The Holiness of Your Sins

the yeshiva.net [Music] the title of the my topic today is quite a curious one i would say the holiness of your sins now that doesn't sound very perfect very good very holy that sounds pretty sinful the holiness of your sins what makes a sin holy and if it's holy it's not really a sin it's a mitzvah but the truth is and this is really what we want to explore today that uh sins do have a holiness all their own and yom kippur contains some of that idea now when you read the textbooks of yom kippur would seem very strange because all of yom kippur we atone we ask forgiveness we we say i've sinned forgive me wash away my sins remove the stains of my sins etc etc so let's explore this a little bit on a deeper level let me begin with one curious fascinating anomaly that we observe on yom kippur that is all confessions are plural we never confess in the individual we say asham new but god knew gaza now between person and person we would not really be enthusiastic about somebody who confesses in a language that relates to the collective rather than the individual imagine somebody insulted you or somebody denigrated you somebody backstabbed you somebody did something unjust to you and they want to apologize and they come to you and they say we have sinned we have stolen we have betrayed you oh get out of my house who's we i take accountability it's enough that you did it don't start blaming the collective i and yet not once in the yom kippur confessions do we speak about i asham t second the confessions in most jewish communities are done with a song and a very dramatic song you go to most synagogues in kipper and this is what you'll hear ah now just do this in the english okay i come to your house i want to apologize because i hurt you and this is what i do uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i backstabbed you i slandered you i defamed you i stole from you well that we dealt with i betrayed you or we even better right we backstabbed you we robbed you blindly we made you lose your job we lied to you get out of my house what is this a broadway musical you want to go to a musical go to a musical what does a confession have with a musical a confession is a confession you don't do it with a sing song you say i'm sorry i apologize what's this whole song and then by the hate again everybody together it doesn't seem to reflect the nature of what we're doing so let's put this in our minds from let's store this away in our minds for a moment we'll get back to it i want to change the subject not completely but a little bit the torah in the book of leviticus the portion of emma discusses the various holidays when it comes to the holiday of sukkot which comes right after yom kippur the torah says that it happens on the fifteenth day of the seventh month the fifteenth day of the month of tishrei tishrei is the seventh month when we start counting with nissan so you have nissan er seven etc tishrei the seventh the fifteenth day is sukkot the way the torah describes it at one point is on on the first day of on the first day you should take the four species the citroen and the lulav the fred the branch of the palm tree and the willow and the myrtle branch and you shake them asks the midrash why does the torah suddenly refer here to sukkot as the first day by yo marisha it's not the first day of the month it's the 15th day of the month it seems very strange to call the 15th day the first day and you have to figure out that rosh hashanah so the midrash answers three words it's called the first day because it's irishon avonos it's the first day for calculation of sins that's why the torah called sukkas the first day what is it a first day of it's not the first day of the month it's middle of the month the first day that we calculate sin so the commentators say what does this mean why do we calculate sins that day so the commentators to the midrash say something very perplexing on yom kippur all sins are atoned you come out of him kipper you have a clean slate the four days between yom kippur and sukkot people are usually overly busy you have to build a sukkah you have to buy a lula vanessa you have to cook you have to prepare it's a stressful time people are very busy so they don't have time to sin when people are busy they usually don't have time to sit when is the first opportunity for jews to start sinning so the commentators say when is it the first day of sukkos when the holiday comes people are more relaxed they come into the sukkah the first night you sit down you do some juicy gossip some juicy slandering or whatever other interesting conversations you have in your sukkah that's why it's called rishon avonus it's the first day for the calculation of sins because yom kippur the sins are absolved after yom kippur people are busy when is the first night and day that jews start sinning the first day of sukkos this interpretation even though it's classical bothered rabble itzhak of bardichev very much how can we say that the torah refers to such as as the first day of sins such a pessimistic view of people is it not possible that some jews will come into the sukkah and they won't sin some jews will come into the sukkah and they'll speak words of torah words of love words of inspiration they'll sing melodies do we have to be so negative and believe that every jew or many jews start sinning on the first day of sukkahs and the torah could not find a better name for the first day of sukkos than the first day because it's the first day of sins there's plenty of jews who don't sin on the first day of sukkos very strange statement of the madrid was one of the great spiritual masters of the late 1700s early 1800s the rabbi of bardichev which is a city in the ukraine he has a book called kedusas levy the holiness of levi his name was levi rabbi levitzk and he gives there a phenomenal extraordinary interpretation which really explores the holiness of our sins but first i'm going to change the subject again on rosh hashanah jews have a tradition to go to the water it's called means to cast away it's based on a verse in michael the prophet michael says you should throw away into the waves of the ocean all their sins so we go to the ocean or to the beach in miami or to the bay or to a stream or a lake or a river or a pond and we symbolically cast our sins into the water what does that mean how do you throw sins into water if it was only as easy as that but that's what we all do we throw our sins into the water symbolically and this is already a universal custom even jews and temples that consider themselves to be very progressive and very modern tashla has become a very sacred tradition people go to the water and they do what they do by the water okay we go once more to the water when do we go again to the water not today's days but in temple days they would go to the water on sukkahs on sukis you may know there was a ceremony known as simchat which means the joy of drawing water shova in hebrew means to draw us the prophet says draw water with joy on sukkot every single morning there would be a procession that would go down from the holy temple to the shiloh spring shilluak spring which you could still