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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
All right, welcome back everybody. Good evening. It's so wonderful to be here. I am honored that so many of you came out tonight, even though all of the weather forecasts are telling us the dangers and the flooding and the rain and the hail and the Tornadoes and everyone is here learning Torah. So Hashem is testing us and we're, Baruch Hashem, winning those tests every single time, time and again.
I love it and I'm so proud of each and every one of you and I'm so honored that we have such an amazing group to learn with together. And here we are in the Treasure for Life edition of the Orchestra of the Ways of the Righteous in middle of the Gate of Repentance and we are on page, in the middle of page 858. Day number 159. Tova Gedol HaHitiv HaKadosh Baruch Hu Yim Bnei Adam. Hashem did a great
thing for mankind by preparing the way for offenders and sinners to flee from darkness to light. Asher heichin derach laposhim halachotim lonus michoshek le'or v'lo sogar ba'adam daltei ha'tshuva af im hir boluvsho. And Hashem never closes the door for repentance, even someone who does a tremendous amount of sins. So someone sins, they think like, oh forget it, I can't repent. I can't, I can't change. Yes, you can. And you know what, a person continues to sin,
Hashem still keeps the door open for teshuva. For repentance is always available for a person, as the verse states, Return your, you backsliding children, I will heal your backslidings. We make mistakes. Part of the challenge of life is life. Life comes with challenges. You hear this Mark? Life comes with challenges and Hashem keeps on testing us. And one of the things that we can answer back to Hashem, we can say Hashem, you know,
if you wouldn't have given me desire and temptation, I perhaps wouldn't do certain things. If you wouldn't given me, given me urges, I perhaps wouldn't have done certain things, but you did and I fell into the trap. I'm asking for forgiveness. Please help me repent, help me, help me become closer. And even if the reason that a person repents is because he's been beaten so bad by the Almighty, he has no choice. He says, He says,
if you repent from all of the pain and suffering that Hashem brings upon you, you're so loved by Hashem, even more so if you repent because you just love Hashem and you feel bad. Not because you were caught, not because Hashem inflicted pain upon you, but because I love Hashem. I love my relationship with Hashem. When you are in distress and all these things come upon you, in the end of days, you will return to Hashem, your God, and listen to His voice.
Hashem assists the penitent to repent and to attain even what is not within man's power. Hashem gives us unbelievable abilities when a person really desires to come closer to Hashem and we can break through barriers that we never thought were ever possible. Why? Because if a person wants something, Hashem brings you to it. And you shall return to Hashem, your God, and listen to His voice according to all that I command you this day,
you and your children, with all your heart and with all your soul, as the verse states in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 2. And Hashem, your God, as the verse states further, will circumcise your heart and the heart of your children to love Hashem, your God. What does it mean to circumcise your heart? You see, sometimes we create barriers and those barriers need to be removed, severed. We have to remove the barriers that we create. How many times, Mark, did you say, that I can't do, that, uh,
kosher, I can't do that, Shabbos, untouchable, I can't do that, me, I can't do that. We create these barriers. But if a person loves Hashem, Hashem literally circumcises your heart. What does that mean? That He removes the barriers that we create. He removes that and brings you closer. And this is each and every one of us. We create these invisible walls. We say, this, you know, I told you the story a while ago.
I'll repeat it because it's such a great story. There was a rabbi, a woman who changed her whole life from a completely secular life to a religious observant life. And she had the rabbi, she learned, like we do here in the torch classes, she learned about Shabbos, she learned about kosher, she learned about all the laws that are applicable. And finally it was the time for her to kasher her kitchen.
And the rabbi comes and kashers the kitchen and it takes a long time, all the pots, all the pans, all the countertops. And then on his way out, he sees these little chiclets on her coffee table. So he says, you know, those chiclets are not kosher. So she says, rabbi, that's it. You can do the kitchen, you can do the counters, you can do the pots, you can do the pans, you can take all the non-kosher out of my house, but those chiclets aren't going anywhere.
