Ethics of the Fathers: Chapter 2 Mishnah 15 - Rabbi Yitzchak Botton

today will be wheeler to discussing mission / Kiev oh that discusses the topic of chuva it's found in the second parekh the 15th Mishnah one of the teachings of Rabbi Eliezer the student of Yohanan Ben Zakai so he says if he says three things but we're going to focus on the main thing today what he says about chuva so he says that a person should reach over one day before he dies and in Hebrew it reads the shoe return in chuva yamaha the leaf namita take do tuva a day before you die this is the you know the teaching of every Eleazar which is a enigmatically actually means so much so that the Gomorrah and shabbos asks it records the conversation between him and his talmidim but immediate respond but ready how can the person to trooper one day before he dies a person doesn't know when he's going to die so how does one apply so to speak this teaching how can one do to birthday before you guys you know so the gamarra over there says well so a person should do you know take the lesson to heart and he doesn't know when he's going to die so he do children today maybe he'll die tomorrow and they'll come after all of his days will be lived in doing chuva because every day he might he'll have the same thought he might die tomorrow so therefore hilditch over today and all of his days would be lived among struever and he'll be I guess the biggest static with the biggest gunaydin that anyone can imagine when he's done with all of his 120 years of living and after learning the Gomorrah and understanding the the lesson that comes out the basic lesson that comes out from this teaching from a very ezer I'm left with a question I just want to check anybody else here have it have the same question so for Speedy's for the sake of being quick i'll mention the question I haven't if everybody agrees with the question you can raise your hand do it quicker that way so but my question is based on some principles of perky other and what what perky vote represents so the point of the teachings of perky elbows are meant to help facilitate the person to serve God on a higher than average level and most of all of the teachings are meant to be applied in action they're meant to affect the person's psyche a person's you know a mindset or his emotional approach to serving a chef and it's supposed to affect his serving of Hashem all of the ideas in Perkey a vote so when I think about the application of this teaching I have a difficulty example take a young person like a 20 year old healthy we might as well make him handsome our had it you know take a young healthy handsome 20 year old strong man and and let's try this out on him so he gets up one day and he realizes you know it goes to shul on Shabbat you know they learn turkey a vote in shul of course with the children and the body call that disgusting fish again with the schmaltz herring and he in between the children the schmaltz herring the rabbi says listen I via laser says one should the person to do sugar before he dies one day before he dies of course he mentions the Gomorrah that ultimately we don't know when we're going to die so the real message rabbi eliezer is teaching me is to do true ver today because I might die tomorrow hence I'll do tu veux every day because every tomorrow I might die some say the opposite some say every tomorrow I might live but that's a different discussion we try to live every day so a person is going to do true ver every day because tomorrow he might die let's let's imagine the guys very excited you know it's a new teaching he learned in a chill on Shabbos so sunday he gets up sunday and says listen I better do true today this sunday january third because forget about what i did for on new year's eve that's a different story but I better do true ver today because I might die tomorrow january fourth so he it's all excited he does chuva on january third he has a good good day healthy day he goes to sleep wakes up january fourth and says okay I better do chuva today january fourth because I might die January fit and he does it again i will i will not do the whole month of january don't worry now what happens he's done this for a week so after a week he gets up next week and he says the same thing in the morning I better do tribute today because I might die tomorrow and another week goes by and a month goes by and two months go by three for six months at what point does the psychological method of chuva that's supposed to impact the person such a meaningful way that it's supposed to change his life at what point does it get dry does it get no been there done that okay I'm not dying tomorrow just like I didn't die yesterday and I didn't die the day before at what point does this mental approach to chula and life get become you know weaker and it's no longer affecting the person the way it's meant to I think that the average person can only keep this up for so long since average people don't drop dead in on the street you know they don't get eaten up by a line of course in the Gamma Rho the terminology is getting eaten up by a line not get a hit by car today unfortunately people can get it by a car but still we don't we don't assume that a person is going to die suddenly the next day you know of course nature of the world today is a bit crazier than it once was but still the gamma receive in the laws of Yom Kippur we don't we don't assume that the co name for example will just get dropped dead or his wife will drop dead we don't assume and also in the laws of gittin we don't assume that a person will will get eaten up by a lion to consider such a thing happening so since in halacha we see we don't consider such far-fetched ways of dying to happiness because they don't happen so to take our nice young healthy strong handsome man he's a six months into this I would assume by then the average person will no longer really with a full heart get up in the morning and say I'm dying tomorrow and do such a powerful chuva so I see a weakness in this idea in this teaching because if ultimately all of the teachings of perkier but are meant to affect us and affect our life and affect our activities in our mindset so I see in this case this approach to the mission will wear off eventually everybody here you'll see the same problem I see just everybody say yes excellent now if you didn't really mean it you could say no but you