Three questions on teshuvah
Three excerpts from Rav Avigdor Miller on Teshuvah and the Yamim Nora’im. Each is shortened; the full answers are in the book.
Is it difficult to do teshuvah?
When the Torah talks about the subject of teshuvah, it says (Devarim 30:11-14), “Ki hamitzvah hazos — This commandment” of teshuvah that I’m commanding you today is not difficult. “Lo bashamayim hi — It’s not in the sky” that you should wonder how we can go up and get it. “V’lo mei’eiver layam hi — And it’s not across the sea” that you have to travel a long distance to acquire it. No! “Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od b’ficha uvilvavcha la’asoso — This thing is very near to you; it’s in your mouth and in your heart (which means in your mind) to do it.”
What are we hearing here? Hashem is telling us that the mitzvah of teshuvah is extremely easy. “Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od — This thing is very close to you.” It’s only a matter of “b’ficha uvilvavcha la’asoso — it’s in your mouth,” which means it’s something you should say, “and in your mind,” it’s something you should think,” “la’asoso,” to do it. The result of the first two steps — constant repetition with the mouth, and constant thinking into these principles and laws — will cause you to accomplish it, to transform your life. By speaking about these principles and laws, and by thinking about them, you bring forth your potential excellence into actuality (“to do it”).
What this means is that a Jew possesses a potential holiness. “Mitzvos were given solely for the purpose of refining Yisrael” (Vayikra Rabbah 13:3), for tapping into that potential holiness. A Jew’s mind can become a fountain of Torah (Avos 6:1).
Now, when dealing, let’s say, with a public like we have today, there are many things people have to be told that do require a drastic change in lifestyle. Sometimes a man must give up his parnassah, his profession, for the sake of teshuvah. But when Moshe Rabbeinu was telling the Am Yisrael these words, you have to picture the circumstances. It was in the Midbar and the people were all shomrei Shabbos. Everybody ate kosher and kept taharas hamishpachah. There was no question about doing a sin in the Midbar that others could notice. That was out of the question. Even a hundred years ago, in a small Jewish town or in a big Jewish city — in Vilna, let’s say — it was impossible for a Jew to walk through the street without a hat. He wouldn’t survive. Every Jew went to the beis haknesses. There wasn’t a Jew who didn’t put on tefillin. It was the national practice for the Jewish people to keep kol haTorah kulah. In the Midbar, everybody kept everything! So the question arises — what talk could there be of teshuvah when everybody is doing everything?
And the answer is — absolutely there is talk of teshuvah, because teshuvah means something entirely different than you imagined. Doing mitzvos is the minimum required of a Jew. It doesn’t make you special. It’s not your great achievement in life. It’s like a man who walks in the street naked, while another person is clothed in shorts. The man wearing shorts might feel extremely dignified. “Look how important I am. I’m dressed in bigdei yom tov, bigdei malchus.” He’s wearing shorts, but he looks at his naked friend and imagines himself dignified. When comparing yourself to others, you can deceive yourself. But in those days, everybody was clothed properly in mitzvos. That was the bare minimum. Everybody did everything. And still, there was so much teshuvah needed that for lack of it, Hashem threatened them with the Tochachah — and we see that eventually it happened.
Now, don’t think they were sent into exile because the people threw away the Torah. No! The nevi’im never accused them of eating unkosher. The nevi’im never accused anybody of disregarding the laws of taharas hamishpachah. That was out of the question — everybody kept everything. Yet still, there was a necessity for teshuvah — a very great necessity for teshuvah — because teshuvah is different than you imagine. Real teshuvah means to make your way closer to Hashem in ways you don’t think about. That’s called kirvas Hashem — you come closer to Hashem. You have to feel Him.
When people want to do teshuvah, they might think they should do more mitzvos — and certainly, do more mitzvos. They might think they should put on a frum externality — excellent, do that, too. But neither of those is the heart of teshuvah. The heart of teshuvah is to start yearning for Hashem. The essence of teshuvah is wanting to come back to Him. If people want to be frum — they want to live in frum neighborhoods, look like frum Jews, have a frum home — all that is very good. But if in their hearts they haven’t yet developed a yearning, a longing to come close to Hashem, they haven’t begun the real teshuvah. We’re not minimizing good deeds. We’re happy when anybody does anything, and he’s certainly fortunate if he does so. Happy is the man who becomes a shomer Shabbos — he’s saved himself. Happy is the couple who begin keeping taharas hamishpachah. Wonderful! Happy is the man who learns to do all the mitzvos. Wonderful! Nevertheless, he hasn’t started on the true road to teshuvah.
