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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.
And now my dear friends, welcome back to day number 175. You're getting excited Mark. We're almost done, right? Yeah, we got this. Day number 175 on the top of page 917 in the Treasure for Life edition of the Orches Zedikim, the Ways of the Righteous. We have two more days left in our study of the Orches Zedikim. We're just three pages out.
וַּאַל יָּחְשָׁבָּ בָּעַל תְּשוּבָה שֹׁהוּ מִרוּחְ כִּם מַל־עוֹשָׁה צְדִּקִם מִפְּנֵי הַחָתוֹים וַאַבוֹן אֶשְׁה אָסֹה. אֵן אָדָבְר כֵּן. A person thinks, oh my goodness, I listen to all of these classes about repentance, and oh my goodness, I am so far, I am so far, I have no hope, there's no chance, I'm never going to attain any type of level of forgiveness. He says, no, no, no, no, don't think that. Just know that when someone comes and repents in front of the Almighty, Hashem forgives them, Hashem loves them so much.
You're so beloved in front of G-d that Hashem makes it as if you've never sinned before. Your reward is so great for that repentance that you seek. You tasted the taste of sin, and now you've overcome your yetzah hara, to no longer want those Burger Kings, and no longer want the non-kosher food, and no longer want those inappropriate relationships, and no longer want those bad traits, and no longer want all of those things. The sages said, wherever a penitent stands, the perfectly righteous cannot stand.
The penitent is so great on such a high level that even someone who is completely righteous cannot stand in their place. It is greater one who sinned and returned than one who never sinned and was never tempted with those things. Because the person who sinned and returned, every time they see that sin, they are tempted again, and now they refrain from it. It was actually an interesting story, Rabbi Uri Zohar, one of my heroes, Rabbi Uri Zohar was the famous, famous actor in Israel who became a Baal Teshuva.
He returned to the service of Hashem, even though he was at the top of his career, the absolute top of his career. His marriage almost got wrecked. You think about the biggest actor in the history of the United States, that was Uri Zohar in Israel. He was the everything, he was the it guy. You can search it up, I'm not making this up, Uri Zohar. He became Rabbi Uri Zohar, a very, very righteous person. Not only that, he became such a God-fearing Jew.
I brought many of our Torch students on one of our Israel trips, I brought them to see him. We had to wait like 25 minutes for him to finish the Amidah from Incha. He wore tefillin all day, and he came out, he was a movie guy. So when I said, can we take a picture, he's like, yeah, of course. He put his hat on, and he was making sure that he looked right. He's like, okay guys, everyone's going to smile, he's making sure.
He was a camera guy, he knew that, he loved this stuff. The level of his greatness was just unbelievable. He was once speaking, and he said, people think, like the author here writes, that those who do teshuvah are greater than those who never sinned at all. He says, I don't think that that's accurate. He says, I'll tell you why, he says, because the person who never sinned thinks there's something on the other side of the street.
He says, I've been on the other side of the street, and I know there's nothing there. So what's the big deal? I know there's nothing there. This was a very interesting perspective that he put on it. He said, no, no, no, the boy from Nabrok who never sinned is far greater than I will ever be. He says, because I know what's on the other side, and I know that it's empty. So what's the big deal? I have to repent, okay, I have to repent.
And he did, he actually spent many, many years gathering up the videotapes of all of his movies. He felt that they were immodest and inappropriate, and he didn't want it to be out there. He felt that it was going to be, in his day of ultimate judgment, it would be sort of a judgment against him from heaven. He didn't want that, so he would buy it back from people. Anybody who had the video, give it, this was before everything was digital,
and you could just, like, it's gone, it's in the interwebs, and it'll be there forever. But this is when it was actually, you know, those VHS cassettes, video cassettes, and he bought them back from people, because he didn't want to have that negativity in the heavenly courts. All of our prophets spoke about repentance. And we know that the Jewish people will not have our ultimate redemption, but with teshuva. And already the Torah says that at the end of days, the Jewish people will do teshuva, they will repent.
And as soon as they do teshuva, they will have their redemption. So this is verses in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 30, verse 1 through 3, where the Torah says very clearly that Hashem will give us blessing, Hashem will give us curses, but it's going to be in our hands whether or not we want to repent then. When we do repent, and we return to Hashem, then Hashem will come to us. When we return to Hashem, Hashem will return to us,
and He will bring us from all of the nations, Hashem will bring us back home. By the way, just today I heard that Israel did a massive nationwide, a massive nationwide drill. What did they do? They imagined what would happen, because there's an uptick in antisemitism all around the world, what's going to be if now 15 million people want to move to Israel tomorrow? What are they going to do? So they simulated, they had planes taking off and landing in succession in the airport.
They imagined that there's going to be hundreds of thousands of bags coming through those carousels. What's going to be, where are we going to house the people? Where are the people going to study? Where are the people going to eat? Where are the people going to sleep? All of that, and they did a whole drill throughout the entire country of how they're going to repopulate 15 million Jews from around the world in a day, if such a thing were to happen.
It's an unbelievable thought that we're living in the times of Messiah, that such a preparation is underway. I think we are right there, Hashem is trying to push us. Get closer, my children, get closer, get closer, do something. Take one small step to bring your relationship closer. That's each and every one of us, to find a way, something that we can do to elevate our relationship with the Almighty. How great is repentance? It brings a person closer to the presence of the Almighty.
Return of Israel to your Father, your God. And here are many verses talking from our prophets about the praises of Teshuv HaKolomar. If you do repent, don't repent just like that. Repent to the Almighty. And we don't have confessionals. We don't confess in front of a rabbi or a priest or anything. You talk directly to the Almighty. It's a direct relationship. The number one value, I hope, that from all of the, thank God, hundreds of classes that we've learned here,
you're in the thousands category. We need to learn one thing, and that's really the only thing I want to share. And that is that each and every one of us have a personal relationship with God. It's not some collective relationship somewhere out there in the ether, there's some relationship with God. Me, I can talk to God right now. I can declare my love for Hashem. I can give thanks to Hashem. I can ask Hashem. I can repent before Hashem.
I have a direct relationship that's very, very personal. K'lomar. He says, yesterday he could have been a sinner. He could have been distant from God. Today he's considered a lover to God. Because he repented in between. He says, with the exact same terminology that Hashem distances those who sin, he brings those closer to him, those who want to return. Both individually and both in a public fashion. He brings a bunch of verses encouraging us to the path of teshuvah.
How great, how excellent is the quality of repentance. Yesterday he was separated completely from Hashem, Hashem the God of Israel. He says, the sins create a barrier between us and God. What is a mitzvah? A mitzvah is something that brings us closer to God. What is a sin? Something that distances us from God. The mitzvahs open up the pathway so now it's clear. We have a clear channel. What is a sin? Something that creates a barrier between us and the Almighty.
He could scream to Hashem but he's not being answered. Because he hasn't repented. Those who perform mitzvahs and they flung it in the face, so to speak, of God. God doesn't want that either. God wants our closeness. Hashem wants us to be close to him, to be attached to him. Hashem wants your actions. He wants your heart. He wants us to desire the performance of his mitzvahs and the closest. And here we conclude day number 175 where we talk about such incredible importance.
We just have a few more lines and we conclude this chapter.
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.