see the problem i'm in pointing at it's an obvious problem right right of course it is okay good i'm where everybody agrees so how do we resolve this problem you know we can't base i did i put myself in a bad situation I just you know rejected the the mission of the way it stands on a simple level Who am I to do such a thing so don't worry I'm going to fix it I hope so we're going to try to fix it now there's a peculiar language in raschi who speaks about this mission err on that very good morrow that we spoke about in shabbos and says that there's something special about doing chuva before you die that is unique and based on this flashy were going we want to appreciate what is so unique about the trooper that a person does before he dies and also how does a person do chuva before he dies we started off saying a person doesn't know when he's gonna die so how does the person succeed in doing this very special chuva that he does before he's going to die so what we're going to do now is we're going to live in our Mishnah to referring to a particular type of person and by doing so we're going to solve the problem which type of person are we talking about we're no longer talking about this young healthy handsome 20 year old man we're going to talk about a much older person not so young of course much older not so strong and I guess nature would have it not so handsome either and he once was so this guy whose will make him what 70 80 years old week his doesn't have the strength of his legs that he used to have he doesn't have the strength in his arms he doesn't have the same vision in his eyes that he used to have his frequent doctor visits are a sign of that he's on the way out it's a matter of fact we don't need a sign the doctors have told him that he's on the way out he knows that he's going to die soon said but this is the way of life we'll make an older so it'll be less saying will make him 8090 so it lived a really good life he has great great grandchildren they're very great and they're also you know second-generation their generation anyhow so this man is told that you know things are not looking good and he's on his way out literally soon we don't know what day we literally no it's tomorrow but we know that it's close and so a person in such a situation he can think about wow I'm dying tomorrow but tomorrow doesn't have to mean tomorrow the next day there's what we call tomorrow which is literally tomorrow row and then is tomorrow which is coming soon which is a date that's not far away extended tomorrow mr. rabbis talk about an extended tomorrow so if we're talking about this old man who knows he's going to die on this slightly extended tomorrow so he could start to think about this wonderful powerful life-changing life-saving chuva that the mission is talking about because a person that knows he is going to meet his maker shortly has a different perspective on life has a different perspective on his future life and certainly a different perspective on his past life and that is the essence of true ver as we've said before one must look to the past and of course in this case the short future is meant to have a eternal effect on the person so what what does he do what does this person do knowing that he's going to meet his maker well let's look at another person that was dying and let's see his reaction the famous rabbi who was in fact rebellious teacher Rebbe Yohanan Ben Zakai on the last day of his life while he was on his deathbed and clearly about to die starts crying his students ask him Rebbe what are you crying for he was the most righteous man alive he he never stopped learning he knew the entire oral tradition written Torah everything he said that was not a piece of Torah that he left unlearned undiscovered he said maybe what could you be crying about what why could you be so trembling and so fearful because that's the state that he wasn't he said because I'm about to die I'm about to go to the world of ms world of absolute truth and i'm about to meet meet my maker and be judged and there are two paths when we come to this world and i don't know what pairs are going to take me on and they said read me you you're afraid of Zach if you could be such reticence a thing then what what's good what's going to be with us so anyway we're not getting into the details of that story but that's essentially where mianamon Zach I was afraid of of meeting his maker a perfect sadak that he was so let's take this old man now that's going to die soon how afraid should he be about meeting Hashem she'll be very afraid now this person was about to leave the world soon he's supposed to look back at his life and see his mistakes and have regret and do chuva and the type of chuva that a person is who's dying makes is not the same as a young 20 year old man that has his whole life ahead of him what's so different is because when you have no life left so then everything is different when you have all your life ahead of you so you cannot appreciate the gift of life when it's sitting there and it's such an abundance of it can really only appreciate life when sometimes fortunate when it's not there anymore let's try a story to help appreciate what we're talking about today in America you have a phenomenon phenomenon today it's probably very normal you can buy things in an obscene amount of size like you could vice things like just huge you can buy approach balika prime mayonnaise you know with I guess a year's supply of mayonnaise right that's what 20 gallon mayonnaise olive oil you can probably you know you could probably it have to build a whole new house for all of the big containers or you can buy our classical's anyway you can buy things in such an abundance that you can have literally a year or years supply of what you want and need not like the olden days where people literally shopped every day and they had to and they had to keep shopping every day you know the game our talks about going shopping on friday because you need fresh food for shabbos you couldn't even buy on thursday because by then it would not be the same but today we buy in nineteen in 1999 and we still have it you know waiting for us for a two to two thousand and whatever 15 coming up so let's take an example you know Oriole is very symbolic oil represents the flame the candle of the soul life let's take a person who goes and he buys a big big container of oil and so he uses