Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz: Yom Kippur - The Transformative Effect of Kol Nidrei

my baby [Music] hey everybody again thank you for coming I always appreciate a live audience and tonight's share is dedicated for a refurbished Lima for yaakov benmerium and his wife is Kenny chandel and the aliyat nishama of moshev binary life and giton and Rabbi dovar in brisman I have to say where we do our imprisonment I just saw this now was a cover of mine when we were near Israel together and even as a teenager he was quite quite amazing in his Mastery of talmud really we had not seen a person who had such a Mastery of so many pages of Gamora and over the years he became a very very distinguished Raven poseek in Philadelphia and tragically he was a nifter relatively young person um we all become younger as we age in terms of the definition of being old and again it's a personal loss to me as well see he he's a quote he's a crowborough uh first I want to wish everybody a shanatara a good year and a sweet year as they say not everything good is sweet and not everything sweet is good but we want you to have both a good year and a sweet year they should all come together that the goodness of Hashem should be felt in a very sweet way and we know that in Rosh Hashanah there is a preliminary judgment that is called the writing and on Yom Kippur there's a final judgment that is called the ceiling so at this point before Rosh Hashanah we wish people kissimmatova may you be inscribed and may you be sealed for a good year after Rosh Hashanah the kasiva whichever direction it went has already occurred but we wish a person made the ceiling be a good ceiling because things can change if God forbid there's a bad kitty black can become good and if there's a good kitty bad can be confirmed so so either way to to everybody uh Yom kippur's coming up major major holiday in the Jewish Jewish calendar uh considered to be the holiest day of the year although the truth of the matter is if you had to pick we shouldn't be picking and choosing Shabbos is actually holier than Yom Kippur it's very very interesting because Shabbos we call seven people up to the Torah Yom Kippur we only call six and even though Yom Kippur is called the Shabbos of shabasas that is not because it is holier than Shabbos but that's because it Shabbat is to refrain so on a regular Shabbos we refrain from physical malacha but we eat and drink Yom Kippur is the refraining of the refraining because not only do we refrain from we also refrain from eating and drinking so it's not a reference to how holy it is but still Yom Kippur does have something very very unique the power of forgiveness the power of reconciliation and the most important thing I think we need to think about Jim Kippur is the fact that the mishna says it was the happiest day of the Jewish calendar along with the 15th above for other reasons we don't always associate Yom Kippur as a happy day necessarily if you look at it somewhat somber you know you're fasting you're serious you're confessing all of your sins over and over and over and over again one would not compare you I'm Kipper to poor him and the like and yet the reason I'll actually write that Yom kippurim a day like Purim Yom Kippur is a day like for him a deep deep Joy the joy of reconciliation the joy of being together with Hashem even the English word atonement it's very very interesting I don't know if this is intentional if you divide it into three words at one meant amazing I'm not sure if there's any intention behind that at one mint it's a day that we Unite with Hashem so much simra that you know often a person might feel when Yom Kippur is over that they miss it already they miss the Holiness they miss the connection they miss that closeness to God that a person can experience when there's like nothing else to do but spend time with with Hashem many places don't even have breaks right they keep on going the whole day whatever whatever it is every show is every game is going to be going to be different so uh we should look at again with cook points us out again and again and again that although regret and remorse have an important role in shuva but shuva overall should be something happy something joyous the ability of a second chance the gift to go on the gift to rebuild the gift of hashem's forgiveness and even forgiving ourselves to some level So within the regret and remorse should also be the seeds of a great joy and Jubilation so that I think is a a very very important aspect of Yom Kippur that we have to take to take in mind you know Chabad has a shita based on their and the way they observe Yom Kippur that Yom Kippur should be kept 26 hours I mean you know we keep it we we obviously keep it more than 24 hours because we begin no later than Sunset and we go at least 40 minutes after Sunset so we're already keeping it 25 hours they keep it 26 hours and 26 is a very mystically significant number because 26 is the Gematria of the shame havaya the yud kevke and therefore the whole day of Yom Kippur is this connection to the shame of Ayah and therefore they even want to keep it in a number of hours that are equal to the shame Avaya itself so what I want to start off with is I want to start off a little bit with the very very interesting ritual that begins the Yom Kippur service at night and this is the famous Cole mid ring right Colony everybody