Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, Torah Outreach Resource Center of
Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.

Tania, we learned in a Braisa, Hoye Rebbe Meir Omer, Rebbe Meir would say,
Gedol et teshuvah she b'shvil yachid she'asa teshuvah mochol lekol ha'olam kula.
Great is repentance.
It is so great repentance that on the account of an individual who repented, the entire
world is forgiven.
You hear this, Bruce?
Is that amazing?
One person repents, the entire world is forgiven.
What is this?
What do you mean, the entire world?
And he brings a verse, the same verse.
Why?
And he brings, the last word is mimenu, mimenu, it's from him the entire world is repent,
it receives atonement.
We see this with Moshe, Moshe asked for forgiveness and the entire Jewish people were forgiven.
Do you understand that if the world has a decree from the heavens, there's a decree
from the heavens that something terrible should happen to the world.
One person does teshuvah, one person repents, can save the entire world.
This was the case with Abraham and Sodom and Gomorrah, right?
Where Abraham says for one, first for 50, for 40, for 30, for 20, for 10, but there
weren't even 10.
But you ever wonder, where does Abraham get the ability to negotiate with God?
You know why?
No, no, no, it's all in our Torah.
Even for one person can save the world.
I'm sure that if Abraham was part of that city, it would have been one.
So the Talmud here says, the Gomorrah defines complete repentance.
What is complete repentance?
What is complete repentance?
Amorav Yehudah says,
Kigon shebas liyodo d'var aver pamrishona ushnia v'nitzol hemenu
When an opportunity for sin comes his way, and this is a sin that he had committed in
the past.
It comes once, it comes twice, v'nitzol hemenu.
And he protects himself and saves himself from that sin on both occasions.
That is considered a real teshuva.
So let's say this.
Someone was tempted.
He's out in the middle of nowhere, and he's like, you know what?
Nobody's going to know if I walk into a Denny's, not kosher, and get some food.
I'm going to get some food.
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows I'm Jewish.
It's not like I'm desecrating God's name walking with my yarmulke and my tzitzis.
Take the yarmulke off, take the tzitzis off.
I walk in, I look like a regular Joe Schmo with my New York Yankees baseball cap.
Nobody knows I'm Jewish.
Okay.
You walk into Denny's, heaven forbid, and you get your non-kosher food and you eat your
non-kosher food, and now you're like, oh my goodness, what did I do?
Hashem commands in Leviticus 11, all of the things you should not eat because it's a contamination
for your soul.
And here I went ahead and rebelled against God and ate this chunk.
What am I going to do now?
I start crying and asking Hashem for forgiveness, Hashem, please forgive me, Hashem, please
forgive me.
And you know what happens?
Hashem says, I'm going to forgive you because you did it out of love, because you feel like
you rebelled in our relationship, not because you're afraid of retribution.
That's tier two.
Talk about the highest level.
I rebelled in my relationship against God.
So now what happens?
If you pass by Denny's two more times and you don't fall into that temptation, that's
considered someone who has attained the high level of teshuvah, unbelievable.
You think it's not attainable?
It's the most attainable thing in the world.
You want, you know what, how many times have we said, you know what, I'm going to try not
to do something.
Well, I'm not going to try not to insult someone in public.
And then you have an opportunity to give a good zinger and to really hammer, hammer at
somebody in that, in that boardroom.
You can say something nasty and you don't say it.
You hold back because you asked for forgiveness.
You asked for forgiveness.
You asked Hashem to forgive you for what you've done or ask that person.
If two more opportunities came your way and you withstood that challenge, then you're
a person of complete teshuvah, a baal teshuvah.
A baal teshuvah means you're the owner of teshuvah.
You're the master of teshuvah.
You don't have to finish school.
You can become a master's, a master's in teshuvah.
That's really what it is.
It's someone who had that same temptation come again and again, and they've just been
able to shut it out, block it out, remove it from their life.
And in fact, not only that, someone who changes their path to connect with Hashem is considered
a baal teshuvah.
What does that mean?
But the thing is today, we don't consider someone who is not observing of the Torah,
we don't consider them a sinner.
We consider them an abducted child.
What's an abducted child?
Someone who's abducted by captors and does terrible things later in their life, can you
blame them?
No.
They never went to school.
They were never educated.
They never had a loving, warm environment.
