TBC - Day 15 - 'A way of life' - Rabbi Alon Anava | Atzmut.org

Last week we spoke about the acronym in the word of chuva. And I told you there are a few other acronyms. But before we go to the few other acronyms, I want to explain and I spoke about it a few times that there are a few ways of doing chuva. There's a few approaches to do chuva. And really chuva is one of the most important foundations in Judaism. If we wouldn't have chuva, there wouldn't be hope for anything because then a person will sin and then that's it. All hope is lost. Then how can you live your life? So really chuva, when you're thinking about it, is the foundation of our belief that if you mess up, you have a way to fix it, which is important to remember. But there are a few approaches when it comes to chuva. Some say specifically three, but we're going to go through these three, but I do believe there are more approaches. And the first approach is that chuva has to be done from love. And that's if you remember the last week that we broke the word chuva into five verses, five channels, this approach is that chuva has to be done with love. If you remember, you know, the first you have to it's all about loving and finding love to the and front of me it's all about the approach that it has to do with love, which is a not less important than anything because really the highest level of chuva is called me'ava. And so it calls it me'ava, high level chuva, but some would call it me'ava. Chuva it comes from love, not from fear. So this is approach number one. The second approach is that it's all about the that your chuva is around mitzvot that you have to make sure that you are not doing all the sins and you're doing all the mitzvot and that's really your chuva. Now get that into into place and function like a professional robot. I'm saying robot, but do it in a very precise way. That's it. You'll you'll be covered. Because if you got all the mitzvot under your control, which means that all the negative ones you don't do and the positive ones you do, by default that's it. That's your chuva. You got it mastered. Now this is not less important. Of course you have to do all the all the mitzvot. And and needless to say we all need to have I mean there are there's always going to be a percentage of mitzvot that you're able to do and then the ones that you're not so good at. So you constantly have to strengthen that and by that you do get to a very high level of chuva. Now the third approach it's looking at everything in a completely different way. And this is not less important than the other two approaches. So I would actually order them that the first approach has to be that you have to master the mitzvot. Because if you master the mitzvot like I said, it means you're doing all the mitzvot and you're not doing all the sins. Do that for 10 10 15 20 years. That's it. You're on the on the right path cuz you don't sin and you do mitzvot. So I would say let's now for the sake of the example just put that number one. The next approach is that you have to increase in love that all your chuva is done less than fear, but more in love to the and love to other people, which is a very high level. Not saying this is not possible, but this is one of the most important ways. But now we'll take a third approach that we have to look at my existence and my chuva in a completely different angle. I don't want to say a more futuristic or modern approach cuz it's not. It's just a different approach. And to bring to look at things in more in a new idea. One good example is that for many many years, thousands of years, the Torah was learned in a very specific way. There was no changes. And 300 years ago came the and started a whole new movement of Hasidut and suddenly in the last 300 years the big majority of the Jewish nation is is walking on the path of Hasidut and serving in a completely new futuristic or modern or Messianic different way. It's a whole different approach, the Hasidic approach. That's why in the beginning there was a lot of opposition coming to the whole Hasidic movement. But nevertheless, it came from the right source and needless to say it was acquired and adopted. So obviously there's an different I wouldn't say necessarily different angle, but maybe a twist to how you look at things. And to understand what I'm saying, then there's again a way to take the five letters of chuva and of the word chuva to break it into five different verses and see what is this new approach. So before we even go and and dive into explain it, I'm just going to go through these five verses and then in future later classes we'll explain it a little bit more. But the point to take from this short class is that chuva has to be done on many different levels. It's almost like I look at chuva like an army going into war. You can't go with an army only with the air force. It's not going to you can't win a war with the air force. You still need the ground forces. You need the soldiers coming in the ground and you need the navy and you need intelligence and you need all you have to cover all grounds. Same with chuva. So just to kind of give more flavor to this short class is that you have to cover the the approach of mitzvot. You cannot ignore that. You cannot do chuva without doing mitzvot. By the way, there are all sorts of seminars and courses and groups that they're telling you, "No, you