does culinary in fact it was interesting that even in Germany when the reform movement was trying to modify the sitter and throw everything out so one of their proposals was let's get rid of call Nidra is a legalistic absolving of vows you know they couldn't do it the the masses wouldn't accept I mean they reformed Jews who didn't didn't keep Shabbos didn't keep Cassius they could not tolerate the elimination of coal midray especially the way it sung to the very haunting Negan that goes back and Colony Dre is not a prayer it's not a prayer at all it's really connected to being absolved of the vows that we made that if a person made vows and commitments they needed to release them from their vows it's not even clear how culinary does that because we're not really declaring it in front of a basin we're praying it as a congregation but whatever it is call nidrae is written in a complex Aramaic style so most of us without a translation wouldn't even know what it's talking about and it's not a prayer for forgiveness and it's not a prayer for repentance and it's not a prayer of chuva it simply says any vows or commitments that I made should be nullified and terminated and no longer binding so there were a few things to know about conjugate call midray actually has a little bit of a history it was actually used by anti-semits for many many years to make the claim that Jews make contracts and Jews make promises to people and then Yom Kippur and I they go to the synagogue and they get absolved of all of their promises and they can break their contracts with impunity because they have a religious service that says I could declare before God that any promises I made are no longer valid so they need to make a very important point that you can seek release from Nevada only applies to a vow that you didn't make to another person meaning if I took a vow let's say I want to go on a diet so I took a vow I'm not going to eat chocolate so I could get dispensation from that vow but if I promised to paint your house or to pay you money call nidre or any type of procedure does not absolve me of my interpersonal obligation unless I have your consent one Rabbi who got rid of cold mid rain for a while was none other than the greater of him because when he was a young Rabbi he wasn't even well known then in Oldenburg he saw that some Jews were using call midray to get out of contracts and therefore that was so against Allah that he actually eliminated the recitation of comedy of copernic so rev Hirsch who was known as a ferocious fighter against reformed Judaism actually had a reform of Judaism in his own synagogue his own kehila by abroading okay but be it is even with that fundamental understanding so we're asking God to release us from our vows that we made to ourselves and to God but why is that the highlight of the beginning of Yom Kippur and why is there such a solemnity that is attached to it so some want to give a historical reason that may or may not be true and they date not the composition of comidre but the solemnity and the tuna comes right they dated to the aftermath of the Spanish Inquisition that during the Inquisition Jews were given a choice they either converted to Catholicism converted to Christianity or they would be burnt at the stake killed or they would be expelled from Spain as you know there were many many Jews who externally adopted the Christian faith privately secretly they continue to keep the Torah even though externally they professed Christianity the older term we used to call them when I was growing up we would call them Muranos moranos is actually Spanish for pig in a way so therefore it's no longer considered to be a proper way of referring to them so the common term that we use are either conversos or a new sim people who were forced but be it as it may some want to say that externally they were Christians externally they were going to church they were taking Mass every Yom Kipper they would Gather in private and they would declare before God that whatever vows they made to the church should be null and void because their allegiance is to the Torah and to the Jewish people and to actually Sparkle So if you looked at call midre as the Declaration before that that all of our vows to the Christian Church our null and void you can understand why there's a certain power a certain emotional resonance because it was the Declaration of a person who was living his life as a non-jew but in his heart of hearts was always faithful to the Almighty so some will connect the solemnity to the a new sim now I want to point out uh everybody is murdered that colony is much older than that the the words of comedre are centuries before the Spanish Inquisition but some connect its prominence in the Yom Kippur service to that and other historians questioned the connection what I want to try to talk about somewhat briefly tonight is what connection kolnidre has to the overall Yom Kippur Yom Kippur service so in order to understand that we need to talk about the laws of vows a little bit a person makes a vowel a person that makes a vow I'm not going to eat chocolate I'm not going to have coffee I will get up you know for a show every morning these are so so you're supposed to say believe that he's supposed to say I make it without a vow in case you're not able to keep it but a person could theoretically say he swears to God that he's going to do such a thing