Starting Fresh: How Teshuva Prepares You for the New Year

Parasitim is probably one of the most fundamental paras because in paras nitsavim what we discuss is the concept of tshoua of being able to return being able to come back and this is so fundamental to Judaism especially when you contrast Judaism to other religions there are other religions out there that believe in eternal damination if you messed up there's no going back you are messed up you cannot change the past. And in Judaism, we believe that while time does go forward, and if that is the way we're all facing, our impacts do influence the past and actually change the future. And we actually can change the trajectory of our lives. And there is no eternal damnation. There is no, oh, you're stuck. You're a sinner. You need to buy into somebody who had died for your sin. It doesn't work that way because every single person has the ability to do tshoua to repent. Not even repent to to return to come back and to reconnect. One of the things described in this parha is what tshoua is going to look like in the messianic era. It doesn't overtly say the messianic era, but it describes this future period in time. Because the the first chapter in this parha describes what happens if we take we don't take the blessings route. We end up taking the curses route and we start doing the feel-good version of life at the expense of what is right and wrong, what is true and valid. and negative things can befall us. But then there'll be a time where we'll be able to return and do. And I'm just going to go through some of the sentences here paraphrasing them just to give context for what we're about to discuss. It says, "All these things will come upon you, will be fall upon you, a blessing and a curse that I had given to you. You should return to your heart." Which is an interesting thing by the way. It doesn't say return. It says it doesn't say return with your heart. It says return to your heart. Which tells us that there is a part of your heart that is still good. You should return to Hashem your God. Listen to his voice. Become more sensitive. like everything I have commanded you today. And then it says God will return your captives and have mercy on you. Um although Rashi points out it doesn't say God will return your captives. It makes it more like God will return with your captives. And Rashi says because during this exile or we're in this space where we need to do toua, we're actually not alone. God is with us. God's presence is with us even in the depths of exile. And as we need to do tshoua in return, we also need to restore God's presence that has been held captive together with us. But we're not alone. Rashi points that out. And then it says something very comforting. This is good to know because there are people that believe that they're too far gone. They've isolated themselves too much from their God, too much from their community, too much from their people, too much from Judaism, too much from their souls. No, they haven't. You're never too far gone. Because it says, "If you were pushed over and dispersed and spread out to the edge of the heavens, From there, God will gather you. There's going to be a time that the Torah is prophesizing right now where we're all going to do tshoua. We're all going to return. We're all going to come back. It's it's comforting to know that we read this every year intentionally. The shab is before Rashashana, by the way. The shabas before judgment day. The shab is before we start the new year. refreshes, knowing that even if we've messed up, we can still return and we're literally never too far gone. I I don't think it's possible. This is going to sound a little crazy. I don't think it's possible to be too far gone, which is crazy because you may have made irreversible mistakes. And I'm not saying that you get scot-free because you did touha. And it could be those irreversible mistakes are permanent and have real life ramifications. And you could still I don't know how. You'll have to we'll have somehow discover how. But I I don't know how, but you could still change your reality by doing tshoua. You can literally rewrite the book. I don't mean lie to ourselves and talk ourselves out of our traumas as if they had never happened. I mean genuinely deep within our heart rewriting the story. I'll share with you a quick story. I wasn't planning on sharing this, but I I think it's it's in context and I think it's important to mention. The Talmud tells of a story of a young yeshiva student who harsive uh inner impulse got the best of him. And apparently there was a seductive woman who was quite famous. Somehow he was aware of her and his curiosity and interest got the best of him and he went to where she was stationed, snuck out of school. This is a this is a Talmudic scholar not most you know right now these days I mean to put it quite bluntly to get enrolled into a yeshiva for most yeshivas what you got to do is pay pay tuition um you do have many prestigious scholars and I'm not undermining uh that that at all but just because somebody is in a yeshiva uh like just cuz they're enrolled doesn't necessarily speak for their their qualities. But that wasn't the case in the Tammudic ages. If you found yourself in a Tammudic Academy, there was a good reason why you were there. You were a certain stature of scholar. Uh