Maintaining a Constant Connection
Distancing oneself from Hashem, it turns out, is not only the consequence of sin, but also its precondition
The Mabit, in his lengthy kuntres on teshuvah in his sefer Beis Elokim, begins with a concise definition of teshuvah. That definition consists of only four Hebrew words: krivah l'Hashem mei'richuk hacheit — drawing close to Hashem after the distancing [from Him] caused by the sin.
The Mabit's first purpose in defining teshuvah in that fashion is to exclude the desire to avoid punishment. Whenever we sin, we do two things. First, we injure ourselves by incurring Divine punishment for that sin. But second, and more important, we anger our Creator by transgressing His command.
True, when we do teshuvah, we mitigate or erase the punishment for that sin. But so long as our prime goal is not to remove the distance created between ourselves and Hashem by virtue of our sin, and we are focused only on our fear of punishment, even the mitigation or erasure of punishment will not take place, according to the Mabit.
Distancing oneself from Hashem, it turns out, is not only the consequence of sin, but also its precondition, albeit in a slightly different sense. The Mabit offers a mashal. No one in their right mind would directly contravene a king's command in his immediate presence. They would wait until they were no longer in his presence. Thus, if we transgress one of Hashem's commands, it means that at that moment we were not conscious of His presence. He was, chas v'shalom, both out of sight and out of mind. That, writes the Mabit, is what Chazal meant when they say that one does not sin unless a spirit of insanity enters into him.
In short, the best means of avoiding sin is to live with a constant awareness of being in the presence of the Creator of the universe, Who sees and remembers everything, even our innermost thoughts.
But let us not fool ourselves into thinking that being ever conscious of Hashem is easy or an automatic outgrowth of our performance of mitzvos. Rav Noach Weinberg, the founder of Aish HaTorah, was particularly fond of the following joke (which I may have told before): An avreich shared with his chavrusa that he had had an amazing dream the previous night about Hashem. His chavrusa told him that there was nothing surprising about that, as he spends his whole day thinking about Hashem.
To which the yungerman replies, "I wake up early every morning and have a learning seder before and after the neitz minyan. Then I have a quick breakfast and take the kids to school, after which I rush to kollel for first seder, followed by Minchah, lunch, and a brief nap, prior to second seder in kollel." In that fashion, he continues describing his day up until the recitation of the bedtime Shema.
At which point he turns to his chavrusa and tells him, "You see? Every moment is accounted for. When should I think about Hashem?"
For Reb Noach, the answer to that question was the Six Constant Mitzvos, which a Jew is supposed to retain in his consciousness at all times. He trained himself to instantly revert to thinking about one or another of those concepts when not involved in some task or conversation, and sought to teach his talmidim to do the same. In a similar fashion, the late Rav Shmuel Wosner once remarked that for the previous 70 years of his life, he had thought about the Six Constant Mitzvos at least 100 times a day, for it is through them that a connection is developed with Hashem.
THE FIRST OF THOSE MITZVOS is "Know that there is a G-d." That constitutes the baseline for us, knowing that Hashem is a reality. And it is that knowledge that we discussed as the essential preventative to sin.
But others of the Six Constant Mitzvos are relational, not just philosophical — e.g., the mitzvah to love Hashem, or to fear Him. The realization of being distant from Hashem, or of having distanced ourselves, expresses a relationship with Hashem. And similarly, the desire to draw close to Him again.
And as with any relationship, closeness and distance require knowing something of the other party. To Whom do we seek to draw close again after having distanced ourselves? At one level, of course, that knowledge is impossible, for Hashem is both unique and completely distinct from us. We cannot know His essence because it is foreign to us. Even the glow of His presence is denied to us in this world.
Nevertheless, during this time of the year, when teshuvah is the focus of our activity, we must focus our thoughts on Him and what we can know about Him. He has drawn close to us, and so must we seek to reciprocate and come close to Him. The most obvious means of doing so is through intensifying our tefillos. In prayer, we are engaged in a conversation with Hashem, even if His responses are not always clear. And Chazal, who formulated the nusach hatefillah, have given us in human terms the best approximation of what can be said about Hashem. The bakashos (requests), for instance, are an expression of the blessings that He seeks to bring into the world, if we can only avoid stuffing up the pipelines of brachah.
