Demonstrating Sincerity for Atonement Shaarei Teshuva 1:33-35 with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] welcome everybody on zoom on i guess youtube or wherever you're watching this we are about to begin if i'm not mistaken this is class 18 this is the 18th class we are still in char aleph we are in the first gate and hopefully we will cover paragraphs 33 34 and bazrat shan 35 in the shari truva written by romain oyona okay so uh well i'm gonna need this okay so i'm not gonna put it away um like i said we're in uh chapter 33 i just want to begin by mentioning that we're praying for all the holy mother of israel especially for yoshiyahu yosef ben zakhri repinto and should have a refusal aim a complete and speedy recovery uh amongst all the sick okay now we are in uh paragraph 33 as i mentioned and we are going to discuss this idea of what else can you gain through breaking your physical desires in other words conquering your physical desires was what we discussed in the previous class but there are other benefits right the idea of being able to break your physical desires yields another great and profound benefit okay to elliot zuma assume is powerful and what is that yoshibo the 12 by doing what you can and now it's work don't get me wrong there's a lot of effort in trying to break at your physical desires is the fact that you're showing hashem that you mean business right it's like what do you call putting the metal the pedal to the metal right a full gusto i mean it's not easy okay it's not easy i have to admit i mean i know and i hope you all know that if you ever uh were able to you know whether it's going with a diet or cutting down on a certain drug right you know that it could be very difficult right certain very negative habits but you know what you know the benefits to it and the greatest benefit we're going to talk about is that you're showing hashem you mean business you mean business the real deal it did it's like that nature that second nature that you acquired disgusts you that's what caused you to to do the sin so by rejecting this instinct isn't that amazing what you're doing you're actually causing favor your hashem will fave you even more the imps he'll have more grace towards you he'll love you even more now we find this written in psalms 51 19. now we've used this verse many times this idea of chapter 51 in psalms is talking the whole psalm is really king david his um his process of repentance from the sin that he that he was involved with when he sinned with batsheva and it says the actual sacrifices to god are broken spirits ruach nisbara the sacrifices that god actually wants he's not interested in your sacrifices of course he tells you to do it you have to do it but what does he want to accompany these sacrifices is the broken spirit lev nishbar the need hello so this idea of a broken and humbled heart god will not despise he will not throw away he will cherish that so let's discuss some of these words this idea of a ruach nishibara what does it mean to have a broken spirit so this is the word from being humble so this broken spirit is where the spirit is brought low lowly humbled and submissive okay and what is a lavenish bar the broken heart that is the breaking of that physical desire it's the breaking the physical desires and he's going to bring a proof where does the where is the seat of the physical desires it's here in the heart commotion where does the desire either begin or sit where is its home it's in the heart now if you go to if i'm not mistaken this would also be in psalms but it's chapter 21 verse 3 and it says over there i'll say in english first you have granted him his heart's desires in other words king david is admitting that the the the desire in hebrew is in the heart as the hebrew says when someone's eating and you you're saying bon appetit right in hebrew we say let's it should be to your heart's desire so the the place of the desire is in the heart the physical desires are in the heart uh now in this mismo in this psalm it's talking about truth it's all talking about as we mentioned psalm 51 is referring to king david's um uh all the principles of truth that he he outlined when he dishoover from the sin with batshev now the statement said laid nishbar this broken heart and not only broken but humbled the could mean broken or crushed okay is um that god will not despise la madness will we learn from this meat that if someone wants to be a balchu someone wants to master this repentance he wants to be a tone for and move on with his life so basically through the breaking on account of his breaking his physical desires this is what hashem wants and this is how he will be atoned for it this is the main principle or one of the main principles of chuva to break your physical desires and to be mo s right as i say moose in fact there's one of the categories of mukhsa called moose and it's usually here's an example like if you find a dead mouse it's uh it's moose it's i joke around i say it's a it's uh mouse okay anyway let's go vonne marbie indiana another idea okay another idea now this is in isaiah 15 and we're also going to use the same words of lathe that brokenheartedness what does that have to do with chuva so there's two times the word revived is used okay let's start in the heat in english said the exalted and uplifted one