Rambam Laws of Teshuvah - Chapter 4 / Halacha 1 - Rabbi Alon Anava | Atzmut.org

[Music] [Applause] [Music] so we are starting now the fourth chapter in the laws of chuva and it's not a long chapter we might uh probably will knock it out in a few classes uh only has six salah but we'll start today with the first salah so we're in fourth chapter first salah and it goes as follows 24 things will hold back a person from doing chuba some people they try to do chuba and it doesn't work they want to go to yeshiva they don't get accepted they want to go to a holy place they there's a quarantine or whatever it is or a person's trying to do chuva and he feels something is stopping him from doing chuva so now it's very important that we go through all these 24 things that will stop or hold back a person from doing chuva because maybe you are one of them and you need to figure out what's holding you back so four of them are behem avon gadol four of them is a big scene that you do uh maybe you stop doing it but maybe you don't even notice and you're still doing it and even if you stop doing it maybe that's the one of the four of the severe sins that's stopping a person from doing chuva now let's see what they are um fourth of them from the 24 is a very big sin and if you do one of these four that we're about to mention who will not even grant you the option of doing chuva can you imagine the doors of chuva being locked and you knocking let me let me do chewbacca so we're gonna say these four severe ones and you should be very careful that you're not doing it because again i will say it again will not grant you options of course it depends how great the sin is sometimes it's in a very small scale sometimes it's in a very big scale now let's see what are these four sins the eluhen what are they first one a person that causes many many people masses to sin and what is included in the sin because we explained what's mahdi arabic i gave many example many examples in previous classes but to title it is a person that causes other people to sin many of them now what is included in the sin a person that will stop many people from doing a mitzvah now imagine our speaker and there's a lot of them in our generation that will invite now a very big seminar or an online gathering a zoom class whatever it is a thousand people are attending and he tells them all you don't have to do this mitzvah yeah it's nonsense ah it's belongs to the to the extremists to the fanatics you don't have to do it the torah is not really requiring you to do it now is causing many not to do a mitzvah i'm not talking that you're causing in the beginning we said mahdi rabim that you're causing people to sin there are a lot of clowns like that that also causes other people many people to sin with convincing them or distorting the torah or whatever it is this is but what's including it that you are stopping people from doing a mitzvah that's the exact same thing you got to be very careful now i'm sure you're not standing on a podium in front of two thousand people telling them not to do a mitzvah but you might support an organization that does that or you might support a rabbi so to say rabbi not a rapper a speaker you might support an individual like that you have to be very careful because there are some rabbis in our generation that are very charming and they know how to sound very sharp very good on the money and they give you 95 truth and 5 is distorted and you don't see anything wrong with that because you don't see you don't know anything better and then you go and support such a rabbi you give them money every month you support such a rabbi you're 100 guilty with him so you got to be very careful excuse me by association by association of course if you're supporting such an organization or a rabbi then you are just as guilty even though you're only giving 20 a month or whatever it doesn't matter but you're involved in it one way or another you have to be totally clean with any type of mahti rabim in any type of way and don't think that this is something that was twenty five hundred years ago with you nevada that used to gather masses of people make them all bow down to idols we have that now in our generation it's just they're not going to tell you to bow down to an idol they're going to make events in one way or another that will cause you to participate in mass sins and everybody thinks no but he has a yamaka and he has a beard and he seems like a very nice guy yeah but he's telling you to sin or preventing you from doing mitzvot you got to be very careful from type of individuals this is number one from the fourth severe sins the next one a person that will cause another person to go off from a good path to a bad path imagine now a person is now observant and somebody comes and tells him hey you know there's a real good concert tonight i know it's friday night but you know you don't want to miss that great concert yeah but i'm going to desecrate you about ah don't worry hashem loves you hashem loves you you'll be fine well you want to miss the concert and this is one example many you know what really falls under this category and we have a bunch of them in our generation as missionaries you are a jew a good fearing jew a god-fearing jew and some person comes and tells you you know let me prove to you that your torah is not 100 right and i can prove to you through the verses that yashka is really the ultimate rabbi yo he's the mashiach or whatever these are missionaries and you know how many poor people they're getting off their path this is called the missionary and this is that you're taking a person from that's walking on a good path and you're taking them to a bad path so one of them is called a missionary a neighbor it's called masit um is to to take you off the path is a missionary either way both ways is a missionary or person that comes who sells you a bunch of junk and gets you off the path now if you are already a sinner that's a whole different thing we're talking about a person that is a good person that believes in the torah even if he doesn't have to be the most observant person in the world but that individual comes and takes you off a good path into a bad path that's one of the most severe sins next