They grew up in the slums.
They're a captive child.
A captive child is not considered accountable for those mistakes.
Why?
Can't blame them.
They didn't have the upbringing that would give them the values that the Torah says.
The halacha says today, our rabbis tell us, it's considered a captive child and not held
accountable as typical.
It's unbelievable.
Which means that it's easier today for someone to become a baal teshuvah.
A child who's grown up on a farm, right?
When they're five years old, they know how to milk a cow.
They know how to take them out for pasture.
They know what they're doing because they grow up with this.
Someone who only comes to it when they're 60 years old, you can't expect them to, in
a second, oh, we showed you what to do, you should know what to do.
That's not the case.
Sixty years he has of not being a farmer, of not being a shepherd, he has no idea what
he's doing.
I showed it to you.
I showed you what to do.
No, no, no, no.
It takes a long time to really absorb and you'll never be able to catch up.
What that five-year-old has absorbed in those five years can take 30 years to absorb.
It's not so simple that you say, well, someone who comes to learn a torch for 10 years, that's
it.
You're downhill from here because, you know, no, it takes a long time for that transformation
to occur.
And the objective here and the objective of torch, my objective is not that anybody who
comes and learns with us or listens to these recordings online on video or a podcast, it's
not for anyone to be like me.
That's not the objective.
The objective is that every person should be the greatest version of themselves they
can possibly create.
And everyone is – that's unique.
So the Ed that you're talking about is – there's a singular vision that God has of what Ed can
become based on his childhood, based on his upbringing, based on his intellect, based
on his success, in his livelihood, based on his circumstances in life.
Hashem wants you to get to a certain place based on all of your previous history.
Right now, you have a special mission that's your mission.
And each and every one of us here, we have our own mission that's unique to us.
And nobody can go over to you and say, oh, you should have been this or you should be
doing that.
Every person has to introspect, which is why Rosh Hashanah is such an important and crucial
time for us to start thinking, one second, what am I supposed to be doing?
How do I maximize who I am?
How do I be the best version of myself?
I have no idea.
Get to know yourself.
That's what you got to do.
Got to get to know who we are.
That's our obligation.
So I don't think you should beat up yourself and say, oh, what's with me?
Oh, Gewalt, right?
No.
On the contrary, you say, you know what?
I have now another day, year, decade to live however long we have.
That's a lot of time to change.
But every person has their own thing.
I can't tell you what that is.
I know what I need to do, somewhat of what I need to do to become a better person and
to enhance my, you know, think of it like this.
You know those – the wars they do with food, how do you call it?
In the kitchen.
They put you into the kitchen.
Right?
They have like five different teams or ten different teams and they give you certain
ingredients.
Everyone has different ingredients.
Who can make the best dish?
Right?
Hell's Kitchen.
OK.
So one of those things.
So let me ask you a question.
What if I tell them, hey, it's not fair.
If you would have given me his meat and you would have given me those ingredients, you
would have given me that and give me this, give me that, then I'd be able to make the
best dish.
But that's not what you were given.
That's not what you were given.
You have to make the best with what you were given.
Your circumstances, with your life, with your upbringing, with your education, with your
intelligence, with your charisma, with your personality, with your charm, with your qualities
and your virtues and your flaws, you've got to make the best dish you can make.
No one is going to tell a Tommy, Tommy, why weren't you like Harvey?
And no one's going to say, Harvey, why weren't you like Ed?
That's not going to be the question.
The question is going to be, Mark, why weren't you Mark?
That's going to be the question.
I gave you these tools.
I gave you all of these ingredients.
Why didn't you make the best possible salad, food, life from the ingredients I gave you?
You never thought Hell's Kitchen would make it into our class, did you?
What do we call that?
The dog show parable?
Dog show parable.
Dogs are not judged based on other dogs.
They're judged based on their breed.
Well, each one of us, our own breed.
Each one of us, our own breed.
You're unique and you're special and they will never, Mark, you hear this?
There will never, ever be a Mark again on planet Earth like you.
And the reason why you are here today is because what God wants exactly this Mark here today
to accomplish, to do amazing things.
If he wanted you to be someone else, he would have created someone else, but he didn't.
He wanted you to be you.
This is the importance of talking about Teshuvah.
This is the importance of preparing ourselves for Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, getting into
the frame of mind of real transformative change.