can do chuva. Just learn this and that all day long. You don't have to do the mitzvot." That's for that's for that's old school. It's not true. You have to master the mitzvot. This is one of one way of chuva. The second one is doing everything from love, meaning that you go beyond the letter of the law, much more than what you are required. You're doing everything for really for the sake of The third approach is not less important. And we're going to go quickly through the five verses then in later classes I'll explain it more in depth, but it's for us to understand that my reach have to be everywhere. You can look at it in the different example I gave going doing chuva is like going to war, so you need to cover all grounds. And another way of approaching it is if you have a business, you want to make money, then you have to accept all forms of payment. You have to accept checks, credit cards, all the credit cards, American Express and Visa MasterCard. You have to have PayPal too and you have to have this and you have to have that. You have to have all the types of methods. If somebody comes and pays and says, "Do you accept this and that?" Of course. Same thing with chuva. You have everything has to be covered. And if you're going to be asked in "Did you do chuva from love?" "Yeah." "Did you do mitzvot?" "Of course." "Did you fast?" "I did that." Then you did everything. Without further ado, let's take the word chuva and break it into five different approaches. Later on I will explain a little bit more in depth the verses that are attached to that. So the taf of chuva is Torah and tefillah. You have to learn Torah a lot and you have to apply prayer. That's it. This is the main part of the beginning of the chuva. The second one is called Sh'ma Yisrael. That's the shin of chuva. What does Sh'ma Yisrael means? Emunah. You can't do chuva without working on your emunah. Very people have this much emunah in their life. Emunah means faith. Faith, belief. You don't have faith, the chuva is not going to work. Sh'ma Yisrael. The vav of chuva is a concept that is called be'ishto. Be'ishto is a verse from the book of chapter two, verse 24 and it says, "And he cleaved to his wife." It's talking about Adam. Adam Rishon. This is talking about the concept of family, the structure of family. So that's a one huge part in chuva. The bet of chuva is going to be another verse and again I will go through all the verses, explain them and also the sources. But the verse says be'hayim. Be'hayim means you choose life. But that is referring to for your choice, for your your choices in life. But not only that, there's a big concept in Judaism and any type of belief is do I have free choice? And how do I approach the fact that if I do if I don't have free choice? This called What do I choose? Do I choose to do good? Do I choose to do bad? This is a big thing that we need to also explain. And the hey of chuva is This is another verse from the Torah. And this means not to rebuke somebody per se. That's what this verse means, but that means How much are you giving out? How much you are affecting people? How much you Yeah, what influence do you do on others? And that's a real big part of your chuvah. That's why it's the last day of the word chuvah. And this is one of the most important things that we're going to explain. So basically saying in other words to conclude this short class is that that chuvah is not an option. A lot of people think that you doing chuvah is an option. Can I skip the chuvah and just do A, B, and C? No. So I would say not only chuvah, Torah is not an option. A lot of people think that they have other options. You don't have an other option. Torah is your option. And Torah comes with chuvah. Chuvah is no option. There's no negotiating here. You have to do chuvah. And not only that, chuvah is not a a system that I have to now be a slave for the rest of my life. Chuvah is your path of life. Is that's your way of life. Is that you change your life completely. It's not necessary that I have to repent and cry all day long and be on the floor and bang on my heart and and and fast. Chuvah, when I say I want to do chuvah is me saying in other words I'm changing my way of life. How I look at life, how I look at people, how I approach life, how I approach myself. It's a whole different way of life and really as I said there's no option here. So we'll go through these five options because when you know how to apply them in your life then your path of chuvah becomes a your way of life. It's not some side thing that I'm doing chuvah 2 hours a day. If you're doing chuvah 2 hours a day, it's never going to work. And the whole point here is that what we want to take from this whole boot camp is that how do I do chuvah that if tomorrow I leave the world, I am set. I don't have to come back here again. I don't need to have a shalom go to all sorts of horrible places to kill again and to get my my soul cleansed. I want to be done with it. So a major change has to happen in my life. So we spoke about one approach of the chuvah. We explained the second. Now we're going to go to another way of approaching the chuvah which the title of it is your whole way of life has to change. Your path of life has to be completely different. And with these five verses that we're going to explain in next classes, we're going to understand it much much more clearer.