STAM
TORAH
YOM
KIPPUR 5780
“FAILING
OF FAILURE”[1]
Rabbi Fishel Schachter relates:
I have a friend who struggled with his
weight for years. He was constantly trying different diets to manage his weight
issues, but he hadn’t been successful for any extended period with any of them.
Then, at one point, I noticed that he
had lost some significant weight. I was close enough to ask him what changed.
He explained that he was meeting with a new nutritionist who was helping him.
He recounted a conversation they had during their initial meeting. The nutritionist
asked him if he was aware that he was three hundred pounds. He nodded. The
nutritionist continued, “Do you know that you’re a very handsome person? It’s
true - at a hundred and eighty pounds you’re a very handsome person. All you
have to do is trim down the excess one hundred twenty pounds.”
Those words really motivated him. It
was the first time that he wasn’t made to feel like a schlub or a glutton. He
was told that he was essentially a good-looking person, he just had to rid himself
of what was covering it.
That is the perspective and attitude
one must have when he approaches teshuva. The Mishna[2]
says, “Do not be a wicked person in your own eyes.” If a person views himself as
a lowly person, he will become deflated and not feel like he can be better.
The truth is that even when one sins,
his soul remains untainted and pure. His task is to remove the excess
impurities which have become attached to him, so that his inner beauty can once
again shine through.
One of the most well-known components
of the Service of Yom Kippur that the Kohain Gadol performed in the Bais
Hamikdash involved the two goats. “The two goats of Yom Kippur, they were to be
equal in appearance, height, and value, and were to be purchased together.”[3]
The Kohain Gadol performed a lottery that decided which of the goats was
offered in the Sanctuary, its blood sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, and which
was dispatched to the Azazel mountain, and pushed off to its death.
Why was it necessary for the two goats
to be so similar?
Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch[4]
explains that the two goats represent two lives, originally completely identical, which proceed on two entirely
contrasting paths. Both are placed together before God at the entrance of the Sanctuary.
The decision whether to go “toward G-d” or to go to “Azazel” hovers over both
of them in exactly the same way. The one designated “toward G-d” is admitted to
the Holy of Holies, where the ideal of a Jewish Torah life perfects itself as the
bearer of G-dliness on earth. The other, designated for Azazel, remains
untouched, at the entrance of the Sanctuary, and is sent out of its precincts,
away from the sphere of human habitation into the desert. Having turned its
back on the Sanctuary, it ends the uncultivated living it had preserved for
itself.
Each one of us is a “seir”
(goat). Each of us has the power to resist the demands made on our will
power. It is in the way we use this power that our worthiness or worthlessness
depends. We can use it in attachment to G-d in resisting all internal and
external temptation and considerations to become a seir to G-d. Or we can
use it in obstinate refusal of G-d and His holy laws of morality. This latter
recourse is reflected in the etymology of the term לעזאזל – using one’s strength for obstinacy
(עז)
for no meaningful future (אזל).
In a similar vein, Maharal[5] explains
that goat blood is most similar to human blood[6]. The goat
offered “to Hashem” was brought into the Holy of holies, symbolizing the ability
of a Jew to achieve the greatest levels of connection with his Creator. Blood
is our lifeforce, and the blood of the goat, which symbolizes every one of us,
was offered in the holiest place on earth.[7]
The other goat, sent to
Azazel, which was so similar, whose blood also resembles our blood, is
representative of our sins and shortcomings. The sins we commit seem to be an inextricable
part of our identity. However, we take those components and symbolically cart
them off for destruction in the desert. The Azazel service reminds us that our
misdeeds, though our responsibility, do not comprise our essence. Rather they
are an external cancer that we must exorcise and distance ourselves from
through proper teshuva.
Throughout Yom Kippur,
whenever we recite Viduy, we state: “behold I am before You like a vessel of
shame and humiliation.” The Belzer Rebbe zt’l explained that we feel tremendous
embarrassment and shame over what we have done. But it is like a vessel we are
grasping, not a core component of who we are. We are ashamed of what we have
done; we are not ashamed of who we are. We know we are better and can overcome
the negative and foolish things we have committed.
The wisest of men states[8] “The righteous
fall seven times, and get up, but the wicked stumble in evil.” Rabbi Chaim
Friedlander zt’l noted[9] that regarding
the righteous it says he falls, whereas regarding the wicked it stays he stumbles.
This reflects an integral difference between the perspective of the righteous and
the wicked. The righteous person views his sins as mishaps; a failing and a
falling from which he must arise; the wicked views his sins as indicative of being
a complete failure!
When one sees himself as worthy and capable,
he will be able to be resilient when he errs. However, one who sees himself as a
complete failure will lack the willpower necessary to bounce back from his inevitable
failings.
Rabbi Yisrael Reisman
relates that on occasion a yeshiva student cries to him about struggles he has viewing
inappropriate things on the internet whenever he comes home for yeshiva for bain
hazmanim[10].
Rabbi Reisman notes that the first thing he discusses with the young man is the
perspective he must have. If he sees himself as a wicked sinner, he doesn’t
have much chance overcoming such a formidable challenge. He needs to realize the
truth – that he is a worthy and aspiring ben Torah, albeit who has a serious
problem which must be addressed. The negative behaviors he has committed,
although spiritually damaging, do not negate all the good he has accomplished and
is accomplishing. Only when that perspective is clear, can they proceed by formulating
a plan of action and rectification.
Psychologists note that a
person acts in accordance with how he views himself. If I see myself as a good
person, I’ll act accordingly, and vice versa. If someone asks a person to
perform an act of kindness when its inconvenient for him to do so, his decision
to do so or not is very much connected with whether he views myself as “that
type of guy” or not. In fact, we act differently in the same situation when
different people are involved, because being with certain people may elicit
different senses of identity than others.
The prerequisite for Yom
Kippur is the perspective that, despite our sins and mishaps, we are inherently
pure and pristine. That in no way exonerates us from rectifying the sins we
have committed. However, it does remind us that we are not repenting because we
are lowly sinners, but rather because we maintain our sense of greatness and ability
to reconnect with our internal greatness.
“The two goats of Yom Kippur were to
be equal”
“The righteous fall seven
times, and get up”
Rabbi Dani Staum, LMSW
Rebbe/Guidance Counselor – Heichal HaTorah
Principal – Ohr Naftoli- New Windsor
[1] Adapted
from the derasha delivered in Kehillat New Hempstead, Yom Kippur eve 5773,
after Kol Nidrei.
[2] Avos 2:13
[3] Mishna Yoma
6:1
[4] Vayikra
16:10
[5] Derasha
l’Shabbos Shuva
[6] That was
why the brothers dipped the tunic of Yosef in goat’s blood when they wanted to make
Yaakov think Yosef was killed.
[7] "הרי כשהכהן מכניס את דמו
לבית קה"ק הרי הוא מכניס בזה את עצם חיותינו לשם והוא מצרף את חיינו לפני ולפנים"
[8] Mishlei 24:16
[9] Sifsei
Chaim – Moadim volume 3, page 9
[10] Yeshiva
vacation
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