Atonement for the Sins of Our Forefathers Shaarei Teshuva 1:39 & 40 with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] welcome back to the heborah for the shari truva zak mohod misrat hashem we will be covering uh we're still in char aleth paragraphs 39 and 40. before we begin i just want to mention we're still dominating for a rule for shalema a refusal amen for repinto yoho yosef ben zakri okay bizrat hashem a complete and quick refer amongst all those who are sick of the children of israel amongst the children of israel not of the children of israel because hashem so what we're going to discuss let me just tell you the topics so in 39 we're going to talk about the importance i'm putting these in quotes of the lesser mitzvas there's no such thing as lesser misses we'll call the light mitzvahs again why are they light maybe there's less effort involved perhaps because they're only positive mitzvahs and they don't have they don't carry such a stringent um penalty or consequence if they're missed out we'll talk about that and bizrat hashem will get into paragraph 40 which we'll be discussing the concept of confession the doing but not just our sins but also the sins of our forefathers of our fathers who came before us okay so to show we'll get to those subjects who win as well okay so let's start we're on page 90 for those that are using the same safer otherwise and known as paragraph 39 okay so now we're talking about this idea that it's important to consider like somehow in your mind have consideration for what we call a minor transgression that's how uh he translates it the amar allah shalom said king solomon in mishlai that would be proverbs chapter 13 verse 13 he who despises a thing will be pledged to it now i i have to tell you when you start to learn the hebrew the english never does it any justice so in hebrew what i just read right he despises a thing will be pledged to it doesn't doesn't even make sense in english i'm sorry to say but so buzz is shameful to shame a thing we'll have to discuss what this thing is it means to be injured by it so if you shame something whatever this davar is a thing you be injured by it but he who reveres a commandment the mitzvah but having or or reverence for a mitzvah who is compensated will receive a reward okay so let's find out what roberto yoda wants he's going to take this phrase apart and help us understand what it means so they translated in this particular book one who scorns a word right shames a word will suffer injury will be injured by one who fears a mitzvah he will be rewarded this idea of shaming was regarding someone who is la vero they wrote someone who transgresses those light mixes again or they're taking these minor transgressions and treating them lightly the very fact that it says in hebrew buzz ledavar la dover is a word so what word are we referring to we're referring to god's words that doesn't matter if he says when you wear a four corner garment make sure that you don't have you make sure you have since this hanging from them or do not murder right they're all his word and if we are going to be obedient and i know that word sounds very strange right if we're going to be chaumer torah mitzvah we're going to observe i like that word better observe right we're going to observe the mitzvahs so what's the difference if it's you know food mitzvahs that you know that you're not allowed to eat certain things or you know how to make mixtures out of certain foods or what we would call more severe mitzvahs the truth is it's the word of the king the word of god and that's what he says so i know that when it comes to gentiles right the the the seven minutes of the nanak many of these light mitzvahs are beyond them they don't have to right it's they're not obligated to i know many of them want to and call it kavod i give them a lot of credit for wanting to to to observe the word of god but everyone should get their own priorities straight right for a jew and i hope you i'm talking to you to get your priorities straight right don't think it's just the 10 commandments hanging on the wall right those 10 commandments have 620 letters and 620 letters break down to the 613 mitzvahs and the seven mitzvahs that were given to the gentile world the rest of the the rest of the universe okay and only through what we call believing this is one of the concepts in judaism you have principles of our faith that the same torah that we have that we were given then is the same torah we have today that it's coming from heaven that it's god's word and why else would i do it if it wasn't god's word okay maybe it makes sense for society so for a gentile okay that doesn't make him or her a righteous gentile truth be told it makes them a wise a wise person but wouldn't you want to be a righteous gentile who goes to the world to come with the jewish people right who wouldn't want to join up with the jewish people for eternity so here's your opportunity investigate the seven minutes of noah in the meantime we're talking mainly to jews but this this class particularly you should know we're talking about ethics we're talking about how you should have awe and take seriously whatever transgressions you're doing so that's what that's what this is about so we invite everybody to join us so the first part of the verse king solomon is referring to one who scorns a minor transgression by taking them lightly which means like this that that person will suffer injury in the ways we mentioned above in previous chapter the yar mitzvah now said and fear or reveres the mitzvah what is that tell mitzvah that the person would have this fear and a fear is i'm not going to say it's an emotion i mean it it's definitely a feeling it's definitely something to be conscious of to to want to be in that level where you are afraid that you're going to pass over an opportunity to do a mitzvah i described in some of my last few classes what's the difference between a positive mitzvahs usually do not carry any severe penalty in fact the the severity is get it is the missed opportunity god gave you an opportunity to come close to him and you just passed it over it wasn't important to you that's a tragedy to understand that's what the tragedy of missing out on the positive misses so that's why it's called enlightenment on the other hand we're talking about one who fears mitzvah meaning he's afraid to neglect performing when we say mitzvah obligation we're talking about positive it's a missed obligation as opposed to a major transgression so one should have the same feeling of missing out on a doing a positive mitzvah which we'll call a mitzvah obligation he should have she should have the same feeling that oh my god it's like murder right like or fighter worship right like in your mind's eye and your