visit in the old city of jerusalem they went to the shelagh spring and they would draw water into a flask bring it back they would go back up to the temple mount the priest would go up to the altar and pour the water on the altar around the time of sunrise every morning of sukkot and the whole night before they did this they would dance in the temple courtyard it was known as simchas basa the joy associated with drawing the water the point that the talmud says that call me somebody who did not see the joy of the drawing of the water did not see joy in their life and i want to ask you a question why is that such an exciting thing to do you take water you fill it up you fill up a cup with water from the spring you bring it to the altar and you pour the water okay seems a little strange but fine it's a mitzvah another mitzvah what's the joy why did they dance all night what was the dancing all night for this mitzvah called nisohamayim pouring the water in fact a whole year they would pour everyday wine on the altar every day there was no dancing now between wine and water what gets people more excited we all know for the wine there was no dancing for the water which was once a year on the holiday of sukkot they were dancing and dancing a whole night the sages said they didn't go to sleep on sukkahs they would sleep they would snooze on the shoulders of the people in front of them as they were dancing whoever didn't see that joy never saw joy what was so exciting draw water with joy every morning of sukkos so rosh hashanah you go to the water sukkas they went to the water but sukkas they danced now it's interesting that today we don't go to the water on sukkot unless it starts raining and then you have a lot of water in your sukkah so i guess you go to the water on some level but then there was this whole procession it was one of the special services done in the temple the seduces disagreed because it doesn't say clearly in the torah this is part of the oral tradition the torah says to pour wine every day but it doesn't say to pour water on sukkot this is an oral tradition and this is during the second temple which disagreed with the oral tradition followed only the text the way they understood it didn't like this mitzvah to the point that to alexander jainis alexander jannah was one of the kashmini kings who was also a high priest and when it came his time to pour the water on the altar the mishna says in sukkah he poured it on his legs and he got pelted with a swaging what do jews do on sukkas if they don't like you they pelt you with their citroens they pelted alexander yana with destroyed him and this was their response to him pouring the water on his feet rather than on the altar because he didn't believe in this mitzvah which was preceded by dancing all night how do we make sense of all of these items so you remember the structure of this class because i don't okay i do we started off with uh you know what we started off with uh the collective rather than the individual then we discussed the broadway musical which is inappropriate for confession then from there we went to the concept of calling sukkas the first day of sin very strange from there we went to discuss the phenomenon of going to the water on rosh hashanah going to the water on sukkot but on sukhot it was preceded by dancing and celebration and music it was huge huge concerts i don't know we call it concertos probably a whole night of sukkah they would dance all night the greatest of the sages would juggle they would juggle and they had candelabras that would light up the whole jerusalem it was an amazing the greatest nights of celebration throughout the jewish calendar with the knights of sukkos until today in jewish communities around the world we have remnants of this simcha sasheva people dance and sing and celebrate in the streets or in the sukkah some communities they have dancing hours of the night and and it's a very lively time in the jewish heart and in the jewish world in israel and in a diaspora in most communities and it's all originated in that tradition of the joy associated with pouring of water and the answer to all of this the the understanding what is behind all of these enigmatic nuances in jewish tradition it all has to do with the holiness of sin with the holiness of sin so if you want to understand the structure of jewish holidays you really have to understand the structure of a relationship because as rabbi akiva says in mishnah and tractate yodayim all the books of the bible are holy but the song of songs is the kaidos kardashian it's the holiest of the holy now the song of songs is a love poem in fact there's no religious message in the song of songs it's the only book of the bible which has no moral instruction no religious precepts even the book of esther it's a history tale but it's a tale about providence about some inner force pulling the strings together the book of song of songs it's graphic it's sensual it's intimate and it's about a boy and a girl who break all the rules basically and mommy and tati and the system are trying to separate them because he's supposed to be in school she's supposed to be he's supposed to be shepherding the flock she's supposed to be in school and they're basically met illegally and they fell in love and they keep on chasing each other running from each other chasing each other it's a classic crush of teenagers who the parents are very upset about this relationship that's what it would seem like it's very romantic it's beautiful it's heartwarming but it doesn't seem to be very jewish and yet rabbi akiva said it's the holiest book of the bible why it's holier than everything why because sheriff is a metaphor it's a metaphor of the relationship between god and israel between heaven and earth between the soul and the body but it's more than that it's written in such graphic terms to teach us that essentially for love and romance in our world to be meaningful and enduring is when love and romance reflects the spiritual relationship a love that is divorced from spiritual relationship is a love that is short-term and could be a love that is even vile and vulgar now this is not the place to discuss what's going on now in the political reality of america for that you have debates tonight so from the yehudi you can go to the debates from paradise to purgatory from heaven to hell um i'm unfortunately not going to be able to do that because i'm going to be on the airplane and i doubt they're going to show those the debates on the airplane well i'll have to hear the replays of the great brilliance the great brilliant remarks apologies or whatever that are going to happen tonight but certainly it's going to be a circus and probably george washington thomas jefferson abraham lincoln are not very happy in their graves when they think about forget who's going to win who the candidates who the candidates that we're dealing with whichever whoever you're voting for or not voting for okay but from a jewish perspective love romance sexuality intimacy are very deep forces we know this but for them to really be powerful and enduring they ought to be associated with a soul relationship a physical relationship