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The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
You're listening to Rav Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
So my dear friends, we know that numbers in Judaism have a great and important meaning. Every number has a purpose and it's not random. There are many aspects of our life and many aspects of our Judaism that is specific with numbers. So seven days of creation, we have, I mean, we can go through this, we can spend years and years talking about this.
But there is something unique about the number 40. And the number 40 is very special because we see the number 40 in some really interesting scenarios. For example, we have Noach and the flood, the great flood. It was 40 days and 40 nights that it rained. We know that gestation is 40 weeks. We know that a baby, according to the Talmud, gets its first brainwaves at 40 days from conception.
We know that a mikvah, a mikvah in order for it to be a kosher ritual bath, needs to have 40 sa'ah of water in it, which is a measurement. We know that Moses went up the mountain for 40 days. And we know that from the beginning of the month of Elul till Yom Kippur is 40 days as well. So the question is, what is particular, what is special about the number 40?
By the way, we also see, we're going to see in this Fiqh Parsha, that if someone is deserving of lashes from the Bezdin, they give him 39 lashes. But that's not what they call it. They give it 40 minus one. Huh, that's a weird way of saying 39. You just say 39, why are you saying 40 minus one? So our sages tell us something very, very important about the number 40. And that is 40 means becoming a new creation. 40 means transformation.
You change who you are. And if you ask our psychologists of today's generation, when they talk about transforming habits, changing certain habits, you need 40 days. 40 days is the time period where you can transform and change who you are completely. And if we look, what did God say about the generation of the flood? He says there are terrible people, we have to start anew. Start the world over again, it takes 40 days. You need 40 days of rain for it to start anew.
A baby coming to life is 40 weeks of gestation. It begins to operate and get its brainwaves and consider to be a living being after 40 days from conception. We have Moses going up the mountain, because now the Jewish people are going to be a sanctified people. They're going to be a new creation. They're no longer a people who are slaves, people who have, it's a different mentality, it's a totally different person, totally different nation.
When someone goes into a mikvah, why did they go into a mikvah? Because they have ritual impurity. They go into the mikvah impure, they come out pure. It's an unbelievable thing. Someone who converts also goes into a mikvah, they go in as a non-Jew, they come out as a Jew. They become a new creation. But in order to have that, you need to have the secret of the number 40. And the number 40 is the secret of a new creation.
Our sages tell us these 40 days from the beginning of Rosh Chodesh Elo, till Yom Kippur, have the power and the ability to transform and make us into a new creation. We become completely new. Now why is it important for us to be new? Because when we come and say to the Almighty, these are the reasons that you should give me a great new year, well God's going to say, well, you're the same Joe Schmoe who was here last year.
You're the same guy who the entire year acted one way. But what do we say? We say, we utilize these 40 days to transform who we are. That's not the same me. I'm not that same person. And in essence what we're doing, teshuva, repentance, means that I'm returning to my original state of closeness with Hashem. What is a sin? A sin is putting a barrier between me and God. A sin creates a blockade. You know what repentance does? Repentance removes all those blockades.
Repentance removes all the barriers. So my dear friends, let's utilize these 40 days. Hashem should bless us that not only we should seek atonement and we should attain forgiveness, but we should feel complete and perfect and whole with our repentance. We should feel that closeness to Hashem. Remove all of those barriers, which is why Yom Kippur is one of the happiest days of the year. If you ask a typical person going to synagogue in Yom Kippur, it's a day of trepidation.
It's not a day where people are all excited. It's a day of fasting. It's a serious day. But it's a day of joy, of absolute joy, because it's a day that we're guaranteed forgiveness. We're guaranteed atonement if we ask, if we repent, if we show remorse, if we change who we are. And in these 40 days, we have the power to transform who we are like no other time of the year. Yes, we're able to repent every day of the week, every day of the year.
God is always there to accept our repentance. But there's a certain favorable divine period of time where God says anything is accepted. I'll take it all. Whatever you're able to come up with, that's what I want. So I'm just going to end off here with a quick blessing for all of us to arrive at Rosh Hashanah in Yom Kippur with our best foot forward, with a clean slate, where we come to the Almighty and show Him why it's a favorable idea for us to be granted another year. Amen.
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