so there is a procedure of a nulling of owl how do you annul a vow you must go before a based in of three people and you must generally declare that there was some mistake in my making of the vow if I would have been aware of some circumstances so let's say for example maybe a simple example a person made a vow never to eat chocolate never to eat cake and when he comes home he discovers his wife made a special chocolate cake in honor of Shabbos and if he doesn't eat the cake she's going to be hurt so he's going to run to a basement and say if I would have known that my wife would have made the cake I wouldn't have made the vow then maybe I would make it later so that's called there's a holoca word for that that's called a PETA is an opening basically I made the vow under mistake another example is the story of Rabbi Akiva remember ABIA Kiva was an ignorant Shepherd and when his uh his wife who was uh the daughter of the very very wealthy landowner ready keep his employer married this ignorant Shepherd her father made a vow dispossessing or disinheriting her for many of his property when Rabbi Akiva became very very learned The Vow was annulled because had I known that my son-in-law had become a great scholar I never would have made the vow so this is called petach or pesach an opening meaning one ground for a nulling a vow is that it was made with a lack of understanding a lack of knowledge if I would have known I wouldn't have done it that's one type of basis for the release of a vow but sometimes you're not going to have that sometimes the person knew everything and he still made the vow but he regrets doing it see there's a difference between kairata and Peta PETA is based on error based on mistake it's based on incomplete knowledge of the situation claretta is based on a change in your emotional reaction to the reality does not mean I made a mistake it means I regret the situation that I I regret the decision that I made so the is nadarim the annulment of a vow can be based on either points out that these are two modalities of Cuba the structure of chuba is based on these concepts of nidorin sometimes a person does chuva because they didn't realize the consequences of their actions if I would have known how much I would be hurting you know my Rabbi my rabbis my parents my my siblings my community Hashem I never would have done it everything I did was under a mistake that's a chuva that's based on sometimes a person at the time didn't care I didn't care who I hurt but now I deeply regret it that's a tuba based on I read that so quite elegantly we have celebration points out that we begin called mid Ray by invoking a halachic paradigm that describes the different ways that bring a person to Cuba sometimes we do chuva because we see that our thinking was erroneous sometimes we do chuva because there is a change in our emotional reaction as we knew all the facts we were not ignorant of any facts but how I emotionally respond is going to be a difference actually that's one aspect of call Midway meaning structure of nedder mimics or reflects the paradigms of change that bring a person to true of nether I want to bring out annulment of a nether is not just prospective but it's retroactive let me explain this again I'm using examples that you might think are unlikely but you know sometimes the person will do it a person I'm going to use the vowel not these not to eat cake right person makes a vow I'm not going to eat cake now that may sound trivial but let me point out if God forbid you made a vow then eating the piece of cake is an absolutely serious sin it is not a light thing so I want to get Ataris nadarim and I can either say I regret making the vow or I could say I didn't realize my wife would be making a chocolate cake now consider the following sequence this is a tiny bit complicated not too much I made a vow thank you I go to the Basin on Tuesday and I get my My Vow a note for sure I can eat cake on Wednesday that's exactly what annulment of the vowel means that's not the question the question is does that take off the sin for eating it on Monday meaning when I ate it on Monday I did not yet have relief from the vet I didn't get my release until Tuesday so how does that affect the action that I did on Monday amazingly enough the halach is very clear that annulling a vow is not just prospective getting your annulment that's why it's called annulment by the way not termination and nominee it doesn't just mean when I get annulment on Tuesday I can eat Tuesday and Wednesday it even means retroactively the Hebrew word is LA buffrea what I did on Monday which was a sin at the time dozens become a sin what was a sin in other words does not just affect the future it redefines the past it's very interesting it changes what already happened when I ate the chocolate on Monday it wasn't Avera but after I went to the Basin on Tuesday what happened on Monday was no longer sinful it never was a sin this is quite amazing we could sometimes think oh true but God forgives me so I can go on truth is much deeper chuva changes the past if I kill somebody and I have all the remorse in the world and all the truth in the world doesn't come back to life I broke a bottle of milk I don't cry over smoke no all of my Troopers not going to bring the glass pieces together how can chuva change the past even if God forgives you God that itself is enough of a gift by