that is divorced from a soul relationship is superficial it's skin deep it's powerful you can ask trump you can ask bill it's powerful but it's it's not deep it's not authentic it's very potent especially for men as giuliani explained eloquently today but it's not it's not deep what do i mean it's not deep it's not enduring and this is true with a marriage too couples that their attraction is merely physical but not spiritual in other words they don't share values they don't respect each other's personalities so their intimacies lacks intimacy there may be sexuality but no intimacy intimacy is made up of three words into me c into me c requires a lot of vulnerability it requires the ability to strip your garments and to be able to look at yourself and allow other people to see you in a very profound way so sexuality and judaism never drew never ran away from sexuality we're not christians i was talking to a christian and i said you got it wrong you thought it says celibate doesn't say celibate it's a celebrate in judaism intimacy is celebrated it's it's sacred mahmoud writes that it's the holy of holies of the jewish religion but the song of songs tells you the story love is powerful when it's a metaphor when it's the physical is a continuum of the spiritual and that's why if you want to understand the structure of our high holidays it's about a relationship and about intimacy we have now two months that are loaded with holidays and for most jews they're loaded with guilt rosh hashanah kipper for most jews or many jews it's full of a heavy feeling how many people enjoyed rosh hashanah how many people enjoy your kipper it's just here we go again the day of judgment the day of confession leave me alone somebody asked me what's the definition of a jew and i said that if he doesn't feel guilty he blames himself we're guilt-ridden in a good day after you eat alatka you're guilt-ridden because too much oil after you eat a humantush you're guilt-ridden because too many sesame seeds and too much carbs after you eat matzo you're guilt-ridden because it's mama's carbs after you eat cheese blintzes on schwa you're guilt-ridden when are you not guilt-ridden yom kippur is all about guilt it's very hard for jews we carry a lot on our shoulders i come from new york there's a concept called jury duty you know what jury duty is you get summoned to being a jury everyone has to go and you need a good excuse to get out of it so i have my excuses but there was a jewish woman there and the way she got out of it was she told the judge that she was guilty somebody asked you wasn't different between italian mothers and jewish mothers i said they both make pasta for dinner both of their 16 year old teenagers come home taste the pasta and say ma it's horrible i'm not eating this pasta you won't i won't take money to eat it i wouldn't eat it if i was dead nor would i feed it to the devil that's how horrible this pasta is i can't even conceive how somebody could make such sickening spaghetti that's what 16 year olds are like especially when they're you know their attitudes are flying high and both mothers shoot they both shoot the difference is the italian mother shoots her boy and the jewish mother shoots herself so these holidays are very very intense and i would say many jews have been alienated from them people think everybody comes to shore hashananyam kipper it's not true in manhattan how many jews live in manhattan let's say five hundred thousand six hundred thousand count all the shows reform conservative orthodox chabad hasidic ultra orthodox reconstructionist gay any synagogue renewal habura bagel unlocks any type of synagogue you want count how many seats you think you'll have in the whole manhattan how many seats 12 thousand at best but there's five hundred thousand jews where are they going okay a few are going to westchester to their parents if you are going to long island most jews don't go to shore as a sipper it's a fallacy we think most jews go to show a lot of jews go to georgia most jews don't step into a show because it doesn't speak to them they went as kids everybody went this kids their grandmother and grandfather schlepped them once a year young kipper or three times a year they sat for four hours and it was the most boring experience of their life at least in hebrew school you could throw spit balls remember you could do spitballs with with with straws in synagogue you can't so you sit like a glump for four hours and one thing you know the moment you become independent the moment you're going to college you ain't returning to this place again and they're reading words that are completely irrelevant to them which is the crisis of a judaism that's completely irrelevant there were three rabbis progressive were talking the other day about how progressive their shulls are so one says you know our shul is really modern we got rid of all the old stuff it's yom kippur everybody who comes in gets a few sushi platters so if they get hungry in middle they can eat some sushi second rubber isn't a big deal our show is really progressive near every seat there's a laptop at any point in the services you could serve the web you could update your facebook account you could see what's going on you could follow trump and hillary it's all good the third rabbi says nah this is old stuff our show is really really modern and progressive before the before rosh hashanah we put up a big sign closed for the holidays so that's what it is for most people to really understand rosh hashanah and kipper you have to go into the model of relationships the way a relationship works is this dating then there is proposal and then hopefully she agrees and then you get ready for the wedding and then there's a wedding and there's a chuppah and there's dancing and then there's seven days of festivity and then there's a honeymoon and then life begins and good luck there was a jewish couple celebrating their 50th anniversary so she says i want to make a toast to myself for sticking it out with him for 50 years and i want to tell you that the 50 years went by like two days people were impressed a jewish couple after 50 years they were on speaking terms and not only that it went by like two days but it was a nudnik and he says why do you say like two days why don't you say when by like one day why two she says because our marriage 50 years went like two days felt like two days to sheba and yom kippur right so fine so that's after the honeymoon okay now if you want to really look at this come back to the jewish calendar you'll see it's all it all begins in the jewish calendar it's the two months ello and tishrei ello the ultra rabbit rubber zaman says in lakota torah that elul the king is in the field what is he doing in the field we call it an english dating he's in the field he's relaxed he says he's smiling you know during dating men are they they i always say you know whenever you see a man holding the door open for the girl to go into the car it's one of two things either it's a new wife or a new car so during the month of ello the king is in the field it's a time that god says i want to just get to know you let's hang out together that's elo comes rosh hashanah