking it head-on never could.

The same idea works for desire in general. The Rambam (Hilchos Issurei Biah 22:21) tells a person who’s struggling with improper thoughts that the real advice is to fill his head with wisdom, with Torah. When your head is full of Torah, desire can’t take hold of you. The Gemara in Kiddushin (30b) explains why: “Barasi yetzer hara, barasi lo Torah tavlin” — I created the yetzer hara, and I created Torah as its remedy. Torah is the only real remedy there is.

How does that actually work? Torah purifies your thoughts. It puts your mind in a different place. It makes your thoughts kadosh — holy — and makes you feel close to Hashem, and that closeness gives you the strength to stand up against your desire. So keep your head in Torah — not only when you’re sitting and learning, but even when you’re walking in the street. Let your mind be on some question, some mussar — Torah teachings on character — thought, something deep, and that itself will stop you before you even get near the sin. You’re not fighting the desire head-on. You’re fighting it by putting your head somewhere else entirely.

Rav  Wolbe was once asked by someone who was struggling to control himself in a certain aveirah — sin. “I don’t know what to do,” the man said. “I’m struggling.” Rav Wolbe asked him one question back: “Are you sure you’re learning enough?” We say every single day, “Hashiveinu Avinu leSorasecha” — bring us back, our Father, to Your Torah — and only afterward, “v’hachazireinu bitshuva sheleimah lefanecha” — bring us back before You in complete teshuvah. Make your Torah your real avodah — your main work — and then, Rav Wolbe said, you’ll be able to do teshuvah. If your thoughts aren’t in Torah, the struggle stays hard. But once your thoughts are in Torah, everything you’re struggling with gets so much easier.

May we be zocheh this year to a real teshuvah, the kind that will hold us the whole year through.