And so, we come back now to that statement in the Torah. “Ki hamitzvah hazos, this commandment that I am commanding you today, lo bashamayim hi, it’s not in the sky.” No, it’s not that difficult. “V’lo mei’eiver layam — it’s not overseas.” You don’t have to travel to Eretz Yisrael to do teshuvah. You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s right here. Where is it? It’s right inside of you. “Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od, it’s in your heart, b’ficha uvilvavcha la’asoso.”
Real teshuvah is achieving the attitude of feeling the presence of Hashem always. It’s an attitude all of us can achieve. It just takes work. All our lives we must strive to do the best we can by constantly seeking more and more kirvas Hashem, by coming back to Hashem as much as possible. The more kirvas Hashem, the more you think about Hashem, the more you are coming back to Him in real teshuvah. And that, the pasuk says, is readily available if you constantly say over the Torah’s principles with your mouth and spend time thinking into them.
Why am I desensitized to sin? Is there anything I can do about it?
The Rabbeinu Yonah explains in the first paragraph of Sha’arei Teshuvah that when a man commits a sin, he has put a sickness into his neshamah.
Now, the neshamah is an entity even more real than the body. The body is only temporary. We think the body is something, but it’s only a collection of gasses, mostly gasses, and the time will come when it will all dissipate into the air. You think the body remains in the earth, but really nothing remains after a while. It decays into gasses and is wafted away into the atmosphere. That’s the body. It’s imagination. “Like a dream that passes” (Iyov 20:8).
But the neshamah is real. It’s more real than the Rock of Gibraltar. Can you imagine the Rock of Gibraltar melting away? Absolutely — an atom bomb could melt it away and turn it into dust, into energy. But the neshamah is permanent, truly permanent.
Now, the neshamah is subject to maladies of its own kind. There are certain illnesses of the neshamah, and they’re more serious than the illnesses of the body. A sin is a sickness of the neshamah. It’s like a cancer for the neshamah. And you can’t just forget about it. Once it’s there, the smallest sin is a cancer that will continue to devour the neshamah. Like the Chovos Halevavos says — no sin is small if you don’t repent of it.
Therefore, it’s important to speak to ourselves about the great subject of our inner existence, what we really are. We’re really an entity that transcends all physical existence. There’s nothing as important as our neshamah, and we must guard it more than our money. Let’s say you have $100,000 in cash. You’re not going to leave it lying around in your home. You’ll probably look for a vault in Switzerland where it’s well guarded. The neshamah should be guarded no less.
But people guard their neshamos a lot less, if at all. They go to places where their neshamah is in the greatest danger. Anybody who goes to places where his neshamah can be harmed is demonstrating that he doesn’t believe in its existence. He doesn’t believe the neshamah can be affected by external conditions. If a man opens up a treif-pasul book to read, or listens to a radio program full of leitzanus — and al achas kama v’kama if he watches a TV program — he doesn’t realize that this tumah is going into his soul. His soul is being changed. No question it’s being affected. Would a man take all his money into the street and carry it around in the open where there are criminals? Even decent people become criminals when they see a lot of money. But this man takes his neshamah — which is a million times more important than his money — and exposes it to the worst dangers.
We have to realize not only that we have a neshamah, but that the neshamah is vulnerable, very vulnerable. “Mikol mishmar, n’tzor libecha — More than anything, guard your mind” (Mishlei 4:23). “Libecha — your heart” doesn’t mean the physical heart. It means your mind, where your neshamah resides. More than anything you guard in this world, you must guard your neshamah. “Ki mimenu totzos chaim — Because from that comes forth all the results of life” (ibid.), life in this world and in the next world. Your neshamah is your most precious possession.
Suppose a person with a deadly infectious disease sits next to you on the bus, and he’s coughing. You’d run away from him immediately! It’s a sakanah gedolah! Now suppose you’re sitting next to a man who’s talking divrei meenus. It’s not enough just to disregard what he says. It’s like disregarding the coughing man with the fatal disease. Disregarding won’t help much. If you value your life, you must get up and run away! It’s even more so for the life of your neshamah! When somebody opens his mouth, he’s putting into your neshamah certain ideas you will never be able to remove. You can be the biggest ba’al teshuvah and the biggest tzaddik, but if a rasha or leitz says something to you, it enters your neshamah and remains there forever and ever.
Of course, you can do teshuvah. You can build on top of that a superstructure of teshuvah to cover it up, but it’s still there. Fifty years later, you might suddenly remind yourself of what a certain leitz said to you in your youth. Something filthy swims up in your mind. You’re an old grandfather now with a white beard, a talmid chacham, but something that was said fifty years ago by some nobody can still float up in your mind. That shows that it remains in your mind forever and ever.
