We continue discussing God's 13 Middot of Mercy, which are necessary for us to act with during the high holiday season. Middah number two on the Arizal’s list is Rahum.
The question is, if we start off with saying A-donai, A-donai, which is already mercy (because God's name of Yud and Heh and Vav and Heh is inherently mercy),
Why do we repeat the word rahamim/mercy ?
Tosafot explains that it’s because there are two levels of mercy, and in his words (and it's actually a quote from the Gemara), “Here it’s before repentance, and here it's after repentance.” This means that before a person sins, there's a certain level of mercy that God has. Then the person sins. But once he does teshuva, there’s a new creation of mercy for after the sin. The rabbis actually connect this to the concept of the two sets of luchot/tablets. The first set of tablets was given to us on Shavuot. They were broken after the sin of the golden calf on the 17th of Tammuz, and Moshe Rabbenu took two sets of 40 days, until, on Yom Kippur, he brought down a second set of luchot.
That means there was a set of luchot before the sin, and a set of tablets after the sin. God gave us a new Torah after the sin, for how to deal with people after sin. With the first Torah, it was assumed that there would be no sin, and no death. Moshe Rabbenu went up for an equal amount of days to create a new Torah, for dealing with the person after the sin. It's almost like saying Has v’Shalom, that someone had a child that went off to rehab because he had an addiction problem. When he comes back, they have to learn a new parenting style. How do I parent him after he comes back? With the same love and the same kindness, but with a different approach. So God has a new approach for after we do teshuva. God, so to say, create a new parenting approach, called the second set of tablets.
And with that comes a second name of mercy called Rahum, for after the person sins and comes back.
This may a hard one for us to emulate, because sometimes someone sin to us, whether it's a child, a friend, parent, spouse, sibling or business partner… they sin to us and it takes a while for us to get over it. When we finally get over it, we’re lukewarm. We don't have that same love. But Rabbenu Yonah says that God does. After our teshuva, He rekindles the same love for us, like we had beforehand. That's difficult. We celebrate Simchat Torah only after we received the second set of luchot.
Why don't we celebrate Simchat Torah when we received the Torah, on Shavuot? Because that marriage didn't last.
Imagine a couple who get married, then divorced, and then get remarried. When do they celebrate their anniversary, the first wedding or the second wedding? I’ve never asked anyone that question, but we see from God, that we celebrate the second wedding, because the first wedding didn't really make it that well. We celebrate the second wedding. The after-the-sin wedding; that's the new beginning. And that has to be our celebration with our friends. Even though someone wronged us, there's a new mercy that comes after they repented and came back to us, and that arouses the way God acts with us.
These are difficult, difficult things to work on. It’s not easy. Anyone who has experienced someone who wronged them and now get along, may still harbor something. It's a life's work, but B’Ezrat Hashem, we will overcome this, because the dividends are great. The the more we do this to others, more God does it to us.
Have a wonderful day.