number three however that you see your son going off the path of the torah starts hanging out with all the bad bad guys with the riffraff smokes on shabbat suddenly doesn't come to the show anymore suddenly takes his pa yamako shaves his belt whatever it is suddenly you see the boy is going to a bad bad bath venom and you don't do anything now unfortunately in our generation almost every second kid goes off the path but that's because of too many temptations and internet and so many problems but some parents says you know i want him to to find god by himself and all sorts of stuff like that listen i don't want to be put in that situation but you are required to rebuke the child so he says you see your child going on to the to a bad way going off the path of the torah they know and you don't rebuke him since your son is under your control or your restriction or i don't know how you call it but if until the age of 18 the child lives in my house he's in my domain if that what he's saying here if my son is in under my control might do restriction and uh and i would rebuke him and he would still go path named sake martial it seems like that i will be the one who's causing him to go off the path but nevertheless uh what he means to say in other words that i have responsibility that when my child is showing signs going on the wrong path i have to rebuke that child and if he's under my control my restriction i have to do whatever i can listen you're under my house you do whatever i say whatever i have to save the child very important but this is not so easy to do i know many many families that unfortunately they they deal with kids that the kids are rebellious and they don't know what to do they literally don't know what to do they say if i don't get him what he wants then he will go crazy here or be violent or or whatever many parents don't know what to do it's not so simple but nevertheless you're still required to rebuke the child even though you're trying to give the child some space or whatever it is the child needs to be still be rebuked that's basically what he's saying now he's adding here another thing and in this sin is included in another thing when you have the opportunity to rebuke others doesn't matter if it's one person or many and you didn't rebuke he says let them do whatever they want that's what is included in this scene which this is a little bit more uh more to us because sometimes you can walk on friday night and you see a bunch of kids sitting and smoking you need to rebuke him no i'm not telling you to take out a crowbar and start beating them up but you can come and tell them listen guys it's friday nights out of shabbat why are you smoking you're not allowed to smoke on shabbat try to do it in the beginning in a nice way but you can't eh what does he say ella yeah you can't just tell them they're already off the path let them be you're not allowed to do that you have to rebuke so basically saying in other words and this is where you need to pay attention if you're not doing any rebuking to people who are off the path of the torah you will find yourself in a severe place don't be afraid don't be embarrassed now i know a lot of people will say i know how to rebuke i have the face of going to somebody and start telling him it's shabbat today or this is not allowed this is allowed i don't know how to talk myself they're going to corner me in a second the other day somebody came and told me that they were trying to fight with somebody about something like that and he didn't he's like i don't have the answers i don't know the torah i don't know the person started throwing to me all sorts of challenges he's like i don't know they don't i don't know how to answer you know a rabbi can answer that person so at least the minimum of the minimum of the minimum what you can do if you don't know how to rebuke then stand behind somebody that knows how to rebuke and boko hashem we have a few good rabbis in our generation they know how to rebuke so support them and give out their cds and share their videos and whatever it is you don't know how to do it i understand not everybody knows how to rebuke because the rebuke has to come firm and with it with love not telling you to be violent and start beating up people that's not rebuke the ultimate way to rebuke was like the the high priest are on a coin he did everything with love everything was with love he would come with a nice soft voice but he knew how to do it you know you need to know also how to review rebuke is not only screaming that's not always going to work sometimes you know david says if a person is tamim whole and simple then deal with them in the same level somebody who's stubborn go and all sorts of tricky ways now i told you already that one of my last trips in los angeles is a certain lady that organizes a lot of lectures for me and she told me do you mind if you speak to my daughter she's completely out of control of course so i come to the meetings it's a young lady she looks in her uh in her twenties black leather suits long black hair black eyeliner black lipstick nails looks like a biker sits like this and i'm supposed to now talk to her she came just because her probably her mother forced her but anyways we started talking now do you think it's going to work if i start telling her that she's not wearing a dress and she's not modest or that she's desecrating shabbat or whatever and that's talking to a wall so i got into a conversation with her i told her you look like you ride a bike you have a bike and we start getting into a conversation and we start talking about bikes and i tell her oh i had that bike i used to drive on this bike we used to go crazy 250 kilometers an hour on the over here and there and suddenly i get into our conversation to her with her about bikes about motorbikes suddenly she's not so tight and then she moved her hand and the sleeve went up and there was a tattoo and i was like can i see that tattoo she's like looking at me like what and then i start telling her i have tattoos and i start showing her my tattoos and the whole conversation is about tattoos and sadly within 20 30 minutes into the conversation i'm not an intimidating rabbi anymore because i have tattoos and i also