The Kohen's Clothes and Radical Self-Transformation — Parshas Acharei

back in the shtetl these two tailors come out from a shul and one sees the other and says I don't let you hear their own structure says yeah sheesh man oh I did he says did here was talking about machetes gonna come this gonna be pious amazing that there's gonna be the resurrection of the Dead you know what that means for to tailors like us he says no what does that mean Shmi no he says well think about it all the people who are buried they were buried and they're talking and they're their burial shrouds so they're gonna need clothing business is gonna be booming so the other one thinks he says yeah but you're forgetting something when there's that resurrection all the dead from all the generations come back to life there's gonna be all these new customers that's true but also all the tailor's from all the generations are going to come back to life as well so that so there's gonna be that much more competition as well so it's not really gonna gonna help us in business so I thinks for a second he says yes Bell that's true you're forgetting one thing we've got the latest styles this week's partial purchase after it speaks about clothing new clothing what does it say if you remember many many weeks ago I trusted sahabat we learned about the Big Kahuna the clothing worn by the clang and the kind goggle yes the kind although the high priest had special clothing of gold and silver and and turquoise jewels but there were there are also simple clothing for white linen garments that the current Gaga wore only one day or wore them on Yom Kippur as part of an even onion Kippur he did not wear them all day and only one of them during the special parts of the Aveda of the service that was done just for Yom Kippur we read an interesting thing in precious Hakurei about this clothing we read that varnel ale made the iron comes into the tent of meeting faucet as big dad bod I shall lavash Pavelich a dish then he takes off the clothing the white linen garments that are special for Yom Kippur that he wore when he enters the holy area the heaney home shop and he leaves them there what does this mean Rashi explains when he comes home he leaves leaves them there Malamud this comes to teach to Onan Ganesa that these clothings these right items of clothing require Indonesia that means they need to be buried you know like we do with a holy article or a holy book that's fallen into disrepair we put it in you can easily bury it so this this clothing that he wore has to be buried the lowest Amish I'm continuing at the Rashi but legacy Amish book is an audible begat him he should never again wear these same four garments lien key put him out there for another Yom Kippur it's a very interesting thing his current goggle wore these clothes these clothes for total but you know a few hours maybe you're them one day and on that day you didn't even wear them all day you barely wore them and now we're told airing them put them away and even if the same coin goggle serves next year and it's couldn't goggle again next year for another Yom Kippur he cannot wear the same clothing again he has to get brand new clothes so we have to understand that it seems a little bit strange but in order to understand that that's usually how it works isn't it we have a specific question that leads us to understanding a bigger idea we have to understand the big idea of to show up and specifically to Shova repentance as we which is we try to translate it in English although it's more aptly translated as return or restoration or recovery being reinstated to what's essential and godly self to show that as it is specifically though how it's linked to tapara like in Kippur the Day of Atonement capita means atonement and that is a it's a marvelous thing where not only do we say let bygones be bygones that the past is the past and let's not dig it up again but we actually experience repair and renewal so that the past deeds become as if they had never occurred and that's that's all so that's a wondrous and I'm Marv we have to understand the mechanics of Atonement how does Caparo work how does it work that I did it you know something I did you know okay I understand not gonna be punished for it my father can forgive me for it but how does it go away which is what component is and Yom Kippur is all about so if we're gonna understand these clothing the clothing items that get put away and buried and never worn again we'll understand also teshuva and capita as well but in order to understand both of these I want to tell you first a story and as you probably know if you watch this class when we tell a story it's not just because it's an interesting story although we do try to tell interesting stories but the purpose is that sometimes to bring out an idea the easiest way the clearest way to encapsulate a deep concept is to see how that concept comes alive in a narrative form there's a story about a young man who lived over a hundred years ago he lived in a Czarist Russia just before the Revolution and he was a budding Talmud Holcomb young scholar a genius really an exceptional exceptional genius and he was not from a Hasidic home but he had friends in his town he lived in white Russia and he had friends in his town who will about sure to see them so these Labov ature friends were trying to get him to go to the river which at that time was the rabbit of Shaba a bit of shop actually just had his 100th yard site a few weeks ago on baseness in the second day of the month of Nisan so these friends were trying to get there this young man this young genius to come to Labov it she never really was interested and then finally one day somehow they convinced him and he came along for a Shabbos and he was very taken with the whole experience at the end of the Shabbos then he had you here this private one-on-one audience with their ever - op and he as customary he wrote a note to bring to the rabbit in his one-on-one and he entered the numbers holy you did this to me the the one-on-one meeting room and as he entered he saw the rabbit ashab had he was looking in a safer it was learning and he didn't look up as if he didn't even notice the young man who had just entered the room and so the young man sort of stood there and then ever - I kept looking into his safer wasn't looking up it wasn't acknowledging anyone who come in so the young man decided finally just to come over to the desk and take his paper the note that he had written just put it on the desk and as he was about to do so that every shop got up but he wasn't reacting to the young man he started pacing around