Rabbi Yirmiyahu Ullman - Orchot Tzaddikim: Repentance - Part 4

oh yes we did the up to number ten or nine at least kufsa designed well we did we did remember we recently we skipped some chapters recently we skipped some short chapters in order to do this section on shura okay so we're here on this chapter on chuva in organic and at this section of the chapter is enumerating a list of i believe was it to 20 20 things which are associated with the person's doing chuva and we're up to the tenth one so on kufstar design you have siri the first one is that he should the first one is that he has to work very hard on regretting what he did wrong the second one is to leave behind the transgression the third one is to feel upset right upset over having lost what he had in order to regain it the fourth one was um feeling regret not in the in the realm of um emotion but in the in the realm of deed yes which means you know actually physically feeling feel physically feeling remorse over the things that he did wrong the fifth one is worry concern about the future if he continues along this way the sixth one is feeling embarrassment over having done it wrong the seventh one is feeling humility in one's heart as a result of having done this wrong deed and um therefore rather than rebelling he'll humbly ask god for uh for forgiveness the eighth is to be humble indeed not just with with one's you know one's approach internal approach but in one's deed meaning a person who's upset about his spiritual stature will dress more modestly and so forth and so on the ninth one is to work very hard on breaking one's typist because even things which a person engages in which are permitted will cause him ultimately to look for things of enjoyment and things that are forbidden that's the ninth yeah and the tenth is what we're up to now kufu zai siri la shiv pa aloi ketzad a mistake in varayas one who looks for example uh upon things which are forbidden sexual forbidden sexual relationships people who with which there are forbidden sexual relationships a man a woman a woman a man vice versa he should lower his eyes and hara yasik batara he is involved in lashanara he has to correct that by being engaged in torah behold and with any organ of his body that he transgressed he should try with that organ that part of his body to do a mitzvah that's what he means by la hashif means to return through correcting the actual body part with which he transgressed therefore the sages said the righteous with the same instrument through which they transgressed they seek favor the sages said if you made packages of transgressions also connect them it's make packages of mitzvos lavera if one's legs run quickly to do transgressions human rights in the roots the mitzvah let them run toward mitzvah let them run to shoal a mouth that spoke evenly so he should train his mouth to speak truthfulness up and let him only speak with words of wisdom if his hands were responsible for spilling blood innocent blood let him open his hand to the poor and i would not be surprised if the author also has in mind here spilling dom noki is referring to the white blood yeah that uh body fluid that's responsible for maintaining life through reproduction one who spills that blood that innocent blood can rectify having done so by giving charity with his hand instead a ramos is his hands are elevated let him be humble and lower his eyes lev if his heart is constantly scheming place in his heart the words of torah so the saying that a person should return to hashem commentary to what he did wrong if he transgressed with any particular body part let him correct that transgression by using that party body part for a mitzvah the eleventh krippus drachov let him look into his ways it we will look into our ways and return to hashem let him check himself regarding the transgressions that he's done and this has three practical tangible positive results the first one is since he is investigating searching into the deeds of all of his life so he will remember what he's done wrong and du chuva on them because just the vidui the admission to having done these things wrong that itself is a major factor of getting atonement hasheni the second advantage to ellis that there is in investigating one's ways looking into one way is the shaney should you score yes he'll remember how many transgressions he actually has and this will cause him to continue to be humble because he remembers his misdeeds ashley the third iii even though it accepts upon himself to depart from transgressing he still has to know what he did wrong is in order to make some protective fence again against these things that he's already transgressed so even if he's done shiva and he's accepted about himself he's not going to do it again he still has to remember the things that he did wrong because it points out to him his weak points and in this way he's going to safeguard himself from doing these things again that's very important because you might think once a person has done something wrong and then he does chuva and he regrets what he has done wrong and he accepts the fact he's not going to do it again it would be better if he not think about it anymore because if he thinks about it then he's likely to be drawn into doing again he's going to be stirred into being interested in doing it again so he's coming to tell you even though that's true there is such a havamina not to think about it because a person might become drawn to do it again still it's important to have in mind you know that this is this is a point of weakness and he has to address it and be aware aware of it in order to safeguard himself from doing it again so i guess the difference is is this that if he's thinking about it in a way which is going to cause him to remember it and then be interested in it and then stir up the desire to do it again that's clearly bad and it's probably better that he not think about it even if his intention is to safeguard