Rabbi Ari Kahn
Yom Kippur 5776
“And though the holes were rather small...”
In a daring and optimistic passage,
the rabbis describe the Divine assistance[1]
received by those who make even the smallest gesture of repentance:
R.
Yassa said: The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Israel: My children, make for
Me an opening of repentance no bigger than the point of a needle, and I will
widen it for you into openings through which wagons and carriages can pass. (Shir HaShirim Rabbah 5:3)
The
Gaon of Vilna[2]
focused on the odd language of this passage, which seems to be built upon a
mixed metaphor: When referring to the eye of a needle, it would be more
appropriate to use any of the words that denote a small gap, crack or hole.
Instead, the word used is petach (opening), which is most commonly
associated with an architectural gap such as a door or window. Alternatively,
the contrast might have been drawn between the hole a pin leaves in a garment,
rather than the eye of the needle, as compared to the wide gap created when a
door is opened. The Gaon learned a very deep and significant lesson regarding
repentance from the peculiar wording of this passage:
Sometimes,
a small hole is of no significance. For example, when dough is left to rise, one
may poke a hole in it that causes the dough to collapse, but the retreat is
only temporary; soon enough, the dough will rise even higher than before. On
the other hand, if one makes a hole in a garment – the hole is clear and
permanent. The Gaon taught, based on this difference, that although God
recognizes even the smallest gesture of repentance and responds with great
largesse, man’s gesture must be real, and not merely a fleeting, halfhearted gesture
that leaves no impression on our own inner world.
The
examples used by the Vilna Gaon to illustrate this teaching seem far from
haphazard or coincidental. The first image, of dough as it rises, is an image
familiar to readers of the Talmud as a metaphor for the evil inclination.[3] As
dough becomes leavened, it expands and rises in a manner analogous to the human
ego. Like the yeast in the mixture, sin draws all the other ingredients that
comprise the human personality into the inflated sense of self-importance and
self-sufficiency upon which the evil inclination feeds. Sticking a needle into
the evil inclination, like poking a finger into a batch of rising dough, is a
futile gesture; it makes a very temporary impression. This, the Gaon teaches
us, is not the sort of repentant gesture that will stir God to come to our aid,
to meet us along our path to repentance and guide us toward the light. Simply
poking at the growing, festering mixture as it expands and rises actually helps
the yeast work more effectively; this is not real teshuva.
On
the other hand, a hole made in a garment is qualitatively unlike a hole in
rising dough; it is permanent, discernable – a proper petach or opening.
This second image employed by the Gaon refers to a “beged,” a word rooted
in the Hebrew verb begidah, betrayal:
The first clothing appeared after Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree and became
suddenly aware of their nakedness. The clothing worn to cover their innocence
is, therefore, both a consequence of sin and a sign of their rebellion, their
betrayal of the trust God had placed in them, and their loss of innocence.
The
fight against sin is a difficult battle, and the message the Vilna Gaon hoped
to convey in this teaching is that we must be sincere, and make a real and
discernable effort to change. Lip service or a bland poke at our own puffed-up
egos will not suffice to convince God to come to our aid. Only when we feel the
consequences of our own sin upon our shoulders, only when we become aware of
how we have clothed ourselves in self-justification and continue to glorify our
own rebellion – only when we make a hole in the garments of sin with which we
cloak ourselves will we be capable of breaking through and tapping into God’s
mercy. In a way, we may compare this hole to the tear a mourner makes in his or
her garment, expressing a sense of loss and irreparable damage. And just as the
torn garment cannot truly express the grief and pain of losing a loved one, the
hole we make in our “clothing of sin” cannot fully express the remorse and
shame that is the core of teshuva. Even
so, just as the smallest tear is a permanent sign of mourning, so too the
smallest hole in our tightly-woven web of ego and self-deception is guaranteed
to arouse God’s Mercy. Even a hole the size of a pinhead becomes the starting
point for a new relationship with God. Through that small but permanent petach, a world of teshuva is born.
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