We all create those little chiclets, those little barriers. That, that is untouchable. That, I'm not getting rid of. That, I can't. You know, that, my parents will disown me, my wife will disown me, my husband will, everyone has these things, these imaginary things. But if a person desires a closeness to Hashem, Hashem removes those barriers. Even things that you have no, you have no ability to overcome, Hashem helps you overcome. Hashem will give you the strength. Hashem will give you the ability to attain the unattainable,
to accomplish that which is unaccomplishable in your eyes. And there are four things that prompt repentance, that awaken us in teshuvah, in repentance. The first is the force of one's recognition of his God. So someone has a master, he gets upset at his master, so he runs away. But then he realizes, you know what, my master feeds me, my master takes care of me. So what does he do?
He gets off his white horse and goes back to his master. And he realizes, he's taken care of me, he's been so good to me, I got upset about one little thing for that. We sometimes do that between us and the Almighty. We're like, ah, Hashem, we are on page 860 on the top. Sometimes we get concerned, we get concerned, that Hashem, how can you do this to me?
I lost my job, I lost my livelihood, I don't have this investor, I didn't get that done, I couldn't pay that bill. And we get upset. But then we suddenly realize, one second, who gave me life? Who gave me the million dollar life pack that you have built in, you know that? Did you ever have a problem, Mark? Breathing? Yeah, you ever had a problem, you had to carry oxygen tanks on your back and breathe in through an oxygen? What, asthma? Okay, that's not good.
You know, my son was a preemie, and one of the challenges of a preemie is that the lungs aren't fully developed yet until the 34th, 35th, 36th week of gestation. And he was born before that. So that was a concern, and that was a worry, and he was in the NICU, the neonatal intensive care unit, for several weeks. And then finally he gets home, but he was on a monitor. And then they gave us medication, he went to a pulmonologist, and they gave us all these medications, steroids,
you know, Atrovent, and all those other types of, and you know what? One time I brought my son to the pulmonologist, and he says to me, Nuso, what's going on? How is he doing? I said, well, overall he's doing great, but sometimes he has some, you know, difficulty breathing, and you know, he's trying to, grasping for breath, but we, you know, we give him the medication and everything's fine. He says, yeah, you know, that's not good. He says, difficulty breathing is very close to not breathing, you know?
It's kind of not so good. So he says, we're gonna have to change that medication. And sometimes we don't realize the blessing that we have of having the ability to breathe, having the ability to take in oxygen, to inhale, to exhale. How many things need to work right in our body for us to be able to breathe? It's such a miracle. So we think about that, we're like, oh, Hashem didn't give me my job, Hashem didn't give me this, Hashem,
I didn't win the lottery, oh, I'm so mad at Hashem, right? And then what happens? We realize, you know what? I'm such an ungrateful person. Hashem gives me everything, and that's the way I react, and we come running back to Hashem. So that's a good thing for a person to come back and to recognize. We come, oh, Omer Akosov, and this is what the verse says in Jeremiah, Im toshuv Yisroel, nu'um Hashem eilai toshuv. O Israel, if you return, says Hashem, you will return to me.
What does that mean? Hashem is waiting there with open arms. He says, I want you. Hashem is waiting. Hashem is not a child. Hashem doesn't say, oh, you insulted me. I'm not going to accept your repentance. No, Hashem doesn't do that. Hashem says, oh, he's back. I love him. My child, he's back. I want him. I want him close. Ve'omer, kodem ba'onash, and Hashem returned, brings us back before he gives us punishments. Ve'omer shuvu eilai vashuv aleichem, and Hashem says, return to me, and I will return to you.
Meaning, it's not just going to be something where you're going to turn to me, and I'm going to give you a cold shoulder for a week. No. Hashem is going to give us full embrace, and Hashem is going to give us the love that we so desire in being close to Hashem. What is the second thing that inspires us to return to Hashem? Sheshav machmash sheyesh lo mo'chichim ha'machlimim oh so'ad sheyoshuv.
