We've been discussing where of Solovecic's beautiful and incisive distinction between the two aspects of Tashuvah. Kapara and Tahara, as he called them. Atonement, and on the other hand, purification. Atonement he had suggested is somewhat more modest. It is what gets us out of being punished, as opposed to Tahara, completely transforms the person. And as we have seen already, Solovecic had mentioned, that this corresponds to two aspects of sin. Sin both obligates us to be punished. It comes with a price, but also that it contaminates us. So we purify from the contamination, and we are forgiven from the debt that we owe the punishment. We also saw that he explained that for Kapara, it was enough to merely stop sinning into the minimal chuva. But when it comes to Tahara, it was not enough to just stop sinning, but one had to completely abandon the lifestyle, and the context, and the culture, which had led to the sin. Now we will complete this essay in this chapter, and see if you additional dimensions that Solovecic adds to this distinction. First, he applies this distinction between Kapara and Tahara to a very famous question. As he puts it, a question that Gedola Yisrael, both the more rationalist and the more mystical bent, all have asked the question. He says, "I am a chuva of a total Tahara, and I am a chuva of a totaler, and I am a chuva of a totaler." He means that he is a chuva of a totaler, and he is a chuva of a totaler. He means that he is a chuva of a totaler, and he is a chuva of a totaler. In other words, fundamental, philosophical theological question is the whole concept of chuva. Is it something that is deserved? If we do the proper steps, we deserve to be forgiven. Hashem is just doing the right thing? Is it just? Or is it something way beyond? We actually don't deserve it at all, but it's from Hashem's compassion and his kindness. Solovecic points out that if you look in sources, both in the Tanach and in Hazal, we have competing impressions. We have Shukim or stories, which seem to apply that it is very much an act of compassion, guide God's magnificent kindness. And other times, we see that it's, in fact, something that seems to be actually deserved. To take two prominent examples, on the one hand, there's a very well-known Midrash, that's quoted in the Gomor and Yur Shalmi, Misakhta Makos, that says, that Shallu Le Chachma Chote Man Ancho, metaphorically, of course, anthropomorphically, they asked, as it were, the middah of wisdom of Chachma. What should a person who sins do? It says, wisdom, khatoyim, tirdo frah. There's nothing to do, you just have to stop sinning, but there's nothing to do about it. Shallu Le Chachma Chote Man Ancho? What about prophecy? What do you say? "Hannephe Chachotat, Hittamut, person should die." And that's what prophecy said. That's how bad it was. And finally, Shallu Le Chachma Chote Man Ancho? Yeah, sachuvah. Only as sachuvah himself said, dutushuvah. So, the result of it, it says, if aha sachuvah himself is saying, to dutushuvah, in this case, even though Chachma, for example, said, there's nothing to do about it, it's too late, you see from this that tachuvah is a middah sarachm. It's not something that's deserved, it's not logical, it's above that, beyond that. However, we know that the famous 13 middah sarachm, a special formula that we say, that we were taught in the Torah from Hashem to Moshe on that first Yom Kippur, where Hashem forgives the Jewish people for the sin of the golden calf of the Hittah Ego. So, among the middah s that I mentioned, we say, Rav Chassad, the ems. And says Rassalvitchik, you see from this, the fact that this is included in the Yoghul Middah sarachmim, and that one of them is ems, doesn't sound like it's just like a gift, a freebie, God's mercy, but rather, Chuvain or Rachme Middah sarachs said, "Elegami Middah s ems." Now, I understand that a person might say, "Middah sarachim," strict justice, and ems are not necessarily synonymous. Maybe Chuvah is ems, but doesn't mean that it's dinn. But it's worth noting that, even though I think that's potentially a legitimate point, Rav Chassalvitchik clearly is equating the two. So, in light of that, it's just philosophically, logically, it's a fascinating question, and if Rav Chassalvitchik himself, all these things that there are contradictory evidence. So, how do we resolve all this? It says Rassalvitchik in the next page. Ooh, the ems. Yoghul Middah sarachim middah sarachim. Classic, brisker of Salvitchikian approach. In fact, they're both true. In fact, they both could happen simultaneously, hypothetically. Chuvah sarachim, kapara, no vahat mi chassad. Now, here's, I think, where Salvitchik surprises us. If I would have told you a moment ago that, yes, we know there's two aspects of Chuvah. The more modest kapara, the more ambitious, transformative, tahara. One is God's mercy. Rachamim. The other one is something we deserve, God's justice. Which one would you have expected? I know I, for one, would have expected that the more transformative tahara, that must be God's kindness. But the more modest one, that we could say we deserve, we'd necessarily deserve the tahara, but at least we deserve the kapara if we did Chuvah. Rav Chassalvitchik actually flips it. He says, Chuvah of kapara? That's from Chassad. Why? So he continues. Hary Adam, Rachit, Haredal, Khadab, Adilah, Yarad mi Derech. Khadatim. Adilah, Paskamim, Yminu. Tumas. Haryt. Rav Salvitchik references what we saw in the previous year, in the previous chapter, that for kapara, it's true the result is only, is more modest. You're only forgiven from the punishment. But what is required of you to achieve kapara is far more minimal and modest. You have to do the