what happens rosh hashanah at night rosh hashanah at night god proposes that's rosh hashanah the energy of rosh hashanah is an energy of serious question are you going to say yeah the night of rosh hashanah the groom the boy turns to the girl the young man turns to the young woman in this case god turns to the jew and says i'm crazy about you i want to be with you we should be together forever i know i'm not the easiest the easiest soul mate to be in a relationship with god means to be in a relationship with infinity to be in a relationship with mystery to be in a relationship with ultimate meaning with with limitless reality it's tough it's much easier to be in a relationship with bagels with cheese danishes they're not infinitely mysterious it's pretty clear the poison but a relationship with god is complicated it's very diff the relationship with god is very serious it's very real it's very authentic to quote abraham joshua heschel if god does not amount to everything he amounts to nothing you got that think about it so the woman tells the guy i need i need this is we're just dating four weeks it's four weeks you know on the west side you date for 16 years and it's still not enough some places of manhattan 22 years you know you get married when you're 80 when you're 90. so fast four weeks it's almost like the hasidic groups god says listen you know you want to date we could date for another 40 years but let's face it we belong together so the girl says the jew says give me a knight let me think it over rosh hashanah in the morning we tell god we have an answer we blow the chauffeur the chauffeur is a way of saying yes so god says okay let's get married the jew says when he says yom kippur i got to prepare he says i give you 10 days but a wedding you don't prepare for wedding and then he says no the caterer belongs to me the floor is belongs to me the hall belongs to me i can do a wedding in a few days just prepare so the days between yom kippur you're preparing for the wedding yom kippur is the wedding so when you kip her what are we dressed like we dress white why do we dress white because that's what a bride dresses at a wedding and white we fast on him kipper the jewish custom is that the bride and the groom fast on the day of the wedding it's the day of our wedding that's why we fast people say why are we fasting him kid because you're getting married and you get married you can't go with a full freshing stomach imagine men wouldn't fast the day of the wedding they already eat for 25 years before that the day of the wedding you have to be a little clear you got to empty the stomach feel the pangs of hunger nothing will happen nobody dies from fasting for a few hours especially jews they eat a meal before you keep her after him kipper it's fine if you ever saw the meal after you keep it looks like they haven't eaten in four months so yum kippur is the wedding how does the wedding begin it begins with with the prayers the first part of the wedding is always solemn it's always solemn it's serious and it's a very deep commitment and that's what yom kippur is the first thing you do on yom kippur is we spoke khalnidra you absolve your vows people because you can't be married to somebody if you're married to other people and if you're married to yourself you can't be married to another person if you're married to yourself did you get that young man you first have to divorce yourself in order to marry somebody else that's why in talmud attracted for divorce comes before the track date for marriage why so some people think because the sages were prophets and they knew about hollywood and in hollywood you get divorced before you got married in the middle of the wedding they already planned the divorce on a deeper level you have to get the voice from your own ego before you could let somebody else in so yum kippur is really a very intense day it's the day of the wedding the first half of the wedding which is very solemn it's very serious it's very introspective there's the veiled about decades in the beginning of the wedding and what the veil is saying is the groom tells the bride i know that much of you i don't see and i'm ready to marry the part of you that i don't see as much as the part that i see one of the biggest challenges in america is people think they're marrying the people that they think they're marrying did that make sense people think they're marrying the people that they think they're marrying but you never marry the person you think you're marrying people change all the time so marriage really is a commitment to this person even when i'm going to see things that i don't see today of course i'm going to see new things that i don't see today but i want i know you're that type of person you are i want to hold your hands even through the unpredictable realities if that's possible sometimes there's abuse or sometimes there's different circumstances beyond expectations that a person has to separate or divorce especially when there's abuse or other similar situations but i'm talking about in situations where there's no abuse but there are idiosyncrasies people are so different so it's really a commitment that's like nasa venisma the jews when they married god they didn't know everything there was a veil there was about that ganesh i'm committed to you and i know that a lot of you i don't see you know people say wasn't everything men and women i said i'll tell you the difference women most women marry most men believing that they're going to change the guy is a slob but he'll live with me for a year and he'll become a mensch most women think men are going to change but the truth is men don't change very few men change now the other way most women marry most men marry most women believing they're not going to change but women constantly change women change every day most women change every hour some every minute so they think their women are not going to change they're always changing so it's a very interesting paradox you have so the first part of yom kippur is really that marriage then you come to nila nila is the highlight of yum kippur the last prayer what does the illa mean closure why is it called nilas every besiakov girl here knows why is it called naila one of the girls will tell us what do you learn in school why is it called naila very good she learned well she got an a on her exams because they basically tell you the gates of heaven are about to close it's like the garage is coming down if you're caught under it your head will be hurt so so either get in or get out but the gates are coming and what's the feeling by jews you have like another few seconds to throw in your petitions because god is like cut off time come on give me a break imagine your child comes to spend the day with you right it's now six o'clock in the evening and you tell your son or your daughter you're like okay in a few minutes i'm turning into a pumpkin the doors are going to close so therefore tell me the last thing you want and then get out of here that's that's the end of the relationship nayla means something else listen to this means the gates of heaven close during the illah but you're inside in other words it's a