The Rabbi Is Speaking, But Why Can't I Understand Anything He's Saying? (6 minutes)

0:00I remember 10 years ago, before the Torah played a significant role in my life, I would hear Rav Zev say something, and to be honest with you, I didn't understand most of what he said. I thought it was his fault. I thought, maybe he should... In last week's parasha, Parashat Nitzavim, it talks about teshuva. Anyone who's looking for a source of teshuva in the Torah should know it primarily comes from Parashat Nitzavim. There are other sources as well, but Parashat Nitzavim deeply explores the concept of teshuva. Teshuva, technically, is not logical. It's against all human logic. Doing teshuva does not make sense to a human being. Because technically, it's like saying you go to...

1:21A bank, you rob a bank, they catch you, you go to the judge, and the judge says, "Do you feel bad about it?" Yeah, I feel bad, I feel really, really bad. "Will you do it again?" No. "Okay, you know what? Go ahead, keep the hundred million dollars, just don't do it again." That's teshuva. It makes no sense whatsoever. But that shows you also the mercy of Hashem. In last week's parashah, Hashem says, listen, if you don't do what I say, a bunch of problems are going to happen. That was also in the previous parashah. We're not going to go over that. Anyone that wants to know the details, there's shiur number 45 on my YouTube channel. It goes over a lot of details. Danny saw it. A few other people here saw it. It's a pretty intense shiur, but it's going to touch your heart. My goal in every shiur is to touch your heart. If I didn't affect your heart in one way or another, then I wasted your time, and I'm sorry. So after we found out about all the bad things, Hashem says, if you do teshuvah — if you come back to Me, teshuvah is coming back. If you come back to Me, then you have nothing to worry about. I'm going to bless you and everything will be fine. But one thing that He mentioned that's very, very interesting.

2:41It says, what do you mean "circumcise your heart"? Last time I checked, we don't circumcise the heart. Any of the guys had a different circumcision. I had a circumcision of somewhere else. It wasn't the heart. So what does it mean, circumcise the heart? When you have a circumcision, you're taking off a piece that's called the orlah. Orlah is the piece that you take off when you actually have a circumcision as a boy. But that's not what we're talking about. The reason why you take off the orlah is because the orlah has tumah. You're born imperfect. Hashem makes you imperfect so you can remove the olah in order for you to become perfect. So then you're asking yourself, well, how could it be? Hashem, He's perfect. How could He create something that's not perfect? He's intentionally creating something that's not perfect to get the Jews to be involved with His creation, to give the prince a job. You know, the king obviously is doing everything. He doesn't really need the prince's help. But he's saying, you know, if I don't give the prince anything to do...

4:06He's, you know, he's going to feel bad about himself. No one wants to only get, get, get. Everyone wants to be involved in something. Imagine going to somebody's house and every day they're feeding you, they're giving you everything, and you never do anything. Eventually, after a while, after this vacation, you're going to feel bad. You say, you know, what, let me throw out the garbage. Let me wash the dishes. Let me do something. You want to contribute. So, Hashem created us imperfect. He created us with an orlah. We have an eighth day, we have a brit milah, and we remove this tumah. the Jew becomes perfect, but here we're not talking about that. Here we're talking about the Olah of the heart. The Olah of the heart is made up of the same thing. It's also made of tum'ah. But this tum'ah, this impurity, is made up of our sins. An eight-day-old baby didn't make any sins, not yet, at least not in this life. But a 20, 25, 35, 55, 75-year-old person...

5:06made some sins. So Hashem says that before you did teshuva, you couldn't even understand a big, giant chacham like Rabbi Zev. You couldn't understand him because you had so much tumah covering your heart, you can't understand the purity of the Torah. He can speak to you in every language you want—in Spanish, Hebrew, English, whatever language you want—but you still won't understand it. It's your problem, not his because you have so much tumah on your heart. So Hashem says, but if you really, really want to come back, and you really show Me sincerity—not just pretending by saying, "Oh yeah, I'm going to do teshuva," and the next day you're, you know, going to the beach on Shabbat—really, you know, you're doing something that shows that you're sincere, you really want to do teshuva. Then Hashem says, okay, then I'm going to start peeling. Whatever mitzvah you're going to do, I'll begin peeling off a piece of this oleh. I'll start removing a piece of this tumah from your heart, and then you'll begin to understand. And one of the things we have to realize is that instead of looking at the world around us, we always have to look at ourselves first. It's one of the most important things in the world because every time someone has a problem, it's very easy to point somewhere else. I used to do it a lot. It's very easy to point somewhere else.