Mindflex- Power of Community, with Rabbi Chananya Rosenblum, Esq.

and how the idea of unity and community relates to that concept now many people arrive at this time of year and they become despondent they think to themselves well i really haven't done enough i haven't done enough in terms of praying i haven't done enough good deeds and i did a lot of bad things too to be honest and now i'm going to show up as a person with very small amounts of deeds and relative comparison to others and show up and repent and pray and what is it that i'm going to accomplish anyway in just one day perhaps it's not going to be enough to pray just for one day if i haven't prayed for all the days leading up to today and in response to this the mishnah and parque avos ethics of the fathers says this is in the name of ribayakov that one moment of sincere repentance and good deeds in this world is equivalent to all of the life in the world to come what an incredible statement the mission is teaching us that all it takes is one moment of sincere repentance and good deeds and that moment alone can be equivalent to the afterlife to the reward that's awaiting us in the afterlife and to illustrate this point that talmud and abort zara relates an incredible story about a man named the lazar benzer daya he lived during the time of rebbi rebbi rabbi judah the prince the redacter of the mishnah was told about the story of this man elizabeth who is a terrible sinner and the talmud goes on to explain how there were certain sins that he spent years now his whole life pursuing greater and greater and greater self-gratification in a terrible way and yet at one point perhaps he felt he hit rock bottom as it happens many times and he decided to repent and he started to cry and he lamented his sins so intensely that his soul left him and it was such a powerful experience that he died immediately a boss called a heavenly voice rang out from the heavens and proclaimed that this former sinner this baal chuva this man of repentance was ready to enter the world to come his soul had reached the high point of eternity and when rebbe heard this story when he heard the boss call ring out he began to cry and he proclaimed yesh kona olamo basha there are those who acquire everlasting life in one moment and he wept and he cried now everybody asks what was he crying about this seems like such a powerful type of moment was he perhaps bemoaning or begrudging this man for having lived a life of sin and yet at the last moment being able to repent and earn his life in the world to come so the rosina says that no he certainly didn't begrudge allah the good fortune of having had his chuva his repentance accepted rather what rebbe was crying about was that he realized that a person can utilize a moment so effectively and so qualitatively that all of the sins that a person committed can ultimately be repented for and he utilized that time even though it was only just a few moments in order to do a true and earnest chuva and do a true and earnest repentance and when rebbe saw this and he heard about it he realized that perhaps he himself hadn't used every opportunity that he could have used in order to repent and in order to earn reward in this world so that he could end up with reward in the world to come and as we know that once a person passes away they can no longer earn reward they can only earn reward for what they do in this world and that's why we know stories of very righteous people that were crying and sobbing on their death beds including a famous story in which a person had an out of body experience a a near-death experience and when he came to his students asked him you know we we noticed that when you were having this experience when you were you're on your deathbed and you were having this so to say near death experience you were crying you were weeping tears were streaming down your face what was that about and the great rabbi said because at that moment i realized that for just a few pennies of charity we can get everlasting life in the world to come but once i pass away soon very soon in a few moments even for the greatest amount of money i'm not going to be able to earn reward in the world to come it's too late but what we see from here is that for a very small period of time or even a very small mitzvah act that's done with sincerity we have the ability to change our entire future to go back and to repent for all the terrible things we may have done and also lay the foundation for our future and our everlasting lives in the world to come a second issue that plagues people this time of year is that sometimes people think that perhaps they're not jewish enough perhaps they were quote a bad jew now to me when somebody says i'm a bad jew i quickly respond there's no such thing as a bad jew perhaps you haven't done enough perhaps you're someone who could have done more but we all could do more and therefore either we're all bad jews or none of us are bad jews and it brings to mind the talmud in tractate sanhedrin on page 44 and the talmud says as follows even though a person sins he is still considered a member of the jewish people amarabi abu rabi a myrtle branch is among the thorns it is still considered a myrtle branch and this is what we have to understand and we have to internalize during this time of year that each and every one of us can do more and we could have done more but that doesn't prevent us from coming to synagogue or from opening the prayer book or even from talking to god from using our own words and speaking in our own language because after all despite all that we have done we may be dirty we may be full of sins but we are still essentially a jew and the same person as we were before we have been changed but we also have