this oil every shabbos to light his candles and he uses it for the other various things he needs lighting the lights in the house you know and whatever else maybe it's the same oil that he uses for for food whatever but he lights his candles which is really representative of the neshamah and the life of a neshama and every time he wants to light he takes oil and he uses it now since he has such an abundance of this oil we could understand that he uses it sometimes sparingly you know drips here and there he puts too much it spills he's taking it very sparingly right finally after however long it takes to get to the end of this oil a long long time he reaches the bottom and he's taking the oil and he wants to light these candles one more time and fortunately he's not getting enough oil because there isn't much left and he's trying to scrape every little drop of this oil in order to put enough candle to light his Shabbos candles know the customers too light for some seven and he at that moment he thinks to himself wow what a my god unbelievable there's no more oil if I thought this way would never run out I took and took him so much and i watched it spill and i watch ivan sometimes through the little bit of way that I thought I didn't need it you know he was wealthy of course so he says how only I would thought then that I would reach a time when they would be no more oil and I wouldn't have enough to even light my candles so maybe I wouldn't have done so I would have saved a little bit here a little bit there I would have by the way I would have enough oil today to light my candles this is the old man that does chuva when he looks back on his life he looks back with no more life left he sees all of his mistakes he regrets he wishes he could have done it differently had I have done this had I not have done that and he says okay so you know what what if I try to fix things now and he looks at his legs his legs won't take him anywhere he looks at his arms they won't carry anything he has no more life in him left to redo his life so all he has is the wasted life in front of him and his time is out and he says oh what did I do I could only have those moments back I can only have the strength and the moment together to go and fix what I did that's the chula of a dying man that's the truth of a man that's life is just about to end and that the special chuva that Rashi is referring to because that only he could do and now everything makes sense it's that type of person doing that type of chuva that can make a life change and save his whole life because when you regret to such a degree your whole life so then that level of trooper can propel you to a very high level says that the person can acquire his next world in a moment it's a moment of that type of trooper that can repair and restore your world even if you were lacking throughout your life so we've seemed to have a save save the mission perfect now it makes perfect sense now it's not a problem because we're dealing with a person that's all but we left with still a problem what problem we left with well well he has his whatever month left or two months left and he's going to live that way till he dies and it's going to be very intense days of chuva and he's going to through that intense chuva do it great in a great place in the world to come if question now remains what about that young 20-year old guy what's he supposed to do so the truth is that even though we we make this Kim too even though we say that the Mishnah is literally referring to this older man who does know that he's about to die or gonna die soon but the mission is still talking to everybody because we don't write mission is for only eight year old people that can't can't move we write mission is for everybody so the point is not that it's a lesson only for the old man the point is this and this is what really we could understand from the students talking with their Rebbe we're young and we have a life ahead of us and there's no way for us to try to determine when we're going to die we have no clue so what do we do so the answer is you think of this old man that does know that he's gonna die soon and does this intense life preparing and life-changing chuva and you've learned his lesson but not when it's too late before it's too late because you still have life ahead of you and you still have strength your container of oil is full don't waste it don't let it Windle for nothing so you think about this old man that looks back on his life and regrets and can't change and can't fix and you as a young man with your life ahead of you you you realize the value of every moment and every day and you do you live your life correctly now that's Shugyo McArdle if they meet attack every day that you wake up you realize that one day life will be up so you do to ver now but you don't just do a regular true ver that we can all do you do a chuva realizing the true value of every and by contemplating on that man that has no more life left and that will propel you to live on a much higher level a much more intense level day by day that's the preventive way of doing true values you've saved your life and you've used it properly instead of just regretting at the end you've been able to fix it all the way through and this is perhaps a good way to settle and understand the depth of this of this mission and again into both cases in the old man's case and in the young man's case we see the chuva is meant to look back to your path to realize your mistakes and in order to not to make those same mistakes in the future for the old man it's the level of remorse that he feels because he can't fix it anymore in the future that propels him to a very high degree of chuva for the young man that's not enough because he has to get up the next day and continue living his life so he uses the past to actually propel him to recess a level of coover by thinking about that old man but now then using every day of his life correctly from now on and this is perhaps if we could take a little bit of these ideas to heart we can really change our lives for the better and merit especially this year and every year to come that we approach God on Russia shawna specifically with the you know clean clean of Sinan and without trying to make excuses for another wasted year but rather a useful year and we can pray and look forward to the next useful year as well correct everyone