uh uh you were a certain level of scholar. Yet despite being on the level he was, his got the best of him. He went to where this lady was stationed. He paid the fee. And the Tamil describes in detail how apparently she was in this inner chamber and he's going from chamber to chamber, getting closer and closer, removing more and more layers of his clothing until he commits what will be a very disgraceful and distasteful act. And he finally got to his last layers of clothing and he sees his titsus and he says, "Oh." He has like this shock reminder like what am I doing? Like this wakeup call. What is going on? He says, "I got to go." She says, "What do you mean?" He says, "It's not you. It's me. I'm out of here." And he He he duck he ducks out of there. He says, "I'm a Jew. I have values. I can't do this." And he leaves. She was impressed. She was inspired. She says, "Who is this guy? I got to learn more about him." And she shows up to the yeshiva and says, "I'm looking for so and so." And they say, "Um, are you sure you have the right place, the right person?" He says, "This is the type of person I need to marry." And she ended up converting to Judaism genuinely, not not just for this guy, but for the values he had represented, they got married. And the Talmud says that because of his tshoua, the bed sheets that were going to be used for sin were going to be are now going to be used for mitzvah. That's the transformative power of tshoua of even at that last moment of being so close to a disgraceful and distasteful sin. It's never too late. You're never too far gone. Even if he had sinned, he could have done toua. There may have been irreversible mistakes. The tshoua would have been more complicated and would have been harder. But it's never too late to do toua. God then promises that I'm going to bring you into the land that your fathers have bequeathed to you. And then here's what God finally says as part of this prophecy in this future era when we're going to do tasha. It's a funny statement. Hashem, your God will circumcise your heart. Ouch. How does that work? What does that mean? God will circumcise your heart and the hearts of your children to love him, to love Hashem, your God with your entire heart, soul, because he's your life. Okay? So, there's this expression of God circumcising our heart so that way we can somehow love him. Well, what is I mean it's an expression, right? What is circumcision? Circumcision is removing something that's getting in the way. That I mean that's the simple meaning. And we had these types of statements in the Torah earlier where we were commanded to circumcise the oras circumcise the what's called foreskin of the heart which is more of an emotional blockage. There's some sort of emotional spiritual blockage. we have to remove it. Okay, here here's the thing. Earlier in the Torah, when we were commanded to circumcise the foreskin of the heart, which means remove what'sever getting in the way. That might mean stop sinning. It might mean focusing on the right things that that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Hopefully accomplishing the same goal, the emotional sensitivity and connection with God. But in the earlier when the Torah had told this as a commandment, it said circumcise the foreskin of the heart. Remove what's obstructing your heart. Over here the Torah says God will circumcise your heart. Well, what's wrong with my heart? He'll circumcise your heart so you can love him. Well, what's wrong with my heart? Like, what is going on here? What does that even mean? It it's a very peculiar pecular statement. Um UNL by the way the UNL is the Aramaic translation. It's a it's an authoritative translation. It's one of the first translations. The tradition is that the translation of UNL the Aramaic translation of the Torah actually uh is a tradition from Sinai and that UNL who lived in the times of the second temple era towards the end of the second temple era had uh through some sort of divine inspiration was able to I I guess align himself and and and get the correct translation but it's attributed to UNL was a Roman convert to Judaism And in his authoritative translation, he says when it says God will circumcise your heart, he interprets it as the foolishness of your heart. We're not talking about your heart. We're talking about whatever may be obstructing your heart. In other words, the Torah doesn't tell us everything in any situation, right? He's filling us in, right? He's just making sure we understand. That is not a sufficient answer for two reasons. Number one, why didn't Rashi uh comment over here? That's an interesting thing. When Rashi says something, he means it. And when Rashi doesn't say anything, he also means it. Because Rashi is trying to tell us the simple meaning of the text. And Rashi has no questions over here. No problems over here. It's all clear, which means we're missing something here. We're not fully understanding what's going on here. That's number one. But number two, didn't we do tou already? The Torah is describing this period in time, the messianic era, where God will bring us to our land. He'll redeem our captives. We'll all come together. Even even if you're on the far corner of the earth, God is going to grab you and pull you in and God will circumcise your heart. Well, why? We did tou already. We're