himself because he knows by thinking about it he's just going to be drawn into doing it again but if he knows that he's not going to be drawn into it and he certainly shouldn't think about it too much just in general i know i have that situation so but if he goes dwelling on the details he's likely to be drawn in so just think about only very generally to know to be aware there's a problem because it's easier for a person to fall back into transgressing into the things that he's used to doing and because of his habit in doing them they become less stringent in his eyes plus the fact that if he did something like this regularly it's indication that that's a particular weakness of his having acted upon that weakness and transgressed he actually weakens his resistance against it because it becomes less severe in his eyes so now that he's done chuva he still has to be extra careful mukahole kashu mask lavrie there's like a sick person who starts to get well second is he has to be very careful during that transition period becoming sick to becoming well again not to do anything that's going to cause him to become sick again so a person who's been cooped up all time inside because he's ill he starts to get better you're not going to say go outside and have a breath of fresh air when it's cold outside he's not strong enough for that he has to become fully cured and then after and then once he comes strong enough the fresh air will help him but it would actually be better to be in in in stale air yeah even though it's not so healthy but it's warm because of his weakness that we better be in stale air than to go give him some healthy dose of fresh air when that fresh air is too cold one who is sick from transgression when he carts to do triva so if this is he has to be very careful so let's say you have a person who has lived most of his life in a non-religious unobservant way and he in order to rectify his ways has to start learning about the torah's path the torah's teachings what's considered to be right and wrong and it comes into yeshiva now that yeshiva is obviously going to be a very sterile environment because it's intended to preserve the spiritual well-being of the people who are there and a person might say this is unhealthy certainly it wasn't god's intention some people might say and it might be true for some people it wasn't god's intention that i be in a yeshiva all day long every day for the rest of my life i have to work i have to support myself i'm supposed to get married and have children that means i'm going to be out involved in the world in a way which is more than i'm involved here in yeshiva so since that's the case i might as well just go now no why because the person is still in a state of becoming cured as it were and therefore it would be better to be in the sterile environment even though it might be a bit claustrophobic even though the the you know the air might be a little stale meaning it doesn't have within it the variety of things that people are engaged with but he's not currently ready to go and breathe that variety and still maintain his commitment to the torah after it becomes well then it might be appropriate to expose the person to the environment right to the to the environment so yeah the elements thank you that's what i was looking for yeah expose itself to the elements that exist outside yeah for certain people that might not be appropriate at all it might be better in fact that if they can they spend the rest of their days and connect it into youtube as much as possible but that's certainly not relevant for everybody the point is even for the first people that's not relevant for it'll be better for at least a temporary situation where they're kind of being doctored back into health yes that they be protected from the outside elements so that they gain enough strength and health to ultimately be able to expose themselves to their outside elements and remain healthy that's what he means here so a person starts to become healthy inside of the zombie audience to be very careful let's be very careful he's just interacting with people in ways and in places at times which are inappropriate to the torah so he has to be removed from all of that in order to correct himself and once he does so then you can go back to interacting with people but now make proper decisions about who and when and what context and so forth and so on very good analogy i think mm-hmm up to the the twelfth one god he should investigate and appreciate learn the severity of all of the specific transgressions that he's done for which one he could be liable for the lashes o meses based in or he could be liable god forbid to be put to death by bastion or karas who could be spiritually cut off when he knows how the severity of the transgression his heart will become commensurately bitter according to the severity of what he's done wrong and he will add his humility in terms of doing chuva so he has to know not only about what he's done and whether it's right or wrong but if it's wrong right just how wrong it really is in order to be able to do proper truva on it you have to appreciate the severity of it it's not that correct to say well i don't uh you know i i don't i can't be bothered by knowing exactly how severe it is um and uh i just know i did it wrong so i'm not gonna do it anymore no you if you don't understand the severity of it you want to address it properly right it's like telling a person you know when you cross the street it's dangerous you know when you cross the street you know you know there might be danger so you have to be careful so the person's you know no he's like yeah you know the person like you know be careful about this if you're more than a person you say you know crossing the the road is so dangerous that you could actually be killed so he's going to take it much more seriously so therefore it's important for a person to know he can't like just like he can't put his head