sensitive spiritual mind intellectual spiritually mind mind's eye is it's god's word how can i transgress i have an opportunity to come close to him the truth is by performing the negative commandment what you are doing is putting an obstacle in your in your relationship so one is building the relationship and the other god forbid is um causing a distancing in that relationship simple to understand and the verse ends who is he will be rewarded the person will be rewarded meaning in the future okay the one of the main principles of judaism is we're not rewarded in this world we're not looking forward to the reward in this world however we did discuss how one could find some of the pay wrote what is the difference between the main reward is waiting for us in the world to come the fruits the crumbs the taste of the reward we can receive in this world there's like 26. things we can do in order to taste that and i'll just give you like for example two or three of them is if you do with joy it's right if you perform the action with simcha with joy you will receive some of the fruits in this world if you spend money and the other one is efforts you know if you run to do it or if it's difficult to do and you push aside your calendar and you make sure right you make certain sacrifices so the efforts you do also help you enjoy some of the reward in this world okay and there is a few notes i wanted to talk about so maybe this is one of them and number three this is because he demonstrates true fear of hashem and because he will surely be careful to fulfill all the misses and avoid all the prohibitions with this reverence for even the minor commandments this person stands in contrast to one mentioned early in the verse meaning the opposite of one who scorns them we said he would be injured whereas the person who fears them would be or reveres them would be rewarded okay now our rabbis mentioned this is a famous famous statement in perky a vote it says in chapter 2 verse one which i don't think i brought down but anyway i'll mention it how these all here beneath the scala commits that one should be this is from our great sages now they didn't make these statements up but they were known for saying these statements these concepts we'll call them principles were told over at mount sinai and handed down generation after generation and revealed i mean they were revealed then but they were let's say re revealed you know spoken about in certain generations where those rabbis those leaders felt the need for their generation to hear those words of their leaders speaking them and it says that one should be careful in performing what we call mitzvot again does it mean light mitzvahs less severe punishment easy mitzvahs it's hard to translate but it could mean any one of those things or all of those things so one should be scrupulous in performing what we call putting in parentheses a minor mitzvah just as in performing a major misread furthermore they said shimitsta gorerit mitzvah the average of their this is an interesting concept what does it mean that a mitzvah i'll use the word drag go rare it it doesn't always mean to drag like i like to use a snowball the snowball effect as a better example okay for those north of the equator right or way south be quite people who have snow they know if they're on a hill and they make a little bit of a snowball and they put it on the ground and they can roll it and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger it's fun enjoy it so what happens is the truth is when one does let me just back it up every single mitzvah is actually interconnected and intertwined like an electrical level on a metaphysical level with every other mitzvah so when i perform a mit just one of the 613 as i mentioned to you already the they're all intertwined they're all the letters can only read right in the in the ten commandments they only make sense as an interconnectivity right there it's par each let each letter is a mitzvah and each letter is part of a word and each word is part of the sentence and they only make sense as a whole group okay so on a certain level every mitzvah is actually interconnected to every other mitzvah now this is interesting because that's the same thing with our jewish soul and our jewish brothers that every single one of us is a collective whole called israel and if i perform either a mitzvah or god forbid the other way around i affect either positively or negatively the entire nation so this is the truth when it comes to the misses try to imagine when i do that mitzvah what am i what am i really doing i'm creating an angel true i'm creating energy i'm creating light right the word torah actually also means light so by doing the mitzvah we said the mitzvah is the candle it's the light i'm doing a mitzvah it's instilling energy called spiritual energy into my limbs i have 248 certain types of limbs bones and whatnot 365 other types of organs and ceneus and they match up altogether 613. every time i do a mitzvah god forbid the other way around it's either increasing the light or decreasing the light that will actually be used in the resurrection of the dead so what i'm doing by doing the mitzvah i'm creating this energy that's really light and it is um when i do the mitzvah i'm actually creating like a spark a small little spark you know like they have spark plugs in in engines i don't know if they have them anymore today but uh just try to imagine that you're increasing you're like lighting a very small spark in the other 612 mixes that you do and therefore it's going to make it easier to do the next mitzvah other than the one you just did so it's like spreading the joy also when i do when i'm doing a myth i'm spreading that amongst the jewish people right collectively they're also getting a part of my mitzvah so to each mitzvah is interconnected and getting a little bit of the light like a spark just a little spark so just to keep this in mind when we do mitzvot we're helping jews who are not religious also do mitzvahs that's unbelievable amazing idea let's say two jews one gives sadaka but he doesn't really that's charity but he doesn't really have the full kavanagh maybe he's giving it because his neighbor gave it and he feels ashamed not to give it that's obviously not the greatest reason to give he may get credit for giving but let's say there's another jew who doesn't have much money and maybe he doesn't have any money at all but he wants to give and he goes over to the poor person he apologizes he starts crying how much he wants to give and he doesn't have any money so can imagine how it works that this jew who wants to give for the fullest correct reasons because god said to give and he doesn't have any money but he wants to give he's also fulfilling the mitzvah