Tomer Devorah with Rabbi Avigdor Miller's Commentary 19 Chapter 8 Yichbosh Avonoteinu God Will C

Shalom. We are in the eighth chapter of Tom Devor page 121. A person should try to conduct himself according to this character trait of Hashem called Aono. He will conceal our iniquities. We said that Hashem values our mitzvot much more than our sins. And Hashem enjoys our mitzvot more and he consciously brings up our mitzvot in front of him and he subdues, he suppresses, he hides our sins. A person should try to conduct himself according to this trait of Hashem as well by not by not overlooking the benefits received from his friend and uh by not remembering only the harm that he did. So just like Hashem tries to move aside the sins and focus on the good, so too we in our interactions with people should focus on the good. Should bring up the good to the into the center of our mind. We should make it bright and colorful and uh big because that is what we love. We want to focus on the good. And what do we do with all the bad? We suppress it. We move it aside. We make it small insignificant, dark and um in a way that as if it doesn't exist. Why should we do that? Because we see that Hashem is behaving like this and we want to be like Hashem. Why? Because Hashem is infinite, all powerful and we also want to be like him. Infinite, all powerful and independent. Independent means strong and not influenced by anyone. When we focus on the bad, that means we believe that other people can influence us negatively and we become uh competitors with them and we fear them. Instead, a person who has no fears, a person who knows that he is not under the influence of anyone, he will be happy. I don't need other people to give me honor and if they don't, I feel offended. I don't need honor. I am above it. I am so great that I don't depend on the approval of other people and therefore whether they respect me or not, whether they give me benefit or not, whether they try to hurt me or not, it doesn't change me because I am connected to God. I have a an infinite soul. And someone who is connected to infinity, he himself becomes unlimited, infinite. And therefore, it's for our benefit to focus on the good and forget the bad. Because by focusing on the good, we are making ourselves similar to God, but also like God. our traits actually become like God which means we gain power, we gain um infinite li life and someone who plays a victim might say what do you mean the more I play a victim the more people will have pity on me and the more they're going to give me and we see that people who play a victim they stay a victim and they stay pity pitiful for the rest of their life. It's only when you say I don't need pity of other people. I don't need other people to feel bad for me and give me. I don't need anything. I am independently sufficient, self-sufficient. And therefore, I will stop complaining. I will stop blaming. I will stop looking for faults. I will focus on only good because there is only good. Nobody can harm me in any way because I am infinitely powerful because I am connected to God himself. And therefore following Hashem's um example actually makes us stronger and more successful. Let's say Rabil gives an example. Let's say somebody was associated with you for some time and during your relationship he did things for your benefit. Then when he does one wrong thing against you, you naturally concentrate on the wrong because we take for granted all the good. That's nothing to talk about and we concentrate on the bad. He did this bad for me because all the good is nothing because it was supposed to be and therefore the only thing that he consciously did for me was bad. That's how many people think that behavior that forgetting is the opposite of a instead of focusing on the good and suppressing the bad. Some people do the opposite. They focus on the bad and they suppress the good. You should concentrate on the good things the other party did toward you, not on that one wrong he committed. Always focus your thoughts on the benefits you receive from others. That's the mid of suppressing the wrong. Rab when we were learning um Sharim he mentioned that the way a person is in one area of his life that's how he is going to be in all other areas of his life. The way you treat people that's how you will treat God. The way you treat one human being eventually it will come out how you treat others. Which means a person who is uh nice with some people and not nice with others. It means that inside of his character he has unworked on character traits. He has blemishes and right now he thinks that he's nice to these people but really he's selfish. These people are important in his life. He hopes to get benefit from them and therefore he is nice to them. Really he's nice to himself and therefore he's not nice to this person and bad to this. He's bad to everyone. It's just that he is temporarily hiding his bad nature. But because he is bad on the inside, that bad nature will come out. And as soon as the person who he treats well, stops being important in his life or goes against him, he will treat him exactly the same way as he treats all the other people. And uh the