Yom
Kippur
And
Vezos
Haberachah
Note:
Vezos
Haberachah
is not read this Shabbos
Callous
Confessions
By:
Daniel Listhaus
יְחִי
רְאוּבֵן וְאַל יָמֹת וִיהִי מְתָיו
מִסְפָּר:
וְזֹאת
לִיהוּדָה וַיֹּאמַר שְׁמַע ה'
קוֹל
יְהוּדָה וְאֶל עַמּוֹ תְּבִיאֶנּוּ
יָדָיו רָב לוֹ וְעֵזֶר מִצָּרָיו תִּהְיֶה
“May
Reuvein live and not die, and may his men be in the count. And this
to Yehuda, and he said: Listen Hashem, to the voice of Yehuda, and to
his people shall You bring him; may his hands fight for him and may
You be a Helper against his enemies.”
-Vezos
Haberachah 33:6-7
The
mishna1
describes the process that the Beis
Din HaGadol (The
Supreme Court) would go through with a woman who is a sotah.
Before having her drink the mei
hamarim (literally-
bitter waters), the beis
din would
try to convince the suspected sotah
to
just admit that she indeed was with the man that her husband warned
her not to be with. After all, the mei
hamarim itself
as well as its potential effect was no laughing matter. The vital
ingredient of the mei
hamarim was
that they would dissolve the parsha
of
sotah
into
it – which contains Hashem's name. A sotah
who
would not admit would have to drink this water as a test. If indeed
she had done what we suspect her of doing, her insides would blow up
and she would die.
The
gemara2
elaborates
that one of the steps of the persuasion process was that beis
din would
tell her stories of people in Chumash
who
did improper things (similar to the sotah)
but were not embarrassed to admit to them. So too, they try to tell
her, she should learn from them and not let her embarrassment
overpower her to stop her from admitting what she did. The two
examples of stories that the gemara
says
that beis
din would
use to illustrate their point are the ones which involves Reuvein and
Yehuda. Reuvein switched the beds in Yaakov's tent after Rachel died,
deciding to take action when he saw that Yaakov had chosen Bilhah
(Rachel's maidservant) to take her place instead of Leah. Beis
din would
relate this story to the sotah
and
then say that Reuvein stood up to his actions, did teshuva
(repentance),
and
admitted to his father that it as he that switched the beds. Beis
din
would then mention the episode of Yehuda and Tamar. Yehuda was
mezaneh
(had
marital relations) with Tamar without knowing who she was. When
Yehuda was later informed that Tamar had zenus
with someone, his reaction was that she should be put to death,
However, when he realized that she had the items that Yehuda had used
to pay for her services, he admitted “tzadkah
me'meh'nee”
- declaring that Tamar was righteous. Beis
din would
then again suggest to the sotah
that
she too should admit to her actions like Yehudah did.
The
gemara
continues
to mention that we see from the juxtaposition of passukim
(verses)
in this week's parsha
that
it was Yehudah who actually caused Reuvein to admit what he did.
Rashi3
elaborates that Moshe was davening that the shevet
(tribe)
of Reuvein should live in this world and “not die” in the next
world – meaning that the incident of him switching the beds in
Yaakov's tent should not be remembered to his detriment, because, as
we see from the juxtaposition of the aforementioned passukim,
when Reuvein saw that Yehuda stood up and admitted, he took the
opportunity to do so as well.4
The
important thing to keep in mind though is that admitting one's sins
to people is not something that is so obvious that could be done.
Unlike other religions, confessions to a Rabbi is not a part of our
teshuva
process. We must confess personally to Hashem. As a matter of fact it
is not simple at all for someone to admit to his own sins in public.
After all, one is not allowed to say lashon
harah even
about
oneself unless it is serving a constructive purpose which falls
within the guidelines of hilchos
lashon harah
or if he is speaking to someone he trusts who could help him conquer
his nisyonos
(moral
tests). Furthermore, as the gemara
itself
points
out, we are not permitted to go around announcing our aveiros
– doing so would demonstrate that we do not take our aveiros
seriously.
The gemara
therefore
asks that granted Yehuda was allowed to admit what he did because in
the absence of doing so, Tamar would have been killed. However, how
was Reuvein able to admit? What he had done was long over with no
such severe ramifications, so what purpose did Reuvein's admitting
serve? The gemara
answers
that Reuvein admitted in order that Yaakov should not suspect his
other brothers. In other words, until Reuvein publicly admitted there
was a little thing that bothered Yaakov every time he spoke to one of
his sons because in the back of his mind he would wonder if perhaps
this was the son who had switched the beds. Therefore after Yehuda
stood up to admit, Reuvein followed suit.
We
could see from this whole gemara
a fantastic concept. Here we have a sotah
who
will face a most unpleasant death by not admitting what she did, as
well as be responsible for having the Name of Hashem be erased. The
beis
din,
tries to convince her to admit and does so by bringing stories of
people who admitted even in order to save someone else's life and
even to save others from merely being suspect in their father's eyes.
Indeed admitting publicly is an incredibly scary thing. Yet, during
the y'mei
slichos,
aseres
y'mei teshuva and
especially on Yom
Kippur itself,
we find ourselves admitting to whole lists of things that we have
done. How could it be that a sotah,
who is already in all the headlines as a suspect having been warned
by her husband and witnessed by eidim
(witnesses),
and who is now facing death, needs to be persuaded to admit in order
not to have a Name of Hashem be erased but yet we are able to show up
comfortably in Shul
alongside our friends and spend all day asking forgiveness for
aveiros
we
have done? The gemara
had
said that one who is able to just admit his sins is someone shameless
and a mechatzef.