because there's another jew who gave and the one who gave is getting part of the jew who gave with simple joy and meaning because every jew is really responsible for each other and we're all all interconnected okay so now think of this ultimate level so too i do one mitzvah i'm igniting a flame a small little spark in the other mitzvah which means it's going to be easier to do because there's already a light you know when you take um i don't know if they still have these but i guess they do uh a pilot light in a in a stovetop right so the difference between just turning the gas on where you don't have to click click click anything right there's no electric ignition that's creating a spark the spark's already there the flames are there you just turn the gas and boom it's gone it's up right the flame is there it's like jump starting it makes it easier now there are those that don't have this uh constant flame it's called a pilot light and they have to either light a match they have to physically light a match or they have to click and hold a button or do something to make a spark you see the difference it's like okay you get it you're already jump starting makes it easier so that's how i think of these ideas in terms of the snowball effect it means that when you start rolling this ball it's going to get bigger and bigger it's got it's it has inertia it's going and it's keeping keeps moving and it keeps getting bigger and that's what happens when you do misses and i want to talk about the difference between maybe like not the differences in terms of like a real radical difference but just in terms of practical difference let's say for example between asia torah and chabad right because today tonight is rob north weinberg it was the founder of uh asiatora it's his 12th yard site so he believed that go and ask people off the street get them to come in and learn torah the rebbe he's not the only one many people but in particular felt you know what they see somebody walking down the street asking if they want to put on to fill in both ideas are really the same it's just a prac it's just different practice get the person to do one mitzvah and once they do one mitzvah that'll be easier to do another mitzvah and then easier to do another mitzvah because when that person where they find a girl a woman they give out candles on friday afternoon hey won't you like shabbos candles so they're doing this mitzvah whether it's the filling or lighting candles they're getting into a mitzvah and that mitzvah is going to go rarely drag them to do another mitzvah meaning make it easier to do another mitzvah because it already there was a spark you ignited the flame and it's bigger and it's going to get bigger and it's going to share the joy with the other mitzvahs with the other jews with amish what about revenue weinberg's idea i mean it's also not an original idea that if you learn torah even it's lola even if it was not for the right reasons hopefully that will bring you and and we know that torahs can negate all the mixes so that's a very powerful mitzvah i think it's much easier to get someone walking down the street or in the airport to put on to fill in that it is to get them to come to yeshiva for an hour or more to learn some torah so there's definitely different practice hashem that's why we have all these different colors and streams of jews right doing different different ways that their personality can express themselves some people like other mitzvahs and broke hashem everyone can take on one particular mitzvah just perfect it and that's really good enough actually right take one make it perfect and streamline out into all the other mixes but keep in mind just one particular mitzvah as maybe your life sky i have no idea obviously it doesn't mean not to do the other mixes it means to spread out but put your energy into trying to perfect at least one minute okay so this idea of what i have here note five okay number five when we just discuss this idea of one mitzvah i'll just actually read his words one mitzvah leads to another mitzvah and one transgression leads to another transgression he brings down this is the law of human nature when a person does a mitzvah even if it's a minor one he becomes he becomes closer to hashem and accustoms himself to obeying his word this makes it more natural for him to perform another mitzvah even though the second mitzvah may require more effort than the first one the process continues with each successful mitzvah becoming more natural to perform and with the person willing to invest ever greater effort into his performance of misses thus he will eventually fulfill all the mitzvahs on the other hand when one when a person commits even a minor transgression he distances himself from hashem and accustoms himself to disregarding meaning that's the buzz le davar the shaming of the word okay now we're going to go to page 92 and this naturally leads him into a downward spiral in which he commits ever greater sins and eventually hustle shalom god forbid violates the entire torah and as a consequence by the way in this idea of one mitzvah drags if that's how we're going to translate gore it and drags one misses so too and the vera drags more there is guess what the reward for a mitzvah is another mitzvah mitzvah mitzvah scara there the actual consequences of doing a mitzvah is a mitzvah meaning when i say actual consequences i'm not talking about the negative i'm talking about the positive right by doing one mitzvah it's metaphysically the reward like like an opportunity right you're involved in one mitzvah hashem right an opportunity to come close to hashem and then hashem right orchestrates is that a good word the world for you and he's now placing already in your path another opportunity wow so once you're already on the way he's going to right he'll lead you in the way you want to go basically that's the fantastic thing about free will we all have it the question is what are we doing with it so as a consequence of doing this mitzvah again i want to just tell you again and i it's very important the word mitzvah literally means that the root is not necessarily command it does mean command but it also means to bear to connect from the word uh savit sevit is a it means a group a staff a group of people working for a common goal okay that's what a seventh is and that's what the chabert the mitzvah the literal root is to connect so now you know that every time god gives you a mitzvah to do it means an opportunity to connect more than that it's mem sadiq vav hey the it's the last two letters of god's name the first two letters is mem sadiq what does that have to do with god's name so there's a gamatra called atbash you guys are probably guys listening on skype they've heard this over and over