who dwells to eternity and holy is his name with the loft in the holy ones i dwell and with the crushed and humbling spirit he's also dwelling with those who are crushed and humble in spirit to revive again the word to revive it is the first time to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the crush so in hebrew to revive that lowly spirit leos and to revive that brokenhearted person in english the translation here is the heart of the shattered and i want to read this comment here because the verse refers to two characteristics mentioned in detailing that the spirit of the lowly that's the right the shephelah the schwalim refers to a humbled spirit whereas the second part lavender keem which we translate as the heart of the shattered or the heart of the crushed refers to the heart whose physical desire has been broken because we said this physical desire is sitting in the heart and if you can break that you can break through whether it's addiction or as we say these desires these physical desires that's a hashem a great level okay we just finished um paragraph 33. now we're going to go up to 34. and this is continuation of the same idea uh romaniana concludes the principle with teachings of the sages to bring out the virtue of abstaining from physical pleasure even when it's permitted i know we discussed this idea before but he's going to discuss it again right repetition is good but it's not exactly the same we discussed the idea of the ramban the ron bond's famous uh regarding kadoshim to you god says you shall be holy for i the lord your god am holy holy hebrews kadosh kadosh literally means separate and therefore the ramban tries to explain and he succeeds it's just whether i can succeed in trying to tell it over that his main thesis over there is by separating yourself from that which is permissible by what i mean separate i don't mean entirely separate but in my in a moderate amount in other words don't overdo it just because that cake is permissible just because your wife is permissible don't spend all day eating cake okay uh zekro um the hour of zikran and vraja our sages of blessed memory said in perkia vote chapter 5 uh mission 19. so i'll read it in english and then in hebrew whoever possesses these following three traits is of the disciples of abraham don't we all want to be like we're from already his seed we might as well you know what i mean we might as well keep these character traits or work for them it doesn't always come so easy for all of us uh imagine that um they're doable okay they're doable because they're in the dna and whoever possesses the opposite of these three traits would be amongst the disciples of the wicked bilum so the disciples of avraham they have a good eye a meek spirit and a humble soul so let's say in hebrew anyone who has these three character traits they are amongst the students the disciples of abraham our father i in tova what does it mean an eye into the good eye it means a generous eye what does it mean that would be a humble spirit and nephesh now we're going to discuss the idea of that uh mixo inya nefeshvala he or she will not follow after their desires their physical desires even with that which is totally permissible commotion now this is going to this is blow you away right avram is crossing into egypt with his wife this is you can find this in genesis chapter 12 verse 11. and he never saw his wife before to say to her see now i know that you are a woman of beautiful appearance but i only see right now how many years have they been married decades wow wow you're gorgeous you're beautiful how can this be avraham never no he of course he knew he married the most beautiful woman in the world right this there's a list of the most beautiful women in the world us eve is one of them and sarah's on the list sarah's on the list now how can it be so it's because it happened to be at that moment that was the concern because she was so beautiful the egyptians would want to take her and that was a concern that doesn't mean it means that he rarely looked at her for her beauty right the the beauty of a woman anyway is from within so that's what he always saw he always saw that and that was his main let's say that was his main desire a spiritual desire to have that union to have that relationship with the inner self the outer self okay she's under she's in the list but that never really like it wasn't his concern but all of a sudden now out of fear of these these wild animals these these people called the egyptians at the time he knew that there was no fear of god and what they might do the concept the the the comment here avrom was therefore concerned that the egyptians would kill him and abduct her now i want to read comment in number two because this is the idea that because until that day gamora baba basher16a explains because until that day he never gazed upon her to contemplate the quality of her beauty of course he knew she was beautiful so this is a very i think fundamental um comment robena yona indicates that the sages do not mean that avraham never looked at his wife at all because for surely it's forbidden not to look at your wife first of all you have to you have to learn you have to love your your fellow as yourself you're not even allowed to marry somebody unless you're you're you're attracted so of course he was attracted