time of intimacy it's the yikhod room after the chuppah you ever see a jewish hope what happens after the khopa the groom and the bride go into a room alone even the photographer leaves do you know what that means even the schwigger the mother-in-law is not going to be there and she's always present but even the the rabbi they chase out i know the weddings i did and there's always good food by the yacht room sushi cakes but the interesting thing is the groom and the bride never touch it it's usually for me and the photographer we come in afterwards and we finish everything i also fast on days of weddings because i know i can eat everything in the room it's a beautiful meal and i always wonder why the groom and bride never eat the food there so i once asked them why don't you eat the food and the guy said it was so exciting i didn't have to eat but you fasted a whole day you'll see most jews during the ila at the end when they say shema is they don't feel hungry a whole day jews are fetching and show that they're hungry just one or one cup of water one cup of water what could one cup of water do a whole day they fetch ready when you keep it starts jews are cratching you just ate a whole day no you ever noticed right when your pepper starts you're starving i don't know why the equipment starts everybody's starving everybody is thirsty they just ate like beasts for three hours no difference and then you keep a day forget about it you don't talk to people then they're in a bad mood by the illuminati straw people don't feel hungry it's like the yehud room because it's a moment of intimacy with god the groom and the bride are so excited about the new marriage that the the adrenaline is flowing the endorphins are released they don't they're this adrenaline is so powerful they don't have to eat at shema yesterday the end of the year now what happens after the groom and the bride come out of the room now starts the dancing so what happens after yom kippur sukkas you have four days in between for pictures but okay you missed that fine but then come sukkah sukkas is the dancing that's why sukis is a happy holiday it's the second half of the wedding and you dance and dance and then everyone is at the wedding it's an outdoor celebration seven days of sukkas the wedding is over now what happens the lights go off you pay the caterer eighty thousand dollars pay the floor is thirty thousand dollars hopefully you have the money you pay the guy of the bar twenty two hundred thousand dollars for all the drunkards who drank you pay everybody and now the groom and the bride go home nobody comes not the schweger not the matchmaker and now it's time to start what we call playing house building a life together with god's grace consummating the marriage what is that in jewish life shemini at series and some khas torah the success ends you go back into the house and this is the time of intimacy the hakophas the stancing with the torah and shul the last days of success is a form of intimacy that's why we pray for rain then what is rain rain is the sperm of heaven that comes down and it's absorbed by mother earth it's fur it's it's it's conceived fertilized developed by mother earth that's what rain is it's essentially the cosmic metaphor for intimacy between god and the jewish people between the groom and the bride and thyrizal even says that the seventh day of pesach the sea opens the sea splits the cosmic womb opens and the first souls are born the souls that were conceived on simchastora during the intimacy between heaven and earth so simcha's torah is intimacy it's very deep celebration very deep intimate celebration what happens after samha's torah you have one more day called israchak the end of tishrei where there's still no confession for sins it's like the honeymoon what happens after the honeymoon comes the month of kashman the month of kheshwin everybody knows is the most boring month in the jewish calendar not one holiday not one special day that's what happens after the honeymoon now life becomes very boring and monotonous and you have to find the joy in taking out the garbage and buying roses on friday in doing little small things for each other and this is where many marriages fall apart because once the lights are off and the excitement is gone you have to build a different type of relationship this is where real jewish life happens they once asked a cardiologist why do jews have so many cardio problems so he said because most jews i know will always tell you i'm a jew in my heart so all their judaism is focused on their heart you know how much stress on their heart there is but if they could distribute their judaism to their arms and their legs so their heart wouldn't have so much judaism would be a little healthier so that's what happens after tishrei becomes a different type of reality now you have to find god in the daily monotonous routines of life so this is the relationship it starts with dating and elo proposal preparation marriage chupa nila the yehud the dancing the intimacy the honeymoon and then settling down and finding meaning in the daily relationships now here when we can understand it in terms of a relationship we now come to the next level to discover the holiness of sins so you see the talmud teaches something very profound when somebody repents out of or out of fear their sins are absolved when somebody repents out of love their sins become mitzvahs that's what reshlaker says interacted yuma page 86b that's what the talmud teaches yuma pavel chuva out of fear absolves the sins obliterates the sins truva out of love transforms the sins into mitzvahs how can you transform a sin into a mitzvah what does that mean what does the talmud mean the answer to this my dear friends is as follows when somebody makes a mistake when somebody falls when somebody experiences a tremendous downfall in life but they manage to get up and recreate their life there is something in the depth of their new life that exists only because of the struggle only because of the mistake ask anybody who has been an addiction and then went into recovery and if they are truly in recovery there is something very powerful and deep about these souls that you would never have with somebody who didn't go through the process of tremendous tremendous addiction why because if i fall but i use my mistakes i use my transgressions as a catalyst as a springboard to a life of renewal i appreciate the truth in the way that somebody else can't appreciate it just like a person who's been stuck in a forest for two days and then you give them a cup of water their enthusiasm and drinking that water is different than a person who always had access to water and somebody who hasn't seen a bed in two days and you give them a bed their appreciation of that bed surpasses a person who has a bed every night somebody who's been to prison and then they come out and freedom their appreciation of freedom is not one that a free person can even understand when gila chalit who was sitting by the hamas next in gaza for five years in a cell in captivity when he walks in at night and goes into a bed he does not take it for granted like you and i take it for granted now thank