Thursday, July 4, 2013
Parshas Matos-Ma'asei: The Miracle of Teshuvah
10:14 PM | 
Posted by
Rabbi Chaim Coffman |
"And Elazar the priest said to the men of war which went to the battle, 'This is the ordinance of the Torah which the L-rd commanded Moshe. only the gold and the silver, the brass, the iron, the tin and the lead, everything that passes through fire, you shall make it go through fire and it shall be clean" (Numbers 31: 21)
Rav Moshe Feinstein, z"l in his work Derash Moshe explains that when the Torah says, 'This is an ordinance of the Torah with regard to kashering pots and pans, it is really an ordinance for the entire Torah. This means that if someone's pot or pan became not kosher, then there is a way to be able to kasher it and make it reusable like it was previously.
We learn out from here that someone who transgresses and sullies his soul has hope that they can actually fix what they have done and be free from that sin. The way they do this is through proper repentance and regret for what they have done. This is indeed an ordinance of the entire Torah where a person should never give up hope after they have transgressed!
The repentance one must do will depend on the seriousness of the transgression. If a person has a strong desire to transgress, then the repentance and regret will have to be just as strong to uproot what they have done. If the desire was not as great, then the repentance also does not have to be as strong.
This is the source for our ability to do teshuvah. In general this is truly miraculous because how does it work that the repentance and regret for their actions actually uproots what they have done. After all, haven't they just transgressed?
The miracle of repentance is as Rav Feinstein explains. When a person takes action and repents according to the transgression, they transform themselves and change.. This in turn uproots the wrong they have committed and now the person is free from sin.
The Yetzer Hara, though, does not make this so easy. It will convince a person of all the terrible things they have done and show how hard it is for them to change. "Why should repentance help?" the Yetzer Hara will tell you. After all, you will continue to sin in the future and not really change.
The answer is that although that is true, one has to look at what they have done and see it as being done in the past. Yesterday was yesterday, today is a new day. If I focus on the terrible things a person has done in the past, they will have no future because it will be impossible to overcome such feelings.
May we realize that although we are not perfect and make mistakes, we should learn from them, grow from them and transform us to become better people.
Shabbat Shalom
Rav Moshe Feinstein, z"l in his work Derash Moshe explains that when the Torah says, 'This is an ordinance of the Torah with regard to kashering pots and pans, it is really an ordinance for the entire Torah. This means that if someone's pot or pan became not kosher, then there is a way to be able to kasher it and make it reusable like it was previously.
We learn out from here that someone who transgresses and sullies his soul has hope that they can actually fix what they have done and be free from that sin. The way they do this is through proper repentance and regret for what they have done. This is indeed an ordinance of the entire Torah where a person should never give up hope after they have transgressed!
The repentance one must do will depend on the seriousness of the transgression. If a person has a strong desire to transgress, then the repentance and regret will have to be just as strong to uproot what they have done. If the desire was not as great, then the repentance also does not have to be as strong.
This is the source for our ability to do teshuvah. In general this is truly miraculous because how does it work that the repentance and regret for their actions actually uproots what they have done. After all, haven't they just transgressed?
The miracle of repentance is as Rav Feinstein explains. When a person takes action and repents according to the transgression, they transform themselves and change.. This in turn uproots the wrong they have committed and now the person is free from sin.
The Yetzer Hara, though, does not make this so easy. It will convince a person of all the terrible things they have done and show how hard it is for them to change. "Why should repentance help?" the Yetzer Hara will tell you. After all, you will continue to sin in the future and not really change.
The answer is that although that is true, one has to look at what they have done and see it as being done in the past. Yesterday was yesterday, today is a new day. If I focus on the terrible things a person has done in the past, they will have no future because it will be impossible to overcome such feelings.
May we realize that although we are not perfect and make mistakes, we should learn from them, grow from them and transform us to become better people.
Shabbat Shalom
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