to her but he had never gazed at her with the intention of contemplating her beauty it was only when they traveled to egypt that he paid attention to her appearance because at that point it was a matter of concern it's also important to read the rest while it is generally prohibited from a man to gaze at women who have forbidden him a husband is permitted to gaze at his wife and take pleasure in her appearance and that is in the shock the fact that avraham had never done so shows that it was his practice to abstain even from permitted pleasure it it reinforces what we're talking about here thus whoever adopts this trait along with other favorable traits mentioned above is counted among the disciples of avraham which i hope we all can aspire to let's go on also tell us in the jerusalem talmud sanhedrin the mushroom tooth now there's a verse in 2nd samuel 20 chapter 20 verse 3. now this is about david melech towards the end of his life he had several i don't know how many let's just say it's several concubines that he was no longer intimate with nevertheless he made sure they looked beautiful every single day i don't know how old they were i don't know how young they were but the pussac says they were bound up in living in widowhood until the day they died so the comment here says like this i'll just read the hebrew tienets so the comment here says this means they remain married to david but he abstains from relations with them the verse discusses the period after david's return to his home following of shalom's rebellion so we're talking about towards the later part of his years according to one opinion in the talmud the reason he no longer cohabitated with the concubines is because they had been violated by afshalom during david's absence that's a possibility having been violated they were no longer fit for the king that's being david but having been married to david they were no longer fit to a commoner it's a very strange position to be in as the the wife the the concubine of the king could not be with a commoner thus he did not divorce them but he also didn't live with them either meaning sexually so that is why so rebellion now cites a second opinion according to roshami okay that's not for now that um so basically he made sure that they were when it says they were bound up it means that he made sure that as the as the rebellion continues right now the no tain tar tamaru kahan le kashtan basically every single day he made sure that their hair was made nice and that he put on makeup they made sure he put he made sure that they put on makeup even though he had no intention of cohabitating with them he wanted them to feel good about themselves and he made them look pretty sick you know what he did this and this is very strange but listen king david he's all of our hero right and for some reason he mamash was able to overcome his yates he had a lot to do true before nevertheless he did this in order to oppress his desire and subdue it by overcoming his impli evil inclination with regard to them in other words it would have been simple too simple if he just made them look ugly by withholding cosmetics withholding these oils that would make your skin uh soft he nevertheless because he overcame his evil inclination regarding them and he wanted them to feel good and he did that uh la man you caught it and all this was to show that he has overcame the incident with batsheva as the comment here very interestingly we'll talk about it's number four below the incident with bashev is recorded in 2nd samuel chapter 11. david's process of repentance for that incident is considered the blueprint for truva okay and that's why i had i wanted to go through number 23 and note 3 i'm not sure what we need to do that maybe ushami states that each day david would say to zizar can you imagine speaking to you ate sahara you desired something forbidden to you i swear to you i'll make you desire something that is permitted to you and prevent you from having it can you imagine like we spoke this out that if you could prevent yourself from over doing something in other words from being moderate in something which is permitted to you it's like building that muscle of controlling your yates or for even those things that are that are forbidden to you i know things that are forbidden they usually have a greater desire right they as they say stolen waters are sweet right true but if you can begin with those that which that which is permitted to you to mod to be moderate that is already building your muscle so you can handle stronger um stronger desires by deliberately seeing them every day when they were adorned yet abstaining from marital relations with them he challenged his sahara and conquered it this was part of his uh process of truva by the way what's the difference with a concubine and a regular wife first of all we don't have concubines today and um the way that a a regular wife you the man has a a katuba a marriage contract and it's it's one-sided it really is you know i'm not there's no i'm not trying to support for men's rights and all that this is exactly the way that ghazal and the rabbis and hashem wanted it okay that the man takes on a tremendous amount of obligations to support his wife to feed her to clothe her to put shelter over her and to um to engage in relations which she desires he's obligated