god we could take it for granted i heard from elie wiesel who just passed away a few months ago he said there's nobody who experiences gratefulness like us survivors we take nothing for granted this breakfast in the morning really wow people who for five years were stripped from all humanness reduced to skeletons and their value of their lives was less than the value of a cockroach literally as an auschwitz survivor told me once he says for a german to kill a jew it took less thought than you smacking a mosquito that's biting you less thought much less thought for you to kill a mouse is far more difficult to trap a mouse is far more difficult because every jew when you put on a mousetrap starts having issues who gives me the right to trap the mouse maybe the mouse should trap me but of them but i paid for the house so if the mouse traps me whatever it is you know how jews are not so simple a mousetrap every jew makes a hush but never have to go to therapy because they put out a mousetrap and peter may be after you in fact i know there was a this fellow who uh this guy you know i'm sorry this mouse who was in a jewish house and and she loved the house because it was a lot of cheese so it was great but then they bought a cat and the mouse became you know miserable so the mouse turned to god and said god could you make me a cat god said of course so the mouse becomes a cat then they bought a dog so the cat became miserable so the cat says to god could you make me a dog god says of course becomes a dork but now the guy decided to discipline the dog so the dog became miserable she says god could you give me happiness god says what do you want to make me the man of the house sure he becomes the man of the house now his wife comes home and he's terrified like you know most jewish husbands so he's terrified from her so he's like god god i wanted to be happy god says what do you want make me the woman of the house no problem so now he's the woman of the house standing in the kitchen confident and suddenly she sees a mouse and you know what happens when a woman sees a mouse i don't have to tell you so she turns to god and says god god please make me god says what do you want she says i want to be the mouse god says you were the mouse you idiot that's what you were but that's how life is you know i'm trying to please you you're trying to please her she's trying to please him he's trying to please her and you're trying to please me that's the cynicism of life so you see my friends people have this issue so elie wiesel said the way we have gratefulness nobody has gratefulness when somebody makes mistakes when somebody lies when somebody cheats when somebody insults when somebody does something that's promiscuous they have remorse they reinvent their life the sin becomes a tremendous component of their new discovered life because it's the negative experience that when you convert it into a positive energy it gives the positive energy a depth that it never had on its own to put it a little bit in in more uh maybe a different words they say there was a guy henry watson watson he was a legendary manager he was the legendary manager of ibm and the ceo and there was a manager there who made a terrible mistake and he cost the company 10 million dollars in losses the next morning he was summoned by the ceo and he gave him his resignation papers he says listen there's no way i could i can make up what i did i'm grateful for the years here and i just i apologize you know he was just ready to resign no severance pay let him just get out of here and it was unintentional it was but it was a mistake and the ceo looks at him and says you're leaving of course i'm leaving after what i did he says you ain't leaving was shocked he says you're leaving i just spent 10 million dollars on your education you're not leaving and this was one of the most brilliant moves he did because the loyalty that he engendered and he created in that person you can't buy you can't buy loyalty it's one of the problems ceos have they raise salaries they give bonuses but you can't buy loyalty but this person's dedication to the company from that day on was infinite it was unparalleled so you see when your mistakes become an education they're not mistakes they're educational so a mistake is only a mistake if i don't learn from it but if i learn from it and i rediscover myself i reinvent myself then the mistake retroactively turns out to be your greatest educational moment in fact from success you don't learn from mistakes you learn i'll never forget probably the first or second shabbaton i did in my life i was a little younger than i am today i'm still a baby but then i was a bigger baby and it was maybe the first or second weekend retreat i did i was really really inexperienced like really it was in chicago i do this weekend i thought i wasn't so bad i thought okay sunday morning the president of the synagogue who's still around is an elderly jew very wealthy jew big community very nice established community good rabbi who who invited me to come calls me in and was sitting by the rabbit i thought he's going to say thank you was beautiful he sits me down we're sitting by me and the rabbi and the president looks and says you were horrible you were so bad in fact you were an embarrassment my wife is a phd in psychology i brought her friday night to your lecture it wasn't even 101 basics who do you think you are to speak to phds the way you spoke without an education who prepared you who trained you 25 minutes did he give me a speech i felt bad more even for the rabbi than for myself because rabbi was a very nice guy and he and he kept so he called me he called me and he says he tells me don't take him so seriously so he hears he says no take me very seriously you were really really bad and he went on and on explaining to me all my mistakes everything i did wrong in every lecture and the poor rabbi says and it wasn't so bad he says no it was worse and he finishes you know it's not fun to hear it's not fun to especially when you're just starting you know unless you hear it from your wife then it's a good thing to hear because it keeps you humble but to hear it from other people so uh he finishes okay it is what it is yeah these things happen yeah what do they say spaghetti happens i get up to walk out to go to the airport he comes over to me and he says but in retrospect this will be your most successful shabbaton so i thought he's schizophrenic i thought he's taught me sugar first he tells me i was the disaster of a lifetime now ita he says you know why because you're going to learn from this because really you're good he tells me but you don't know it yet so you learn from this and you'll see that this will be your most successful chapter because you'll learn from every mistake you made and you'll become good and it was very profound what he did it took courage it took confidence but it was profound and you know what he was right because when you're good and people say thank you there's nothing to learn from you become smug right and you become complacent and you go eat but when you when you're not good when you fail but then somebody helps you channel the failure into