again but it's how you get it into your head and live with this reality is is is to change your life the mem tzadik is really the athbash the aleph tough meaning the first letter of the alphabet and the last letter the alphabet are interchangeable same thing with the second letter and the second to the last letter and on and on and on whether in value or as replacements therefore the word the word mitzvah the first two letters is the yud and the hay so by transform what you're doing by connecting to hashem you're literally bringing him into the world you're actually connecting to the the almighty the you'd have ave i mean there's nothing greater in this world than having that opportunity so cherish every mitzvah that comes to your hands right and know that the reward of doing one mitzvah will bring on more shepherd more of this energy if i can translate shepherd that way okay now we're on paragraph 40 and we're talking about now the 14th principle and that's called is from the root which means to admit okay to admit and we're going to use the word confession okay now in judaism we only confess to hashem there's no reason i mean there are certain times at certain places where we have to make restitution and sometimes that will involve a personal uh i wouldn't call it confession though apology for sure i mean if you're gonna apologize and not mention what it was maybe it's not really an apology so you have to speak to your local orthodox rabbi about how and when we do uh make restitution what's the best way to go up there doing that and involving the uh the revelation of what sin you did to another human being in the meantime most of what we're talking about is directly between you and the almighty the creator of the universe so we're going to go into vayikra chapter 5 verse 5 and it says and it shall be when someone incurs guilt in any one of these cases that he shall confess the sin which he had committed that confession um i do have to tell you that this is not the only source this is the source that the robina yona brings down and but if you want to look in numbers chapter 5 verses 6 and 7 this is the source the rambam brings down tell the children of israel when a man or a woman commits any of the sins against man to act treacherously against god and that person is found guilty they shall confess the sin they committed and make restitution for the principal amount of his guilt add its fit to it and give it to the one against whom he was guilty okay so just keep in mind there's more than one verse this is the verse that the the ravino yonah brings so since it says he shall confess that which he sinned now this is a very interesting let me usually when one confesses their own sins they have to confess their forefathers sins as well when i mean like this if you go and i don't know if everyone has a copy of this i'll just use as an example this is an art school door and there are two places now not every art school sitter has this page but then i don't know but in the shimon sure and what we call tofila because we're going to talk about this now soon that the real confession is during prayer that what not only are we confessing but we're asking for atonement we're asking hashem to forgive us so in the middle of the shimon ashrae that's the silent prayer in the prayer that we're asking god to accept our prayer in shema kolenu there's a little paragraph off to the side where we're asking on a personal level in other words we're not just saying words we have to add in it's true it's all personal because it's iii but also there's a place to add in your sin please oh hashem i mean i'm reading in english so hebrew it's a whole different thing i have heard been iniquitous and willfully sinned before you from the day i have existed on earth until this very day and especially with the sin of blank blank blank that's when you have the opportunity to say these words please hashem act for the sake of your great name and grant me atonement for my iniquities my errors so you're actually asking him for atonement right if you don't ask what a waste what a waste okay might as well ask um for which i have heard been iniquitous and willfully sin before you from my youth until this day and make um and make whole all the names that i have blemished in your great name now that's a personal prayer later on there's some have this edition some people don't only because art scroll i think i don't know where they had it before but it's like uh it looks like an addition so uh on page 119 a meaning after the shmoness right after the repetition we do the deutsch called confession but this is plural and we're going to read some verses from daniel to show you where we got it from so not only do we have our personal vedoi confession but this is called group confession even though it's done individually but it's done as a group because part of it is using the 13 attributes of mercy which hashem told moses this is what you say when you want to be forgiven that will be on the very bottom of the page but near the top so we it's all about it's all plural there's nothing here about me me me or i i it's we we so start off our god and god of our forefathers may our prayer come before you and do not and do not ignore our supplication we are not so brazen and obstinate to say before you hashem our god god of our fathers we're told that god is the god of our forefathers that we are righteous and have not sinned but rather we and our forefathers have sinned where do you get that from where do we we'll see daniel chapter nine okay but in the meantime then we do the i'll it's basically we've sinned it's all plural every one of these subjects has a nun love at the end so it's all plural we have become guilty we have betrayed we have robbed on and on and on okay you're getting the idea so now we'll talk about these two ideas so you just mentioned when confessing one should mention our own sins as well as the sins of our parents our forefathers for before he dechuva when he carried the sinful deed of his fathers he stood to be punished for them now this is a crazy idea because we do have two very distinct verses in the tanakh in the torah that imply totally opposite ideas one is that children are not responsible at all for the sins of their parents right and that makes a lot of sense each person should die or be held accountable for their own sins however there's another verse that children are held responsible so if anybody examines these verses they'll know that we have some issues here right so the other the other verses in exodus 34 verse 7 right preserving love and kindness for thousands forgiving iniquity and rebellion and sin he does not completely clear of sin he visits the iniquity of parents on children how's that possible and children's