Sparks of Alshich - The Secret of Sacrifices: A Process of Spiritual Cleansing - Rabbi Wagshal

This year was generously sponsored by my beloved grandfather. That the Torah that we learn should be a zechus, a merit for all of uh Klal Yisrael and that we should all live in a life and in a world of happiness and safety and growth and that everyone should be safe and that we should see the geulah very, very close very, very soon. So, this week we're going to discuss we're starting a new book pa- the book of Vayikra and we are now turning into the story of the korbanos, the sacrifices. And there are many different sacrifices, there are many different types of korbanos. But the primary job and the time primary work that we did in the Mishkan and in the Beis Hamikdash was bringing the korbanos the sacrifices. And there are many of them and what you know so the one we want to discuss today is the idea of the korban chatas the sin offering. So, the basic idea and the question we're going to be discussing is a person sins. Now, there are many different ways a person could sin. But the person the korban chatas is brought in a very specific way. If a person sins without knowing that he's doing a sin. Specifically without the knowledge that he's doing something wrong and the sin is a type of sin that if he were to do it and he were to know what he's doing is wrong, he would be chayav kareis. So, it has to be a very, very high level sin. But he's not actually aware what he's doing is wrong. In that case specifically, the Torah commands us to bring a korban. It's called the korban chatas, the sin offering. And in this way we are going to we are going to do teshuvah, We're going to We're going to be able to get rid of that sin. We're going to be able to repent from that sin specifically with the carbon cutters. Now, how does that work? Let's give an example. If somebody were to wake up on Shabbos morning, but he is not aware that it's Shabbos. He forgets that it's Shabbos and he goes and does a you know, like he lights a match or he starts turn turns on a light, whatever it is. And he's not aware that it's Shabbos. So, he's done a sin, but he's not aware that he's doing this thing cuz he's not aware it's Shabbos. Or he knows it's Shabbos, but he does a melacha, he does an act that he's not aware that this act is actually prohibited on Shabbos. So, what is he doing? He's doing He's breaking Shabbos, let's say. Now, Shabbos, if you break it consciously, you're liable for kares. But you're liable for misah, whatever. But if you do it without knowing that you're sinning, either cuz you're not sure that today is Shabbos or you are not sure you are not aware that what you're doing is actually violating Shabbos, you will then have to bring the sacrifice the sin sacrifice, the carbon cutters. Now, how does that work? You go to the temple. You have to specifically bring a male uh sheep and without going through all the details, you bring it and you place your hands on it and you repent before Hashem for the sins you've done. You lean down on the animal, then you slaughter it and you put its blood on the mizbe'ach, on the altar and you put some of its fats on the altar. You burn it up. Part of it is eaten by the kohen and that's, you know, we're not going to go through all the details, but that's the idea. And then you will have rectified the sin of sinning without awareness. So, the question the deals with is really a The question in a lot of different carbonas, but we're going to focus on the carbon as a sin offering is how does that work? Why does that make sense? I did a sin. I went against Hashem's desires. So I'm going to kill an animal instead. And that's going to somehow get rid of it. How does killing an animal even in this special way have anything to do with me? How is that rectifying the sin that I have done? By kill an animal, you're good to go? How does that work? How does that logically make sense? This is the question he deals with. What is the carbonas helping? What are the sacrifices actually doing? So in order to answer this question, he says a very brings down very fundamental ideas of how messes work, how commands this work, and how sins work. And how a carbon actually will rectify what you've done. So let's start. Let's begin. The also says as follows. A person is actually born naturally a person is a soul which is a portion of God. And he has a body. And in theory he's a very, very pure being. The also use the language that he's almost like a mouth. He's almost like an angel in his purest form. But however, he has an ability to sin. And he has ability to do good. Now when he does good, he cleans himself and cleans himself onto God. He is David to Hashem. And the more misses he does, the more positive commandment he does in his life, and the more goodness he does, he strengthens his connection with Hashem. He purifies his soul. He brings clarity into his being. And he is a better person. Part of the reason