whereas this other type of relationship is is it's let's say it's non-committal it's a strange thing anyway it doesn't really take place today but the con the comment says here a concubine does not have the same marital rights as a wife it's prohibited for a commoner to take a concubine but it is permitted for a king to do so that is written in the rambam okay now we're going to go we are going to make it 30 chapters paragraph 35 which is a little bit longer than everything we've done so far but we're beginning the tenth principle okay the tenth principle is yes i'm sorry to interrupt you i just didn't get the last one you said about the coccupine it just sounded really confusing yeah it's a side point it's really not part of the discussion here but let's just talk about what david did david was permissible as a king to have these relations with let's say they're um they're like wives okay they're like wives but they don't have the same status and for some reason he was abstinent from them nevertheless he wanted to control and not only controls yet he wanted to outsmart it and to show hashem that he has overcompensated sahara by causing them to look beautiful putting on makeup allowing them to do their hair every day you know setting them up at the waldorf astoria to get their hair done and to go to the best makeup artist and nevertheless he was not with them which meant that it probably aroused his his physical desires and yet he abstained yeah that part i understood i didn't understand their status that you took something about that as the commoner i'm just reading the comment according to the according to this comment the rambam says that a only a king can have a cut i don't know what to call it in english i guess concubine in hebrew it's called peleggish so we see that we do see that commoners did have polag shame so the equation did the change i don't know um but uh it's it's looked down upon okay it's not it's not an accepted practice put it that way okay god anyway wanted man even though the torah permits to have more than one wife god himself made it that really a man should have only one wife the best case scenario i mean there are going to be cases god forbid right a man if he marries a healthy woman and then all of a sudden she feels uh fell ill god forbid is in a coma now he's stuck he the woman doesn't have a mitzvah to marry and a woman doesn't have a mitzvah to have children but a man does so if if god forbid she's in such a situation it would make sense that he would take a second wife now the truth is you really have to permission from your wife from the very beginning before you even marry her that she agrees to have in the future a second wife okay there's such a thing today that because it's i've been outlawed for over a thousand years that a man cannot take a second wife that if a situation like that would arise you would have to the man would have to go and get a hundred signatures from rabbis why a hundred i don't know i think it just to really make sure that it's legit that it's a a bona fide situation and he's not just fooling around or playing the field it's a it's a real situation that to have rachel on him that not to divorce his wife he'll take care of her till the day she dies but uh to take on a second wife okay whatever the situation is okay so i don't know if i answered you but it's it's like it's like a serious girlfriend i mean that's the only thing i can describe it because there's no commitment except that you're not really fooling around you're committed to each other temporarily or permanently temporarily because there's no nothing really binding you contractually you understand it's uh it's a very look king solomon how many wives did he have so the whole question is king can only have eighteen wives yeti a thousand wives so some make the cheshire he really only had 18 wives and the rest were concubines again it's it's like it's like a wife but she doesn't have the full status of life and it's not applicable today okay so leave it at that okay it's a status that is meaningless to a certain extent okay the tenth principle we're now in paragraph 35 ha siri allah anybody who's about troubas should be able to really relate to this and anybody who wants to become about to pay attention that what god wants from you is to do good deeds with the very matter and it could mean the very limb it could mean the very concept but in in hebrew in the very thing that you uh sinned with and he's going to explain a whole bunch of examples i'll read it in english first and then we'll go deeper into the hebrew so for example if one used their eyes and gazed at things they shouldn't have gazed at a rayot so he should carry himself with his eyes cast downwards no use the same limb the same organ your eyes uh in a different way if one sinned with his tongue by speaking hara use your mouth use your tongue to speak in words of torah study torah in this matter one should try to do mitsubish mitzvot with every limb or organ in which the person had sinned and now we're going to go into more detail with the verse so let me just read it in the hebrew in his you gazed or stared at things you shouldn't have yet but you should use your eyes in a downward fashion as the comment over here explains this is showing humility if one used their mouth with each limb that you sinned with you