children are the third and fourth generation and if you want to go to deuteronomy chapter 24 16 this implies the opposite the father shall not be put to death because of their sons nor son shall be put to death because of their fathers each man shall be put to death for his own transgression so let me just try to help us understand what we're talking about here number one god is a merciful loving father in heaven and he doesn't want to punish his children anyway the word punishment is probably not appropriate that's how we're translating it but really it means he it's a god wants us to change our ways so he gives us signs he he brings down signs to say stop you're doing the wrong thing and i want you to change now if you didn't have those signs you just go right through right if you don't have the stop sign you just go straight through so you would just continue to act that way so hashem has to make it clear and sometimes clearer and even more clear when we're not getting the subtle the most subtle of messages okay so really it's not a punishment per se in the terms of what we think punishment is but it's called more towards rehabilitation it's more measured for measure i'm telling you like the way god is letting you know is in a way like prophetic prophetic this is what you're doing i'm spelling it out for you right it should be clear this is what we're doing wrong so that we can correct it okay so basically if our parents or let's just say forefathers had sinned and they did not make those corrective measures god nevertheless is very patient i mean he knows ultimately what someone will do true or not but he gives you enough room to hang yourself as we say he gives you time he's patient that's what patience is he's giving you time to make those corrections now if that person does not make those corrections and the next generation follows suit and continues well guess what those punishments were never meted out right and the person growing up in such a household should have known better right now you're going to say well guess what this is how he was brought up he didn't know any better this is all he knew it's not true we all have a compass inside of us that we know right from wrong and if we're continuing in our father's footsteps and there were signs right obviously hashem sent signs and they didn't heed them and we got the same signs and we're continuing in the same footsteps of our forefathers so then we deserve i'm going to use the word really deserve let's say double whammy right in other words we'll be punished also for their sin really it's really our sin that we continued and therefore it's worth it's worth a more severe penalty okay so that's in the sense that a child or let's say another generation could be it's only because they're following the same footsteps they're not being held accountable for something they didn't do they're being held accountable for something they did do but hashem was patient and didn't meet out whatever signs needed to be told so the signs would be double strong on the next generation what about the other idea that a person is not held accountable that's because they did chew the in other words when you recognize that your fathers had sinned and they didn't do chuba and you do your true that truva is very powerful and maybe even more powerful than if your parents hadn't sinned right it's very powerful and therefore you will not be held accountable for their sins it's like wiped clean okay so the idea of this seeming stira the seeming contradiction between whether children are held accountable for the sins of their fathers or not is whether or not they're continuing in the same path or not simple now i happen to interestingly enough be talking to some people who they claim they're from the house of the fry interesting right i mean these people all the time they i don't know if they're messianic or they're just a little bit um whatever off balance but they want to claim that they're from 2700 years ago from the northern tribes right now they don't have any proof and the truth is and i don't want to really go into this but in christian the christian thought is that they're the new israel so they're very attached to this idea that i must be israel so i think it's like a little screws loose somewhere because they don't have any proof that they're actually from the house of yosef or from the northern you know tribes but what i'm trying to say is this they want to say won't you accept me you're from yehuda well how do you know i'm from yudah you know i don't know if i'm from yudah i i attached myself my forefathers attached themselves to the monarchy of king david that's true and you didn't that's what i want to tell this person you went ahead and separated yourself from the from banay israel from the god of israel from the torah of israel and from as we know you know the monarchy of israel and the law of israel and the temple right you created your own idols you created your own temples and you separated yourself so your forefathers has sinned you want me to accept you you're still hold if you are still holding on to idols or let's say for a jew christianity is idol worship for a christian it may not be i'm not going to get into that right now there's different levels of of idol worship some are more severe less severe it may not be utter worship at all in certain sects certain um traditions within christianity whatever they hold but in general for a jew to believe this stuff is actual idol worship okay so if you want to be you want me to accept you and you want to come back to the fold to what we call tom israel i'm used to a clay israel right the venegas round you want to be accepted so okay i don't care you don't have to prove to me you're from yosef but you have to prove to me that you accept it right you want me we're the same mind frame for 3 300 years will be accepted about sinai and of course then you would understand you would have to convert because basically if you want to be a jew so you have to go all the way right you want me to accept as a jew how do you know that your mother's mother's mother's mother's mother's mothers was all the way back uh pure uh israelite lineage so if you could prove that great then you don't need to convert right you're just the jew and that's great welcome home so that was a message to one particular person but really it's all those people that i get emails all the time i i don't know how to answer them other than what i just did and uh they usually stop nudging me anyway if i can come up with a better answer i would love to yeah if you have a question yes can you explain like you don't have to go into all of it but something of the binet frying that is different like so that you just keep calling well i don't worship i mean what is