The neshamah is the most vulnerable of all parts of your existence. Not only is it most vulnerable, but the disease of the neshamah, which is sin, is the most perilous of all diseases. It’s a fatal illness, no question. “The sinful soul is going to die” (Yechezkel 18:20). Sin causes many people to die in this world, and for those it doesn’t, they’ll find in the next world an even worse kind of death waiting for them.
However, now comes along the great Rofei cholim, Hashem, Who heals all and Who created a chessed called teshuvah. The chessed of teshuvah is that it can undo what was done already. Now, that’s something impossible to understand logically. How can you undo a sin? If a man corrupted his neshamah and introduced the fatal germs of sin and death into his soul, can he undo that? Will it go away by saying he’s sorry ten times? If a man is dying of a terminal illness and says he’s very sorry, will it cure him? And sin is more serious than any kind of physical illness. But Hashem tells us that teshuvah works. It’s a tremendous kindness. It’s something we don’t understand. We say it but there’s no logic to back it up — it’s possible to undo your misdeeds! You can erase history. Yet that’s what teshuvah is. It’s a chessed beyond logic.
So teshuvah is a miracle. A man regrets his misdeeds and Hashem makes a special dispensation. He allows this man to remove that blemish from his soul, that spot of cancer that was a peril to him. He can save himself from the effects of sin by being sorry he did it. Of course, there are certain conditions to teshuvah, but it’s possible to do it. The first thing is to realize what a great miracle teshuvah is. To undo the past, to wipe out what happened before, is something we can’t understand. It is a chiddush gadol, a neis gadol. Teshuvah is a miracle, and for this miracle we must be grateful to Hashem. That’s what we’re saying in the Shemoneh Esrei three times every day. “Baruch Atah, Hashem, harotzeh biseshuvah.” We thank Hashem who “desires teshuvah.” We’re thanking Him that there’s such a metziyus, such a reality, called teshuvah. We thank Him for the opportunity of teshuvah.
Rabbeinu Yonah says that if a man comes back to Hashem with all his heart, he’s even more beloved by Hashem. Hashem will do a tremendous favor for ba’alei teshuvah. He’s going to change their neshamos. He’s going to cure them and remove all the stains from their souls. He’s going to give them full clean neshamos like when they were born. Like we say every morning, “Elokai, neshamah shenasata bi tehorah hi — Hashem, the neshamah You put in me is pure.”
It’s a remarkable thing. It’s a miracle. And it can’t be overemphasized how much we must express gratitude for that. That’s what “harotzeh biseshuvah” means — Hashem cleanses our souls and restores them to their original purity. Like it says, “Umal Hashem es l’vavcha — Hashem will circumcise your hearts” (Devarim 30:6). That means He will bring your hearts back perfectly to Him once you start doing teshuvah. Of course, it depends on him fulfilling the conditions. The more the conditions are satisfied, the better his teshuvah is.
Now, if a person is desensitized to sin, it’s because his sins have made his neshamah seriously ill. But going through the steps of teshuvah will help repair his neshamah and help him regain the proper sensitivity. That’s part of the miracle of teshuvah.
In what sense does teshuvah help?
Teshuvah helps in every sense except in the fact of history.
Now, I’ll explain that. When a man does a deed, he cannot unmake history — it remains part of history. However, when he does teshuvah, it is transformed from the character of a misdeed and becomes a good deed. When a man does something wrong and he sincerely repents of it, that wrong is now gilded over with pure gold, and it becomes something to be proud of. In this world people are afraid to admit that once they were sinners, but in the next world the truth will be revealed, and they will be honored for the fact that they overcame their past. They are honored for the fact that despite their sins, they worked so hard that they really regretted it, and they are going to be rewarded for the fact that they did a sin. Of course, there are conditions for that, but with the proper conditions, the history, although it is not erased, becomes inscribed with letters of gold.
Teshuvah is considered one of the great kindnesses of Hashem. It’s a great chessed and a great neis. And it’s something that is beyond our ability to explain. That’s why, when we say, “Baruch Atah, Hashem, harotzeh biseshuvah — We thank You, Hashem, the One Who wants repentance,” we have to understand the full impact of that blessing. That You, Hashem, are willing to accept teshuvah! You are the One Who makes teshuvah because You erase the stain that we created on our souls. Teshuvah is one of the greatest miracles that Hakadosh Baruch Hu accomplishes, and therefore, we should appreciate how great is that kindness.
Rav Avigdor Miller on Teshuvah and the Yamim Nora’im is available from Judaica Press.
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