Parshas NITZAVIM - VAYEILECH
By Rabbi Dovid Zauderer
As we all know, this month, the Hebrew month of Elul, is the time for Teshuvah (repentance). It is the time of year when we reflect on our actions of the previous year and see what changes we can implement for the coming year.
But doing teshuvah and making positive changes in our lives is no easy task. I mean, just think of those fad diets that many of us go on just to lose some weight. We lose a pound or two or more the first month and we feel great - but then we go right back to our old ways.
Sometimes we try real hard to change a bad habit or character trait, like controlling our anger, for example. Or we decide to take upon ourselves the observance of a new mitzvah, like keeping kosher. And it works for a while. But the we run into an impasse, and we feel like we can’t continue.
Well, guess what? I have good news for you. Rabbeinu Yonah, in the beginning of his classic work Shaarei Teshuvah (“Gateways of Repentance”), ‘promises’ that G-d will assist those who repent and help them overcome their obstacles to teshuvah, even when they are not capable of doing so on their own (see Deuteronomy 30:2-6).
This means that if a person makes a sincere effort and does as much as he can to correct his bad character traits, or to fulfill the mitzvos of the Torah, and he reaches a point where he is ‘stuck’ and he simply can’t go further, then G-d will send him Siyata D’shmaya (“Divine assistance”) that will enable him to go forward and to be successful in his teshuvah, as the following true story illustrates:
A successful bank manager in the Tel Aviv area with a secular Jewish background became attracted to Torah and began studying the heritage he knew so little about. As he continued learning, he slowly but surely began accepting upon himself a more observant lifestyle. He would get up each morning and put on tefillin and recite the Morning Prayers. He was also careful to make the proper blessings before and after eating food. Over time, he began to incorporate more and more mitzvos into his lifestyle.
There was, however, one mitzvah that he was not ready to take upon himself. He just could not bring himself to wear his yarmulke in public. The thought of his secular friends, colleagues and neighbors knowing about his new ‘religious’ lifestyle – and making fun of him - was just too scary to him. So when he went back to the bank to work, and wanted to eat his lunch, he found himself in a quandary. On the one hand, he had accepted upon himself to always make blessings over food, but this required wearing a yarmulke on his head in order to say G-d’s Name. On the other hand, he couldn’t bring himself to wear his yarmulke right there in front of all his secular employees.
As he was standing there, struggling with this difficult dilemma, a wealthy client of the bank came in with a huge bag of rare gold coins in his hands. Suddenly, the bag tore and the coins began rolling in all directions all over the floor. As was standard procedure in such a case, the bank doors were immediately locked so that no one could leave or enter with stolen coins. Meanwhile the rich man – who was shrieking like a madman about his precious coins - got down on all fours, and scuttled around the bank, searching for any coins that might have rolled further away – and all this without regard for his social status or his fancy suit which by now was quite filthy. But nobody was making fun of him for crawling around the bank like an animal. If anything, the opposite was true. They were right there on the floor with him, helping him retrieve his gold coins.
The bank manager, who was taking all this in, thought to himself: “Nobody laughed at the rich man on the floor because everyone understands that money is an important value, and that there is nothing to be embarrassed about when it comes to money and other valuable things. So why I should feel embarrassed to wear a yarmulke in public and worry about what my secular friends might say? Is wearing a yarmulke any less valuable than gold coins, if it is something that is important to me?” He decided right then and there in the bank to put on his yarmulke and recite the blessing on his food – and he never looked back.
Just like the bank manager in the story who got stuck in a quandary and simply couldn’t bring himself to wear a yarmulke at work – until Someone (can you say G-d?) sent the wealthy client into the bank who dropped his bag of coins and was crawling on all fours in search of any coins that got away – which gave the bank manager the push he needed to put his yarmulke on in public no matter what his secular friends might say – we, too, must know that as long as we try our hardest to do teshuvah and make positive changes in our lives, then even if we get stuck, G-d will send us Divine assistance and help us overcome all our obstacles.
http://www.torchweb.org/torah_detail.php?id=763