Today we're going to explain why humility is necessary for the Teshuva process. There is an unbelievable Bet Halevi quote, in his essay on Anava. The Gemara in Masechet Rosh Hashanah 17A says there is an argument about how Hashem causes the scale to tilt in the right direction. When somebody has sins that outweigh his Mitzvot, what does God do to tilt the scale the right way? One rabbi says, Kovesh/ God presses down like it says, He presses down our sins. Another rabbi says, Noseh/ He lifts the sins off. As it says, Noseh Avon/ God lifts up the sins.
The Bet Halevi says, I understand that Noseh means that if I have 60 pounds of sins and 50 pounds of Mitzvot, Hashem can take 20 pounds of sins off, and now you have more Mitzvot. That's Noseh/that's lifting up the sin.
But what does Kovesh mean? He presses the sin down? It would be one thing if we're going by volume, but if we're going by weight, pressing the sin down is not going to make them any lighter or fewer. So what does it mean to press it down? The Bet Halevi gives the following explanation:There are three worlds where sin impacts. We'll use a mashal- when it comes to Borrer and Shabbat.
If you separate a mixture on Shabbat in this world, what really happened? You took the peas out of the salad because you don't like peas… And nothing happened. But what really happened is the fact that this act is connected to the upper worlds and in the upper worlds, you made an explosion. You're not being punished for what you did down here because nothing really happened here. You're getting punished for that explosion in the upper world.
But there's a third world that's even higher, the highest world is called the World of Freedom, that's free of sin. It's so high that sin doesn't reach there. This area is aroused on the Yovel/the jubilee year, when they blow a shofar and it says, Call freedom to all the inhabitants on the 50th year. Everything is free.
That freedom comes through the shofar, which is blown on the 50th year on Yom Kippur. Our rabbis tell us that's why we blow a shofar at the end of Yom Kippur, to arouse that shofar the jubilee year. Because on Yom Kippur, after the whole process, we reach that high world of freedom from sin.
So those are the three worlds.
If God judges us down here, there is nothing to worry about. You just took a pea out of the salad. Nothing happened.
If God judges us in the highest world, the world of freedom, again, nothing happened. There's no sin there.
You only have to worry if He judges you in the middle world, the world where sin impacts on a spiritual-explosion level. That's what we're worried about- the middle world.
There are two ways that God gets rid of sin. One of them is Noseh Avon He lifts the sin up so high, to a place that there is no sin.
That's one option. The other option is He goes all the way down to this world, where again, nothing happens. So you took the pea out of the salad. Nothing happened.
But says the Bet Halevi, If a person is an arrogant person, then he cannot be judged in the highest of worlds because it says God lifts up the sin, to those people that are humble So if you're not a humble person, God won't lift up your sins. As we discussed yesterday, when a person is easygoing, God lets the sins go, but He won't do that for a person that is not a humble. So if he’s arrogant, we can't lift up his sin to the highest world and cleanse it that way. What's the other option? God is going to push the sin all the way down to this world. But God says, I can’t dwell with an arrogant person so I can’t come down to him and see the sin as a simple physical act.
Therefore, he's stuck. This arrogant man is judged in the middle world and that's a problem.
Thus so, the Bet Halevi explains beautifully that arrogance interferes with the, so to say, leniencies of God. God has ways to get around our sins. He quotes what we say in our prayers on Rosh Hashanah,
“God lifts up in His judgment,” which means He brings up the sins to that high spot where God says sin can't do anything. You think sin can impact Me? He says, I'm not impacted by sin. But that’s only if the sin goes up there, and God only goes up there for the humble people. As we once discussed, Does God lift the humble person up, or does God down to the humble? They're both true. God can either lift the humble man up to Him, and then there's no sin there, or God can go down to the humble person. Again, sin doesn't impact there. But if neither of those happen, the sin is allowed to remain in a spiritual world with a spiritual explosion and no cleansing. And that's why it is so important to work on humility during these days.
This might be a little complicated, but it’s a beautiful, beautiful, little known Bet Halevi that was hiding in this essay, which was sitting in a suitcase for decades and Baruch Hashem is now available.
Have a wonderful day.