Every year during this season and of course culminating in Yom Kippur we recite the Viduy. Viduy by definition has to be a painful experience reciting Viduy. If it's not painful probably it's an indication that we're not focused on what we're saying. It's painful to admit failure and to be misvadeh is in certain areas in certain aspects to admit failure. So there's no way and one should not look to be anesthetized against feeling that pain in being misvadeh. But sometimes there's an added element which we don't want to be there which shouldn't be there. Sometimes when we're misvadeh it feels and maybe it actually is the case that we were misvadeh this way last year sincerely and misvadeh as the Rambam says not only charata al he'avar but a kabala lehaba and yet this year we find ourselves in the same position and the Al Chet is as relevant on the same level in the same way. It's depressing and it also potentially shakes one's confidence in his current teshuva as well because if I went through this experience last year and this year I find myself in the same position so what does that mean and what does that bode? So how does that happen? One thing we know isn't the case. It isn't the case that last year's Viduy especially on Yom Kippur was insincere. A Jew can't be insincere on Yom Kippur whether one wants to correlate it with the Chazal that there's no yeitzer hara on Yom Kippur however one will explain it. Whatever shortcomings we may have in sincerity at other times on Yom Kippur a person is honest, a person is sincere, a person is straight. So if that's the case how is it that we sometimes find that the teshuva doesn't stick, the teshuva doesn't endure? So I just wanted to review with you three possible reasons, three perspectives. Rambam writes in Perek Beis of Hilchos Teshuva Halacha Beis he says when a person does teshuva יעיד עליו יודע תעלומות שלא ישוב לזה החטא לעולם. The Lechem Mishneh explains that יעיד עליו יודע תעלומות means like ואעידה בם את השמים ואת הארץ. I will call as a witness, I will call to testify. It's a transitive that the subject is the person who's being shav betshuva and Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the Yodeya Ta'alumos is the object. And the person who's doing teshuva calls Hakadosh Baruch Hu to attest to the sincerity of his resolve, of his kabala lehaba never to repeat the chet. The significance of that as follows: so think of the following mashal. Let’s say you go to the doctor and the doctor tells you that you need to exercise. If you exercise you’ll feel better, you’ll look better, you’ll be more energetic. Okay. So you commit to it. You make a commitment. Let’s say someone else goes to the doctor and the doctor tells him that I’m telling you v’lo guzma that your sedentary lifestyle is killing you. So that person also makes a commitment, but he makes an absolute commitment. There are commitments: sincere, real, honest, and then there are absolute commitments. In order for a teshuva to stick, the thought has to go into it that results not in just a commitment but an absolute commitment, a sense that everything is at stake, that everything hinges on this commitment that I’m making. A cheit is a bad thing, it’s a thing not to do, or is it poison like Ramchal says? A mitzvah is something good, it’s a good deed, it’s something good and noble to do, or l’kach nutzarnu, l’kach nutzarnu? Difference between a commitment and an absolute commitment. If the Rambam tells us that the baal teshuva, hopefully, hopefully we all merit that label, invites Hakadosh Baruch Hu to attest as to the firmness of his resolve שלא ישוב לזה החטא לעולם, a person doesn’t do that unless he’s making an absolute commitment. He doesn’t invite Hakadosh Baruch Hu to testify as to a commitment. Okay, another perspective. Sometimes you find there’ll be an appeal and someone will make a large pledge. Let’s say someone will pledge $100,000. Then when it comes time to pay, he begins to procrastinate. He finds this excuse, that excuse, and ultimately either he doesn’t pay at all or he certainly doesn’t honor the full amount of his commitment. So what happened here? So it could be, could be the guy’s a faker from head to toe and you know he was posturing, thought he’d score a few public relation points and never meant it. Okay, you could imagine such a hypothetical scenario. But more likely what happens in such a case is that the person just heard a stirring appeal for whatever, for this cause, for this tzedaka, for this mosad, he heard a stirring appeal and he was really inspired. The $100,000 that he pledged is going to pinch. He could honor it, but it’s going to hurt. It’s not an easy commitment for him to honor. So what happens? As time passes and as there’s temporal distance between himself and that stirring appeal and that level of inspiration that he felt, so he’s left with the commitment but without the same degree of inspiration. Even if when the doctor gives him mussar shmuze about the exercise, the person is really inspired and really commits, again, absolute commitment. But as time passes and as the echo of the doctor's words fade, so then the degree of inspiration begins to drop. And then when you're left with a commitment that's made when you're at the peak of inspiration and then you're not at that peak anymore and you're left without that same commitment, so then there's a problem there. Rabbeinu Yonah writes at the end of Sha'ar Sheini of Sha'arei Teshuvah: הנה נחתום הענין הזה במאמר נכבד אשר לחכמי ישראל זכרונם לברכה היה הלל עליו השלום אומר אם אין אני לי מי לי וכשאני לעצמי מה אני ואם לא עכשיו אימתי ביאור הדבר אם האדם לא יעורר נפשו מה יועילוהו המוסרים כי אף על פי שנכנסים בלבו ביום שומעו ישכחם היצר ויעבירם מלבבו.