Another opportunity to think about Hashem and what His existence means for His creatures is to imagine a world in which awareness of His existence is universal. The Tein pachdecha section of tefillah encourages us to imagine what such a world would be like, one in which all have become "a single society, to do Your will wholeheartedly."
And if we cannot know Hashem's essence, we have access to His will, as expressed in His commandments. The question we have to ask ourselves is what kind of human being does Hashem seek to fashion through His commandments. What does it take for us to be worthy of a relationship with Him. For to enter into a relationship with Hashem, we must be like Him in some way. He is holy. So what does it mean to be a holy individual, and how do we get there?
We are referred to as banim l'Makom, children of Hashem. As the Mesilas Yesharim explains in this discussion of chassidus, the difference between an eved and a ben is that the servant is content to simply fulfill his master's orders; the son wants to understand the will that lies behind those orders, the purpose for which they were given, the person our Father wants us to be.
THIS PAST SHABBOS, our shul rav spoke about the increasingly common practice of people leaving the charging lines to their electric cars lying on the sidewalk where anyone walking by can trip on them. A classic bor b'reshus harabim. After the shiur, he told me about a recent case in which a single woman had tripped over such lines and had fallen, breaking her wrist. Not only did she incur medical bills but she was unable to work for a period of time.
Though the beis dinin such a case has scant ability to impose damages for lost wages on the baal habor, my rav called the owners of the car and told them that they should cover at least part of the woman's lost wages. They replied that parnassahis min haShamayim, livelihood is from Heaven, and declined to share the expenses of the woman who had fallen because of their careless appropriation of the sidewalk.
We say that Hashem's mercy extends to all His creatures, and that we should strive to emulate His middos as much as we can: "What is He — merciful and gracious — so should we be." But the owners of that car, I would guess, had not taken a moment to think about Hashem or how they might emulate Him.
But without contemplating those questions, how will they recognize how far they have distanced themselves from Him or arouse a desire to return to a close relationship with Him?
That is the task of each one of us in these days of teshuvah.
A Belated Apology
Before we get to the Yom Hadin, I'd like to apologize to my readers for an oversight. I have until now failed to call attention to Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein's sefer From the World of the Meshech Chochmah (Mosaica Press), which was published approximately a year ago.
What makes that oversight particularly glaring is that the recently passed 100th yahrtzeit of the Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, author of the Meshech Chochmah on Chumash and the Ohr Sameiach on the Rambam, on 4 Elul, would have been a perfect opportunity to highlight the new English-language work.
Rav Meir Simcha was referred to by his contemporary Torah giants as "the Sar HaTorah" for his total mastery of all aspects of Torah. The posthumously published Meshech Chochmah fully captures that mastery, with its brilliant interweaving of halachah and drush, along with a keen understanding of human nature. The result is a rich, multilayered work, filled with chiddushim connecting the halachic derashos of Chazal with pshuto shel Mikra.
Rabbi Yehudah Copperman opened up the Meshech Chochmah to the world with an extensively annotated version. And Rabbi Immanuel Bernstein, the son of Rabbi Copperman's first cousin, the late Rabbi Isaac Bernstein, was a long-time chavrusa of Rabbi Copperman. (He previously published a two-volume English-language version of Pshuto shel Mikra, based on Rabbi Copperman's Hebrew work of the same name.)
Stimulated by Rabbi Copperman's love of the Meshech Chochmah, Rabbi Bernstein undertook to explicate approximately six of Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk's insights on each parashah. I have now completed a year's cycle of Rabbi Bernstein's sefer. It is very rare for me to enter Shabbos without delving into the thought of the Meshech Chochmah as explicated with great clarity by Rabbi Bernstein, and almost unthinkable to finish Shabbos without having done so.
I encourage anyone who is not already familiar with the astounding chiddushim of the Meshech Chochmah to begin the new annual cycle of the Torah reading with From the World of the Meshech Chochmah. And I ask for mechilah from all those whom I denied the thrill of doing so by not mentioning the sefer previously.
Kesivah v'chasimah tovah.