basic, the bare bones, Chuvah, stop sinning and regret what you did. But as Rav Salvitchik had pointed out in the previous chapter, getting kapara, the bare bones of minimum Chuvah, does not require you to distance yourself from the derech of the rate, the overall context, culture and lifestyle that led to the rate. It doesn't require you to remove the tuma, the filement, the contamination, which is still in you. So you could still be contaminated by the previous sin. You could still be living in the same culture, environment or lifestyle that led to the sin. But yes, strictly speaking, you have stopped sinning and you regretted the sin. If that's enough, then why did you stop sinning? If you haven't completely abandoned the lifestyle, if you haven't decided to get rid of the tuma, the contamination, why did you even stop sinning? Salvitchik most likely, probably because you don't want to get punished. You're a normal guy. You're a normal guy. You're a US onus. So just because you don't want to get punished, even though you did enjoy a week ago, a month ago, a year or 10 years ago, you did enjoy the pleasure of whatever the sin was. And now you woke up and you said, "I don't want to get punished." So you actually stopped the sin and you truly regret it. Okay. But you don't really transform yourself. You don't get to the heart of the matter. You don't purify yourself from the contamination. You don't remove the contributing factors, the culture, the environment that led to the sin. You just do the bare minimum. And yet you still are forgiven. Well, all you did was the bare minimum and yet you still are forgiven. Hashem is going to let you go of that punishment. Klam ains das medus achaset, ses rasavicik. Is this anything but? It's true. The result is somewhat modest. But the effort is really minimal. The fact that that minimal effort even gets you anything, that's God's kindness. However, so the salsavicik nice paragraph, l'oumazot, chuvau amiras aden vamishvat, miras amis yachvarach chuvas hatahara. But if a person truly purifies himself, which we've discussed in the previous chapters, means a total transformation of self. Complete uprooting of the old identity and a transference to a new identity. Removing not only the sin abandoning that, but abandoning the contributing factors, changing the culture, the environment. Of course, there's all that. Yes, it's a hugely incredible, impressive result. But it also comes from an incredibly ambitious, hard, and profound effort on the part of the sinner. If a person has done all of that, what the rambam himself calls, you've made yourself into a different person, so then it may look. Logically, in fact, you're going to be forgiven. It's a completely changed identity if they get tahara. So, obviously, logically, it's only a matter of justice and fairness that a person is going to get forgiven because, after all, they're not the same person. So, it's true that the result of tahara is very ambitious. But in order to trigger it, in order to deserve it, you have to totally transform yourself to be a completely different person. So, if you taka, do that, then it's only fair that you shouldn't get punished. After all, you are, to use my personal name, I'll say, you are dove in 2.0. It's dove in 1.0 who sinned. But now I've changed myself. It's not just that I'm still the same dove in, but I regret it. I'm a different person. So, to get to that point, it's huge. If you actually get to that point, so there's all that chick that's actually misa didn't, it's fair that you are forgiven. Ata makhair, you're ready to live. Using the metaphor of the mikvah, a metaphor we'll come back to in the second part of today's year, you went into that mikvah, so to speak, one person, and you came out as another person. If you can do that, and it's only fair, you shouldn't get punished because you're not the person, quote unquote, who sinned. Their salvaging ends this little mini chapter by pointing out that that's why we have sources in numerous places, including in the Ramban, that describe one of the aspects of perhaps chuvah as shi noi hai shame, changing your name. Certainly the way of salvaging understands that idea is not a cheap shortcut to getting forgiven. If I go to shul and I have the gabai changes my name and we do something like that, then all of a sudden, I'm forgiven. No, no, no, clearly, salvaging says that is a way of encapsulating something much more profound. Perhaps, literally, you changed your name. That might be some of the appropriate circumstances, but it's only going to work if the change of the name is the manifestation and the outward expression of a much more fundamental inner complete transformation. The person does that. The male is sort of salvechic, the ets tahara, and that is truly fair. So, somewhat surprisingly, I wouldn't say paradoxically, but perhaps not as intuitively as we might have thought. So, the salvechic, the more modest, kapara, so that actually is Hashem's kre said, his kindness, that he gets us out of anything. But the much more ambitious tahara, which is total purification, and getting rid of all of the contaminants and retroactively purifying us from all the negative impacts of the sin, that requires a much more ambitious personal change and transformation. But if a person actually does that, so the salvechic is actually me, this idea, it's only fair and right and just, that they actually be completely forgiven. To end the essay, we now skip a little bit to page 30, and we are going to do a final chapter here called shait vilot. And our salvechic basically ends the essay by trying to go back now to the question of, we understand how a person does kapara. After all, that's the more