the ability to change now on yom kippur night everybody gathers in the shul in the synagogue and we all know that the service begins with come the dre but before the khon nijre service in which we seek annulment of our vows the leader the cantor says something very interesting he says the following words al dash hamakom be a shiva shall mala be ishiba mata matiram imam which means that we are asking permission of god to pray with sinners now this is something that's always puzzled me firstly presumably everybody has done a sin at some point or other why are we asking this now why specifically when we come to yom kippur are we asking god to give us the permission so to say to pray in the company of sinners and it actually sounds like sub-optimal so perhaps what we would rather do is pray only with righteous people is what it sounds like we have to ask permission god please grant us the permission to pray in the company of sinners so if that's true does that mean that a sinner really shouldn't be there to begin with if he's there so we have to ask for permission to pray with him but maybe sinners shouldn't be in synagogue in the first place so the interesting thing is that there is a gemara the talmud and tractate crisis which says as follows um called this that any fast any communal fast a moment where we come together and pray for repentance that does not include a sinner is not a fast if we want to come together as a community and beseech god for forgiveness we must include the sinners how do we know he says i'll tell you very simply how we know because we have the spices that were offered in the temple we know that in the times of the temple there were two altars one altar was for animal sacrifices and one altar was for spices was for incense and there was a special formula for the incense the incense had to be done precisely in fact the sages teach us that if one ingredient is missing the person who offers the incense is liable for the death penalty serious stuff but one of the ingredients was known as the hellbena what was the kalbana the helbena galbanum was the spice which had a bad smell now if i were to ask you you know cook up a recipe for pleasing spices that we're going to burn in the temple well of course you're going to pick the incense that's going to smell good one would never think to include the spice a spice or some type of plant that smells bad however that's not the case there was a spice in the kataras in the incense called helbana and that khalbana had a bad smell and therefore says of hana barbizna in the name of shaman khasidah we know that a sinner someone who has a bad smell must be included in the keto rest must be included in the incense so what's this about the rabbenu bukhaye a classical commentator on the torah explains that the reason for this is that it actually is an elevation and a sanctification of the name of god when sinners come and they join the community in order to repent because if not all the righteous people will have to take responsibility for those sinners why because we have a concept called kali israel raven and that means that every jew is responsible for every other jew we're all in this together and so if it was the case that the sinners wouldn't show up and they wouldn't repent together with everybody else that would bring down the righteous people as well so when sinners show up and they repent and they join our congregation and they pray with us they daven with us and they sing with us they praise god together with us it is an experience that actually uplifts and sanctifies the name of god because we're showing that we're all in this together and the rabbenu bakay says it's for this reason that when we have the mitzvah of lulav we know that in a few short weeks we're going to have the holiday of sukkot sukkus and on sukis we shake the love and we have the four kinds we have of course the lulav which is the palm branch and then we have the hadas the myrtle we have the arava the willow and then we have the s-rogue which is a citroen sort of a sort of a special type of lemon and each one of those four kinds has different property we have a willow that has taste and smell and we have the myrtle which has no taste but no smell we have the s-robe which has the taste and the smell and then we have the lulav which has taste but no smell but what's the idea that we have in this all different types of jewish people we have people who have flavor perhaps they have a certain quality a certain property but they don't have the other we have people that have only wonderful qualities and maybe people that don't really have many good qualities but the reason that we bind them together is because this is the rainbow and this is the beautiful symphony of the jewish people and in order to really have true repentance in order to really have our prayers be answered we need to be there together and all different types of jews from all walks of life from all of all shapes and sizes of all different types of opinions about the world and all different pasts we're all coming together in order to pray to god and to sanctify his name so it's not that this is something that is not undesirable and we have to ask for permission so to say for that it's the opposite where it's with intention that we're doing this together and so the question really becomes the question that this begs is so why do we have to ask for permission for that what are we asking permission for after all we just explained that this is necessary for all of us to come together in this beautiful symphony that is the jewish people so why is it that right before we enter into the prayers of the day of atonement we have to ask god for permission in order to include the sinners so i want to suggest that when