drove like a maniac on motorbikes so suddenly we have a common denominator and i'm not a scary rabbi and the whole meeting we don't talk about not about torah not about shabbat not about that she doesn't need kosher not about that she has a non-jewish boyfriend not about that she desecrates shabbat and she's not modest we didn't talk about anything all we talked about was things that were in her level and in the conversation we i i just kind of like threw out that she's causing a lot of sorrow to a mother to be a little bit easier on the mother and whatever here and there i just gave a few a few things and you know the next day i'm getting an email from her thank you so much i had such a wonderful meeting i thought you're going to start screaming at me blah blah blah and she wanted to be in touch and she was like i want to do one mitzvah what mitzvah do you think i should do that is not too hard for me right now i want to do a mitzvah after all i grew up in a good jewish home so you saw that was the rebuke there was was in a very sophisticated way not everybody can do such a thing but the fact was that that slowly slowly she started becoming a little bit more aware of the situation i told her to stop driving and going out on shabbat and to try to be a you know mort snow and eat culture and like this i have many other cases the rebukes sometimes have to come in a very sophisticated way you know what i did in that meeting i put a hook if i would come and slam her in that meeting nothing will happen on that meeting i broke the ice and i put a hook or as some somebody once told me you planted the chip so now i have a good rapport with her now i can tell her after three times that we spoke i can tell her stop doing this stop doing that and it's coming from place of concern so not everybody's able to do such rebuking that you can't do it no problem so team up with a rabbi or an organization that knows how to do it you know many rappers out there they doing outreach how many organizations do i so support them support them with money support them with giving out their cds or sharing their videos or whatever it is but you have to be part of a system that does outreach or we'll call it now rebuking next and last number four the home this is one of the most severest ones by the way this is all of us a person that says i will sin today because the temptation is too big and tomorrow if a person says that this is also including when a person says you know what i'll sin now in a few weeks this yom kippur i'll go to work come here i won't eat i'll fast i'll give some money to the show i will pray this is they're not going to allow you to do hashem will not grant you the opportunity to do shiva you're going to have to do it by yourself and then doing chubba is going to be almost impossible you cannot come and say i will do a sin and now because i really want to do the sin and tomorrow i'll do chuba what's the big deal i'll go to the mickey in the morning i'll do chuba i say sorry give the 36 donation and i'm good to go right so this is called the this is i'm the fourth one from the four that we just said that the kadosh baku doesn't like that at all and not only that doesn't allow you to do juve it doesn't mean that you can't do chuva it just means that hashem is not participating hashem there's no shema there's no help from above shem says i'm not helping you at all you do chiva by yourself that's almost impossible to do such shiva because without the help of hashem we can't do anything so these are the four severe ones of the the next couple days we're going to go through the all the 24 but the four that are severe as like i said taking somebody off the path of the torah not rebuking other people especially your child and the fourth ones that i will sin and duchess and i will see you in el duca and you count on the while you want to do the sin all these four are the ones the four seventy ones and the last one by the way because a lot of people say well that's kind of like locking me in that i could never do chuba because of course when i do the sin i have in the back of my mind the option of doing chew up i'm talking about a person that says that gives the condition that he says i'm going to do the sin right now because i want to and tomorrow i'll start my juva then you have to be careful don't do that then say if you have to sin bring it to a point that you are really in a in a place of that you are anus that you are forced to do this in i'm not saying it's easy but i'm just painting the painting that you understand where not to go to by saying you know i'm going to do the scene right now and i'm counting on the fact that i'll do chuva so this is not a simple one but hashem will explain it more in depth as we go and then we'll of course in the next couple of classes explain the rest of the 20 which are not so simple but important to know because these are the things that can stop me from doing chuba and a lot of people trying to do chewbai and i see many people struggling when it comes to juva and they don't understand well maybe they're doing one of these 24 sins that are holding them back from doing chewbacca and it's very difficult for them and you know sometimes you're in the path of juba for 20 years and there's a certain sin that you can't seem to get rid of whether it's whether it's say i don't know whatever it is gossiping you can't get rid of it i i'm doing chiva i'm a hundred percent well ninety-nine percent observant this sin i can't get rid of well maybe something is stopping you from doing chuba maybe one of these 24 and you need to now to do reverse engineering maybe one of these 24 is that i'm doing is stopping me from doing chuba for one sin then we're gonna have to go through it and then psychoanalyze it and mainly do reverse engineering to see maybe one of these 24 is causing me or better to say preventing me from doing chuva for one specific sin and you never know maybe that's that little stone that causes the clog in the in the in the plumbing and all you need to do is pull it out and now the clog is released and you can finally do chuva bazaar hashem this should open our eyes to the right path of juva and may hashem accept our chiva and forgive our sins [Music] you