he's better is actually because when he's doing a mitzvah, he's creating angels. Positive energy, a holy spirit that goes on him and goes into into him and is infused in him and this pushes him to do better. So not only is he naturally good, but he has this spiritual energy that he's adding on himself by doing a positive commandment. And this is why it says mitzvah, a good deed, pushes and forces you to do another good deed. Why? Because this the good deed is now making you stronger and bringing within you spiritual energy, positive spiritual energy that's going to push you to do more mitzvahs and gives you more clarity and makes you feel more connected to God. But the opposite is also true. If a person sins, what's the problem with sinning? Because this is what disconnects us from Hashem. This is what makes us less connected to Hashem. This thins out our relationship with Hashem. We have a direct line with Hashem and it makes it thinner. And not only that, but it also creates angels of destruction. That we with that the angel of destruction pushes us to do more evil things and makes our mind confused and makes us feel distant from God. And this is actually the direct effect of every sin and this is why it says aveira goreret aveira, that the aveira itself the sin itself create angels that push us to do the next sin. And in that confusion and the more confusion and the more darkness and the more tumah, the more impurity you put into ourselves, the more disconnected we are from Hashem. So what happens if a person sins? What does he have to do? He has to do basically teshuvah. He has to repent. And in doing teshuvah with God's great benevolence, he allows us to heal [snorts] from the sickness that we have within us that we've put into ourselves, Take away the negative energy and again go to our natural existence of purity and connection to Hashem. Now, certain every type of avera that we do has different type of chuva. We are now going to focus specifically like we started with the avera where we do a where we do a sin that's a very grievous sin, but we are not aware what we're doing is necessarily a sin. So, what does this mean? Again, like if somebody breaks shabbos without being aware that it's shabbos. So, in fact, the sin that he did is a sin with his body, but not really with his mind. He didn't consciously go against Hashem's will. But he physically went against Hashem's will. And in that physicality in that physical world where he went against Hashem's will, he created these angels of destruction that goes within him and causes him to be disconnected from God in a way. So, what is the antidote to that poison? The antidote to those angels of destruction that we've created within ourselves. And what can we do to do proper chuva? So, the Alshich says the first thing you have to do is bring an animal. And we're going to explain why in a minute, but you bring an animal and you do vidui. What's vidui? Vidui is when you confess. Every sin you do you have to confess before God and then say that I'm sorry what I've done and that I am not going to do this anymore. This now strengthens your relationship with God. This now allows your direct line with Hashem your direct with Hashem to be strengthened. But the problem is you still have that sickness inside of you. You still have that negative spiritual energy within you. It's like a healthy person who works out and eats healthy and does everything right. But God forbid if he has a cancer inside of him, he could do everything right, but in order for him to be healthy, he's got to get rid of that. No matter how much exercise he does and how much healthy things he does, he has to get rid of that cancer. So, the vidui and the chuva helps you reconnect with God and makes you stronger, but you still have the negative negative energy inside of you pushing you away being like a mask between you and Hashem not allowing that relationship to flourish. So you can't be truly healthy until you get rid of that negative spiritual energy. So what does Hashem allow us to do? Hashem says, "Take an animal." And we take this animal again, we send with our physical. And the animal is also purely physical. There is no animal doesn't have wisdom. So we send with our physical bodies. So you take an animal that's physical. And you take the animal and you press down on top of it. Very very it says you have to press down hard. And this is the great uh like we said benevolence that God allows that gives us this great mitzvah. Now what happens when we do this? We go to the holiest place in the world. We go to the Beit Hamikdash and we come and we repent and we confess our sin. Now we take the animal and we press down on the animal. And actually the Alshich says that we are now transferring the negative angels, the negative energy, the ruach rah, the bad spirit that's within inside of us and we transfer it directly to the animal. It's an unbelievable thing. We could actually take this