we're asking for permission what it's really supposed to be is permission for ourselves because very often we ourselves lack the confidence that we can do it and by coming to synagogue and for asking permission it's not just on a communal level because we so to say don't need that permission but on an individual level i want to give myself permission in order to go through this process because oftentimes the biggest block to repentance is that we have something called the yetzer hara the evil inclination and that yetzer hara convinces us that there's no point don't even bother don't come to shul don't open the prayer book don't even talk to god you are so far gone that there is nothing that you can do to come out of this pit that you dug yourself the base hal levy on last week's torah portion which many many times talks about the concept of returning to god clearly a reference to chuva and repentance so the great commentator the base halley is puzzled by the fact that there is a verse that says now the torah prefaces that by saying that we're talking about someone who does not is not interested in repentance he just sits back and he's going to just continue living his life the way he was before but still it seems like a very uh blanket and very very type of sharp statement to say that god will not want his forgiveness when after all we know that god wants our forgiveness god specifically gives us one day a year and of course any every day we have the opportunity to repent but special day of the year in order to repent so how could the torah be saying that god will not want his forgiveness so the base halleluji brilliantly says that it's not that god doesn't want his forgiveness but this quote that god does not want to forgive is what the sinner himself convinces himself is what god is saying that he thinks to himself i am so terrible i have sunk so low that god will never want to forgive me and even though this appears like a logical type of argument but it's really not it's his evil inclination that's telling him that because the reality is that no matter how low somebody has sunk god still is going to accept his repentance if he does it with sincerity as we know there's a verse in ecclesiastes and cohellis which says it's impossible there has never been a person on the face of the earth that hasn't sinned god created us with free will and free will means that he knew when he created us that we were going to mess up that is inherent in the nature of a human being in fact the midrash the rabbinic writings tell us that when god was ready to give the torah to the world the angels complained they said god how could you give such a holy book something so sublime to mere flesh and blood mere mortals it doesn't seem right so god says well let's open the torah let's see what the torah says the torah says don't kill the torah says don't steal the torah says respect your father and mother do angels have a father or mother do angels have a temptation to kill or to steal the only way that the torah system would work is if god created us with free will the ability to choose as we had in the torah portion it says god has placed in front of us good and bad and he is telling us he is advising us that we should choose life we should make the right decisions but inherent in that is also the idea that we can choose bad if we want to that's what free will is that's what free will is all about god gave each and every person the ability to decide and to choose and of course he wants us to make the right choices but the choice is ours and oftentimes we make the wrong choices because if we all made the right choices firstly we'd all be robots and secondly we would an idiom kipper we would all be perfect the angels don't need yom kippur they don't sin because angels are robots they only do exactly what god tells them to do so therefore if once a person realizes that this is a natural part of the human condition but god has also created a remedy but rasa hara barasilo toritavlin god says i created the evil inclination but i also created the torah as a remedy god teaches us through the torah how to repent how we are supposed to approach the subject and how we're supposed to deal with it instead of being blind to the concept and pretending it doesn't exist it's the opposite god says i understand that you're human and i understand that you have the capacity to sin and now i'm going to teach you how to repent and our sages throughout the generations have put together beautiful liturgy prayers and so forth in order for us to be able to go through this process which actually started all the way at the beginning of the month of elul at from the beginning of the month of ello we already start blowing the chauffeur we already start thinking are supposed to be in the frame of mind or we're thinking about repentance and this process actually carries us through not only yom kippur but also into the holiday of circus as we know that the last day of hoshanaraba is really when the final judgment is sealed and so we really have a very significant amount of time not forever in order to take advantage of this opportunity and here's something that's almost ironic one would think that during a time when a person has sinned and they go and they fess up they confess their sins that god would be farther away imagine a child does something wrong and has to come to the parents with their tail between their legs and talk about how bad they were and the bad things that they did now there's a rift that gets created at that point in time the parent feels more distant from the child because the parent learnt all about what the child did but we're taught that when it comes to this month god is even closer to us as the great hasidic masters would say the