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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 Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
So let me tell you the difference between human beings and Hashem, God, creator of heaven and earth, all merciful, all loving, all kind, all giving. You see, if I did something to harm you, intentional or unintentional, so I come over to you and I say, Dave, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to park in your parking spot. I was in a rush.
I saw the sign, it says reserved for Dave, but I figured you're probably not coming in today. So I'm sorry I parked in your spot. Please forgive me. Okay, you forgive me or not? Okay. It was genuine, right? It was genuine. I made believe it was real, real remorse. All right, the next day you come to work and you see I'm parked in your spot again. It clearly says reserved for Dave. So you come in and you're like, what's going on?
I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I was in a rush and I just, I had to take care of things and please forgive me. You're like, okay, but listen, it's like it's got to stop, okay? I pay money for that spot. I want this to stop. Okay. The next day you come to work again and guess what? I'm parked in your parking spot again. How many times are you going to say, okay, enough is enough.
Enough is enough. I don't forgive you and I'm going to get your car towed. How many times? Three, four, and then we're just like, it's not cute anymore, okay? Stop doing this. Okay. We come to Hashem every year Yom Kippur and we say, Hashem, I'm kind of sorry. Sorry I did that. I got carried away. I was just busy with life. You know how things go and I just like, okay, we come back the next year. I said, Hashem, I'm sorry.
Like, just can we, can we just clear this one out? It was like, next year is going to be different. Like, do we think it is Hashem senile? He doesn't realize? Like we did this the past 30, 40, 50, 60 years and we keep coming back saying, Hashem, I'm sorry. All right, we're good. We're clear. It's all worked out. Okay, now I'm going to just go back to my life. You know, it's like, how many times will God eventually pick up on this scheme?
This is a game we're playing with Hashem. We don't really mean it. We're sorry, but we're not sorry, but maybe, but maybe not. We go back and do the same thing again next year. So I want to tell you something. I compare it to a pencil and a pen. You remember those Paper Mate erasable pens? I remember those pens. They never worked. You wrote, I love you on a piece of paper and you tried to erase it
and it would say, I love you, but lighter. Remember, you remember that? It still had the imprint. What happens if you take a pencil and you write with a pencil, I love you, and then you erase it with the eraser as if it was never there. There's no remnants of it. There's no, nothing left. It's gone. When we forgive other people, we forgive with a pen. There's still a marking there. When Hashem forgives, it's completely erased. It's no longer there.
It's as if it never happened. So when you go ahead and you ask for forgiveness now, it's not like, oh, one second, last year you asked for forgiveness, the year before you asked for forgiveness, and now you're coming again? What do you think, I'm a fool? No, Hashem's not a fool. Hashem is so merciful. Hashem is so loving. You know what he did the last one and the one before? Erased it, it's gone. There's no record.
It's not saying it's some file here. Let me pull up in that file, oh, 2001, 2002, 2003. I see every year he did the same scheme. It's not like the IRS, they have seven years that they can go back and they can pull the file seven years in arrears. When Hashem forgives, he forgives. He forgives. That doesn't make him senile. That doesn't make him crazy and a madman thinking that they're gonna be, you know, oh, this time it's gonna work.
If we're genuine, even for one millisecond, Hashem says, oh, I forgive. To have remorse, to really feel bad that we did something wrong. Now, I don't know about all of you, you're all righteous, holy, saintly people, but me, I'm saying this for myself, to really feel a sense of remorse, to really feel bad for even one moment where you say, Hashem, you know something? I really messed up. I did things I shouldn't have done. I said things I shouldn't have said.
I acted in ways I shouldn't have acted. I should have been better than that. And when we come before Hashem and we ask for that forgiveness, Hashem says, I forgive. And it opens up a clean slate.
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