The Relationship Between Teshuvah and Tefillah

[Music] my name is sverschwanreb and i'd like to present to you several shirim over the next week or two on the topic of teshuva the timely topic during the month of ello i want to focus on the relationship between teshuva personal change and growth repentance and feel of prayer there are many connections between these two concepts teshuva and feel prayer and repentance the rabbeno yono a medieval richonne under the great richonim of the 13th century spain wrote a masterwork on the subject of chuva and that work is entitled to survivor the gates of repentance in it the first gate the first shah he lists the various components of chuva chuva is a complex process with many components one component in the numbering system of the rebellion the 15th component of teshuva is te fila and here's what he writes the 15th eco the 15th major component major principle of teshuva is hatfila prayer defined as is hashem a person should pray to god vivace rahamim and beg god for mercy for compassion to bring forgiveness to all of his or her prayers ke and he bases this upon a possum a verse in the navi hoshea which happens to be the text of the haf torah for shabbat shiva in it the navi the prophet hoshea tells the jewish people el hashem take words for yourself and return to god return to god through the vehicle of speech of devotion of words this cedra berlion is the matter of confession one component of juva is confession god i am guilty i have sinned i take responsibility for it i regret it i will change that's vedoi that's confession but the apostle the verse continues and hoshea says to the people called say to god god please forgive my sin bear my sin for kachtov and take the good take the good what does that mean take the good explains rabbi leona that this is no longer confession this is prayer who piroshva kartov the meaning of take the good is kath take the good that we have done in one's life this is true of every person over the past year we've done some good things some midfields and we've done some things that are not so good what we're asking god to do is to remove to wipe away means to wipe clean the averos the sins the wrong doings and just take the good stuff just take the mitzvos the good deeds that we did kartov and he continues our sages was a candle but the gemara says that the alveros that we do extinguish or dim the glow of the of the mitzvah sometimes extinguishes entirely sometimes the average just dims the light of the mids for someone but the the aveiros block the power and the illumination glowing from the candles so god remove the averroes and let the candle shine brightly again albeit and the merit of the mitzvah shines burst forth the light bursts forth again the flame is again ignited your ear nero it begins to sign the candle begins to shine don't forget before one day the candles glow was blocked or dimmed or perhaps extinguished entirely by the misdeeds that we did you move the misdeeds and you have glowing candles again so we pray to god kartov take the good in rebellion's formulation it's as if we had two columns a column of misdeeds of aveiros and the column of good deeds midfields and they have an interaction one with the other the aveiros extinguish the mitzvahs the mitzvahs try to shine sometimes they can sometimes they cannot because they're overwhelmed by the aveiros so remove the alveros and all you have is a spread of glowing candles i'd like to share with you a somewhat deeper thought perhaps more relevant to most of us especially nowadays whereas yona speaks of averos versus mitzvos as if they were two separate columns the closenburger that's all shared this idea in one of his thursday night lectures back when he was alive some decades ago i was fortunate to hear some of those lectures during this time of year he would focus on the text of the vidue the confession that's in the siddur which we are all saying already soon we'll begin saying by we'll say in the ring yom kippur many times and we confess to god and the confession is written in the form of the aleph base aleph i have been at fault but god knew i have betrayed you gorzano i have stolen the barnudofi i have spoken foolishly or falsely and the whole list i'll of faith give will dallas all the way down to tough by summer we have gone astray we have turned away from your road your road is the derecha yosho or the straight road and we have veered to the left or to the right sauron we have turned away from the word source or to turn away sorry when we finish the whole list of olive pages we give the top three chances toravdo titono and toyinu and then we say mitzvos we have turned away from your mitzvahs and the closing megareba asked once i've already said we have turned away why do we again say sarno which also means we have turned away what's the distinction why say it twice so the closenburg river said there's two things there's two ways to go astray one is surrounded god you wanted us to go right down the strike zone straight and we went in a different direction a totally different direction we should have gone to the base madrid and we went instead to an improper place that's we have straight then there's not something else and that is sanu we have strayed me mitzvos from the midst of your mitzvos meaning many times we've done mitzvos which were contaminated by our attitudes our failure to appreciate the mitzvah or in some other way in the process of doing the mitzvah we have done a veru so god is presented not with two columns of arrows on the one side and and mithras on the other no we we present god with a little me a list of mitzvos and the mitzvah itself is partly good and partly bad for example the rabbit said sometimes we do mitzvos for the wrong motivation sometimes we promise or we donate actually a sum of money to what stalker but we do it because we know if i give a thousand dollars to this charity oh is the good chance that next year that the the charities fundraising banquet they'll make me one of the honorees and they'll get to sit up on the deus so your motive is on the one hand you're giving stalker that's a fine mitzvah but behind it is your wish for covered for honor for glory for prestige so it's a selfish motive mixed into the midsole or the type of example which israel solante used to give and that is you want to go and you get online to wash your hands from the tillage your dying and as you do that you push aside somebody else so that you can go and wash the deal as you're dying so in the process of doing the misfortune of washing your hands for bread you're also ignoring someone else mistreating someone else neglecting someone else so you're violating habits between your a person and a fellow person as you're in the process of doing the holy act of washing your hands for a minute for for for us for eating bread so many times our mitzvos are contaminated by our motives sorry we have turned away from god mee mitzvah from the midst of the mitzvah it's not that they averaged separately we spoke russian horror on monday and on tuesday we gave stockholm no some many of our mitzvahs are contaminated by our veils it's a whole different ballgame and this calls upon prayer god kartov we've given you the mitzvah but the mitzvah's not so pure the candle is not shining so purely the candle is contaminated with some darkness some dark motives are involved in what we're doing i'm shaking the lulav and i'm shaking the loop to show that show off to everybody oh i spent a hundred dollars on this lululemon asterisk all right so we're contaminating the holy mitzvah barb i mean him with our uh need for glory and approval uh or to impress people with our uh with our wealth or with our piety when we do that we're contaminating the mitzvah so we bonus alolan you're the only one who can kind of sift out sift out the the the contamination sift out the average component ignore some of our uglier motives and just look at the good at what we did just to look at it purely that's kakto this is such a such a important concept especially for all of us none of us have done firmly none of us are listening to this program uh this presentation we've not done most of the alveros listed we haven't stolen and we haven't done all the terrible things that are listed there but we may have done is had the wrong thoughts the wrong intentions the wrong motives or in the process of doing a mitzvah we've neglected other priorities we've taken time away from our our responsibilities to our family and instead involved ourselves in in some charity purposes or some tamba toro or some other mitzvah you have to be careful know what your priorities are and and do the right mitzvah at the right time for the right motivation this is more complicated you can you and only you only god can sort out and wipe away the negative aspects of our good deeds and only look at the good of our good deeds called [Music] this is one aspect of the kind of prayer that's connected to chuva god forgive us and neglect the misdeeds that we've done and only pay attention to the good deeds that we've done and deeply more deeply relish lola we've done many deeds which were not perfect ignore the imperfections and only look at the proper aspects of the mitzvah that we performed and that's how we hope to approach the omaha din the day of justice and we will come out hashem justified and validated and approved for xiva hasimatova [Music] you