the way forgiveness I can go out but how does it change on the other hand if it didn't change the past we'd be in a very sad predicament imagine a person for 20 30 years was not serving God they do children so God forgives the sins that still leaves them with 30 years of emptiness what do you do about that how does shuva deal with the back ears yeah you're forgiven you've served your time you served your punishment you leave jail with five bucks in your pocket but what happened to your life tell him I truva changes the past let me share with you a passage in the gemara that gives us an insight into the notion of chuva not just being prospective you're forgiven go on but shuva redefines your past if you are in Yuma brings a mimer brings a statement of rubbish who himself was about juva this is the rabbi shiman minlakesh is known as just rep Shimon been lucky he started off life as a highway robber who eventually became a Great Sage he married Rabbi yokon and sister and he became revokinons both student and colleague at the same time so if Shima bin lakesh knows about Shiva he himself was about Cuba in fact that's why I I think autobiographically he made another statement which is relevant to Rosh Hashanah he said even the Sinners of Israel areas filled with Merit as the pomegranate is filled with seeds even the Sinners of Israel have in them a goodness it's not too far of a stretch to say that he's speaking out of the reality of his own life that's there are two ways a person could do chuva the lower way of doing chuva is chuva out of fear meaning I better do chuva or God is going to give me a spanking you know at some point in my life or after I die a lot of fear you get forgiveness and God will treat even your intentional violations as if they were inadvertence which means there'll be a significance reduction of sentence okay but then there's a different type of chuva a higher type of Cuba that is called chuva out of love I do truva because I love God I want to please him I want to give him I want to make him proud of love says rich luckish not only is the aveira erase but the aveira becomes a Mitzvah becomes a mitzvah the Avera becomes a mitzvah so you started off with a million sins it's not just Hashem my debt is canceled and I'm bound to zero because that still leaves me with zero in my bank account the other way around your million sins have become a million mitzvahs now how can that be I understand although it's still a great great question of Hashem I understand that God could take the sins and God could erase them even though that's a wonderful thing but I understand that God forgives God erases I understand that God could treat even my intentional sins as accidental sins because I didn't know all the things I should have known but how can the sin become a mitzer they tell the story of labia it's like a British the great defender of Israel once said to the town of Russia the town Russia that I'm very jealous of you because all you have to do is true God of love and then you'll be much greater than me because you have so many sins and your 10 million sins are going to become 10 million misses you're going to be ahead of me you have the power of two for me Adam but still it's an enigma how can sins become mitzvahs but this is yet another example you see where I'm going with this that shuva changes the past it changes the past it changes the answer is that although the path does have an objective reality I did this I didn't do this I ate cake I didn't eat cake but the meaning of that objective reality is actually fluid and indeterminate the psychological term they often use in therapy is you can reframe you put a frame on it right like pictures look very different depending on how they are framed your reality is fixed in an external way but the meaning of that reality can change with the trajectory of your life again let me give you a very simple example let's imagine a person was a drug addict for many years drug alcohol couldn't kick the habit the person at some point in his life finally comes to chuva and goes through the very very difficult work physical intellectual emotional spiritual work of getting himself out of that destructive life Hashem that's a magnificent accomplishment when I meet people and I do applications to meet people sometimes my own students in North America who are struggling with these addictions and working so hard to beat them on one hand they feel like failures on the other hand the truth of the matter is in many many ways they are remarkable successes people who are struggling and achieving some success in this area so the question is this how do they deal with the 10 years 20 years 30 years that they were drug addicts so one approach is they simply amputate that in other words I go forward that past is gone which is sometimes necessary just like sometimes you have to amputated them you've lost the limb amputation is not at first Resort it's a last resort out of love says there's a way that you can take those years of addiction and use them as the foundation of how you serve God so that you will be able to do things because of that sinful history that you wouldn't have been able to accomplish otherwise the difference would be if a person becomes let's say a drug and alcohol counselor and draws on his own experiences in helping people that's a very different situation than simply amputating he's not amputating