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32 | Harav Dovid Hirsch Harav Eliezer Krohn | 33
Yerushalayim by means of the wind. Then Menashe declared, “There is justice Harav Elie zer K r ohn
and there is a Judge.”
Noted Maggid Shiur
We see from this Bavli and Yerushalmi in Sanhedrin that Hashem wants us to
do teshuvah. No matter how bad the person – even Menashe, who sinned
and caused Klal Yisrael to sin – Hashem wants us to repent and gives us the Teshuvah is in our Hands
opportunity to return.
If we really love someone and that person wants us to do something good, we his mitzvah that I command you today [...] is not in heaven for you to
would most definitely do it. The Master of the Universe wants us to repent say, “Who can ascend to the heaven for us and take it for us, so that we
NOW. We love Him and we are commanded to love Him; let us do what He T can listen to it and perform it?” Nor is it across the sea for you to say,
wants of us. Let us not be like the person in the parable that Rabbeinu Yonah “Who can cross to the other side of the sea for us and take it for us, so that we
quotes (Shaar 1:2) from Koheles Rabbah (7:15) about a person who is in prison can listen to it and perform it?” Rather, the matter is very near to you, in your
with a band of thieves who were imprisoned by the king. mouth and in your heart, to perform it. (Devarim 30:11-14)
The thieves dig and dig, until they have forged an opening through which Many Rishonim, such as the Ramban and Sforno, understand that the
they make their escape, while he remains behind. The jailer sees the breach, mitzvah the Torah refers to in the above passage, “the matter […] to perform,”
then sees the one prisoner who did not escape. The guard starts hitting this is teshuva. (Rashi, on the other hand, learns it as referring to talmud Torah.) The
prisoner with a rod, saying, “Hapless one, do you not see the breach before commentaries ask two central questions here:
you? Why did you not make haste to save yourself?” First, why the contrast of such extremes, themselves seemingly so unrelated?
This is the time to do teshuvah. Let us not be that prisoner who remained in the By telling us that It is “not in heaven” or “across the sea,” the Torah would
cell and did not escape. seem to suggest that it is nevertheless very far away from us. Yet the very next
verse informs us that not only is it not so far, but in truth is so very close. Why
Rabbeinu Yonah writes (Shaar 1:43) that one who does teshuvah must constantly introduce the mitzvah in these doubly grand terms?
pray to Hashem to be assisted toward repentance, as the passuk says (Yirmeyahu
31:18) ”Turn me, and I shall be turned, for You are Hashem, my G-d.” Second, is it really true that teshuvah is so easy as to be “very near”? Isn›t
it something that we struggle with our entire lives, trying to remedy our
Let Hashem give us the strength and motivation to repent fully and sincerely deficiencies and not fall prey to our yetzer ha-ra?
right now.
Perhaps we can work toward answering the above by adding a third question:
Everyone, have a happy and healthy year. Why does the verse twice add the word leimor, “to say”? It›s not, after all, for
us to say that teshuvah is in the heavens or across the sea, and accordingly the
Torah could have written more simply that the teshuva we are commanded is
not in the heavens nor in the sea rather than writing that it’s not for us to say
that it be in either of those places. And indeed that question suggests its own
answer: teshuva in fact is in the heavens and across the sea, very remote from
us, and life is such that it would naturally be very difficult for us to mend our
ways. Tendencies, after all, are very difficult to overcome. However, such a
Agudah Achasgudah Achas
A Agudah Achas