king is in the field meaning that he is among us he's among his people he understands who we are and what makes us tick and gives us an opportunity to get even closer to him than we can the rest of the year which is just a testament to his love for us he wants us to become closer to him but in order to do that we need to repent and we need to go through this process and we have to think about what a tremendous benefit this is in fact the talmud and thanos teaches us that there were no greater days for the jewish people than the 15th day of avon yom kippur this was a day of tremendous joy and it should be a day of tremendous joy because imagine an opportunity for a person to take his dirty filthy car and ding the car go to the car wash go to the body shop and he drives the car out and it's brand new what an opportunity that each and every person has in order to cleanse themselves of their sins and what greater joy could there be than that and so we look around we come into synagogue and we realize that everyone has their bag of sins we're all standing together and yet we all showed up just as god instructed us to and we plead and we beg and we pray and if we do so with sincerity god can't say no like a father who just can't refuse if a child comes back to their father with sincerity and begs and pleads for their forgiveness no father would ever turn a child away and instead of focusing on other people's evils and our own evils we also have the ability to focus on the good that we've done the prayers are in plural for a reason as we've said before the idea of community is so important to such an important theme that the vast majority of the prayers are said in the plural and especially when we get to the point where we actually confess our sins we don't say it as an individual we say it as a community ashamu bhagavanu we have sinned we have betrayed we have become disloyal now i'm not the first one to have pointed this out but there is a long-standing tradition that we actually sing that part god knew so weird can you imagine somebody showing up and telling someone his boss his parents somebody that he did something wrong going to court and telling the judge i have sinned i have betrayed you it's crazy is this it sounds like someone who is just mocking or being happy about it but the idea is that this song refers to the fact that we didn't do it maliciously that we have so many good deeds each and every one of us as we know that it says capella that even the emptiest person is full of merits like a pomegranate we know that we've done bad things but god also knows that we've done good things and so many good things and for most people the good things have far outweighed the bad things so we come as a community and we invoke the merit of all the good things that we've done in the collective there is the talmud in tractate arabin that says that posha yisroel that for the centers of israel the fires of hell do not have any capacity to harm them and brings a comparison to the altar of gold just as the altar of gold had the fire on it for many many years and only a very very thin layer of gold that protected it but the altar did not become disintegrated or burned so too the jewish people that have a great layer of merits to protect us cannot be burnt and that's why the talmud talks about the idea of a pomegranate and we know that one of the traditions is to eat a pomegranate on rosh hashanah and one of the reasons for that is that we're coming to god with our pomegranate full of mitzvos just like a pomegranate is full of seeds that we have such a tremendous capacity to do good and we have done good that we come together not only in order to repent collectively but also to rely on the merits of everybody else who also rely on our merits and we all have the right and the ability to do that so we're not alone this process is not a process for us to undergo alone and this year it's going to be different there are many people that aren't going to be initial in synagogue because of the virus people are concerned about their health and maybe they're going to be praying in smaller groups or not in synagogue at all and we have to realize that if this is our situation god put us in the situation for a reason we might not understand it but that doesn't mean that we don't have the very same capacity to join in the collective interestingly enough the law is that when a person prays by themselves at home or in a different location and there's no seaboard they're not with a minion they are supposed to say the prayers the shawshat siber mispal at the same time that the congregation is praying so if the congregation is praying at eight o'clock in the morning it's appropriate for a person to also start their prayers at eight o'clock in the morning and what's that about it's all about what we've been saying throughout this entire class that it's all about coming together and praying collectively doing this as a community and we might not be able to be connected physically or in the same space but we all have the ability to tap in to the power of the community the idea that there are jews the world over that are going to be doing the same exact thing and if we have the ability to pray from a prayer book we should do that and we have we don't have the ability to do that and we can't say the prayers we should read the prayers in english or in any language we understand and beyond that of course there's a formal structure of prayer but there's also informal prayer where god accepts us and understands whatever it is that we say in any language that we say it all we need is a little bit of sincerity and god will accept us in open arms thank you for joining have a good evening i wish you and your family a happy and a healthy new year