modest, basic, hilchos chuvah, stop sinning, regret, confession. Okay. But says our salvechic now, page 30. How do we get to this much more ambitious self-transformation? What do we do for that? Says our salvechic. First of all, chuvah is out in a rakmi pakhad onesh. It cannot be that a person will achieve that level if you're only motivation to do chuvah, just because you're trying to avoid the punishment. That might be enough to get you to kapara. That is not enough of a motivation to get you to the more ambitious tahara. This is the first a person has to completely, so to speak, bow their head, change. And that's not the kind of thing that fear of punishment could perhaps induce. Low u.s. onesh taviyat adam luchus tahara. That wouldn't be sufficient. Rather, tafila. Immersion. What type of immersion? A double immersion, so they're salvechic. Tvila bemaim, but there's also a tavila beish. There's two types of totally immersive processes that a person can go through. One civilized by being in a mikvah of water. One intriguingly, says our salvechic. A mikvah of fire. What's a mikvah of water, says our salvechic. Tvila's maim missamellet eta hit amkut. Hah. And elidit, the mejadat, excuse me, reading this Hebrew when he's really using, you know, somewhat complex English words. That itself can be tricky. It would be easier in English in a certain sense. Salvechic, the mikvah, quote unquote, in water, water symbolizes getting to analytic depths. Thinking about things, being thoughtful, being analytical, self-reflective. Hah. Hah. And you make a honest assessment where you're right, where you're wrong, and you choose for some rational reasons, perhaps even logical. You know, the way we would make a list, you know, write a line in the middle of the paper, pros and cons, that's this kind of thing. However, says our salvechic, the second type of immersion, in the mikvah of fire, that missamellet eta ataktagadol sashfirasaratsan. That's not so much of an analytic decision, I weighed the pros and the cons, and it makes sense to do x or y. Rather, it is a much more extreme, you could say, and dramatic, change or breaking of your previous will. Hah. That can be quite strong, quite powerful, there's a fiery passion. And therefore, we have to break that. A person has to speak, elevate themselves beyond themselves. We have the better angels of our nature, and the worse or more evil, of course angels of our nature. And this type of sirasaratsan, this type of immersion in the fiery mikvah, mikvah fire, is where a person has this traumatic moment where they decide that they are more elevated aspects of their personality, are going to triumph over their more animalistic and coarse ones. Both of these really are the kind that, especially together, can bring a person to true tahara. After all, he says, what does it mean to regret the past? Really, to do that sincerely, a person has to do an analysis, think about what they did, why they did it, and it comes mitoq havana, below mitoq parad. You really understand that in hindsight, you made a mistake. Havana shalah shayt, next page, mashmah utoh, you truly understand it. Breghar shahadam, parahir, mishtahayayain, so to speak, mistah kelah lah shayt, hoorah hav mape rusa shalah shayt. A lot of times in life, we reach a point where we're disillusioned, sizr sawejik. Akhzavai says in the next line, we're disappointed in ourselves, and we realize that it wasn't even worth it. Like what was that even about? Pishat shiitat regal shalaadam kadam. You reach a certain kind of moral bankruptcy. You know, you thought you had all this quote unquote, in the bank, all these enjoyments, all these pleasures, all these experiences. And you look and you see, I was misled. It really wasn't where I misled myself, to be honest, but it just wasn't worth it. Sizr sawejik. Haheit rakmakhti et matarato. It, it missed the target. May be all the day, morège lei mape rnefes. It's to some extent, the regret is heartbreaking, because you realize there was missed opportunities, missed experiences. The possek says, this is the well-known possek in the Tanakh, we say it in the haftorah. Every shabbos, every year on shabbos between Roshan and Yom Kippur, Shuva Yisrael. Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit. And that's of course what the name Shabbos, Shuva, comes from. Repent, return to Israel, to Hashem your God, because you have made a mistake, so to speak. Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit. It's not that the sins led to the failure, the sins themselves were a fail. Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit The sins themselves and hindsight were the mistake, not that they led to mistakes. They were the mistakes, they didn't lead to failures, they were, they ate some failure itself. Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit He gives an example, which is close to my heart, quite painful. Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit gearitit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit Haheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit rakheit them to this elevated area and he, you know, locked the door and closed everything and hopefully no one should be tempted even to see them because who knows, you know, how beautiful they were and that really, who knows what the ankle lead to. However, the MRI describes how there was once a situation where the light hit the room where these women were staying right exactly at the moment that he was looking in that direction and sure now he was actually able to get a glimpse of this incredible beauty and he was so enticed by their beauty that they were on this elevated area that's loft. He pushed the superhuman strength, this ladder that really one person, slowly not a rabbi, should have been able to push and he is so consumed with the fire of temptation that he has the superhuman strength to push the ladder and is climbing up the ladder in order to hope, you know, in his mind to the time hopefully satisfy his desires with this woman and then at the last minute so to speak, you know, he kind of grabbed hold of himself as a word. He realizes what he is doing halfway up the ladder and he steadies himself and he screams out, there's a fire in Omeram's house and when people heard him screaming fire, fire, everyone ran and of course once everyone was there, he wasn't going to commit the sin in front of everybody and they thought he was screaming about an actual fire but he was really screaming about the fire of a Zietzohara burning inside of him and that's what saved him. It says you know sometimes in life, even though we know what's wrong, we just can't control ourselves because our passions are burning inside of us. If you have that kind of passion to sin, you need to fight fire with fire. You need to fight fire. You need to fight fire. Therefore you need that so to speak. A person has to have a shiviras, a rudson, they have to just sometimes in, you know, a lot of times we have this and he had before he had used the term analytical or methodical, step by step, think it through, pros and cons and that could sometimes lead to a certain kind of a shiviras, haversa, salut veichik, a more tried and true way of purification is not just to think it through and be methodical or analytical but sometimes we just have this moment where almost an instant we have this extreme awareness. This is just right. I'm not going to do it anymore. It would be just as an analogy would be the difference between someone who let's say smoked for a while and therefore they needed to use some kind of behavioral modification and over time, over weeks, over months slowly, slowly, slowly the wean themselves in the cigarettes. They have another person who might have smoked the exact same amount of cigarettes but they are just so clear and so aware and so strong in their belief that, you know, I just have to stop. It's not healthy for me. They can stop cold on a dime. That type of shiviras a rotson, not just slowly, slowly, slowly. Yeah, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense. No, but to just have like this almost ada bod experience. I don't want to be that person anymore. I'm not like that anymore. This is not what I want to be. That's the type of thing that can lead to true tahara or salut veichik ends this beautiful essay by referencing the telos on yomikipurim where we seem to ask for both of these things. We ask for a certain kind of a kapara, but we also ask for a tahara. It says, "Bachisika af pishekachachachachachachachachachachachachachachcha." The sin has the ability to cloud ourselves. We sort of speak cloud, the light coming from our nashama, the true selves, our true good self, our true godly divine self that's inside each and every one of us that would shine forth like the most beautiful sun. But the fact that we've sinned piles layers upon layers of dirt, of smut, of clouds covering that light. Ka'adam zocha, le chuvah, shaltahara, but if a person doesn't just kapara to get out of the punishment. But tahara, that is like mith pazriim kallanani. The clouds all clear up. Everything goes away, and all of a sudden that sun is allowed to shine bright. That is truly what we're davening for when we say ke galtihr. That is to have a personal redemption, not just to get out of the punishment, to get out of the jail, but to truly be one with ourselves. Tashuvah is not just returning to Hashem. It's returning to our true selves. It's really there, but it's been covered with layers and layers upon years upon years of sinning. But we can do true tahara, not just to get out of the punishment, not just to have them, you know, the bank forgive the loan. But in fact, they totally transform ourselves. That's so to speak, clearing all the clouds, allowing our true selves to come out. So as we now move into the middle towards the middle of Khodesh Elul anticipating Rosh Hashanah, eventually Yom Kippur, something to think about. On the one hand, the more minimal, the more modest, on the other hand, the more maximal kapara versus tahara. And if I were to sum up everything we've seen in these three shurim to one final point, I would say, since we don't want to, you know, we want to have an actionable point, I think both of these different dimensions and is different as they are. But they both provide a certain level of guidance and comfort. On the one hand, we should realize that even if we're not ready for and are able to accomplish this higher and more dramatic level of tahara, it's okay. Because there's a more modest level. Kapara is also a level. Kapara is also a madrega. And even if we can't reach the highest one, there's a madrega of kapara. That's something we could shoot for and hopefully benefit from. On the other hand, we should be aware that there is something even higher and there is something to aspire to. It's not just kapara. We should be aspiring to be aware of the higher madrega of tahara. That balance, there's something she's telling us, again, it took him 30 pages to do it. And he explained it beautifully with layers upon layers of examples and proofs and development and nuance. But the bottom line is there's more modest level. We should be aware of that that gives us comfort. It's relatively, relatively not easy, but relatively easier to achieve. But we should also be aware of the more higher ambitious goal that when we can, we should certainly be aspiring to achieve.
