Rabbi, I just wanted to share one idea with you tonight, or maybe more accurately, the beginning of an idea. One of the most basic dialectics or tensions in religious life is that between relating to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, perceiving Hakadosh Baruch Hu as one who inspires love but simultaneously also inspires fear. Hakadosh Baruch Hu inspires a love, not only that selfless ahava lishmah that the Rambam describes in Yesodei HaTorah, but perhaps a lower level of ahava that Rabbeinu Bahya talks about in Chovos HaLevavos as well. And ahava when a person sees just how much love Hakadosh Baruch Hu has bestowed upon us. When a person sees personally, individually in his own life, collectively Klal Yisrael as a whole, אהבת עולם בית ישראל אהבת. So Hakadosh Baruch Hu is one who inspires feelings of love that we know that ultimately כרחם אב על בנים. And yet, Hakadosh Baruch Hu also inspires fear. Chaim Volozhiner begins the drasha that we have from him from Selichos, the pasuk David HaMelech סמר מפחדך בשרי וממשפטיך יראתי. Lichora, it's not coincidental that the Rambam in, again, his famous discussion in the beginning of Perek Bet of Yesodei HaTorah when the Rambam writes האל הנכבד והנורא הזה מצוה לאהבו וליראה אותו שנאמר ואהבת את ה' אלהיך ונאמר את ה' אלהיך תירא.
It's not just the Rambam in his usual remarkable, with his remarkable gift for brevity and being able to formulate things so concisely. It's not only for that reason that the Rambam mentions the mitzvos of ahava and yira in the same bracha, in the same phrase. It's rather that the two mitzvos have to coexist. If a person only sees and relates to Hakadosh Baruch Hu as someone who loves us and therefore, reciprocally, is the object, is the recipient of our love, so that clearly distorts the relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. Maybe it's a little harsh to say so, but if that's the only dimension to one's perception of and relationship to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, it's a fool's paradise. The Gemara says in Bava Kamma, Mesillas Yesharim quotes it when he's making this point about כל האומר הקדוש ברוך הוא וותרן. מגיד לאדם מה שיחו אפילו שיחה קלה שבין אדם לאשתו מגיד לו בשעת הדין.
So it's absolutely and profoundly true that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is Avinu. Av Harachaman, but he's also Malkeinu and presumably this is some of the omek of what the Tefilla of Avinu Malkeinu is intended to encapsulate. Avinu, that simultaneously we see Hakadosh Baruch Hu as Avinu, and at the end of the day, whatever fear a father instills in a child, at the end of the day the child knows that the real foundation for the relationship between himself and his father is that of love. כרחם אב על בנים. On the other hand, no matter how benevolent the monarch, at the end of the day one knows that the defining feature or quality of that relationship is שום תשים עליך מלך שתהא אימתו עליך. Som tasim alecha. Shimi ben Gera was Shlomo Hamelech's rebbe. Didn't do him any good when he was mored bemalchus. And that's part of the omek of Avinu Malkeinu is that these two feelings, approaches, attitudes have to coexist. Any serious, sensitive oved Hashem has to work mightily and constantly to strike the appropriate balance between the two. If a person only, only feels and is preoccupied with the awe, the dread, the fear, it will definitely overwhelm a person. A person can't function that way, we're not intended to function that way. תחת אשר לא עבדת את השם אלקיך בשמחה. You can't, you can't live only thinking of the omek hadin, whether it's that omek hadin that Rav Chaim Volozhiner talks about in that drasha, some of the omek hadin that the Vilna Gaon talks about in his igueres. You can't live only with that. A person needs to to experience and to feel and to forever be cognizant of Avinu Av Harachaman, of כרחם אב על בנים. And yet, simultaneously, part of the the truth and part of the religious experience has to be hachilo u're'ada ya'achezun. And that's perhaps maybe the challenge, if not the challenge, certainly certainly one of the most basic challenges in avodas Hashem is is to maintain the correct balance between those two. And I'm not sure if the correct balance between those two is necessarily the same for everyone, but for everyone, both have to be present, both coexist, and there has to be a balance between the two. Nowhere is is this need to combine the seemingly incompatible, nowhere is this more evident than in the mitzvah of teshuva. The mitzvah of teshuva on the one hand is techilaso chesed ve'ahava, kulo chesed ve'ahava. The famous medrash Chazal, the Yerushalmi about hanefesh hachoteis, what should its fate be, how should it be dealt with? Only Hakadosh Baruch Hu said ya'aseh teshuva. The offer, the possibility, the opening for teshuva... an expression of chessed of ahavah. And if and when we take advantage of it, so the result of the teshuvah process again in the Rambam's famous description that after a person does teshuvah, היום הוא מדבק בשכינה, whatever he does מקבלין אותו בנחת ובשמחה, mis'aveh lahem. So certainly the mitzvah of teshuvah highlights again the element or the dimension of Hakadosh Baruch Hu as inspiring our love by bestowing rachamim, by bestowing chessed, by giving us reason for hope. And yet unless a person goes through the agonizing, at times depressing, and terrifying experience of what omek hadin represents, he can't do teshuvah. So teshuvah again is from olam hachessed, but for a person to take advantage of that world, a person has to