like medicine. We could actually take this negative negativity, the spiritual negativity that we put inside ourselves and transfer it over to the animal. Now that negative energy is in the animal, but the Alshich says it can very easily come back to us. If we if we don't properly do teshuvah, if we don't properly confess, that's that spiritual energy is still there. So we need to get rid of it. What do we do to get rid of it? We immediately slaughter the animal. We do shechitah. And this slaughtering weakens the power. We're not it's not about killing the animal. It's about weakening the power of the and energy that we have inside of us, that we have now transferred into the animal. And we do shrita and we kill and we weaken these the strength of this negative energy. This malach this malach ra, this bad angel. And then we immediately take the blood we we the blood comes out we take the blood and we put it on the mizbeach. We're going to explain why in a minute. And we take the fats of the animal and we burn that up on the mizbeach. Now why do we take the fats of the animal and the blood specifically? So the idea is that a person has two reasons why he sins. Because again the reason why he sinned in the first place is because he has a little bit of evil inside of him that pushed him to do more and more sin. How did he get to the point of breaking shabbos? How did he get to the point of doing such a great sin? It's because he started off with his little sins that ended up causing him to have small amounts of negative energy and that negative energy ended up causing him to do a great sin. So we need to go to the root of the problem. And what is the root of the problem? There are two reasons why people sin. Either because the alshich says the fat within them. What does the fat represent? The laziness. Their their their nefesh their their their animalistic uh desires to just sit and eat and gorge and be lazy and not serve God. To make it's a fat like fat like you're you're lazy and you're just you don't want to you don't want to push yourself. And it just you want to relax you want to be simple you want to be want to be comfortable. This is represented by the fats. So we take the animal fats which we just transferred that negative energy into the animal and we take the negative energy from within ourselves we transferred into the fats of the animal and we burn it up on the mizbeach. Now there's something very very amazing. We know that one of the miracles that happened in the first temple was that a fire came down from heaven right on the mizbeach. Meaning we ourselves had to put a fire a physical fire but there also was at all times a spiritual fire coming down directly from heaven burning the whatever was on the mizbe'ah. What was the reason for this Yasha said? It's because really when you're burning the fats, it's not just the physical fats of the animal you're burning. But it's the spiritual energy, the negative spiritual energy that you placed within the fats. In order to destroy the spiritual energy, you need a spiritual fire. A physical fire is not going to burn out that spiritual energy. So Hashem himself sends down a fire from heaven to consume the fats thereby also consuming the negative energies of the fats that are in that are represented by our own laziness. Our own desire for comfort. And the second thing we do is we take the blood. And we sprinkle it on the mizbe'ah. What does that represent? The blood is the second reason we sin. What is the blood cuz it says blood hadam hu hanefesh. Blood is the soul. What is the blood blood represent? There's another reason we sin. The second reason we sin is not cuz we're lazy, but because we have desires. We have lusts. We become passionate about things that we're not meant to be passionate about. The passion comes from the blood. Our passion is meant to be to serve God. It's meant to be used to excite us to do mitzvahs. It is meant to be used for the excitement and the and the joy and the love of doing and the passion of doing mitzvahs and serving God. But sometimes we use that passion inappropriately. So what do we have to do to rectify that? We take the blood, which again the blood of the animal represents our own blood, which we transferred the negative blood into the blood of the animal, and we sprinkle it onto the mizbe'ah. That represents sacrificing your your animalistic desires on the altar of Hashem. And saying that all my desires and all my passions and all my lusts should be only to serve God. And Hashem not to to serve or push or pursue any other interests. >> [snorts] >> And why do we put it on the mizbe'ah specifically? Because what is a person called? An Adam. Why was Adam called Adam? Cuz he came from the Adamah, the ground. And which ground was which literally which ground? Where was the ground? It says that Hashem took ground took earth and formed man and then blew into him a neshama. Where was the earth that Hashem chose to create man