As we are now between the days of Shmini Aseret and the start of Bereshit, I would like to share an interesting and relevant thought. We have been working for 53 days, counting from Rosh Hodesh Elul to Simchat Torah. We spoke of the significance of the 51 days, which was HoshaNa Raba. ( Na=51), and of Shmini Aseret, day 52, for which the gematria (numerical equivalent) is בן-son. On the 53rd day we reached גן/Gan- which is a garden. We are in Gan Eden. This means that the whole, long process we’ve been going through is in order to fix the sin of Adam HaRishon. That’s the whole story. Adam sinned, and we are here to fix it. We are judged on Rosh Hashana, because that is when Adam was judged. The term used for the Jewish people being sent out of Eretz Yisrael is Eicha, and the term used when Adam left was Ay’eicha- these words have the same letters ( in Hebrew), and the Midrash equates these two terms. The Jewish people were sent out of Eretz Yisrael just like Adam was sent out of Gan Eden. It’s the same theme and the same underlying sin- the fact that we want to be the boss. Adam and Chava both wanted to be in charge. They didn’t want to be told what to do, and that’s our mistake as well. We have to go through the process of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, where we humble ourselves, return, and proclaim that G-d is our Creator. He created us, we didn’t create ourselves. That’s the whole month of Elul.
הוא עשנו ולא/לו אנחנו
This can be interpreted as either
-He made us, and not us, or
-He made us, and we are to Him
These two interpretations,
לא and לו, rescrambled, spells אלול /Elul
This is the whole process we’ve been working on, for all of these days.
Finally, we reach perfection after the holiday of Succot.
(It’s brought down as a segula that after Succot, a lady bites the pitom off the etrog, thus making it pasul, and makes a prayer to G-d, saying, “Chava ate from the forbidden fruit; if I would have been there, I would not have eaten from it, and to show how much I wanted to eat from it, right after the holiday is over, and the Mitzvah is over, I take a bite to show my self control. I waited until now.”)
Then, after this whole process, we start again at Bereshit, and there we go again. We have another shot at it, and once again, Adam and his wife eat from the forbidden fruit.
We are back in the regular cycle of the year.
At first glance, it’s depressing. It sounds like we went through everything, and we crashed again. Is there any purpose? It almost sounds like עבודת פרך
The answer is a very important principle, that we might have said in the past, but it’s always good to review. I heard Rav Matityahu Salomon quote the following from Rav Chatzkel Levenstein-
Seventy years ago, the Mir Yeshiva spent the years of World War II in Shanghai. It was Yom Kippur, and they were praying all day, with heartfelt prayers. They were almost all orphans, without family. Their leader, the Mashgiach, Rav Levenstein’s prayers were the longest. Each Amidah was longer that the last. Finally, at the end of Arbit, when the boys had already finished their meal, Rav Chatzkel was still praying Ne’ilah. The boys wondered what could make their rabbi happier than finding them back in the Bet Midrash learning when he finished arbit. So that is what they did. When he walked back, he saw them all learning, and of course, had a big smile on his face. He then gave them a final
(post)Yom Kippur speech, and told them the following mashal:
There was a man building a beautiful palace. The last step of the process was to place a beautiful stone at the top of the arch at the entryway to the palace complex. The man told his contractor that he wanted the honor of placing the stone himself. So he got up on a high ladder, climbed up, and he leaned over. He then slipped and fell, bruising himself badly. The contractor ran over to help him up, and heard him groaning, “My palace fell !My palace fell!”
The contractor clarified to the man, “No, your palace didn’t fall, you fell!”
Rav Hatzkel said the same is true on the holidays. We spend all this time and hard work building our palace, and we might fall; we might not be able to keep this going, but our palace didn’t fall, we fell. Which means that all the work we did is still there. Our accomplishments can never be taken away from us. There is a cycle. We perfected last year’s cycle. G-d, in His mercy, as the Ramchal tells us, took the very large test of Adam HaRishon, and separated it out over the generations. We are fixing something every year. Each year we take a slice off. He gives a mashal of King asking a man to move a large rock that is in his way, but the man is unable to move it. So the king leaves a hammer near the rock and tells each person to chisel away a little bit as he walks by. That is what we have been doing.
Every year, we take a slice off. Just because we come back to the beginning again, that doesn’t mean that we haven’t removed that last year’s slice. It just means that there is another layer to work on.. So we start again, with the new layer.
We take the same approach, we apply the same fundamentals, we make the same proclamation, “We are Your creation and You are our Creator.”
And that is our goal for another year, Bezrat Hashem.
Have a wonderful day.