Vaad Before Yom Kippur – Conclusion How to Make Teshuvah

Last vaad we discussed doing something that will not move our life around and yet will change us. The goal being to change ourselves, not our life. The teshuva needs to be within our life and we need a kabbala ketana – a small action – which will go together with our life. We will discover in this vaad that it is really Torah and Mitzvos which will be the driving force for change in our life.

Teshuva is not only about making a decision to change

We know that sheer will power to change is not going to have staying power. What we need is creative thinking to figure out an appropriate small change which can come naturally to us and change our life. We need to figure out what is wanted from us and our lives. 

The purpose of Rosh Hashana within the framework of Asseres Yimey Teshuva

The two days of Rosh Hashana are a part of asseres yimey teshuva and yet we do not do teshuva during them! This is because the purpose of Rosh Hashana is “Zikaron” meaning that Hashem remembers the impression a person made on His ratzon. A barber who remembers someone, remembers the haircut they had and the impression it made on him. A shoemaker remembers a person’s shoes. Hashem takes into account our life in so far as our life expresses His will and His interests so to speak.

It is for this reason that Yom Hadin is very frightening for us because we don’t know what Hashem’s grand plan is and we cannot even discern who a Ben Olam Haba is!  We see this in the Rosh Hashana davening that we are talking about Hashem’s plan…”simcha b’artzecha” etc. all sorts of tefillos which are dealing with this Will of Hashem. This is the judgment of Rosh Hashana and it is part of asseres yimey teshuva.

We can never know the Peratim of what it will be like when Evil is Banished from the World

We think that these sentences regarding the utopia of the world without evil and fulfilling Hashem’s will b’shleimus are for tzaddikim. We think that we ourselves are busy hoping for physical blessings on Rosh Hashana but Anshei Knesses Hagedola who wrote these lines in the special Rosh Hashana shemoneh esrei were busy with these lofty ruchniyus desires and this was the world and the ratzon Hashem that they themselves saw and envisioned during their Rosh Hashana. However, this is false because the Ramchal says that no one can envision the details of what the world will look like when evil is banished from it. So we see even the greatest tzaddikim are not in “that future world” on Rosh Hashana.

The Point of Rosh Hashana is the clarity on the overarching goal

Rather the essence of Rosh Hashana is the focus on the clarity of the general concept of what Hashem’s Will is. This Will for klal yisroel can be summed up as “giluy kavod shomayim.” To make teshuva during asseres yimey teshuva we first need to have this clarity of what the overarching principle we are going for is. These two days of Rosh Hashana are a full 20% of our asseres yimey teshuva.

An example to illustrate the above necessity of clarity in order to do teshuva properly is from a yeshiva bochur who says he wants “hasmada” and jumps to the conclusion in his head that “hasmada means learning 15 hours a day,” this is wrong! While this may at times be an outward expression of hasmada, this in and of itself is not the definition of hasmada. 

A person who is curious about so many different things in the world thinks that to be a masmid he needs to channel all of his curiosity into the Torah. This too is jumping to a conclusion without really focusing on what hasmada means. If a person were to be “curious” in his Torah learning he would be jumping from detail to detail and just knowing the “trivia facts” of Torah so to speak. What a masmid really means is that he is not curious in anything except that which he is focused on learning. He lives the sugiya so he isn’t interested in anything else. That is the experience of hasmada. 

Real Teshuva

Sadly when our generation approaches teshuva we are result oriented and hone in on what the end product needs to look like. We think when we do teshuva on “anger” we need to “never become angry.” This is impractical and also misses the definition of what a savlan (patient person) is. In truth being patient means being sovel your own desire. A savlan is sovel his own ratzon. For example, his own desire to not be micromanaged!

Taking the Kabbala Ketana After Clarity 

Once we have clarified for ourselves “what does Hashem want from me within tefilla/torah/shalom bayis?” meaning the matziv (internal state) which Hashem wants us in, not the outcome. Then we can figure out what kabbala ketana can actualize this internal state we are going for. 

It is now abundantly clear for us that the kabbala ketana is not simple practical advice to choose something small in order to be realistic. Truly it was always foolish to think as much because it is the most obvious advice to “not bite off more than you can chew.” That practical advice cannot be the great chidush of R’ Yisroel! Did we honestly think that before R’ Yisroel came along everyone just bit off more than they could chew?? Rather R’ Yisroel is saying that we need to take that small action which contains within it the internal state which we want to reach, and doesn’t bother our life.

The Kabbala Ketana remains within our natural daily routine

How do we take the internal state we see Hashem wants from us and distill it into the proper kabbala ketana?

We think our kabbala ketana needs to be that each day we need to be inspired to fulfill our kabbala ketana. However what we really need is that the kabbala ketana needs to be attached to a naturally recurring experience of life. The parable for this truth is that all the functions of our organs are interesting in the sense that they activate, rest, and change, but the heart just keeps its rhythm without changing. Our kabbala ketana needs to be like the heart. The man we spoke of last vaad who made the coffee for his wife fit it into a part of his daily pattern. The man we spoke of last vaad who could not daven, he incorporated it into his natural routine before putting the kids to bed.

R’ Yisroel did this even with aveiros where he said that even though a person continues to do aveiros, if they take the natural path of change then they will eventually free themselves from those averios. So we need to find a kabbala which naturally repeats itself. To ensure that our kabbala ketana continues to remain meaningful to our life and the internal state we are going for we need to learn mussar on it. Otherwise the kabbala ketana will just be another mitzvah which doesn’t change us.

Yiras Shomayim can be a Motivator for our Kabbala Ketana

We said that in our generation Yiras Shomayim is detrimental to our Avodas Hashem. Yet R’ Yisroel says that Yiras Shomayim should motivate us. This actually can work for our kabbala ketana. We can say that “if I do not do my kabbala ketana it is a terrible tragedy because it is not fulfilling the obligation which is required of me by Hashem! I have Yiras Shomayim that if I found this small natural thing to do and even that I do not do, I am going to be held responsible by Hashem.”

Kedushas Yom Kippor – a conclusion

We merit Kedushas Yom Kippor when we fulfill within our life the outcome from the clarity of Rosh Hashana of what Hashem expects from us. From there our life will change!