Never Remind a Ba'al Teshuva Of His Past Life (3 minutes)
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Transcript
0:00The point of highlighting other people's mistakes, or our own, is not to say, "Ha ha ha, you did it," or "Ha ha ha, you're a rasha." That's not the point. The purpose of discussing these things is to learn what not to do, and to remind ourselves of what we need to do. That's the point. You're never supposed to remind someone who did teshuva about their past sins. It's not allowed; it's a big sin. If somebody did teshuva,
1:01if you're still remembering me as that person, and not what I became after 10, 20, 30, 40 years of doing this, it's not worth anything. Of course, it's worth something between him and Hashem, but the point here is that for us, we have a direct connection with each other, and we have a direct connection with Hashem, but with Hashem, we don't see Him, we don't feel Him, we don't smell Him, we don't touch Him. So when something is more physical, we feel closer to it. That's just our reality. You feel closer to your wife or to your best friend or to your partner than you do with Hashem. It's supposed to be different, but that's just the way it is for our generation. So we have to make sure that we protect each other and ourselves by not reminding each other about our past. It doesn't matter what you did in the past. If somebody did teshuva, life started at that point. Somebody started doing teshuva and then they fell off, you have to get them back on track, and then they start again, as if they never sinned. You can't, you know, bring people down and remind them of all the things they used to do. Like, a lot of people like to talk about what were these rabbis' former lives? Like, some of these big ba'alei teshuva, some of these big rabbis are ba'alei teshuva themselves, like Rabbi Amnon Yitzchak, Rabbi Mizrahi, you know, some of the sages in the Gemara.
2:28Rabbi Akiva himself was a Baal Teshuva. His parents were converts. He was a Baal Teshuva himself. I mean, you have Reish Lakish. He's a huge, huge figure in the Gemara. I'm going to tell you one of his stories later today. He was a criminal, no? Not only that. Why do they mention he was a criminal? Not because they want to insult him. This guy is mentioned in the Gemara. Just so you know, just for future knowledge. Anyone mentioned by name in the Gemara had the ability to bring back the dead, to resurrect the dead. There are many people mentioned in the Gemara but not by name. They might say, "it was said that this and this." So when they say "it was said" and they don't mention the name, obviously somebody said it, but they don't mention it by name. Why don't they mention it by name? Because he wasn't able to bring back the dead.
