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You may say to yourself,
"What kind of joke is this?
I did this last year and now I'm doing
it again this year. God has to know that
I am insincere."
Okay, I want to talk to you about that.
There is a concept in the Talmud. Call
me.
Anyone who says I will I will sin and
repent later, he will not manage to
repent. What that means is a person will
say to himself, you know what?
I know this is wrong, but there is a
thing called tshoua penitence.
And uh I'm going to have to do some
penitence later for this infraction.
Okay, here I go. No, I'm going to sin
and then I'll I'll then I'll clean it up
after.
And so the Talmud says it's not going to
work. It's you're not going to manage to
do chuva.
So seemingly you could ask, isn't that
what that what isn't that precisely what
we do every year? Every year we ask for
forgiveness and then we sin again so
that we have to ask for forgiveness
again the next year. So that's like
someone who says I'll sin and then
repent later. It's basically what we're
doing.
So this is actually not my original
question although a lot of people do
relate to this question. I saw this
question in Egosa of Tanya. That's the
third volume of Tanya. It's all about
repentance. It's in chapter 11 actually
if you want to look it up. And the
balatanya says that
what does it mean when the Talmud says
anyone who says I will sin and repent
later will not manage to do will not
manage to repent. It means that if at
the moment of the moral dilemma itself
you say to yourself you know what I
could hold myself back but why bother
holding myself back? let me indulge now
and I'll just repent later.
Then what you've done is a terrible
thing. You've taken the concept of
repentance which is this beautiful
concept and you used it to embolden
yourself to psych yourself up into
sinning. Well, there's a principle in
Kate Nisa that a prosecutor cannot
become a defender. Teshua itself,
repentance itself was part of your
psychology in emboldening yourself to
sin. So now you're going to meaning to
say it becomes part of the the the the
prosecution. Now you want to defend
yourself. You want to do tshuva and say,
"Oh, come in uh tshoua and uh help me
get back in God's good graces." No, no.
You already used your tshoua card. You
used it for the infraction. You used it
to get yourself to sin. Now you want to
use it to get yourself to do penitence.
Not going to work. So the the balata
says like this. What does it mean? The
Talmud says anyone says I'll sin and
repent later. He won't manage to repent.
Is that when you used the concept of
penance in the moment of the moral
dilemma itself where you gave in to the
struggle and just did whatever you want
to do relying on the fact that tshoua is
always a possibility. Then you've
corrupted the concept of tshoua.
However, what we do is very different.
It's not at the moment of the moral
dilemma. It's not at the moment of
struggle. It's after the the struggle is
passed. We're we're sitting in Shaolan
on Yimkipper and we're thinking about
our past year and we're thinking about
the year ahead of us and we're sincerely
saying, "I don't want to do any of that
stuff again. I'll be very happy to never
do those sins again."
So in that case, this is nothing like
anyone who says, "I will sin now and
repent later." Nothing at all.
What we're saying is we sincerely wish
that we won't repeat those sins. Now, do
we know in the back of our mind there's
a high chance, high likelihood that we
will rep repeat those sins? Yeah, we
know that. We know that based on our
track record that we had a sincere
desire last year and the year before and
the year before. But but that's not the
point. The point is at this moment when
we're repenting, we really really wish
that this will be done. We'll be
thrilled to find out that we never
repeat any of our sins again. So this is
not a concept of using tshouva to to
embolden you to sin. The sin's done.
It's behind you. You did it already
anyway. Now the question is can you face
God and say forgive me even though you
know b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b
b b based on your track record that a
month from now or even a week from now
or even a day from now you're going to
cave. And the answer is of course you
can face God and and sincerely say this
is where I'm at right now. This is what
I would like to have happen. I I really
pray that I I I I do never sin again.
Oh, and by the way, the Balatana says
even the guy who says I'll sin now and
repent later, who really does violate
that principle,
the Talmud says he won't manage to
repent, meaning it won't be an easy
process for him. But if he'll go out of
his way and really apply himself, even
he could eventually do as well. We're
heading into a new year, a new level.
every year is on a higher level ready to
stand before Hashem and say we're ready
to let go of all that stuff that we
thought would make us happy because we
know that it doesn't. We know that's not
what we're really here for. It's not
really satisfying. And we're ready to
drop it all. And we'll be thrilled
thrilled to find out that this is the
year that uh we drop it all and let it
stay dropped and don't pick it back up
and just do things the way God wants us
to do them. That would be that would be
beautiful. That would be a dream. That
would just be dreamy if we could drop it
all on Yim Kipper and just just leave it
dropped and just
remain in a mode of surrender to
Hashem's will and not not picking back
up any self-will. Of course, that's what
we want. Of course, that's our intent.
And uh you know, God willing, we should
uh be able to live up to that or
live closer to that. Sometimes it's just
a matter of progress, not perfection,
right? Just a little bit closer to that
ideal than we've been before. And that
itself can be something amazing.