connecting already. We're in this messianic era already. Things are good. Leave my heart alone. Don't do it. Why is God wanting to circumcise the heart? So, what exactly is going on here? Okay. So, we got to give a little bit of an introduction because the truth is andidic teaching elaborates on this in great detail. We actually have two parts of the heart. It's actually like two hearts. You know like in the in the B mikdash there were two altars. There was the outside altar in the courtyard. The outside msbak that's where sacrifices were offered. That's where corbano come from or or are offered. A corban means to come close. That's where you come close to God. But then there's the internal altar inside the holier section of the basdash and that's where deep connection is celebrated much deeper. That's where the incense which are a lot more spiritual are offered. And similarly in our heart we have what's called the external heart and the internal heart. What are the differences between the two? The external heart maybe the more conscious heart you could say is an emotional attachment to something based on perceived value. That's the external heart. That's the conscious heart. Emotional attachment based on perceived value. How much buyin do you have emotionally depends how much you get it, how much you understand, how much you appreciate. The more you appreciate, the more emotional buy in you're going to have. The less you appreciate and recognize, the less emotional buy in you're going to have. Um, I'll give you an example. An example is the employer employee relationship. You know the guy who applies to a a new job and the uh boss says, "Okay, you're hired. Welcome to the family." And he's thinking, "I applied to like 34 families today." Right? It's it's not a family. It's transactional. And the the company culture and emotional spirit and buyin is very much dependent on how you understand your role and your relationship with everybody else. It's very logical and because of that it's very limited. It has a beginning and it has an end. It's not going to last. Then you have what's called the pine hal the internal heart. Maybe it's the subconscious or unconscious heart. And that's where you you have emotional buy in not based on your understanding, not based on your appreciation, not based on perceived value, but it's innate. It's like a relationship that you have with an infant. Your love for your child isn't based on your assessment of the child's capabilities. We do that when they're teenagers, right? But be but before that, especially when they're an infant, there's no reason to love them because it's unreasonable. The love is unreasonable. Now notice I didn't bring marriage in this uh example because marriage could be both of those or either of those. Ideally it should be both but marriage could be either one of these. Marriage could be uh emotional binding based on perceived value and it could be something much deeper. Ideally it should be both and maybe we'll get into that soon. But these are the two different hearts. Um as it relates to our relationship with God. There's times where we learn about God. We learn about the Torah. We do in we kind of get it. We understand. We're we're and we start to feel like, yeah, this is my this is my Judaism. Well, what makes it my Judaism that I care about it so much? I learned about it. But then there's times where our relationship with God in Judaism is much deeper and maybe doesn't even stem from anything logical. Uh I think yum kipper is a beautiful example. How many people show up to schul yum kipper and how many people show up just on yum kipper like there's no kiddish. Why are you coming? Right? Because you're trying to connect to something very deep. But the connection is in a very deep way. It's not measured based on what you understand. So these are the two hearts that we have. So when it says in the Torah, love like in the Hashem, love Hashem, your God with all your hearts, both hearts. We have to engage both hearts. We have to align both hearts. The external heart, the conscious heart in some ways is more difficult to engage but we have a lot more control over. The internal heart is engaged. We just have to become aware of it. It's there. It's literally there. When it comes to the conscious heart where your emotional buyin is based on perceived value, there could be things that obstruct our perceived value or obstruct our ability to appreciate emotionally. Even if there is perceived value, we could become desensitized. And that's where the Torah says, circumcise the foreskin of your heart. Try to learn that this is valuable. This relationship is worth it. This relationship is meaningful. There's something true here. It's your truth. And remove whatever is obstructing. Okay. But then there's a deeper level of of love and connection innate. It's not formed by perspective. It's not formed by or shaped by our upbringing. It's not shaped by what we were taught. It's not even shaped um by by anything anybody had given to us. It's in us already. It's the soul. There's no foreskin spiritually speaking, figuratively speaking, obstructing or blocking. I'm just connected because I'm a Jew. Nothing is getting in the way. Nothing. And from this perspective, God is going to circumcise the heart, engage the heart so we can love him. In other words, that