should make every effort to do mixes with this comes into play people have asked me if they did sins in which they are so severe right karet for example being cut off is there any yes there's even true for that right for example for woman felt that her sin involved not keeping needed properly well she can donate money to the mikv fund or she could give a class on taharsa mishpacha she could try to promote things that have to do with the purity of the family maybe even cancel young women who are about to get married we're talking about after the person to true of course and has her head on straight and this is what the rabbis mentioned in the midrash that had sadikin it's amazing because it says righteous people completely righteous people that they should what with that very thing that they sin with they should use to find favor with hashem so who else is gonna nobody said sadiq that doesn't sin but that sadiq is the one who falls down seven times and keeps getting up right okay the cut the com the comment here says a sin defiles the limb or organ in which is committed now think about this i i don't want to speak spook you out but the the khufitskayam explains in hill shabbos in the introduction to shabbos to the laws of shabbos that as we all know each one of the 613 commandments is parallel is connected and one of the limbs or organs or bones or sinews or veins in our body yeah you have 365 negatives when i say negatives i don't mean negative commandments i mean don'ts and they're parallel to certain parts of your body and the 248 positive commandments actions are parallel to the 248 organs or different aspects of your body now in the resurrection of the dead oh let's just start with this every time you do a mitzvah you're giving you're giving a life force you're putting light you're adding hashem's name let's call it a life force into that limb and when the resurrection takes place that resurrection for the whole body or parts of the body comes about because of the misses that you did now they're not all applicable to us so if you learn about them or if you're associated with people they're doing these mitzvahs you'll somehow benefit your organs will benefit so god forbid he says that there are certain limbs that you could be resurrected without right if someone didn't put on to fill it so when they're resurrected they might be missing an arm or the arm itself will be um blemished or if they looked at things they shouldn't have looked at their eyes might be missing or be blind scarred different every mitzvah has right it's limb that is given is given a life force well guess what he says shabbos is the heart and there is no resurrection without the heart you can be resurrected without a toe without a pinky without certain limbs right but not the heart so he begs people if you really want to be sure resurrection of the dead learn constantly learn the laws of shabbos okay because it's not easy right we make mistakes right it's okay you make mistakes but if you're serious about keeping shabbos you will find the kabura you'll start a kabura you'll somehow find the group of people to learn the laws of shabbos and constantly be updated on and that will give you the heart in the resurrection of the dead okay so i see there's a connection here you know we're going to go to a verse it's a very interesting idea in um it's actually in proverbs chapter 6 verses 16 through 19. now each one of these negative things are going to be parallel to something that we could do to restore or fix it says in six chapter six verse 16 there are six things that the lord hates and the seventh is an abomination of his soul haughty eyes a lying tongue hands that shed innocent blood a heart that thinks thoughts of violence feet that hasten to run to evil one who speaks lies with false testimony and incites quarrels among his brothers now each one of these ideas the the roberto yoda is going to bring down a there's a parallel way to fix each one of these things so where do we start we're still on page 82 where it says if god forbid someone did more than one sin bundles of transgressions i say connecting their royce i'm sorry um so if someone did bundles of sin then parallel to this you should do bundles and bundles of mixers well you can't lose great i got it down now i know what the remedy is but that means the full-time job man you want to do chuva it's like give up you give up your day job man not kidding okay of course through your life you're gonna you know behave with people right you have to everybody you're involved with mother-in-laws right daughters-in-laws right okay and your boss and your co-workers do bundles of mitzvahs as the sages explain now this is part of and i didn't read the hebrew to you but um we can go through it slowly with the hebrew but basically it's like this in part of regat regulation roots so one who has legs who ran quickly lara to do evil you the ratzon ladaver mitzvah he should use those same legs to run to do mitzvahs right you're on your way to shore now but this is shabbos we walk slow we walk slow but on a weekday or a shear or you're going to help your mother you're going to help your you're going to help the lady across the street run or at least you know if you can't run give it your full concentration you know do what you can to do it quickly what about lush and hurrah what