look starkly, realistically at what din vecheshbon means, of what omek hadin is, and that's in in two respects. A, a person, it's highly unlikely that a person is going to do teshuvah unless he's on such a madreigah that he has very little to do teshuvah for. It's very unlikely that a person is going to do proper teshuvah unless he realizes just how exacting the din is when a person hasn't done teshuvah. A person has to look and confront the reality that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is not a vatran and that every detail of our lives we're accountable for. Now that's a very sobering and when you lock yourself in that spot terrifying reality. In addition, a person also has to be misbonen not only on how exacting din is, but a person also has to be misbonen on the magnitude of what he does. Dehainu, I mean this can be the illustration can be given for any of the mitzvos, but just to take one where it's been very developed, part of what the Chafetz Chaim did in trying to impress upon us the need for shmiras halashon was just to be melaket as he himself says the ma'amarei Chazal that it sends a shudder through a person when he realizes what the magnitude is of chato'im when he's not nizaher. I don't know how it was in in earlier But there's no question that in our dor that we're uncomfortable with this part of the equation, the reflecting upon how exacting din is and the recognizing just what the ramifications and what the magnitude of our deeds and misdeeds are. The challenge of teshuva is just as again what the lesson the Rambam implies by putting the mitzvos of ahava and yirah into a single halacha is that these two have to coexist. In order to really do teshuva, in order to really take advantage of that gift of teshuva, in order for a person to experience the אשריכם ישראל לפני מי אתם מטהרים ומי מטהר אתכם, a person has to go through a very trying ordeal. It's not easy to do teshuva. A person has to confront scary realities. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, there's a havtacha. At the end of the day, all the awe and fear and dread that we're supposed to have notwithstanding, there's a havtacha. There's a havtacha that הבא לטהר מסייעין אותו and there's a havtacha that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is ימינו פשוטה לקבל שבים. You can't fast forward to that. You can't. In some places there's a minhag that after Yom Kippur to sing and to dance, and it's a very beautiful minhag. You can't sleep your way through Yom Kippur and just wait for that beautiful moment. So at the end of the day, again, in terms of this delicate balance and this coexistence, the picture at the end of the day is an optimistic picture because agam that אדם אין צדיק בארץ אשר יעשה טוב ולא יחטא but there's a havtacha, A, of הבא לטהר מסייעין אותו and B, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is עד יום מותו תחכה לו, Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants to be mekabel bitshuva. That's the again the part of teshuva which is and always should be me'orer in a person a sense of ahava for Hashem because he realizes that we're the recipients of Hakadosh Baruch Hu's ahava. But we can't delude ourselves into thinking that because teshuva comes from olam hachesed, comes from olam ha'ahava, that it's not a gut-wrenching experience. It is, it has to be. It has to be because the only way I can do a proper teshuva is if I have an accurate perception of A, what my accountability is and B, what I did and the magnitude of what I did. You know, if someone hurts you deeply and then gives a very casual apology, so all right, maybe the halacha says you're supposed to be mochel benefesh chafetza and you do it, but on one level you think that the apology doesn't really cut it because it doesn't reflect an understanding of what the person did wrong. It shows a superficial grasp of what happened. To do a proper teshuva, we have to have some hasaga of what it is. Again, coming back. Now at the stage, and it's a stage, you can't get locked in here. It's dangerous, dangerous to get locked in. But at the stage when a person is reflecting upon that, it's excruciatingly painful. The Abravanel says that the peshuto shel mikra in V'inisem es nafshoseichem is not the chamisha inuyim, but the peshuto shel mikra in V'inisem es nafshoseichem is the inuy a person experiences in doing teshuvah. It can't be otherwise. Can't be otherwise. So the challenge is that a person has to open himself up to that, but a person can't get locked in there. Person gets locked in there, so Rachmana litzlan he's mityaesh, Rachmana litzlan he can sink into depression, and that's certainly not ratzon Hashem. It's antithetical to everything we're supposed to do. And yet, despite the fact that we're not supposed to get locked in, we do have to go through that stage, and we have to be prepared for it. When the Rambam describes that in darkei hateshuvah that a person cries and he's tzo'ek, a person has to allow himself to feel that pain. He has to feel that devastation. He has to feel the pachad at the omek hadin. It's only if a person opens himself up to that, again carefully, with the intention of moving beyond, with the intention of that being a catalyst, then a person can ultimately come to the berina yiktzoru of the ashreichem Yisrael. So obviously this needs to be developed for each of us ba'asher hu sham. I hope that each of us should be zocheh to be ba l'taher and to be the recipient of the havtacha of misyeno and we should also all be zocheh to be chozer b'teshuvah sheleimah.