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Simchas Beis Hashoeiva
We will be having a Simchas Beis Hashoeiva at the Rov's home, 3923 Labyrinth Rd, on Thursday, September 25, at 8:30pm. Music, food, and words of inspiration l'kavod Yom Tov. Looking forward to greeting you there!
Dvar Torah
Ki bayom haze yechaper Aleichem, letaher eschem, lifnei Hashem titharu.. (YK)
Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein, in his Sefer "Teshuva", asks why it is that we are asking for Tahara/purification from our sins. "Presumably, once a person attains atonement from his sins he has thereby received atonement from them. Are Kapparah and Tahara merely two ways of saying the same thing?"
Before you question why it is that I am late to the Yom Kippur dvar torah game - bear with me - this insight is so powerful and is applicable every week. In fact, if we pay attention to our Shabbos Shmona Esrei we will notice that we ask for Tahara every week! Kadsheinu...Vetaher libeinu le'avdecha be'emes! What is this "Tahara" that we speak of?
Rabbi Bernstein cites R' Freund who brings a parallel idea from the idea of Yovel.
What happens on Yovel? Every slave goes free, and every ancestral field that was sold for harvesting returns to it's original owner. What is gained by this? Are we guaranteed that a slave won't sell himself back into slavery or a owner will sell his field again and restart this cycle? The length of servitude could be up to 50 years! This is all the slave ever knew - he might turn around the day after Yovel and sell himself again. Why did Hashem create Yovel?
The reason for this hard reset is to give this man an opportunity - he can sell himself back but he doesn't need to. He is given the choice once again to decide if he will prefer to choose the way things always were, or will he rise up and create a new beginning for himself.
This is the purpose of Tahara/purification - if someone just attains kapparah he may very well turn around the next Yom Kippur and ask for Kapparah for the very same things he did last year. But, if he can tap into the Tahara process and realize that Hashem has lovingly released him from the shackles of doing things the way he always did, the ball is in his court to decide whether to continue down that path or to reflect and create a new path for himself. What a special gift from Hashem!
Something to think about the next time we sing Kadsheinu...Vetaher libeinu le'avdecha be'emes!
Good Shabbos!
Yisrael Moshe Kraines