Welcome. We are holding by the ninth middah (attribute), ha-teshi'it (ninth), with Tashlich bimtzulot yam, kol chatotam. And he throws into the metzulot yam, into the depths of the ocean, all of their sins. So this is a very interesting middah. In order to understand it, I think we also need a little bit of background. This first shiur (lesson) is going to be a little bit of a general introduction to the subject of evil and suffering, and their roles in creation.
Of course, everything that HaKadosh Baruch Hu created in the world was created for the Kavod (honor) of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The way that ra (evil) brings Kavod Hashem is in a couple of different ways. We know that ra was created to give us free will, and the reason for this free will is so that HaKadosh Baruch Hu can give us reward. We don't just get His Tov (good) without deserving it, because that would cause us embarrassment, and the Tov would not be complete. HaKadosh Baruch Hu created evil, and evil is there to test us. But evil itself also brings honor to HaKadosh Baruch Hu in certain ways. One way is when a tzadik (righteous person) is able to overcome his Yetzer Hara (evil inclination); that in itself brings honor to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The other way is when evil is destroyed, as with Paro and Haman, and so on. The destruction of evil brings Kavod to HaKadosh Baruch Hu as well. So there are ways that evil itself brings Kavod to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But when a person sins, the evil is misused, because the truth is that the reason it was created is for a person to defeat the evil and earn his reward. Before sin, a person has to do all he can to avoid sin, because sin is counterproductive to receiving the reward. If one commits a sin, then he has misused the purpose of the evil, which exists for our benefit. However, once a person has sinned, all is not lost. At that point, a person can do Teshuvah (repentance). He has an obligation, an obligation to repent and do Teshuvah for the sin. By doing this, he has once again restored his ability to get reward. And he has once again brought evil back to fulfilling its purpose.
Then, as in earlier shiurim, we spoke about the inyan (idea) of suffering. First, suffering serves as a catalyst to awaken a person who sinned to do Teshuvah, as we spoke about earlier. This is one of the ways to take away the kitrug (accusation). The person creates that evil force, which is supposed to be nourished by him, and Hashem sustains it. These punishments, this suffering, cause the person to do Teshuvah. Another reason is that, once a person does Teshuvah, suffering also cleanses a person of their sins, as we're going to be discussing in this perek (chapter). The third reason can also be that, as brought in the Gemara, there is a situation where a person receives additional reward beyond what he would normally be able to receive with just his own Torah and mitzvah (commandment) service. HaKadosh Baruch Hu sometimes gives a person suffering, which is called as long as it doesn't interfere with his service of Hashem. If it does interfere with your service of Hashem, the Gemara says, then that's a sign that it's not because it is only to give you more than you do with your service. So it has to give you the ability to have your service, and then, over the top, you're getting, as they say, the cherry on the cake, which is going to give you even more Olam Haba (World to Come) than you would have got just serving HaKadosh Baruch Hu to the best of your abilities.
However, once we have a person who has sinned, we now do Teshuvah. This person also has to atone for his sin. You know, there's the part of regret, and Hashem forgives you, but there's still the damage that was done, and this evil entity, which is in existence, needs to be dealt with. So if HaKadosh Baruch Hu were to give us Yisurim (suffering), and they once again interfered with our service, that would also be a problem. We pray all the time that we should, you know, not get Yisurim that's going to Yisurim Naim, and that's going to interfere with us serving HaKadosh Baruch Hu. Something needs to be done with this aveirah (sin) after Teshuvah, and the suffering, if it were to interfere with our service, would again be counterproductive. HaKadosh Baruch Hu needs to deal with this suffering. Now, really, in this perek, we're going to be discussing what is done now with these Yisurim and these destructive forces that were created from the sin after the person has repented.
So that's just a general introduction. We'll stop here today. B'ezrat Hashem (with God's help), tomorrow, when we begin actually inside this middah, we'll have this introduction in mind, and hopefully it'll help this perek move along much more smoothly.