a lesson then the failure becomes far more successful than success because it prompts awareness it generates perspective it expands horizons you don't learn from success you learn from failure you don't learn from arrogance and smugness you learn from humility and that's why the talmud says when somebody repents out of love the sin becomes a mitzvah why because the new love that they have could have only come about as a result of the mistakes of the sins of the transgressions we spend 10 million dollars on your education there's nothing like the education that comes from failure even though it's very vulnerable it's painful but that's what it is let me put it a little bit and abstract how halogen terms how many of you are familiar with the expression mitzvah mitzvah means every mitzvah needs preparation i want to blow shofa on rosh hashanah i have to make a chauffeur after buy a chauffeur buying a chauffeur is not a mitzvah but it's the prerequisite for a mitzvah i want to eat mats on passover i have to bake matzah baking mats is not a mitzvah but you can't eat if you don't have baked matzo i'm gonna sit in a sukkan sukkot i have to build it i have to buy wood i have to buy bamboos buying bamboos ain't the mitzvah but it's the mitzvah's the prerequisite every mitzvah you put on filling you have to make that fill them you like shabbos candles you need to get matches you need a candle etc clear right there's no mitzvah without a preparation a mikvah of course going to the mikvis the mitzvah but if there's no structure if there's no water you can't have a mikvah so now i want to ask you a question think about this every mitzvah has a mitzvah what you do in order to do the mitzvah the the what's the word i'm looking for the precursor the preliminary preliminaries now there's a mitzvah called chuva repentance what's the mitzvah of chuva what's the preliminary for truva admission is when i'm doing it but what's the prerequisite to be able to sin so the prerequisite for the mitzvah of truth is what it's sin but that's a strange idea because sin is the opposite of a mitzvah it's not like buying a lulav sin is doing against what god said so what do you mean that's the preparation for the mitzvah so here we have quantum mechanics and judaism when i do this sin i'm doing a sin okay but here it is how it works if after i do this sin i repent so the sin leads me to a deeper appreciation of god and truth and justice and morality so retroactively the sin is redefined from being a sin it becomes a mitzvah it becomes the prerequisite that allowed me to do truva but that can only happen retroactively after i detrovea which is how the arizona resolves the big paradox between human choice and divine knowledge everybody had this question when they were 14. if god knows everything i'm gonna do you remember when you were 14 and you came to your teacher and they said when you get older you'll understand and you still don't understand if god knows everything i'm going to do so then i have no choice because i can't disprove him i can't disprove him and if i prove him right so then he already decided and if i prove him wrong then he doesn't really know so that results says that there are parallel universes there's a universe in which i choose there's a universe in which god decides in my world i chose in god's world he decided the question is does these two worlds come together if i don't do shiva my world remains divorced from god's world so i sinned okay it was my choice if i do chuva basically what i'm saying is god chose it if god chose it it must have been a good thing what was so good about it it led me to trivia so when i do shiva i align my universe with his universe and the two parallel universes merge into one so that the sin is not a sin anymore the sin is a mitzvah that's what the talmud means that when you do true that of love your sins are transformed into mitzvos now come with me and you'll see the whole calendar is based on this rosh hashanah yom kippur are dominated by a feeling of awe sukis is dominated by a feeling of joy we discuss the two stages of the wedding the first half of the wedding is solemn the second half of the wedding is festive rosh hashanah kipper is more introspective sukis is much more festive joyous extroverted it's like the dancing at the wedding this is true that of awe this is truvad of love in shiva of awe god obliterates the sins in shiva out of love the sins are transformed into mitzvahs so therefore sukis is called the first day when he calculates sins why is he calculating your sins on sukkahs because rishabhayam kippur he threw away your sins but now come sukkahs sukis is a time of love love you bring your sins into the equation because the sin itself is a mitzvah so what is suk is called the first day of calculation of sins he says let's now calculate the sins because every sin becomes a mitzvah where do you see this in jewish ritual on rosh we go to the water what do we do by the water we throw away our sins sukkas we come back to the water what do we do on sukkahs we take the water back and we pour it on the altar like a sacrifice in other words on sukkahs you go back and you reclaim your sins and you bring them up to the altar and you pour them they become holy because on rosh hashanah you're in a state where you have to say i don't like what i did i get rid of it symbolically on such as you mature and you say you know what you're past you don't cut away your past you have to elevate your past you have to learn from your past there's two stages in recovery one stages my past was horrible never never again that's important but then the stage two stage two is you have to be able to say thank you for my past it taught me something i would never know yes people often say i would never want to go through that but once i went through it i would never not want to go through it i'm not giving it up so easily because all struggle can become a catalyst for unprecedented growth i remember when i was sitting shiver from my father so i turned to my nephew who was close to my father and i said you know it's the end of an error for us and he looked at me and he said or the beginning of a new one and it was a very profound observation if you don't acknowledge that it's the end of an era if you're just in la la land though everything is so sweet it's so good you know stupid things that people say at shiva you must be happy it's over you ever heard the wise people at shiva you must be happy it's over yeah i'm thrilled uh at least he didn't suffer yeah it's wonderful that he's dead he must be in a very good place now oh yeah wonderful place but i would rather he would be in this wonderful place some people einstein said two things are infinite the universe and stupidity and the latter is more infinite than the former so in my my tenure i was privileged here a lot of people say a lot of wise things if you don't acknowledge that at the end you also will never discover that it's a beginning there's always the element of remorse of regret of pain if you deny that you're living in la la land and if you're living in la la land it's going to come back to bite you when a person goes through a painful experience a