We are all Children of Teshuva - Tehila Gimpel: The Land of Israel Fellowship

hey guys uh so this week we're starting to learn about shabbat and that was really exciting for me when i heard that from jeremy because i feel like we're all coming down from the spiritual elation of the festivals and we hit the ground of everyday life i spoke about this a little bit last week and it's it's a challenge right we were in this deep process of repentance we feel so close to hashem how do we continue that momentum into our regular life so i don't think it's a coincidence that the first torah portion after the holidays is the portion of breishi talking about shabbat so um maimonides in his book on all of the torah laws has um an entire section on repentance now when he first talks about repentance he says you know he kind of gives us this really detailed process about what you do if you you know if you sinned you've transgressed he gives you all these rules you have to confess your sin you first have to identify your sin then you confess your sin and then you have to um you know plan how you're gonna not do it again and you have to promise not to do it again and take all these different steps um you have to apologize to whoever you hurt you have very very um strict and regulated process that you need to do in order to free yourself from the burden of this sin then surprisingly maimonides in chapter 7 on his you know whole uh you know section in his book about uh chula he talks about another um he sort of takes another approach to chuva and it has a very different vibe there's a different feeling when you're reading it he says you should try to do chuva all the time it's interesting he says try like after giving us all these rules and regulations yeah try it sounds really chill it sounds really relaxed but he says you know at the end you never know when is going to be the last day of your life and you want to come to hashem you want to return your soul to hashem knowing that you are a baal chuva a like a a true repenter and you know it's interesting like why does he have these two different types of chuva so i heard rabbi daniel cohen explain that the rambam is really talking about two different categories of repentance you have repentance that's in response to a specific sin or that's like you know for the for the you know for yom kippur when you're trying to release you know release all of your sins and and become a new person but then he says there's a different type of chuva there's day-to-day tuba the lifestyle of chuva a type of person that every single day is living in a mindset of repentance the rambam says in the second type of repentance he says don't think that shubha is only about actual sins you know it says in the torah don't steal and you stole it says don't commit adultery and you commit adultery because there's a whole you know that's important but there's a whole other type of chuva and that's your everyday chuva he says think about your characteristics do you get angry do you love money do you chase honor do you um you know treat people poorly do you feel jealousy in your heart right all of those things and he he says those are the things that you need to be um doing every day in order to live a life of chuva it's like your entire life not just on the high holidays your entire life needs to be a reflection on your characteristics and you know an effort you try it's an effort to all the time have a growth consciousness of pushing yourself forward so now i learned something about this week's torah portion that was really really moving for me so in this first torah portion of the year we learn about two major sins first we learn um about adam and eve right adam and java they're kicked out of the garden because you know they ate from the fruit of uh the tree of knowledge now the talmud and the tractate iruvan notices that there's a huge 130 year gap between the birth of cain and abel and the birth of seth right and the talmud says that adam was so broken by what had happened in the garden that he actually divorced java he left her for 130 years um and then a little bit later in the in the torah portion we read about cain killing abel and he also gets a punishment he's exiled kind of like his father was he's exiled and he's told that he's going to be a nomad right he's going to just be living um without a home wandering the earth he says you know oh my gosh i'm god i'm going to be wandering people might just kill me he's wandering around right but the weirdest part is that a few a few verses after he gets his punishment we find out that cain it says that cain was a builder of cities that's sort of mind-blowing because isn't being a city dweller kind of the opposite of being a nomad so there's this story passed down in the oral tradition in the midrash rava that says that adam actually came to visit kane and he looks around and he's like wait a minute weren't you in exile what's going on here and he says cain then it says that cain answered him he says oh i did shiva i repented and now hashem you know let me he he sweetened my punishment a little bit um and adam said shubha i've never heard of two but what's that and kane said you could actually repent and become close to hashem again you know when adam sinned he hid he blamed eve he did all these things but he didn't do chuva and then what happens next adam is so his mind is so blown by this idea of chuva that the major says he writes psalm 92 a song for the sabbath day um and then he writes this song and then he gets back together and with uh with eve and they have this child they have this child seth and you know it's so fascinating because we're all the descendants of we are all the descendants of that uh child that was born through the recognition of repentance it's as if our spiritual dna like our fundamental essence was born out of the discovery of juva so then the sages asked well why did he write the song for the sabbath day right what's the connection if it's about shouldn't you have written a song you know about shiva and so the sages say that shabbat is actually the uh it's it's like the key it's the secret to being able to live a life of chuba because imagine if you're working all day imagine in the ancient world people just work seven days a week you're working working working you never stop people in the modern world do that too just keep on going keep on going you never have a moment for contemplation you're always in the rat race you're like a mouse on that wheel just running and running and running and shabbat is what gives us the opportunity to stop and to reflect and to assess what happened in this last week what do we want to happen in the coming week it's the difference between living in a slave mentality when you're just working to being a free person who knows that he can grow and he can change he can change his life right so we don't have to wait for rosh hashanah every year to have repentance adam is teaching us that we have shabbat every week to review to stop to look to hashem and say you know what's going on just like hashem stopped and you know he made this world and he stopped and he observed it he said well okay what about you know let's let's observe this creation we create and create and then we have shabbat to observe and reflect and live a life of personal growth and so i think that all these things tie together to show us that this week's hashem kind of opened this up for us by giving us this torah portion and the psalm 92 of you know thankfulness to hashem for giving us shabbat and all this comes together to give us really the secret of shabbat which is beyond just you know the laws and the technicalities of what you can and can't do it opens up for us the possibility of living the life that maimonides is talking about the life of being an everyday repenter a person who throughout their entire life is always growing and developing and able to reflect on how he wants to become better and better so guys it's the beginning of the week but i can still wish you shabbat shalom because that's what we're studying so i hope that this shabbat and all of your shabbats are filled with meaning see you later