only way to know that you are a good person is if you treat everyone well. If a person treats God with respect, but he treats people badly, that means that his treatment of God with respect is really selfish. The only reason he's treating God with respect is because he's afraid to be punished and he wants to be rewarded. But really, he doesn't care about God. If he cared about God, that means he would have a good character. He would have a character of respect of or of recognition of good and that would spill over to others and he would behave with respect and um care for other people as well. So a person cannot become partalized because he's either good on the inside, he's perfect or not. If he's perfect, he will treat everyone well. And if he's not perfect, he will treat everyone sooner or later not well. Similarly, um very often people say, "Why did God do this to me? Why does God hate me? Why did he hurt me?" And uh when asked [snorts] what exactly happened, they'll say, "Oh, look, this didn't go my way here. I got hurt. and they start asking why does God hate me and um they forget about all the good God did for them. They're not saying why is God treating me so well that he gave me life 30 years ago, 40 years ago, and he fed me for the last 40 years every day besides the days that I voluntarily abstained from food because it was a public fast. Otherwise, every day of my life, God gave me food. Why didn't I ask then? What did I do to deserve the food that God is giving me? What did I do to deserve the health that God is giving me? What did I do to deserve extra day of life that God is giving me? Hashem loves me so much. He's pouring blessing upon blessing on me. And then with such an attitude if something doesn't go my way I'll say it's insignificant because God gave me million and one thing of good and this one thing that didn't go well it pales in comparison. It's insignificant compared to all the good God did for me. But if a person only focuses on bad, why didn't this relationship go well? But what about all the other relationships? why I wasn't able to make money here, but what about all the other times you made money? Why I poked my finger over here, but what about all the millions of times that you didn't poke your finger? And so on and so forth. If we focus on the good, we will see the vast difference between the good, how much good God gives us, and tiny tiny bit of bad. And we're going to be happy. And we're not going to stress and we're not going to worry because we see that God is a loving father and he loves us millions and billions of times more than he punishes us. And then we look more carefully and we'll see that the punishment is really out of love. Why did I get hurt over here? because I was doing something risky and Hashem wanted to me to to stop because I could, God forbid, lose my life. And therefore, Hashem send me a message, a small message. Please stop what you're doing. It's dangerous. Why did I fail in this business? Because God didn't want you to spend your life on a lowly small business venture that's not going to get you anywhere. He wanted you to wait a little bit more and be involved in something much larger and greater spiritually and physically. And you look back and you say how good it is that I failed over there. This was actually one door closing and a huge gate opening up. And uh when you focus on the good, you will see that everything is good. Even the bad is good. It's not like a human being that sometimes makes mistakes. My spouse is great most of the time, but sometimes my spouse hurts me. Hashem is not like that. Even when Hashem hurts us, it's not because they forgot. It's not because uh they became overwhelmed under stress. No, Hashem doesn't forget. He's not overwhelmed. He's never under stress. And therefore, even the bad that happens to us is with his will, with his decision and his guidance. And that means if it happened to us, it must be good. And therefore you we should always focus our thoughts on the benefits we receive from others from Hashem and from people because the benefits we receive from others are usually much greater than the bad. Even the bad person in our life if we think about it we will probably find many good things they did for us. Now some another example gives sometimes a man becomes angry with his wife or a wife with her husband and everything else is forgotten. Just this one incident stands out in their minds. And this character trait of suppressing the bad requires them to overlook that one thing and remember all the good. They said something not nice. If you focus on it and talk about it and revenge and hurt them back, that will start a snowball uh spiral out of control and the marriage may be finished. But if you take that one thing that they said or did and you suppress it, say it's okay. I will focus on the good and I will pay them good for bad. That will finish that bad streak and they will catch themselves and they say my spouse is so good. I made such a mistake and even though I hurt them, they were strong enough to repay me with good. I love my spouse so much because he or she loves me and forgives me and gives me another chance. I'm so lucky and