he's drawing on his past as the source of his spirituality this becomes his mission this becomes his Target retroactively what had been in Avera now becomes the very Foundation of his spiritual growth that's what it means to turn the sin into a merit you don't just escape the sin escaping the sin is sometimes necessary and that's a lower level of children it's not just escaping the sin it's reclaiming the sin and using it as a an essential component of how you serve God you've changed you are passed you've redefined the meaning of those 10 20 or 30 years this could be applied to a lot of things a person goes through many many difficult experiences life a person goes through illness and now has health so one modality is thank God I'm not sick anymore I'm just healthy but there's another way in which by remembering even the illness you achieve a humility and a gratitude to God for help that you wouldn't have had otherwise so the illness which at the time was a disability any suffering turn into a gift that brought you to a certain place you know um to give another example which doesn't involve sin because it's not Africa sin I gave your example of illness um you know some of you might remember the great rosh hashiva of mere you have nothing else who died relatively Young and um he everyone knows the story a famous story he grew up in a from a very religious home to be sure but he grew up in them which we might call Modern Orthodox in Chicago so he went to a co-ed high school he was under basketball team he was on the debating team Etc then he came to Eric Israel and he became you know the head of the largest Yeshiva in the world right the the mirror Yoshida mayor does not have a basketball team and it is certainly not co-ed debating team maybe they have Caboose so when he was nifter so all the people all the great rabbis who gave has paid them they all made the point you see what a person can become even though he came from such a degenerate environment and environment of co-ed in basketball they didn't even mention these things uh all of the tumor of American you know false Orthodox life he escaped it and because he escaped it he became great that's a perspective but I think there's a point that's missing from that his greatness was not that he simply escaped it his greatness was he took it with him he was able to relate to American kids from Modern Orthodox environments you know they're brought to the mere Yeshiva on the visits and then this like totally everyone is like learning all day and the rest of Shivers have long beards and black coats and black hats and listen to me anyway was difficult to understand it was a little scary because he had a Parkinson's substitial friend to talk and they're in a totally different world a world that is absolutely so different things that they had in New Jersey or whatever it is and all of a sudden this roshishiva starts talking about jump shots in basketball and debating teams and the kids can't believe it this guy knows about this stuff and he did know about this number he didn't try to deny it he used it as the basis for his sensitivity his ability to reach out you see what that means you're taking your past you're redefining it see I know another Russia yeah I shouldn't say anything that's negative during a Saturday but a very hush of a Russia a great Thomas and a wonderful wonderful mechanic in all ways but I happen to know because his sister always calls me and complains about it that he grew up modern Orthodox co-ed all that all that stuff and now it's like you know he denies like ever having that existence he recreated a new existence for himself he felt he had to cut it off again his sister was actually very upset because she's still modern Orthodox he is rejected you know everything you know whatever it is he even gave his mother a new name his mother had kind of a Israelis Zionist name he made it into a Yiddish name whatever it is the sister is upset over all of these interests okay so that's immodality and again they make there are good reasons to sometimes go in that direction but that's the modality in which you simply cut off your pest but nothing sway didn't cut off his past have nothing to be reclaimed his past so going back to culinary this is why We Begin Yom Kippur with a discussion of the unknowns because the institution of chuva is based on the same Principle as the annulment of house the same way the annulment of vows changes the past it doesn't just dictate the future redefines your past I've spoken about this before so forgive me if I'm repeating but but the idea is an important idea and it comes up again and again and again you know let's imagine you're about you but you were not raised in a religious family a person comes to 30 or older and a person sometimes feels that maybe God gave them an unfair deal here I mean I was born in South Dakota I was born with not religious family I didn't have a synagogue I didn't have a rabbi generally you know it's six years old you know they know more than you know I'm gonna know when I'm 40. and the light and the question is why did God give these kids these opportunities and God didn't give me those opportunities so here is the secret that you need to know Secret it is true that the Kid born in May ashram the one that's the 50th generation you show me has many many gifts and opportunities that we will never have that's Ms but you know