level of the heart is very pure. And there's nothing obstructing. There's nothing getting in the way. Well, why don't I feel it? So, here was the thing. As pure as the heart is, I might have a pure heart, but that doesn't mean I'm pure. That that is the the uh that's a big reality to face. on both levels from the heart's perspective. The heart has to realize that well there's a uh that's just a part of you. There's the rest of you. The rest of you has to realize that your heart is very much pure. But here's the thing. There's there are things that influence the heart. There are things that influence what we feel. Namely, what we see. We usually interpret what we see as truth and we take that for granted and it's not always the case. Often it's not the case because we can't see everything. So how could that be for the full truth? It's impossible. The Torah says, we say this in the sh every day, don't astray after your heart and after your eyes. And Rashi says those two come together because your heart wants what the eye sees. So it could be that we have this potential capacity to have pure unadulterated love, pure unadulterated connection with each other, with God. But we're corrupted but what? By things we've seen, by things we can't unsee. This is such a big deal by the way in like the day of in the the age of social media where you can scroll infinitely literally infinitely. I you could you could scroll forever forever and ever and ever and ever. And we could feed ourselves things that we're we shouldn't be fed and and it leaves an impression on us and shapes the way we feel and can actually obstruct the purity. And the only way to clear ourselves of that, which means the only way to buy into truth and not the truth that we saw with our own eyes, but to believe that that might not be the full truth. There might be something even deeper than what our eyes tell us in a very pure, unadulterated way. The only way to do that is to allow God to do it. That's why it says God will circumcise your heart. He's not even removing obstructions. He's just focusing the heart so it can feel pure love, not based on any perceived value, even what the eyes see. Because the eyes definitely influence the heart. The eyes are the windows of the soul. By the way, this is this is a big deal in marriage because in marriage, love and connection could be very pure or things can become adulterated based on what we see, based on stories we create, based on expectations we create. And this is rashashana as well. Rashashana is pure love sounding the chauffear. The chauffear is no words to it. I once saw uh read a teaching from the Lava that he explained how on on Rashashana were coronating the king. We're coronating God. But usually when you coronate a king, you would have an orchestra, a symphony. Why is our coronation of God so simple, so plain, so bare? The reason is because the relationship is just simple. The relationship is plain. The relationship has no attachments to it. There are expectations in the relationship like every relationship. There's things we need to do. There's things we expect God does. But the essence of the relationship is that pure sound that can't be articulated even in language. It's the pure heart that can't even be or shouldn't be adulterated even by what we think is true, by what we see. That takes a lot of humility. That takes a lot of humility to believe that what we see is not the full truth and that there's a much more pure, deeper truth. How many people make irreversible mistakes? I I'm just thinking with with the catastrophes that have taken place this week with the shooting, people buy into what they believe is true based on what they're shown, based on what they see. But what if we can just let go and believe that truth might run deeper than what we think we know? The Ramban I'm going to finish off with this the Ramban on his commentary in the Torah right over here on this verse. He points out that right now in the exile era we have autonomy. We could do good things, we could do bad things. And the reason why we have autonomy is because we have emotional corruption or at least the ability to have emotional corruption, which makes us have to choose good. When Msiah comes and our hearts will be circumcised, we'll love God. We're going to have pure love on some level. We're not going to have the same autonomy we had once had. It's going to be like Adam and Eve prein. We're going to be very pure. We're going to have a very pure connection. That's why when Messiah comes, we don't accept converts anymore. It's like, of course you want to convert now. Should have done that earlier, man. Now is not the time. In general, we only accept converts when things are bad for the Jews, not when things are good for the Jews. and m the messianic era is the epitome of goodness. But our calling right now, our role right now is to know that there is going to be a time where we are going to experience pure love. We're going to experience pure love for God, pure love for each other, unadulterated by anything. But it's not a fresh new experience. It's an experience of something we already have within us. And we start that now. We start that now with our connection during L. Our tshoua during Lul. We start that now with our tshoua on rash with the chauffear. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.