then that will actually help me never to hurt my spouse again. Now, Rabbi Cord continues just the opposite. A person should conceal the evil of another person and try to forget it and he should abandon it. He should give up any ideas of remembering it at all. Don't ask yourself, should I bring it up? Should I remember it? No. Forget about it and move on. Live a good life. And this evil should not enter within his walls. Just like Hashem doesn't allow our misdeeds to enter his domain, another person's misdeeds should not enter into our consideration. We should try to wipe wipe it out as if it never happened. and the benefits that the other party did should always be laid out before his eyes to look upon. It's actually a good thing, a good advice to keep a list of all the people in your life, all the thousands of people that you know that you ever came into contact with, and especially those that you're still in contact with. List all of them and try to remember something good that each one did for you. The biggest good that you remember you can remember and then list all the other ones as well. And then when you go to meet that person, to call that person, you're interacting with that person, remind yourself of the good things that this person ever did for you. And then your treatment of that person, your relationship with that person will improve. Rabbi Miller says sometimes even years of benefits can be forgotten because of one wrong thing that was done. And sometimes without anything bad, we just are used to getting good from this person. We take it for granted and we don't pay attention to it. And when we speak to that person, we're we might not be nice because why should I be nice? He never did anything good to me. Why? Because I never noticed even though he's doing 10 good things a day for the past 10 years and I don't pay attention. It especially applies to our parents, our siblings and our spouses. These are the people who do so much for us and these are the people that we take for granted. It could be our neighbors. It could be our co-workers. It would be our boss or our employees. Every day they do something nice towards us and we take it for granted. Sometimes we are even embarrassed to admit because he did so much for us and we never said thank you. All of a sudden I should say thank you. is going to look weird, so I might as well pretend I don't notice for the rest of my life. God forbid. The author is explaining that instead you should think of all the things that were done to benefit you. Make a list. Review the list. Work on that list. It should be your lifetime goal to list everything that anyone did. Good for you. Anyone you meet, anyone you know, write their name, make a a line, a separate page, a few lines, and as things happen, go to that page and say, "Oh, on this day, he gave me this. He did this for me. He helped me out with this. He has this positive influence on my life." Write everything down to this is called recognizing the good. You were pleased with that person. Many times he did or said things or behaved in a certain way that pleased you. You should be thinking about those times and only about those times. He should remember that benefit. Rab is telling us, notice that the author is talking even about a person who did a single benefit for you. Still, you should always remember that benefit. Keep it in your heart. Mention it to him. Thank him for it. Speak about it to others. Praise him to others. That will develop good good feelings between people. Especially a spouse should always praise their spouse to their parents. Mom, dad, I married such a wonderful person. He or she is so good to me. They're treating me well. This way, not only you will love your spouse, but your parents will love your spouse as well. Rab Corda says, "And he should make it more important than anything else that he did for him." This quality of remembering the good is for your own benefit. Like we mentioned before, because when you do that, Hashem deals with you in the same manner. You are emulating God's system of concentrating on the good and looking away from the bad. And Hashem treats you like this anyway. But if you treat others like this, then Hashem will treat you like this even more. Rabbi Cord continues, he shouldn't deduct in his mind and say, "He did some good for me, but he also harmed me." and forget the good and therefore the benefit is either wiped out or reduced in size. He shouldn't do that. Rather, regarding the harm that was done, he should allow himself to be appeased in any way he is able to be appeased. Rab explains, "If a person showed willingness to ask forgiveness, you should surely allow yourself to be appeased. But even if the person didn't mention it at all and chose to ignore the wrong he did, try to find ways to judge him favorably. Consider it as something that was done by accident. or without thought. Perhaps he had been careless, but he didn't do it on purpose. Whatever you can do to reduce the severity in your mind or the wrong that was done against you and remove your thoughts from it is imitating this mida of Hashem. So someone did something hurtful. first say maybe he didn't mean it. Maybe