started pacing around the room and he looked very distraught and he started saying in Russian and you'll forgive my terrible accent in Russian but he was saying on yeah on it's him it's not him on yeah it's him it's not him back and forth like that in Russian never acknowledging this young man so he just sort of put his note on the desk and he backed out of the room and he left and he didn't really understand what in the world had just transpired he went back home and some time passed and there was an advertisement in a newspaper in a non-jewish newspaper that the University in Petersburg the the imperial capital was making a contest they published a math problem and they were asking people to try to solve the problem so this young genius he put his mind to the task and he wrote up a solution to the problem he sent it into the university at Petersburg and he received a response from them that he had won and that he should come to claim his prize now Petersburg was not found it was even accessible to Jews in many ways to even enter the city but now to be able to enter in such a prestigious way as the the winner of this contest this was sort of an unusual thing so he came to Petersburg came to the University and he was a religious Jew and he looked he looked like a religious Jew and the the professors they were sort of taken aback by his appearance but as they spoke with him they saw he's the same genius who wrote the answer to the math problem they they took a liking to him and they sort of brought him into their world and over time he became a star pupil he enrolled in the University and at first he tried to maintain his Judaism but after a while it just the challenge became too much for him and he let go of Jewish observance and eventually he no longer identified Jewishly at all he became completely assimilated and really didn't think about Judaism then came a point where they wanted to offer him how a professorship to be more than just a student to become a become a master and he was very flattered by the offer and eager to accept it there was one condition he had to formally be baptized as a follower of the Eastern Orthodox Church that was part of the the rules so he didn't really do it because of you know any religious conviction but he was you know completely secular at that time as were the other professors but he did it because he felt it was expedient you know this is what he had to do in order to progress in his career and since Judaism no longer meant anything to him he didn't really feel a conflict about it so he went to look he went along with it and he he fought he formally converted he lived this way for a while and he didn't really think much of it didn't really have any guilt over it wasn't something that really came up but one day he was out hunting he loved to hunt I was one of the things he developed a taste for when he was living in that world so he was out hunting and he was riding on horseback and the horse somehow it just went crazy and who ran away with him on the horse and he was very very he was that he was afraid for his life that the horse was going to throw him and as the horse is galloping away and he's holding on for dear life he uttered what we call a foxhole prayer he said Oh God if you save me from this I promise I'll be a good boy I'll go back to Judaism and what do you know the horse calmed down the horse stopped and it made his promise so after that he started thinking about it wasn't just the fact he made a promise that that sort of opened up his mind to reconsidering his whole path in life and now he really felt terribly remorseful and regretted the whole the whole path that he had followed and he knew that he couldn't do this anymore he couldn't live in betrayal of his true self he had to return to his identity as a Jew problem was beyond the fact that wasn't so simple just to you know change his religion back to being Jewish he it was already everything was built on you know this this lifestyle so it wasn't so simple beyond that in addition to that more and more important it was it was simply dangerous it was a risk his life he could have been it could be killed or at least you know the violence could have been done to him it was it was not a decision that was without some serious risk to his safety so he decided the only way he can pull this off as he has to escape yes to run away into the night and not let anyone know where he's going that's it just testin disappear without a trace and that's what he did he packed the bag and in the middle of the night he left all of his worldly possessions he left everything he just disappeared and he started going incognito from town to town village to village living in taverns and inns and after a while on the run he was in a tavern and a group of officers from the military combined into the tavern and they start asking everyone to show their papers so I deemed to need to see a CID so they came to this young the young man was on the run and they asked for his papers obviously he did not have papers for obvious reasons he was not carrying his ID did not want to be identified as who he was so they said in that case you're coming with us and they arrested him and they brought him down to the police station now at the police station he realized that the whole raid the fact they were going around asking everyone for papers was because they were looking for him it was worst case scenario they were there looking for him they had been sent to go find him to catch him and somehow they you know figured out where he was so at the police station how did he realize they were looking for him the lead officer took out a picture we had photographs in these days this isn't the you know the the late 1800s the early 1900s so it takes out a photograph it's a photograph of this guy the way he looked only a few weeks earlier when he was a professor in the university as a you know as a Christian as a convert to Christianity so there he is in the picture as he looked in that life but now here he is sitting in front of them having run away from that having done teshuvah and reclaimed his Jewish identity and the officer is comparing the two images in front of me he's looking at the picture of how this guy used to look for years and now the image in front of him the person sitting in front of him how he looks right now at present and he's looking at the two images side by side he's trying to figure it out and he and he says oh yeah Tim it's not him on yeah it's him it's not him and finally you know it's not him and they told me get out of here go you released he walks out of the station oh sudden it hits him