Parshas Ki Savo: Confession, Repentance, and Bulldozing Imagined Walls

It wasn't my finest hour, I know it. I'm really kind of embarrassed by it, but it happened. And this week, from a source that I didn't see it coming or expect it, I received an entirely new perspective on this story. It was Probably five, six years ago. I was a young chap, not 26, but maybe I don't know 21, 20. I was back in Yeshiva learning as a sheevah bacher by Nussinstein Shelita, and the way that it goes is that you travel to Yeshiva and you endeavor to Become a big Talmud kacham. That's the goal to become a disciple of the holy rabbi, follow the ways of the Torah and grow up to be a great rabbi one day. Right Because of that, there are certain guidelines and rules. You're not allowed to have any sort of device or object that may inhibit your growth, and one of those items that was prohibited and based measures Torah's chesed Was a vehicle. We were told we were not allowed to have a car, and Probably the thinking is because if you give this group of a hundred young men Automobiles, they probably will venture out all the free time that they have, maybe even God forbid miss a couple minutes of the Scheduled Torah study. So no automobiles, no cars. But I asked the rest of Shiva, I said I Live far away. The she was in Lakewood, new Jersey. After all. I live down south, in Norfolk, virginia. It's about seven hours, seven-hour drive if I take a bus, ten hours because I got to go up from Virginia. There's a bus from Virginia Beach that drops me off in Manhattan and then I got to take the local transit down to Lakewood and that takes forever and slept the bags and I want to fly. There's not a perfect flight. There's only a couple flights a day and they charge you an arm and a leg. So Please, rabbi, can I drive a car, bring Myself my bags up to Lakewood and I'll leave my car by the rest of Shiva. I'll give the rest of Shiva the keys and that'll be that. I'll just use it Kind of as the transportation to and from my house to yeshiva and from yeshiva back home. And the rest of Shiva allowed that and everything went well. I drove up and the first man was great, but I was a rambunctious Young gentleman at the time, and here's where things kind of went off the rails. The next off-shop is the next time I went home for yeshiva. I drove my car home and I had I thought well, you know, if I drive my car back and I give it to the rest of Shiva, I give the keys to the rest of Shiva. If I park it, you know, tell the rest Shiva, I parked it around the corner, and I bring a second set of keys, a spare key. Well then, maybe I can still use the car and the rest of Shiva won't know and I won't miss yeshiva. I'll only go out to maybe eat with a couple friends, and after all, I'm an added towner and I got to break my way in to be friends with the cool kids. I want to be friends with the in towners. So Something got the best of me. Maybe I'll bring blaming on my twin brother Even though that's not a good idea, because it wasn't him, it was me. Anyway, I take the second set of keys, I follow through with my devious plan and I give the rest of the keys. I park the car around the corner and I keep my second set of keys. Things were going well. I was making friends, now a cool guy, because now I'm the Adotana with a car and now people want to be friends with me. But then something very odd happened All of a sudden. I walk outside in the middle of second stator. It was a Sunday and actually my friend Schmuel tapped me on the shoulder and said you got to go outside and see this. I kid you not, my car was sitting inside the rush of sheaves driveway, or at least it was a black car that had the same license plate as I remember I had and also said it was from Virginia. So things were very weird. But I remember parking it a couple blocks away, so the rush of sheave wouldn't know that I had a car and eventually became known that the rush of sheave had figured out that a couple of the sheave of a car in the sheave had had cars and I was one of them who was driving my car. So the rush of sheave said okay, I have a key too, I'll go take the car. Not saying anything, pulled the car around and I guess he didn't like my ESPN radio. Maybe my seat was adjusted poorly, but either way. The rush of sheave brought my car and put it in front of his house. That's it. I was caught and he didn't say anything. But he sent a message out with one of the Bukham who was close with him at the time. He said that anyone who has a car or had a car, please come to me and I would like to speak with them. So of course I am quite nervous. I don't know what I'm going to get, but it's probably not a big hug and a keep up the good work. I make my way over to the rush of sheave Later that night and I say rubby. I kind of, in the rush of sheave, said yeah, I heard you had a car, it isn't so exciting. And I was disappointed. And he told me sternly I'm making everyone drive their cars home today, but since I know you live far away, I'm going to keep the car here and when the off shop is comes, I want you to drive it home and don't bring it back. And I said, of course, of course. But then it continued and he said Michael, you know, since you had this car, the worst part was that you were hiding something from me and I can't properly nurture you, I can't connect with you. You're always going to put up some sort of wall, because you know that we can't