it was an accident. Maybe he did or said something else, something positive, but somehow it evolved into hurting me. But that's not what he meant. Not what he did. He meant and did good, but other circumstances caused that the benefit that he wanted would roll down and hurt me. Maybe that's not what he meant. Maybe that's not what he did. Maybe that's not I how I understood it. Maybe I misunderstood him. Maybe it wasn't him. Whatever you can do to lower the severity, do it. and never let the benefit he did disappear from before your eyes. Just like Hashem never substitutes mitzvah uh for a meaning he never cancels out and says this person did five sins and 10 mitzvot so I'll subtract so I'll consider as if he only did five mitzvah. No, Hashem says he did 10 mitzvot and the sins I'm going to forget. Therefore, we tell a man who is angry at his wife, think of the benefits she bestowed on you, all the good meals she prepared for you. All the times she gave you clean clothing to wear and she takes care of your children. You don't see how she diapers them, feeds them, cleans them, takes them to daycare, worries for for them, prays for them. You don't know. Just because of one thing she did, you are going to overthrow everything and forget all the benefits she bestowed on you. This example is about a case when someone did many benefits. But the author is saying even if they only did one good thing, don't forget about that one good thing. Even if they only did one good and many bad, don't forget about the good. You should always try to remember that one benefit and put it before your mind as much as possible. And Rabbi Cordova concludes, "Conceal the wrong from your eyes as much as possible like Hashem does when he tries to conceal all the sins so they should not come before his eyes. As I have explained, not only we try to conceal them in our own heart and mind, but we try to make the person look good in front of others and we try to diminish his bad qualities and focus on his good and praise him to others. If everyone treats him with respect, then all of a sudden he's going to start thinking, you know, I am an important person. People are treating me with respect. I better start behaving on a higher level. I cannot let people down. They think I'm a sadic. I have to behave like a sadic. And with just your treatment of him as a righteous man, he will actually become a righteous man. And Rab Miller concludes the author is describing something that is unnatural for people. However, people who wish to fulfill this mitzvah of walking in God's way must emulate everything we learn about Hashem. The Torah repeats this message. This is my God and I will glorify me. And the Gar asks how do you glorify God? And it says can be read as an I and God. I will be like God. How will I make God great? By making myself like God. You honor and glorify Hashem by trying to be like him as much as possible. Here is a practical suggestion for anyone who has an ambition to succeed in fulfilling this mitzvah properly. Everybody has been wronged by somebody and that somebody ordinarily gets relegated to a low place in your esteem. You push him all the way down in your mind. Now think it over once more. Search your memory and think, did this person ever do anything good for me. If you don't recall even one good thing, at least he must have done something good for somebody else. Maybe he did something good for me. And if I absolutely cannot find anything good that he did for me, maybe he did something good for others. So there is something good in him. Maybe he did something good for God. Maybe he did something good for himself. There is a grain of good in him. Let me concentrate on that good. Perhaps someone in need came to him and he helped in some way. Concentrate your thoughts on finding something favorable. And in that way, you will be emulating the ways of Hashem. Perhaps you had no other dealings with that person except in that one incident in which he wronged you. How then can you concentrate on the benefits he did? The answer is the man has been living a normal life with other people. You see, he's a normal person. Maybe he has a wife, maybe he has children, maybe he has a brother, maybe he has parents, maybe he has neighbors, someone in his life he treats well. He has a family and he is doing his duty as a husband, father, or as a member of the community. Maybe he doesn't treat me well, but he does have good in him. This man is doing many good things. Even though he didn't happen to do good to you, you should concentrate on all the good things that you find. Even though though in your mind this man is worthless, if to the rest of the community or to his family he is valuable somewhat or functioning properly, that should be the center of your attention. We have a lot to work on. We have a lot of people on our list that should be on our list of good ofat and let us work on item and let's see how fast we can find thousands of benefits for thousands of people. fill up pages and pages, notebooks and notebooks of all the good and then our life will be full of good and Hashem will send us blessings every moment of our life. Thank you for listening. Shabbat shalom.