A person can hear a tremendously rousing and effective shmuess and when he hears it, it really hits home, it registers, nichnasim belibo. But it's going to fade, ישכחם היצר ויעבירם מלבבו. So what's the preemptive measure? How does one how does one prevent that? Tzarich ha-adam, I skipped a few lines, בשומעו המוסר לעורר נפשו ולשום הדברים על לבו ולחשוב מהם תמיד.
Returning to the mashal of the person who hears the appeal, so he has to he has to retain what was said and he now has to constantly rethink and review and reinforce everything he heard that generated that inspiration because the inspiration doesn't last on its own. It doesn't, it peters out. Says Rabbeinu Yonah: בשומעו המוסר לעורר נפשו ולשום הדברים על לבו ולחשוב מהם תמיד.
The person who made that stirring appeal, so if I'm moved to make a big pledge, so I need to take out my index card and I need to write down bullets what the points were that were so moving and then if I can sustain the inspiration, I'll be able to sustain the commitment. But when we lose the inspiration and we're left with a commitment when the doctor's mussar shmuess wears off and I still have to get up every day and go jog or go or go or go on the treadmill, the inspiration has to be there to match the commitment. Okay, one more perspective. When you look I guess the first sefer of this genre, I guess the one who really created the genre systematically is the Chovos HaLevavos. So when you look at the Chovos HaLevavos on down, Chovos HaLevavos is very very, this is intended 100% leshvach. In addition to all the profound ideas, very practical. So is Mesillas Yesharim, ofen kinyas middas, fill in the blank. Sometimes the the initial commitment is what it should be and we can even be looking to maintain the inspiration, but it has to be practical. It has to be practical. If if I have a problem with kaas, so it's not enough that my resolve is so absolute that yodea taalumos and that and that I'm constantly reviewing. How am I going to improve? For the past x years of my life, all these things provoke me and all these things elicit anger. So le'maiseh, how am I going to be different when I find myself in the identical circumstances? Kabbalah lehaba can't just be a general Kabbalah, I'm not going to do it. The question is how, or if it's something I'm supposed to be doing, that I'm going to do it. How am I not going to do it? How am I going to do it? How am I going to be able to implement it practically? Again, look at all the classic sifrei mussar, they're very practical. Very practical. How am I going to do it? Again, the doctor let's continue with our mashal. The doctor tells you to exercise. Okay, I'm going to exercise. What do you mean you're going to exercise? The whole reason you never exercise is because you're too busy to exercise. So it's fine and good to say I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. Le'maiseh, how are you going to do it? How are you going to implement, how are you going to implement that? Okay, I'm going to buy a treadmill and have it in my home and I'm going to eliminate this from my schedule and this half hour. Okay, but there has to be a practical, concrete approach as to how I'm going to implement that commitment. Sometimes when we do teshuvah, even if the commitment is what it should be, and even if the inspiration remains—it's not because of the waning inspiration—but sometimes it wasn't, it was never translated into practical terms in terms of le'maiseh, le'maiseh, how do I try to implement this? How do I try avoiding this? If I talk during davening, if I'm sometimes not nice to people, so tachlis, so how am I going to change that? How am I going to change it? Does it have something to do with the people I sit next to in davening? Is that part of the cause? I have to understand what the general context is and in order to be able to implement it. In a similar vein, and not only does the sort of the approach, the implementation have to be practical, but the Kabbalah also has to be practical. What does that mean? You know, this sort of during the yemei hadin verachamim, we avada avada try to identify rachmana litzlan any chata'im and eliminate them, but we're also looking to grow. There's so much in avodas Hashem, in kedushah as אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור. A person can be resolving and committing, not necessarily to avoiding a cheit, but could be that the amount I've been learning until now, I'm not guilty of bittul Torah, but there's still room for me to commit to learn more. And could be that the amount of chesed I'm doing presently, I'm not guilty of violating ve'ahavta lerei'acha kamocha. So I'm not talking about teshuvah in that sense, but in the sense of growth. When one is dealing not with cheit, but with growth in אלו דברים שאין להם שיעור, so there, part of the practicality has to be that again, how much I undertake to do also has to be practical. A person can't undertake too much. A person's not going to go, it's going to be a highly, highly unusual case, and maybe it doesn't exist, a person's not going to go from learning four hours a day to making people forget who Rav Elyashiv was and wonder why people were impressed with what they thought was his hasmadah. It's not likely to happen overnight from going from learning four hours a day. It has to be again, if we're talking about cheit rachmana litzlan, again, a person who. was brought up frum, not talking about a person who's becoming frum, that's a totally, totally different parsha. So in terms of chait, so chait, a person, what's realistic is a person's goal has to be I'm not going to do it at all. But in terms of growth, so then there a person has to make sure again that the commitment is realistic and and is practical. A gute Shabbos.