So how could we come before Hashem in public and admit to the things
we have done?
There
is no question that indeed this is the method that must be used, we
have so little of our own zechusim
and depend so heavily on Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov and the 13
Middos
of
Rachamim
(attributes
of mercy), which Hashem promises He will never return empty5,
as well as the power of coming as a tzibbur
(community)
to
ask Hashem to help us do teshuva.
However, the big question is on us who when we admit to the things we
have done, it is with such callousness. Such an absence of feeling
while admitting to such horrible things could only be because of one
of three reasons: One reason could be that we look around us and see
that everyone is saying the same words. Yom
Kippur is
part of our yearly calendar. It is not like we were caught “red
handed”, rather we are doing this on our own, just part of the
routine of being a Jew. Therefore, perhaps it does not seem as
personal to us. A second possible explanation is that we do not feel
that the things we are saying are relevant to us. After all, some of
the things we admit to seem a bit extreme and we may think to
ourselves, “well, I may have done 'x', and given the opportunity I
would probably be willing to do 'y', but 'z' I would never go so far
to do.” The distance we may feel to the aveiros
we
are admitting to may make us feel more relaxed and think that the
tefillos
and
viduy
are
not so relevant to us. A third possible explanation is that perhaps
we have given up. We stand in Shul
and do a drum-roll on our chest by “ashamnu”
and the “al-cheit's”
as we think to ourselves – I am who I am and there is no way for me
to change now.
However,
these three fatal diseases – for that is precisely what they are –
as causes for our callous teshuva,
could not be further from the truth. First, the Chovos
Halevavos6
writes that beyond what we could term as “chovas
ha'eivarim”
- the responsibilities we have in using our bodies to do mitzvos,
there is another area of avodas
Hashem which
is chovas
ha'leiv –
what we are expected to feel inside us constantly. The Chovos
Halevavos offers
the following parable: The personal servant of a king is expected to
take care of every single need in the kings house at all times. It
happens to be that sometimes he is required to take care of the
gardening, mowing the lawn, raking leaves, etc. but those are not
chores which are constantly present, but rather tasks which are
seasonal. So too we have mitzvos
we
do once a year, we have mitzvos
we
do once a month, we have mitzvos
we
do once a week, we have mitzvos
we
do once a day, and we have mitzvos
we
do multiple times a day. However, there is also a category of mitzvos
in
the heart which must be active every second. This is the realization
that Hashem exists and is the Ruler of the world, and that he knows
our thoughts. So as much as we could convince ourselves that we were
not caught “red-handed” and that we are just joining together in
Shul
for our yearly ritual, we are dead wrong. Hashem knows what we did
and what our intentions were. Therefore when we admit to having done
aveiros,
it
should feel real to us and we should try to get at least a small
feeling that we were really caught red-handed, but are now given the
chance to repent.
Second,
although it may be true that some of the parts of viduy
sound
extreme, it was intentionally designed this way to include any
aveirah
we
may have done. Every aveirah
fits
into one of the categories in the al
cheit's. Additionally,
the Orchos
Tzadikkim7
writes
that when we say “ashamnu...”
and
go through the aleph-beis,
we have the ability to personalize the viduy
and
insert our own aveiros
according
to the aleph-beis,
that we are aware of and want to do specific teshuva
for.
In
response to the third cause of callous confession, there is no such
thing as giving up. As a Jew there is no option to stay at a stagnant
level. A person who stops growing hurts himself exponentially because
not only does he stop growing, but he starts falling. So the one who
convinces himself that he cannot change is lying because either way
he is changing – just for the worse and not for the better. What he
really means to say is that he is not capable of improving as a
person according to the Torah. However, such a despair is completely
false. In
Netzavim the
Torah8
states, “ For this commandment that I command you today, it is not
hidden from you and is not distant. It is not in the heavens...nor is
it across the sea....Rather, the matter is very near to you, in your
mouth and in your heart, to perform it.” The Ramban9
learns
that these passukim
refer
to the mitzva
of
teshuva.
It is very near to us. We just have to make sure that we are doing it
with more than our mouth alone, but rather as the passuk
describes,
“with your mouth and with your heart”.
Hashem
has given us the opportunity to join together as a tzibbur
and
do teshuva.
Let us utilize the opportunity to also make it more personal, even if
it means taking just one thing that we have done and think about it,
regret it, admit to it, and to wok hard on not doing it again.
Perhaps in this way we will have a productive and real Yom Kippur.
May
Hashem help us not fall into the traps of thinking that it is part of
the routine, that it is not relevant, or that it is too late. With
this new focus may k'lal
yisroel be
zocheh
to
do teshuva
sh'leimah this
Yom
Kippur
and
may
Hashem respond by bringing Mashiach
as we blow the shofar
after Ne'ilah.
1Sotah
1:4, Gemara Sotah 7a
2Sotah
7b
3Devarim
33:6 and 33:7 as well as in the
Gemara Sotah 7b
4See
Chizkuni - Devarim33:6
5Gemara
Rosh Hashanah 17b
6In
the introduction
7Orchos
Tzadikkim:Sha'ar HaTeshuva
8Devarim
30:11-14
9Ibid.
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