person that was born in South Dakota to non-religious parents has many many gifts that the mayor showroom kid will never have either you in a certain environment and you didn't choose that God put you there that's because that's what you're in a shama needed your neshamin needed to be in South Dakota for 30 years your neshamin needed to interact with non-religious Jews and therefore your job as a balachuva is not to repudiate that past somehow use it as the foundation of Europe I've mentioned a few weeks ago rabena bakaya and the Torah right that before you're born Hashem shows you all the circumstances of your life and you agree you say this is best for me now it's sometimes going to be very hard for us to figure out how on Earth how on Earth was that the case and maybe that's going to be a question we're going to ask God after 120 years but we agree to him we agreed this was the best thing for us so this is a deep reason I think why Cole midray is so significant in Yom Kippur because nidorium is the halachic construct of changing a past by reframing it and redefining it and that is exactly what shuva is you are redefining look back at your life what have you learned from those experiences that were outside the Torah world what do I take from it what have my parents given me what have I learned from my environment sometimes it might be negative thing sometimes I learn you know how not to give into a negative environment but I learned things I am a better person because of what I went through so it's not like the mayor sharim guy has all the advantages and I don't rather they got what was best for their nashama and I got what was best for my nishana why that's so these are Divine Mysteries I'm not saying I I have an answer to it exactly but minishama's role was to incorporate what I could get from that particular environment and that's why the modality of rejecting that environment is sometimes not a good modality we often see this in trouble again I've talked before that in the Yeshiva World and maybe even more so in the Baltimore world there is a certain level of depression now you can call it subclinical maybe it's not clinical depression but there's often a certain sadness that exists among Yeshiva students now obviously there's not one one reason for this and some might just say I'm wrong but I actually don't think I'm I'm that wrong empirically and there are a few reasons one reason is which is nothing to do with our talk tonight is our role models are so impossibly great that we can never have a sense of success a human being needs to feel that they're progressing in their profession I'm a good doctor I'm a good lawyer well I learned in Yeshiva and my role models are of crime kineski Revolution I mean people that you know are impossible for me to reach so by definition no matter how good I'm learning you know I'm always going to be a failure and some Bible so part of it is that our role models are so unbelievably great that by definition we're always going to be a nobody okay the that's one reason but another reason and maybe this is more so in the balchuva world is that a person leaves that environment they kind of either they're told or sometimes they just tell themselves they got to cut themselves off from everything that brought them joy in that old world because it's goyish it's strife whether it's music or writing or poetry or whatever it is and when you cut yourself off from something that gave you a certain Joy there's going to be a sadness inside because you're not really being you okay that's the trooper that's amputating the past as opposed to finding a way to incorporate in Europe Hashem so that's a reason why call midrand is so important change the past not just ignore it change the past redefine the past take it from an Avera through so that's one idea of why I call nitre is a paradigm for children let me give you another idea a vow is a very severe thing breaking a vow is Right quite quite serious that is why we absolutely if you're thinking of going on a diet we absolutely discourage you from making a vow you can say I'm never going to eat cake again be sure to add the words believe neither without of them and as the book of kohela says better not to make vows than to make vows and break them don't even make them out but if you do make a vow you're bound by it unless you get hattorats Etc but the thing about The Vow is it's a self-imposed limitation God didn't tell me I can't eat cake I declared I can't eat cake once I create the limitation God goes along with it so to speak but it's a self-imposed limitation in other words I'm binding myself and I was free not to do that so when we annul The Vow we are declaring essentially that I hereby renounce the binds and the constrictions that I create in myself that too is a paradigm of children now again to illustrate this let me tell you another story from the Gomorrah this is the story a very famous story of an Infamous sinner for many years Elizabeth Dougherty had what we would probably term today a sexual addiction the gemara says there was not a single prostitute in the world it's probably an exaggeration that he hadn't visited he was with everybody and then he heard at a Faraway Island there was one woman that he hadn't been with yet so he spent money and time taking a trip to a Faraway Island to be with her the basic story is that some people can be so disgusting that