in the sand like an ostrich and blind himself to whether it's right or wrong so when it's wrong he can't blind himself to what the you know what the severity of that of that wrongness is he has to know it is possible that if this person goes into how serious it is and starts reading about all the you know very terrible punishments that are associated with what he's done wrong and the result of that he's going to go out of his mind he's going to like just get totally turned off and blown out you know and he said you know what whatever reject the whole thing so probably probably better that he not know exactly how severe it is and just know that look this is something wrong and you have to regret it and make you know you're not going to do it again you know you start going into the into detail just how wrong it is with this particular person has resulted the result is going to be that he's going to start he's going to fly off the handle and say it's too much for me so i'm not going to correct this or anything else for that matter in fact i'm going to just throw it all throw it all away so then it's probably not worth going into the details and of course there's a phrase of the sages which is right muttov if there's something that somebody's doing wrong and they don't know that it's wrong in certain circumstances actually better that they not know that it's wrong yeah than than risking a scenario where even if they know that it's wrong they'll still continue to do it there's a muta she's showing it better that they're going to dress anyway meaning even if they know it's true it's prohibited they're still going to do it so better better that they do it accidentally then they do it on purpose yes yeah so you know it depends and we we say that's you know something which is before torah something which is explicitly forbidden in the torah we don't say that something that's explicitly forbidden in the torah we don't say that mutation on the museum you have to tell the president the torah prohibits this but it's something which is not like explicit it's only learned out indirectly from the torah or if it's dora bonan and the person doesn't know so if you have reason to believe that even if he knows he's not going to refrain from doing it better that he do it by by mistake then let him know that this is forbidden and he's going to go ahead and do it anyway even though he doesn't you know because he doesn't care so there's scenarios where like i said perhaps a person shouldn't know that it's forbidden or even if he knows his forbidden person shouldn't know just how serious it is if he's going to do it anyway or as a result of that you know he's going to come to transgress even more than the better that he doesn't know the 13th he should work hard on accepting the fact that the transgressions which are generally less severe should be viewed by him as being just as severe as the ones who he considers to be severe konnichi stockholm like looking at ladies with our voice in him throwing and talking to them or dwarian battalion or talking other types of nonsense bottle or just wasting his time holasky or shem shaming or mentioning god's name unnecessarily all of these and many more like them in the eyes of many people eve jose even in the eyes of of of of great rabbis in our times in in his time so many centuries ago hemlock shawn didn't call us they're considered to be not so serious to look at women you know in a desirable in a way of desire or to be speaking to them and and you know chatting chatting with them light-heartedly you know like sometimes like even like flirting you know with women this type of stuff that's forbidden right talking not nonsensical non-important things so even even in his generation even even great rabbis didn't view these things as seriously as they should you'll get you know i think a rabbi who who accepts let's say you know you know members of the community into his office or you know takes questions and shines from people personally it has to really um you know is it a difficult situation because you know on the one hand uh you know men have questions women have questions often women's questions can be directed to the rabbi through the husbands but sometimes women's questions can't be except the rabbi has to decide should accept women's questions only over the phone or in person or if at all if not on the other hand you don't want to make women feel like they're not important members of the community which they are and it's one thing if the women feel like men should not be gazing at them but here in the end of the day it's a rabbi and they're talking about words of torah why shouldn't the rabbi accept me i'm a member of the community i also need you know and her point of view is you know she's she's a she's a human being you know a person a personality a member of the community she also need looking for spiritual guidance you know which she might get from rebeccans but there might be certain things that she you know only the rabbi can provide for so she doesn't feel towards the rabbi anything but the rabbi you know might as a man generally might be more sensitive to looking at women so he doesn't want to offend her need to have a connection to a rabbi on the other hand you know if he's you know taking questions from women personally all the time so he's seeing many women and it's very hard for a person not to look at a person and judge that person looks intelligent or not or that person is attractive or not i mean so it like it becomes very difficult do you not accept at all and if you do like under what circumstances and and how do you establish a relationship with that person not look at all but the person might be offended or from time to time look at the person's kind of you know decide but avoid eye contact but if the person's not getting eye contact they might not feel they're being paid attention to eye yeah you know imagine yeah it'd be very you know very difficult so you