it no no i don't mean a benefit of worship i mean christianity usually these people are coming out of christianity and either they're still like this particular person told me that he is a believer in yeshua hamashiach that's what he said so i i didn't have to guess but the church itself is basically claiming they're the new israel so they make a difference between what they call the southern tribes which is basically yehuda binyamin shimon levy they right and the northern tribe or the other we'll call them the ten lost tribes first of all they're not lost they're not 10 and everybody you know i don't want to i give a whole nother sheer another time on it uh i'll just go real quickly through it ruby kevin himself said they're not coming back everyone jumps on him what do you mean they're not coming back he says because they already came back jeremiah jeremiah brought at least 10 percent back first of all before jeremiah brought them back so any time you have war as everyone knows it wasn't a surprise attack there was tension with the assyria and whatnot for for decades so you had already intermarriage and jews meaning jews between different tribes so that what was in the north was not necessarily pure ten tribes there was a lot of intermarriage between the tribes and then you had as i said decades of tension you had refugees before the war you certainly had refugees from the north during the war you had jeremiah i just mentioned brought back 10 and all the tribe of levy was said what are we doing we want to attach ourselves to you that's what the temple is we're we don't want this mishigas this idol uh worshipping stuff so you're talking about the the real faithful israelites anyway came out i'll use the word came down it means they went up to you shalom they came down to yehuda they joined up with the jewish people so if you had let's just say conservatively 30 or 40 of the north that joined up with yehuda so the majority of jews are not from yehudah it is true yehudah would still be the largest group but it doesn't make them in the majority at all so who says i'm from yehuda right three out of four of my we were discussing this before three out of four of my grandparents are from the tribe of leaving right so what makes uh what makes me from yehuda why is this guy saying you're from yehuda because lady understood they were the ones right right i we're all for hashem so that's the idea that they they're they were traitors they were traitors to god into their people and they were dispersed whatever was 20 30 40 60 i have no idea but we didn't lose them all so if you want to make a claim and i would be embarrassed to make this claim i don't know why they're holding it with pride the claim is that i'm part of the sinful part of the jewish people that got dispersed never to be come back again right uh that's very nice so then now you want to the whole why do we bring this up because we're talking about carrying the sin of your forefathers so if if you know the bible's true you know that the history is true you know that they sinned so if they sinned so then why are you following in their footsteps and sinning with the same type of sin which is idol worship that's what they sinned with back then it's not accepting the torah as the ultimate judge or um you know document to follow right because they change things and that therefore you want to come back first thing is abandon your sin admit it verbalize it make a vidue and you have to do it to me but if we're having a conversation you should at least acknowledge the fact that this is a is a stumbling block for you right now as well okay i hope i made myself clear has nothing to do with the frying per se because probably a significant amount of frying is still with the jewish people today according to rabbi kim okay i i might as well just tell you the other opinion so ravi eliezer held that no they didn't come back yet it's something that's destined to happen in the future and rib yeshua says only if they do chuva so i think that that is really where the key is that they probably will come back as individuals i don't know if they'll come back in mass it would be nice we're praying and we're open right but they have to do truva if they did not hold it by marriage the true marriage law so that it could be mom zarim i don't translate that per se but you know anybody knows what that means and they didn't follow the laws of divorce properly right there's a lot of complicated laws and they weren't part of a jewish community for so many years so it's unlikely that they kept the laws of marriage um and divorce properly so what do you expect it's a mixture okay okay so we're starting off with this idea and we just mentioned um this idea about the sin that is so here if you're going to seek forgiveness you must seek forgiveness for your forefathers as well as your own sin and that is what we just read and if you want to look you can use your own time to look at this for daniel in i told you it was chapter nine it's also he's using the the plural we so many times he starts off by saying i prayed i confessed but what was it we have sinned and we have dealt iniquitously we have dealt wickedly and rebelled turning away from your commands and we have not obeyed he's taking the i called the roy the royal we right he's putting himself in because daniel was pretty much symmetras as far as i know and yet he's telling us as it says and all of israel transgressed your teaching all of israel didn't transgress meaning all of israel transgressed because we're all responsible for each other there was significant sins by our forefathers all israel had to transgress your teaching turning away not hitting your voice and therefore as a result there's an exile right because a significant amount of jews were we're not on the we're not with the program so to speak okay so you can go through chapter nine it's really important to hear much in the beginning but okay now we're going to go to mish vayikra they will then confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their forefathers of their fathers be their betrayal that they dealt me and that they also treated me as happenstats okay let's look because there's a lot to say about this and number three in the safer the standard text of vedoing actually contains the clause indeed we and our forefathers have sinned that is what we plural are saying all the time robin jonas seems to imply that a child's truva and vidue can atone for his father's sins why is this so commentators explain it's because a child's sin sins can have their roots in the father's misdeeds we admit that and also is influenced by the way his father treated him thus it's all the more difficult for the son of a sinful man to do trouba as the father's ways are ingrained