even the prostitutes don't want to have anything to do with them she basically can I just say hey what type of low life is this he travels a thousand miles to be with the prostitute so at that point he hit bottom meaning he finally realized how low he had sunk until then he was living in a state of denial he wasn't thinking about it so much he was a Playboy but when even the past prostitute kind of says you know he's a worthless guy that kind of hit him so the gemara recounts he began to engage in a very very strange dialogue actually it was a monologue but he wasn't getting any real answers but let's see first he calls out he says mountains and Hills ask God for mercy for me and he hears them respond the mountains in the Hills say we have to ask God for ourselves we really don't have the ability to ask for you and then he says Heaven and Earth ask for mercy and they gave the same response we have to ask for ourselves and then he said sun and moon ask for Mercy same answer and then he said stars and planets ask for mercy same answer he had no one to turn to so he said to himself I see it's all up to me sobs and sobs and sobbed till his nashama left his body he died in the grief of his penises and a voice from Heaven came out giving him posthumous ordination Rabbi Elizabeth the world to come and when the said this story they would cry because they would say yes foreign in one hour actually one minute so why were they crying that sounds really good because they were crying because all you need is a minute how many of us never have that minute I'll need is a minute but his greatness was he took responsibility now the question becomes just in terms of shut who is he talking to is he talking to the mountains he's talking to the heavens he's talking to the Sun and the Moon he's talking to the Stars sounds crazy what's even more crazy is they seem to be answering him right so what's going on here so there's a beautiful explanation from ravarin Levin Levin as uh secretary who was they called the rate the rav of Latvia he was one of the godole harabarim before the Holocaust he was killed in the Holocaust those of you may have heard of the famous attorney a wonderful person from person Nathan Lewin one of the great uh constitutional he's always chabad's attorney for minorism and everything else so Nathan Lewin is the grandson of bravaran Levin as he was known in in Poland and Warren Levin wrote a beautiful safer at Hamish called hadrash for her Ian and in the safer had rashford he gives a very nice explanation he says like this he says as I mentioned before all the years that van gordia was cavorting around he didn't even think about his situation he was just living the life of indifference but finally when he's confronted by The Prostitute who despises him he no longer can deny what he is he realizes what a low life degenerates he was but what does a human being do we don't like to confront the negative parts of ourselves so a lot of the time we don't think about it but what happens when you're forced to confront it well we are infinitely resourceful and we have a plan B and the plan B is I may be a bum but it's not my fault other factors are to blame I am a victim and because I am a victim I am not responsible for my life so symbolically this discussion with the heaven Earth Etc is really an interior monologue in which he's looking for some excuse and he realizes he doesn't have the excuse so what are the factors that a person might use to claim victimhood the first might be my parents my parents didn't raise me right that it represents mountains and Hills we find elsewhere symbolically that you're a votes are called Harin mountains so when he calls out mountains and Hills pray for me he's basically saying if my life didn't turn out well it's not my fault you parents didn't give me the right opportunity you didn't treat me right when he hears the mountains talking back to him it's really his own interior monologue where the parents are saying maybe we made mistake mistake and we have to ask God for mercy but you are free to make choices and to use your family as an excuse you are resilient you are free you have the power to make the right decisions the second excuse a person has is my general environment I was in a bad Community bad schools bad friends they dragged me down environment is Heaven and Earth that which surrounds me so his second point is environments right nature versus nurture you ruined it for me once again he realizes well I had it tough but I could have made the right choices the third excuse people might have is economic conditions either I was so busy making a living I didn't have time to serve God I was very wealthy or I was very poor person might use economic conditions in either Direction that's sun and moon because in that in the in an agricultural economy the Sun ripens the crops and there's even certain melons and the like that the Tory describes as being ripened by the reflected light of the Moon economics so again what he's doing is he's cataloging a list of excuses and he's coming to the internal realization that nope I can't let myself off the hook he represents family environment saviva economic conditions finally stars and planets now here we know that gazelle believed that certain aspects of a person's personality are based on the planet under which they were born this is called the Maslow of the constellation the