Second is that a person is being rebuked and humiliated into repentance. People mock him, people laugh at him, people yell at him and say, what's wrong with you? Don't you know that you're going down the wrong path? What's wrong with you? You're wasting your life away, etc., etc., and then he returns. Ve'hu ke'eved sheborach ma'adono ve'poga bo'eved ne'amon ve'chicho ve'yichlimo ad sheborach. And what can also happen is that a person is distanced from Hashem because of whatever sin that he may have done. And then
so what the author here says is that what you're doing is you're like a servant who runs away from the king, rebellious, and then you meet a very loyal servant of the king. And he says, what's wrong with you? Come back to the king's palace. He's waiting for you. He loves when you're there. Oh, really? I didn't know. I didn't realize. I didn't realize how precious I was to him. Ve'yoatz osol la'ashuv. And he recommends, return to the king, come back.
Ve'yivticho sheyimcha lo'adono ve'nitzaz. I'll promise you that the king will forgive you. Ve'shovei lo ve'nichna. And he returns to the king and he humbles himself in front of the king. Ha'shlishid, the third. When a person sees the punishment that people who distance themselves from Hashem that they experience. He doesn't want that. That's a terrible thing. Nobody wants to be punished. Oz yoshuv el Hashem e'yiras ancho. Because he's terrified of that punishment, of the reprimand from the Almighty.
He says, you know what? It's not worth it for me. I'm going to return. Ve'hu ke'eved ha'borach madonav. It's like a servant who leaves, runs away from his master. Ve'kish yishma ha'anoshem she'ozol li'mi she'borach mimeno, ve'oz yoshuv elav. He hears about how others who ran away were punished. He says, ah, I don't want that. I'm running back to my king. By the way, there's a, there's certain times where someone has put the death in Jewish court. Okay, in the time of the temple, obviously. And
they would hang the person for the crime that he did. And he would be hung publicly till the end of that day. The person, a person who was judged, who judgment was against him for a death penalty, he'd immediately be taken out to be punished. They wouldn't prolong it because they don't want to, they don't want to harm the person or make him, someone who's on death row for 18 years till they finally decide to pull the plug on the guy, right?
That's not, that's not appropriate. Because now he had 18 years of suffering of, is today going to be the day? Tomorrow? Next week? I don't know, next year? Who knows? That's, that's an added punishment that's unnecessary. So if in a Jewish court there was a warranted death penalty by the court, it would happen immediately. And that day he would be hung. Why? L'man yishmu vi'orot. So people would learn from this person's mistake. But then you have the, it's an image of God, a human being,
who would be disrespectful for some thing in the image of God, a person in the image of God, to be hanging like that. So they would immediately take him down and bury him in a very dignified fashion later, after sunset. But the idea was people should learn. So here this guy, he heard about other people getting punished by the king. He says, oh, I don't want that punishment. Then he runs back to do the right thing. HaRevi, the fourth inspiration that brings one to Tshuba.
Shebo olav an onesh v'tzoros v'shov. That a person himself is afflicted with punishment and suffering and he repents because of it. V'hu ke'eved shebarach. And he's like a servant who ran away. U pag'a bo, pag'u bo listim. And now robbers attacked him on his fleet from the palace. V'u sfasu v'yisru oso al'brikhoso. And now they beat him up and they started swinging their belts at him and they started whipping him, right, because he ran away from the palace.
V'shov. He says, okay, okay, okay. I'm coming back. I'm coming back. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I ran away. V'a maskel yeh chaz b'tshuvoso v'derech harishonu v'yoshu me'ahavas g'duloso. He says the best way to return is to return because you love Hashem and not have to have any negative influence to bring you closer to Hashem. It shouldn't be because other people are punished, not because other people are pained, not because you're pained, not because of any other negative influence, but only positive,
because I love you Hashem and that's why. I'm coming closer to you Hashem because I want to be close to you. And I realized, oy, I've tainted the relationship between me and you and I don't like that because I love you so much. Hashem, I'm returning to you. And this is the end of day number 159.
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.