in the child's nature if the son manages to overcome this obstacle by recognizing the wrongness of his father's ways as well as his own he achieves a more profound truva than one who did not inherit wickedness from his father the evil that the father transmitted to him has thus been used for good as it has spurred him to do even greater levels of trouba than he otherwise would have attained so the son rectifies the root cause of the sin and is able to gain a measure of atonement even for his father's evil this also explains why if the son had not repented that he would be punished for his father's sins since he has the ability to rectify the influence of those sins through his trueva so for those lost who claim they're from ephraim or from the lost 10 tribes you really want to rectify your father's sins then do truma fully don't worry about yehuda okay you that's got their own problems and their own way of rectifying right you have to concentrate on you and they want to know how are we to accept them how can we don't have our open arms right well who are you anybody can come and tell me they're from the lost tribes right bring a little bit of uh repentance with you that'll go a long way towards our being open to you coming home and we're praying for you all the time to come home anyway so the last part of this is this is the ability to rectify the influence of those sins through his trueva he bears the responsibility to do so and if he fails to rectify it he is faulted not just for sinning but for also preserving his father's sinful ways that is a heavy heavy statement now there's also another major comment down here and maybe should people should read it on their own it's going to take a lot of time i see we have some time and this is talking about v doing so this is a little bit of what you call a background so we already said earlier on in 19 okay you know what i'm going to just sum it up we said earlier in 19 that there were three major categories to doing true in other words these are like the prerequisites you could you couldn't be considerate of dhanchuba unless you did these three which we said was what kharata having this regret having the confession and aziva tahit getting rid of conviction not to sin again okay not going back to it now we already described this book that we're reading and learning together has 20 steps not three okay because what he believes is yes there are three major steps but there are so many nuances so many levels of these three steps that if you really want to do what we call trouble hydra minimum hydrogen right on the highest level right we might as well if we're going to do it we might as well try to do it the best we can so he breaks it down into three levels right i'm sorry 20 levels now but he's still holding that there are three major levels in vidoy since it's the third of the three major levels so he is discussing it here in the 14th principle right out of 20 because this is a major category that he wants to discuss the nuances of that's all in other words it was a question you might ask um if there's 20 levels according to him and we only have three according to everybody and so the truth is he said yes we just we have three but there's nuances and now i'm getting around finally to this nuance of the okay now so he continues and we're on page 94 for those who are in the same book the prophet hoshia so what he did was he made all the principles of truth in just one category and then so in other words we say there's three major categories josiah basically said they're two whenever he put into one category that was one thing maybe we'll say the kharata and the ziva is considered one but the vidoy he put as a separate category meaning all you have two and the vidue and the feeling he put together why did he do that and that's we're going to investigate so if you go to hoshaya that's hosea 14 let's see if i can find it return o israel to the lord your god for you have stumbled in your iniquity in hebrew the israel hashem return until yudkev your um stumbling block for you stumbled in your sin now right away is the name you know he doesn't bring us to the next verse yet or maybe he does like let's go to the next verse that's 14 3. so take words with yourself in other words if god says return o israel and then he tells you how but look at verse three take words with yourselves what does it mean take with you words you know where we're going with this right confession right take with you words [Music] that's what it says i don't know what the other translations say take words with yourselves and return to the lord say and then he tells you what you should say you shall forgive well turn okay this is probably hashem talking but you shall forgive all iniquity and teach us the good way now that we should say to god you will forgive all iniquity and teach us the good way and let us render the bulls as offerings for our lips this is a famous expression this is already in the prophet before the destruction of the temple the first temple even let alone the second that when there are no sacrifices to be made because there's no temple our lips replace the sacrifices what do we talk about atonement in other words this vidoy this confession is part of the process of atonement this is another thing that our detractors i don't want to keep counting on these people but they got it wrong and they mess up the whole world right i have some ex-christians uh want you know some of them my best friends um who told me they were they were uh duped you know that they were under the impression that it's only through a blood sacrifice that they could find atonement well first of all all intentional sins do not carry any kind of blood sacrifice at all it's only unintentional sins so what do you do there you got a big problem you're not going to find any atonement because there's no blood sacrifice it was never meant to be right first of all it's your heart god doesn't even want your sacrifices he wants your heart he wants you he wants you to change and do trouba but here you can see take words in verse three right chapter 14 verse three you know so take the words which is what we're gonna explain is confession and let us render for bulls the offering on our lips we're going to talk about as prayer so i see you know where we're going with this right yes okay so that's how he begins this idea so what is hoshea saying he urges that even after we return to hashem which we said in verse 2 that we should take words with us that is a further way of returning to hashem and then hoshea means in verse 3 that through the words of confession and prayer the pentenant person gains a decree of closeness to hashem that he could not attain any other way to the other ways of truth in other words it's very nice