Gamora says for example he who was born under the influence of the red planet Mars will be a shedder of what can't help it he will have a Lust For Blood but he could decide he can't get rid of that left but he could either be a showcase a mohel or a murderer meaning now when you read gamars like that so the first thing that hits you is oh astrology pseudoscience Etc you know that's part of a larger discussion but in many ways that's that's a very secondary point because kazal are dealing with the notion that certain aspects of our personality are hardwired now khazal considered the source of the hard wiring to be the muzzle modern science would call it DNA but that makes no difference because in both there's a certain determinism that's built into the human personality it's really not that important where you identify the source of that determinism but determinism has been used and is even used currently as an exoneration or an abdication of human responsibility people say for example I can't help you know murdering somebody I have the ax murderer gene or whatever whatever it would be people say if everything my emotional makeup is based on biochemical aspects of my DNA How can there be human free will but the key is exactly what the gemara says you can't change your personality trait but you can divert it and channel it in good unconstructive ways so now you see what's going on here he's trying to find for himself a way out it's my parents it's my environment it's my economic circumstances it's my DNA or my muzzle and and each of these he realizes we're not victims we're free we make the choices we have resilience we are the captain of our ship yes everything is in the hands of Heaven except the decision to fear God so chuga is predicated and freedom freedom is a gift but freedom is a responsibility basically says we can't blame Our Lives on other people you gotta take responsibility for our lives and that is why swinging it back to commentary We Begin Yom Kippur with the Declaration that maybe I made vows vows are the straitjackets I put upon myself which spiritually means I Define myself as a victim but it's self-imposed and by declaring that I renounce those self-imposed restraints I am declaring my freedom and there can't be chuva unless there is freedom just end with this idea that everyone knows that the end of Yom Kippur is marked by the blowing of the shofar this is such an important ritual that even even Jews who don't go to show on your most Jews tried to go to show and Yom Kippur they have to be there when the chauffeur is blown it's like I think it's almost imprinted from childhood I got to hear the chauffeur being blown and some American synagogue is an interesting thing now after Yom Kipper we have to dive in the weekday my ref even though Yom Kippur is over but people who were less religious they didn't stay for the week they might have as soon as they heard the chauffeur blowing they left so some rabbis in America started a Minogue they don't blow chauffeur until after weekday Myra because that that guarantees that people are going to stay for weekday migrant because nobody leaves before the blowing of the shelter blow chauffeur at the end of Yom Kippur so the tour gives a very strange reason because every 50 years there used to be the Jubilee where slaves Go free Etc and the Jubilee year actually began on Yom Kippur not in Rosh Hashanah so they would actually blow the chauffeur on Yom Kippur of the Jubilee air so to commemorate the Jubilee blowing up the shofar we blow it now we don't blow it on Yom Kippur because you're not allowed to blow musical instruments okay but we do it after yum Kipper now this is a peculiar reason because the blowing of the chauffeur for the Jubilee year was once every 50 years why do we commemorate the Jubilee year every single year so the Morrell says a beautiful powerful thought Morrell says the tour does not mean we're just commemorating Yeovil Yeovil is every 50 years but the tour means that the sound of the show for every Yom Kippur has the meaning of the Yeovil chauffeur because when the chauffeur sounded on Yom Kippur of yoga what does that mean the slaves were freed from their slavery it was the chauffeur of freedom we blow the chauffeur after Yom Kippur because we have been freed from our sins thank you very much I'm free thank God I'm free I was a slave to all sorts of things now I'm free so that's the gift but the point I'm making Freedom also connotes responsibility we are not victims of Our Lives we have to make choices and we have to know that whatever our circumstance there's always a choice that can be made in a good direction this of course is the thesis of Victor Frankel's book Man's Search for meaning this is exactly what the whole book is about the idea that we have very little control over the external circumstances of life things happen we don't know why Always we can't always make sense of it and if we allow ourselves to be boxed in that is a straight jacket of our own making just like a vow [Music] get rid of the straitjackets that you create upon yourself recognize your freedom so there's much in called midray that ties in through the message of children so again I wish you all a wonderful wonderful Year and may your Kippur may you feel at one minute the connection to Hashem and may it be for all of us the happiest day of the year the day of forgiveness and atonement [Music]