the words those inexplicable words those mysterious words from years earlier when he was in the Holy you hit the cinema the room of that evidence on that habit of shot was seemingly in a trance-like state seemingly did not recognize and seemingly did not even acknowledge his presence what was that ever - I'm doing his pacing around I see on yet on it's him it's not him whatever it was that was happening transpiring who understands the ways of other rather law of a holy man of God but there was some thing transpiring on the spiritual plane that finally came to pass years later to save this young man from a heroin fate and that's the story now as I said we tell stories because not because they're fun or interesting or dramatic but because sometimes a story is a great way of understanding an idea what's the idea in this story again I I mentioned you know that whatever that ever did that spiritual stuff that I don't understand and it's beyond but beyond my paygrade so I'm not gonna pretend to understand the spiritual mechanics involved but just on a simple level on a simple level that we can relate to what happened it's a story about somebody who abandoned his identity took on a new identity and then regretted that and wanted to reclaim his identity and the whole punchline of the story is a question is it him or is it that he is it him or is it not him this picture of what he looked like when he was an apostate er of ma no it's lon may the merciful protect us when he had gone away from his Jewish identity this picture of him is it him or it's an idea is it the same guy or it's not the same guy is this the person in front of me or it's not the person in front of me and the conclusion Yellin it's not him it's not the same guy that is too sure that is to show us simple and plain that album says in Hill Kostova then when somebody truly does to show them it's not just that he ceases doing behaviors that he used to do it's not that he becomes a new person as if he were to say in the words of the RAM boom on the up Here I am a different person the ami I say oh ish and I am no longer that person sure also I son huh my sim who did those actions what I mean you're no longer that person you're the person no I'm not that person that old version of myself is not me anymore so it's not just I did it but I don't do it anymore no someone else did it who did it the old me but that's not me anymore I'm the author I become someone else rabbi dr. torski rabbi dr. Abraham J torski a teacher of mine told the story he's told the story many times I've heard him tell it a couple of times that he always was trying to understand that Rambam you know it sounds so lofty I'm not that person you know what it's so spiritual but on a practical level you know how can you see something like that so he said it clicked for him he was at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and the speaker there was someone who'd been sober for 20 years and he got up and he told his story about his recovery becoming sober the guy said simple like this he says the man I was drink the man I was will drink again thank God I am NOT the man I was and then it clicked for him I understand that I used to drink now I don't drink no it's much deeper than that the man I was drank and the man I was will drink again that's what he does I no longer do though why not cuz I stopped doing it because but because I'm not that person I'm not the man I was I'm a new person who doesn't do that that's teshuva so it's not just a change in behavior it's a change in identity I'm no longer that guy think about today we have DNA evidence and unfortunately it comes out that sometimes people have been imprisoned wrong with and they have sat in prison for years or for decades and then the evidence comes out the DNA that this person is not the person who did it it's impossible this is not the guy who did the crime and then they release them well think about to show felt kind of like this that when you truly do teshuva you become a new person on the offer now I'm a new person I'm not that person who did those deeds to the extent that it's like as if your spiritual DNA had changed so if they would check who you were when you did it and who you are now they're two different guys and how can you punish somebody else so for somebody else for a crime that another guy did so it's not just I used to do that but do those things and I stopped so therefore don't punish me no I used to be that guy but I'm not that guy so if I'm not him you can't punish me for what he did that's what capita is atonement is radicals self-transformation where you are a new person you're not the person that you were so it's not just that let bygones be bygones and Hashem can say let's forget let's move on no no you are literally not that guy anymore so you have truly a completely fresh clean slate and now we can understand why the coin goggle had to have new clothes every year because even if he had served last year on Yom Kippur that was last year's radical self transformation radical reinvention but in order for there to be capita and forgiveness and atonement this year he's got to do it again he's got to become a completely new person than he was ever before you know the difference between bespoke clothing and off the rack off the rack never really fits even when they do alterations it never really fits so think about it like this spiritually the cutting goggle becomes a brand new person every year every in Kippur and that's what brings atonement for the Jewish people that renewal the world literally as a nation of brand-new people because he as a representative or a delegate of all of us becomes a new person so whatever clothing he wore last year that was made for who he was last year so maybe he didn't grow maybe physically you know he's the same body but spiritually spiritually that's what it's all about he's a different guy than he was last year so for him to wear his own clothes from last year's ium Kippur would be like taking a suit off the rack it would be like wearing something that was made for somebody else and the only way to make it be bespoke to really be custom made is that it has to be made again this year for who he is spiritually now as a brand new person this is a lesson to all of us there's no such thing as saying I can't change I'm stuck in my ways I've been doing this for too long Hashem gives us a path to teshuvah radical reinvention of self and it's not even something that happens one time it can happen many times in a lifetime just like that coin goggle if you served many years you would have to get brand-new yom kippur clothes each year