difficult experience when we make bad mistakes either by mistake or intentional or some people make mistakes with us i can't deny and the pain i can't deny the need for remorse then it becomes futile you're like you're drunk on a delusional reality that doesn't exist and it's going to come to bite you you have to integrate things in order to integrate sin into your life you first have to get rid of it you first have to go to the water and say get out of my life i don't like you but then in a later stage you go back and you say i now come back to my life because there's something i learned only from you so even though it wasn't easy but it's something i am who i am today because of you and the first person to do this was jacob he wrestles a whole night with an angel a whole night the guy wants to kill him and then he maims him he becomes a limping jew and then the guy says leave me alone and jacob says lo asha i will not let you go until you bless me bless you a gangster attacks you in a dark alley and then you tell them before you go i want a bracha you call 9-1-1 you don't ask for blessings jacob was making a statement when you encounter an adversary in your life that's trying to kill you or at least make you limp make you meek make you weak make your stature lower smaller you don't just run away that's not enough because if you just run away then the question is why did you have it in the first place jacob says i will not send you away until i don't get blessed from you i have to come away from every challenge feeling more blessed and that's when he gets his name israel instead of yaakov yakov means you're holding on to a heel yisrael is two words li roche my head ki sarissa you are a leader you wrestled with god and men and you have prevailed and with this jacob set the bar for jewish history throughout our history we have encountered sadly so many adversaries and not small adversaries profound adversaries the approach of the jewish people was always not let's just get rid of it and move on which in itself is an incredible approach they said more than that we are going to become more blessed from every adversary we encounter we're going to learn something we're going to channel into a new blessing we're going to see the end of an era also as the opportunity to open up a new era to turn a new page they say that alexander the great summon the jewish artist to depict the painting of him but he gave him the following condition the painting has to be accurate plus i have to look handsome the problem is the two were mutually exclusive if it would be accurate he would be ugly if it would be handsome it would be inaccurate and those days you didn't fulfill the request you can come out with a head shorter the problem was that he had a huge um a huge blemish a huge wart on top of his eye on top of his eyebrow if the painter would eliminate it it would be dishonest if he would put it in it wouldn't look good so what did the jew do what would you do he drew a painting of the king sitting in a state of deep meditation and reflection so how do you sit like this and the king was was so impressed he loved it he made the impression that he's thoughtful he's reflective he's an intellectual par excellence so you see what the jew did he took the very stain he took the very blemish and he turned it into art he used that itself to convert it into art that's what jacob says i will not just leave you i want to feel more blessed from you from every encounter you have to say what did i learn from it that's the holiness of sin so that's why rosh hashanah you go to the water and you throw away your sin sukkas you got to go back and say come back into my life let me grow from you let me learn from you so now we understand why when we do the confession we do it with a musical uh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah because there's two elements to confession one is i feel bad i feel horrible i'm sorry but there's another message and that is ultimately you went through all of this to create more music in your life all of this will create more music not more depression yes you have to go through the remorse you have to be able to say i'm sorry there's an element of humility in that it doesn't feel good to say i'm sorry to call somebody up on the phone and say i apologize i did something terrible it doesn't feel good we don't like it but there is a music that will come to you through that it's not an act of of destruction of denigration it won't diminish you it will enhance you and that's the plural of no says something very daring he says you know why you say we sinned we we we who's the we he says we is me and god but that's strange god didn't sin i send that's where we come to that result this parallel universe is i choose in my world god chooses in his world if i do truva i choose to align the two worlds that my world should become a reflection of his world if this sin becomes his choice then if it's a godly act if it's a godly act it's good if it's good it's a mitzvah how can a sin be a mitzvah because it led me to triva so when i do this sin simultaneously now this is heavy god also does it or to put it simply when i did it i did it but also god decided i should do it but that seems like heresy what do you mean i'm responsible he's responsible no i'm responsible because in my world i did it but he also chose for me to do it now what happens so either we just remain in divergent paths and that's it and i'm responsible for my sin because that's the world is parallel universes and in my world i chose when i do chuva i choose to redefine the sin from god's perspective i align my world with his world i put my faith and i link it to his destiny and faith if god chose i should do this sin that means it was a godly thing it was a mitzvah what makes it a mitzvah what makes it a mitzvah is a prerequisite for true you can't do trivia if you don't sin so for deutsche you have to sin so the sin is not a sin the sin was the prerequisite for truther but that can only happen if i do true if i do true i retroactively redefine my sin and those are the two stages in every relationship in a relationship we hurt people that's part of a relationship if you don't hurt then you can't get hurt you're not in a relationship a husband who tells a wife whatever you do you will never affect me or a wife who tells a husband whatever you do you won't affect me they're not connected you know if i'm this invisible wall if i'm this thick wall you can't penetrate me okay no we affect each other and we sometimes hurt each other and then we apologize all our relationships with children with siblings with parents with spouses with partners with friends with colleagues with employers with employees with community members we say things and we apologize and then in stage b we learned how from those mistakes unprecedented growth happens so i bless you my dear friends the dissim kipper you and i and all of us should have the courage to confess our sins to apologize for our sins and then to be able to see the holiness of our sins thank you [Applause] this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make 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