have you had you know spoken lush and hara so emit yeah now you should use your palate your whole mouth to express the truth up that you should let you open your mouth with wisdom and let the teaching of kindness be on your tongue what about if you're you dying if god forbid and it doesn't have to really literally be that you killed somebody physically it could be even with your tongue but let's say god forbid that one did hurt or wounded somebody or spilled innocent blood then what you need to do is help poor people because someone who is poor he's like he's dead okay it's like he has no life and you're giving him a revival right you're giving him spirit you're giving him a life force so god forbid if if that is what one had done so giving charity and helping the poor is a very similar way look at the number seven this is paraphrasing of deuteronomy chapter 15 11. sometimes charity can keep a recipient alive when he's desperate for funds to sustain himself or to feed his family thus the giver not only rectifies the evil action of his hands of the past by doing a mitzvah with them but he also in a way rectifies the bloodshed by actually providing life and darker the sake i'm sorry and i am removed what if you had haughty eyes so the answer is [Music] put your eyes downward how does that help the the expression here in the note the midrash notes the putting to fill in on the hand can tone for sins of the hands now we're not talking okay women can learn about it we're not suggesting that you put on to fill in but if you do you do it privately anyway anyway um i'm not it's for another time and putting to fill on the head between your eyes this can atone for the sins of the eyes um what if you had a heart that applauded treacherous thoughts belieber utsaphone imre torah right so within your heart you'll memorize and you store the words of torah in your heart you had libo so that the meditations of your heart will be focused on tory insights like but even if it's the hilla you just keep repeating the same parrot and go into it with the same chapter and go into it with the cut with the comments and believe it or not when you're not having to kill him in your hand you're riding the bus you're driving the car you're helping with the kids or you're doing whatever it is you're on your way to work it'll be coming through your mind you know because this is called jewish brainwashing right it's a good thing i want to chill out i'm sitting on the bench and all i'm thinking about is the torah that i just spent three hours learning i'm trying to chill and all i can think of is the stuff i just learned for the last three hours hashem that's a good thing okay god forbid if you stir up strife between brothers shalom you're on feihu then go out and try to figure a way to make peace this is the as a rona cohen would do we know what he did he was famous right to pursuing peace chasing peace this is to be a disciple of our own he would find two people who were fighting and he would tell each one a little white lie shh little white lie he would say to one of them you know the guy over there just told me how fat he felt from what he said to you but he's too embarrassed to apologize and he go to the other guy and say the same thing you know i was told the other day he really felt so horrible about what he said to you but he's too embarrassed to apologize you know why don't you forgive him and before you know it the two of them were like buddies you know so whatever you can do to create harmony like if god forbid you were a balmack locust you were someone who caused strife then take it upon yourself to figure out ways to do the opposite to bring peace here's the comment he should strive to make peace between conflicting parties and surely between himself and others with the last clause the midrash introduced the idea that the principle of truva includes not only turning a sinful limb or organ to the good but also turning sinful traits it's not just the past event it's taking the present day limb and doing something positive with it but also turning sinful traits to good in order to rectify the trait of creating conflict one should pursue peacemaking okay so i hope it's very clear right very clear what we need to do and it's possible it's possible i mean maybe i'm a living example of a partial botuva like a partial right a little bit and if i could do it a little bit i know i could do it a lot more and i'm sure that if you all has also have experience of doing some trevor so you know that's totally possible and that hashem forgives and he loves us and is what he wants he wants us to imitate him and to come close to him and have this intimate relationship and of course sin is a barrier and by rectifying that sin and this is during chauvinism right show them in the sixth week starting with parches schmos and their different sing sins to rectify but seems to be i spoke about purity and multi shabbis in my show on the 48 ways so i'm giving a little plug for that purity and today also the idea of rectifying sins through our thoughts and actions and putting them into into play and that hashem will he absolutely will i guarantee you he will forgive you and um and you will be more holy and that's all i have to say so i'm going to say over and out for the camera but i'll open up questions now and uh [Music] okay [Music] is