become too close because ultimately then I may figure out about what you're hiding. So now you can get rid of this car, you can bring it home. You don't feel like you're hiding anything. I feel like our real relationship can start and we can build it. It wasn't until this week that I recognized the Rosh Hashifah's absolute brilliance and his unique prowess and his ability to educate young gentlemen. It was this week that we come across the mitzvah of K'Sichal la'aser as k'om'aser tfu'ascha bas'onah hashlicis that when thou hast completed the tithings of the third of thy produce in the third year and just big, regular English, here there's a mitzvah, every Arab Pesach after the third year of the Shemitah cycle, the seven-year cycle, one needs to make sure that they have properly allocated all of the third year tithes. Make sure you did it right, you separated and you gave it and that, if God forbid, there may still erroneously remain some misallocated money in your possession. See to it that is distributed. You did properly. That satisfactory tithing has been accomplished. But it doesn't stop there. The mitzvah, along with the allocating of the miser, you must make sure to do a vidui miser, a confession about your miser, and listen to this and you tell Hashem. You say in front of Hashem, then thou shalt say, before the presence of Hashem, I've cleared out that which is hallowed from the house and I have also given it to the Levi, to the stranger, to the orphan, to the ger, all of it. You have to do a vidui. You must out loud, say and confirm that you have fulfilled properly all of the relevant mitzvahs. A vidui, a declaration of sorts, a self-examination that you dutifully fulfilled your tithing obligations. And when you think about a vidui at large, of course, the first thing that comes to mind is the mitzvah to be misvada and to confess to do a vidui when you are repenting Chuvah during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the high holidays. It's one of the parts, the halakim of Chuvah. You have to forsake sin. You have to commit yourself to do better in the future. In order to have full repentance, you gotta make sure to regret your actions. Jam, I'm sorry, I wish I never did it, but you know what? Even if you have all of those tanayim, all of those parts of your chuvah done, taken care of there's a check mark next to them still not enough. You need vidui. You need to confess your sins out loud, and Revulba wants to know why. Is it not enough to have some honest regret? Can I also forsake my sin? I can make up my mind to deny it in the future, and still that's not enough. What is lacking? What is left and why does vidui accomplish that? What role does vidui play? And when we examine the root of sin, one of the causations, one of the factors, one of the outcomes of sin, we will be able to then hopefully come back and understand what vidui is, why it plays a role in our vidui, my certain separating ties, and hopefully get back to understand Rev Nussinstein's educational mindset and philosophies. You see, every single time that a person does an avayra let's take Lush and Hara, for example the Gammar tells us if you speak illicit tongue, you speak gossip or slander about someone. You are somebody that denies the existence of Hashem. You are a co-fair. Why, we are taught? Because you may have looked left and right to see if that person is around Listening to you, because you don't want to make sure that they hear you speak behind their back. So when they're not around, that's when you speak your gossip, that's when you get it in, start the rumor. But you forgot to look up, you forgot to check if Hashem is listening. So when you spoke Lush and Harah, you, so to speak or not so to speak did not in Hashem's existence. You imagine that Hashem isn't really listening. You have created this fantasy. She can't really see me. Every single time that a person does sin and the recesses of our hearts, we have to conclude Hashem can't see me because it's too hard To do something against Hashem in front of Hashem. So every hate is a building of a partition and imagined, totally fabricated Mechitza. And one of the interesting factors about this fake wall that we have created between us and Hashem is that the wall doesn't actually stop Hashem's vision at all. He can see what you are doing quite clearly. It is just a wall that we can see or we pretend to be there. This partition Mechitza of sorts, vidoy, vidoy tears down walls. Vidoy says Khatano, I have sinned Lafanecha in front of your face. Confession tears up the imaginative walls. When a person goes ahead and says Hashem, in front of your face, I spoke lush and harder and I didn't look up. You have shown this bright beam, the shining beam of truth, to destroy these imaginative, fabricated walls. And and for every sin that we do that, we pretend Hashem can't see us, another wall, another partition created, and so Vidoy continues to, just like a bulldozer, destroy these walls and Khatano, lafanecha. It rings so true to us that I've sinned. In front of you. Every time that you say it and when you look inside of the Maachs, are God willing, on Rosh Hashanah, on Yom Kippur, when you will say Vidoy, you will See how, on the right side of the page there's this list of all the Khatano Lafanechas and on the left side there's the list of the actual sins that a person can confess to, ones with lush and