to have kharata to have repentance and it's very nice to ha i'm sorry it's very nice to have which is regret and it's very nice to have the conviction not to do it again but even according to the rambam in other words it's it's one of the main factors without vedoi without this confession without humbling yourself without saying and admitting to you into hashem this is what you've done wrong you're missing a major factor in truth so he goes on he says it also says in isaiah chapter 55 verse 7. let's read it the wicked shall give up his way right so it's not just a matter of believing somebody's going to remove all your your sins or your the wicked shall give up his way you have to you have to true it you have to return you have to stop doing the same thing over and over again and the man of iniquity his thoughts so not only do you have to stop acting a certain way to start thinking differently and he shall return to the lord who shall mercy upon him and to our god for he will freely pardon okay this idea in uh that means he will forgive so what does that mean when it says that you forsake your way the immoral man his thoughts and let him return this is how he's explaining it it's through vedoi which is the confession and prayer by the way is done with our lips as we just saw it also says in joel that's yoel chapter 2 verse 13 rend your hearts and not your garments and return to the lord your god for he is gracious and merciful slow to anger and of great kindness and he repents of the evil so what does that mean it says what he what it means is you redo your trueva you return through the deutsch feel it through the confession and prayer so there's a very interesting idea here number um source number eight meaning even after the sinners rend their hearts and regret their sins you still have to return to hashem with confession and prayer so look in deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 14. now this has different connotations but it says now most understand this shot and i understood it this way and i still do there's all about the torah the torah itself is something that is very close to you it's in your mouth and in your heart to do that's true but it also means the davars we've been using the word all along a davar is a word and we're talking about the confession that's that means the truth just re first of all even the word torah even though it means instructions it's instructions how to return how to be at one with god at one mint it's interesting the word atonement in english means at one mint right for those that are not aware that atonement in english if you break it down but kikarov that this matter meaning the word the confession is very near to you in your mouth and in your heart what's the mouth that's the confession in your heart that's the prayer so according to the ramban the matter refers to chuva and the verse means to encourage a sinner to repent with his heart by undertaking to faithfully keep all the mixes with his mouth by saying vedoy confession thus this supports this verse supports assertion that expresses one's repentance with the mouth through confession and prayer it is a distinct act of the true process okay let's continue we're on page 95. now robin yonah makes another point about this the importance of vedoing remember this is our topic for tonight the amish vader are someone who does not confess there's a verse in michele michele chapter 28 that's proverbs 28 verse 13. he who conceals his sins will not succeed okay i mean i don't have to translate it i don't have to use the original hebrew but we will say someone who's covering over their sins will not succeed but what is the next part um but he one who confesses the isaiah and abandons his sin will find mercy mercy will be upon him i don't know how much clearer crystal clear you need to get in this so regarding someone who does not confess his sins as we just saw one who conceals his sins will not succeed obviously someone who covers up his sins is someone who's not confessing what does this mean that god will make your sins available for others to see you think you're so smart yeah i'm the only one knows like even hashem doesn't know right come on he knows everything so just you might as well admit it he already knows what's what's the big deal no so if you're like trying to even hide it from hashem hashem will make sure that this will be revealed i'll just read the words hashem will make his sins known to others on the other hand one who does not cover over his sins and he confesses it that hashem himself will cover over your sinful transgress in fact the ark the holy ark had a cover what what is the cover it's called kapowrit the actual word for atonement means to cover over that hashem will cover over that means he will atone he will forgive he will forget he will wipe away okay to he'll cover over so the cover on the holy ark is called a caper it and that means it needs to cover so here it's like measure for measure when you do confess hashem will then cover if you try to cover so that you have no success but if you uncover hashem will cover it and you will have success clear is mud can't get clearer than this this is beautiful teaching and in looking psalms 32 verse it says of david my skill praiseworthy is he whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is concealed i mean this is the result after you have confessed then it will be covered over by hashem let me just read here um praiseworthy is one whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is covered over so the sages mention that this means [Music] how does one become a person whose transgression is forgiven whose sin is going to be covered over with confession as it says and look look in verse 5. in other words we just read chapter 32 of psalms verse 1. look at verse 5 i would inform you of my sin king david is saying i did not conceal my iniquity i said i will confess my transgression to the lord you forgave my iniquity of my sin forever so you see the result of confession [Music] um here we are so okay that's basically how he ends actually so we're gonna we have uh we went a little bit over so now at this point in time i'm gonna turn the camera off we're just gonna take questions live but i want to wish everybody who did join with us thank you very much for joining if you want to join us live there is in the description below in the description box on youtube uh a whatsapp number that's mine and once you contact me i'll give you more information about how to join so we do look forward to more people joining with quite a quite a crowd already and um it's it's only for women live because they have some questions but for all you guys join us week after week okay so i'm just turning off the camera and we'll continue on [Music] is