know the different rabbis have different approaches and each one's got to decide you know to find you know the what seems to him to be the correct path for him but uh it's not not an easy you know situation so um you know um unfortunately you know people are people and even rabbis are people and you know sometimes you you know hear situations uh where you know rabbis are uh who seem to be involved in inappropriate behavior you know you know at different different levels of of of syria you know maybe some of the accusations are not true but some might be true and you can think about a person you know who is constantly you know in contact might ultimately because of his own weaknesses come to uh abuse the the position uh where he's viewed as being you know um a rabbi and proper and a holy man and somebody that you can speak to personally about all types of different things but over time i mean if a man is hearing certain things from women time and time again he might come to weaken his guard and come to be attracted or think about women in a certain way i mean it's very difficult some people it's not only of course rabbis the same thing with doctors i mean or lawyers any you know it can happen to anybody it can happen to anybody of course you expect more from a rabbi but that's my point rabbis are human beings too and sometimes and sometimes and sometimes even rabbis are are suspected of being in improper situations and therefore this is very difficult i'm just trying to figure out what he means here when he says even great rabbis of his generation don't take the idea of looking at women you know improperly they don't take that seriously enough you know how can that be but maybe a person might justify looking you know for certain reasons and then can be accustomed to it and therefore ultimately not take it seriously and even transgress as a result of that there are four reasons why a person should view these seemingly light things as serious as well a person it's wrong to look and focus and contemplate the smallness of the transgression it's a transgression so it's wrong to focus on how small it is look at the greatness of the one who commanded it right this could be compared to a king siva the schneider who commanded to two of his servants the one he said bring to me drink cute son and the odd is very thirsty the other one he commanded to bring something which he doesn't need so much visa caller and he warned each one bring me what i am asking in one case it's drink which he needs very much and the other case is something which doesn't need very much but he warned them he said if you don't bring it but vidaya call me certainly in either case if the person doesn't do what he was told he's liable you know for treason the death penalty says because they punish him whether he stole a little bit or a lot he still stole guard all of these commandments should i give you today cursed is he who does not fulfill the words of this torah la says and to do the commandments even though some are greater and some are less some are more stringent and some are less but the point is you're supposed to keep it so whether it seems significant whether it seems more severe or not is really not the point the point is you have to keep everything hasheni the second factor is kimisha oyverhakola another reason why you have to treat the seemingly less stringent things as if they were stringent because sometimes by transgressing the light things many times azi hamura then it becomes severe it's true transgressing at once might not be particularly severe but once you do it again and again and again and again and then again yeah well more than saying he's saying more than that the 10 times that he does it equals the one time of doing something else there's something which is very severe another thing which is less severe right he does the thing which is severe only once in a while because it's very severe and he wouldn't come to do that very often let's say once a year but the other thing he does a hundred times throughout the year it could be that the hundred times that he does the instagram things actually adds up to being more severe than the one thing that he only does once a year keith starfo and oshie i'll call the farm because the punishment will accrue each time hashelishi the third reason why a person has to treat those seemingly s slight things as severe that's the shelishi that's your point moroccan because when he gets used to doing these transgressions because they're not so severe and then they come to him as if they're permitted the lord isn't guard protect themselves from anymore he um like a person who is a heretic at least regarding this thing you're a heretic a heretic me i believe in god i dive in i put on filling i do all the mitzvos oh that's true but what about this thing that you transgress again and again and again and again and again almost as if as far as you're concerned it's permitted well for that thing you're going to call me a muma yeah you're a mumma it's a fourth reason why you should pay as much attention to the small things as the big thing is because when you actually succeed in guarding the small thing it gives you the strength and the the confidence to take to to guard the bigger thing as well but if you let the small things go you're a lot you're just that much closer letting the big things go as well if you guard the small things then you're that much closer to guarding the big things right for them what they brings about another mitzvah applying any misfire can bring about another mitzvah even if that one mitzvah is small and even if the mitzvah brings about is big but a mitzvah can bring about a mitzvah so even a small mitzvah can bring about a big mitzvah the conifers is also true in the vergoros of era rivera brings money rivera it doesn't specify which one implying even a small avera it's just a teeny one can bring about another era a huge one if you do a little mitzvah so that