harder ones, with immorality and the misuse of our potentials and all the different sins. And the custom is, as my great Rebbe of ninth grade, who continues to be my Rebbe of wisdom, read by Shol left which Slita. He said, people have the custom to keep their finger on the left side of the page, just moving their finger down, listing and saying each sin, because they know that the words before it are Khatano Lafanecha with it and Khatano Lafanecha with this. Is this every sin. But truthfully, the more important part is to have that intention and to keep your finger on the right side of the page of. It was in front of you that I send Khatano Lafanecha, removing the walls, shining this light and clarifying and opening up this relationship between man and a goddess. Bar Vidoy is a glowing ray of truth that dispels the sinful fantasies and imagined walls. But there's more, another benefit and confessing, and that is that it's hard to begin any healing process if you can't admit and realize the sickness. Always the first step is To recognize and acknowledge a certain shortcoming. God, I need help. This is an area of weakness for me and I'm a needly mealy, we are told. I talk by the mission of that. If a person will not be for themself, well Then who will be for them? And that's not because there aren't Others to help you your parents, your rabbi, him and I call this bar who will help you for a baby. New yone explains to us that it's not gonna work and lets you yourself actually decide to acknowledge where you are lacking and to decide once and for all to perfect it. So many of the sins that a person may do are never sins, because really it wasn't that bad that I took a tissue. He doesn't even care. Am I really upset that I really sin, that I didn't have proper concentration in prayer? Nobody does. It's too hard. The fashionable philosophy tells us otherwise. Am I expected? Am I in trouble for not learning a sufficient amount? Doesn't Hashem know my schedule? I'm so exhausted. Things aren't necessarily sins, things aren't issues, until we acknowledge and admit and clarify to ourselves a confession of self-examination, aka a vedoy, that will quiet the voices inside of your head. Vedoy is us comparing notes from what our life is to that which Hashem commands, and the discrepancy is vedoy. Vedoy is an acknowledgement of weakness. The confession restores a clear outlook on life. It's a returning to reality. It's returning to life, real life. That's vedoy. All of this is accomplished with an honest confession and it's not easy. No, to really look yourself in the mirror and say that tissue that I took was stealing five cents from my friend, that's not easy. The time that I woke up late, I really could have got up, really, that is just, I'm lazy. It's very hard. The pain, of course, is well documented. For anybody that sees the truth, the pain is excruciating. But when you look the truth in the eye, even though it ain't a big bowl of cherries, you become like Yehuda. Yehuda who was blessed by his father, yaakov, to be the king. He grabbed the throne. It was going to be the monarchy and his dominion for the foreseeable future. Because at Odessa you admitted, he admitted, with the episode of him and Tamar, it is king-like. It shows giveura and strength like a lion, to admit. At Odessa, therefore, you will be the monarch. So back to the tithing on Erev Pesach. Why is it that it's not enough just to allocate the necessary tithes and see to it that it has been dutifully and satisfactorily taken care of? Because sometimes you can't see satisfaction unless you do vidai, in order to make sure that there isn't a dollar stuck on your hand, a couple pennies in your pocket or maybe a couple more bucks that are supposed to be put in the miser pile. That takes a vidai. All of a sudden you start to see a couple extra bucks that were supposed to go to the pauper or to a koine or levy. You understand what you have to do, but it takes an honest confession, it takes vidai. And now I understand that the Rosh Hashiva and the depth of his thinking when he said bring your car home, because then you're gonna be lying to yourself, you're gonna build a fake wall, you're never gonna open up to me and I'm never going to be able to learn with you. I'm happy that I never brought the car back. And if you're still not sold on a full, honest confession, a real video, well then maybe keep in mind that the heavenly courts function in the exact opposite way of courts down here in our world. In our world. When you admit, that's when you get punished. Self-incrimination Thank you for telling the truth. Now Go to jail, but upstairs in heaven, if you're Marchia as Atzmo, if you admit guilt, you walk away totally squeaky clean. Hashem says you were the judge already. There's nothing left to do here. You were honest, you see it, and now you want to repent. Welcome home. So confess, to return to reality. Admit, duvidoy and exonerate yourself. Reveal the facts as they are to yourself, because Hashem knows all of our thoughts and our actions. Own up to your actions and your decisions Like a king. Act like Yehuda. Seek the truth, admit to the truth. Quiet the voices inside of your head that are imagining certain partitions between you and the Almighty and tear down those walls that are separating you from Hashem. And all of this can be done with some honest confession. Hisvada, admit, confess, say Vidoy.