from? Adam. The place of the mizbeach. Where did man the Hashem took man and formed man from the place where the mizbeach was going to ultimately be. Cuz Hashem says, let the earth that man is going to come and and turn into man, let the body that the man is going to use to sin from that space should come the teshuvah. Because where's the place that a person does teshuvah? At the place of the mizbeach. How does that work? Because again, we take the blood, we sprinkle it on the mizbeach and we say that all our desires of course come from our physical bodies. The soul is holy and pure, so the desires come from the physical bodies. Let it be given over to Hashem. Let it be sacrificed to Hashem. And it's specifically in that place where man was formed that we take our blood and we take the blood of the animal, we take the blood that was transferred from ourselves into the animal and we say, we want our bodies not to be bound by physical desires not connected to Hashem, but only to be totally given over for its purpose to serve Hashem in the best way possible. So we burn the fats of laziness, we burn the blood of of of illicit desire. We sprinkle it on the mizbeach and we say all of this is meant to be the process of helping us come closer to you. And in this way in this way we are getting closer to destroying the evil within us, destroying the malice that we've created with our sin and saying that we want to bring it all up to Hashem. And the final step is the the the kohen has to eat the korban. And again, this represents the idea that we sin physically in this world. So, the client who is the great the great Sadiq has to do an action in this world, a physical action in this world that's going to finalize the destruction of the evil that we've created. So, by the client eating the holy carbon, eating the parts of the holy client carbon, and doing a physical act in this world that is totally dedicated to Hashem, that is the final process of him totally eradicating the evil spirits within us. Again, he's eating it, doing a mitzvah, elevating this evil spirit into holiness again, and now everything is back to its original place. So, again, we started with the question, how does a carbon help? What does a carbon do? It's like, oh, you think you're just killing an animal, good to go? No, there's tremendous spiritual uh rectifications going on over here. Because again, when a person sins, there are two things that he's doing. He's severing his connection with Hashem, and he's bringing into himself evils the evil spirit. In order to get rid of In order to make yourself closer to Hashem, you have to do teshuvah. You have to promise to do good, and you have to actually do good. And the more mitzvahs you do, the more connected you are to God. But in order to get rid of the sickness that you bring inside yourself by doing sin, you have to go through this literally this like this very big procedure in order to take the negative spiritual uh energy out of yourself and be cleansed. And this is the process of the carbon. This is the carbon chattas. Take the animal, transfer the negative energy onto the animal, slaughter it by weakening its power, burn it up on the on the on the altar, sacrifice the blood on the altar by saying that your desires, your laziness, your desires for lust should be given over to Hashem, burn it by the spiritual fire that comes from heaven, thereby saying that you want to be connected to God, and have the client eat from your carbon, thereby saying that we want to turn the negativity that we did into this world in this physical world and bring it up to physical to to a mitzvah. And thereby reversing the entire negative energy into a positive energy. And now the world is back at its natural space, which the Alshich says is that everyone is holy and pure. And again, the Alshich says that this only works in a in a mitzvah in a sin that you've done unintentionally. But a sin you've done intentionally, if Hashem forbid you've done an averah that you need to do you need a rectification of like Korach's or bigger rectification, the carbon won't work. It's only specifically where you sinned only with your body and not with your mind that Hashem gave us the power to bring the carbon chatas, rectify our sins, and thereby destroying the negative energy that we've brought into this world and allowing a space for the the spiritual positive energy to enter this world, and that is the process of teshuvah. By doing what we've taken what we've done wrong, turning it around, and turning it into something better. So with that, we ask Hashem that the whole world should come to teshuvah, the whole world should all the sins of the world should be turned around into goodness. And as we know, the korbanos were a re'ach nicho'ach lifnei Hashem, a positive beautiful fragrance uh smelling a smell a smelling fragrance in front of Hashem. So the hope is that all the sins should be turned into goodness, and it should be a