gives you the strength and the and the and the well the strength the incentive the strength and the um the uh what's what i'm looking for the uh confidence that you can do another mitzvah and therefore you do another one but if a person does a transgression right so this small transgression can cause them to do other transgressions why because every transgression that he does he gets used to transgressing and his custom of transgressing can lead him to even larger transgressions as well so that person doesn't lie he just doesn't tell the truth he didn't lie he just didn't tell the truth he didn't reveal the truth but now that because he hasn't revealed the truth the implications being something other than what is true yeah if it goes one step further in order to cover for the fact that he didn't reveal the truth he's likely to distort the truth he hasn't told a lie he's just distorted the truth but now that he's distorted the truth yeah there's a difference right in one case he hasn't told the truth he hasn't told the truth and he knows that the implication is that somebody's going to understand the scenario as being x y or z now he didn't outright tell a lie like i said he just withheld the truth but now in the same scenario based on this person's perception of the scenario being x y and z something's going to happen he's going to tell somebody he's going to do something and now it's going to come back to this person right and what's he likely to do what's he going to say i did i actu i didn't actually tell the whole truth yeah he's likely now to try and get his way out of it by distorting the truth he's going to say something now yeah which is not it's not a lie it's just a distortion of the truth ah so temporarily he gets the blame off of him because he's through this distortion he's able to explain the seeming contradiction between behind what he didn't reveal and what other people understood in the reality so now he's going to distort oh okay fine ah oh so it wasn't actually like x y and z you mean it was like x a y a and z a yeah okay ah fine so now they act on xa yay an x y and z a yeah and now it gets so now something happens which shows that even x y and z a doesn't work so they come back to him right what's he going to do he's going to lie don't lie so you go from small to small to bigger and bigger i mean of course you don't have to the person can always say you know from the outside you could always say you know i i you know it's true i i didn't actually lie but it but it's true i i didn't actually tell the whole truth and um you know before this gets out of hand i should i should be honest and say that you know in truth what really happened was this he could and even if he didn't do that he ends up distorting the truth but then it comes out to where he's going to have to really outright lie to cover up at that point he could also back out and say you know i i i've been misleading i've been misleading initially i didn't tell the truth that i distorted the truth i've been misleading i don't want to lie and therefore you know i have to clarify that but it takes a lot of courage to do that you know once a person's out on a limb it doesn't want to discredit himself so he's likely to go into the into the lie mode okay so that brings us up to number 14. you must confess own up to what you've done wrong was that we've how would you summarize well it's quite a bit longer yes but he's just saying that a person has to weigh up the relative significance between the transgressions and the uh relevant relative transgress the weight the weight of the severity consider insignificant transitions to be like significant ones in order to avoid the scenario of virgo videos his transgressions and even those of his forefathers why should he recall those of his fathers because he can be punished for the component of his father's misdeeds in his own hands and that's what it says they shall confess their transgressions and those of their fathers based on the government brothers which says that uh how do we reconcile the two different verses where one says pakud a voice al-banim god will deliver the transgressions of the fathers on the sons yet another verse says children won't be punished on account of their father's contradiction the more reconciles the the steer between the two verses by saying the one is where abundance the other one is where they're not meaning children can be punished for the misdeeds of their fathers when the children continue the mysteries of the fathers themselves it's like it's like they're they're giving their approval i'm doing the bad things my dad did as a way of of of of affirming his agreement with the bad things not only that he does but his father did as well so in order to do chuva a person has to do truva on his part and also on the part of what of his deeds of his fathers he's got to repudiate his own deeds and also dissociate himself with the mysteries of his father mizoram be careful the time of confession that he should fix in his heart to stop those ways our land they know because if you return to them he doesn't discard them he's like a person who goes into a mikvah with a source of impurity in his hands as he's immersed it's not going to help confession is like immersing oneself in the mikvah but if you continue holding these things taking hold of them while you're in the mikvah and come out with them while in your hand when you've come out it hasn't done anything same thing with the transgressions certainly the transgression is like the impure object and clearly the immersion in the mig for one help when you're holding on to the share it's the impure object so the same thing goes with chuva it won't help if you're still holding on to the desire to do these things and we mentioned the other day even if he knows he's probably going to do it again but right now at least he's got in mind that he doesn't want to do it again there the chuva will help okay let's stop here you