Sha’ar 2:5: Suffering as a Source of Salvation

Good morning Rabbosai. I hope everyone's well. Os Hey here in Hashaar Hasheini.

ויש על הבוטח בהשם להוחיל במועף צוקתו כי החושך סיבת האורה.

And Rabbeinu Yonah here teaches something very very important. Our sort of natural, natural in the sense of secular rather than religious instinctive reaction in the midst of yissurim is that one is looking for yissurim to be lifted. One is looking to be spared, freed from yissurim. And we think of the yeshua as a cessation of yissurim. Rabbeinu Yonah says, well obviously that is true, but what one really should be hoping for, davening for, is that the yissurim will serve as the source of the yeshua. Not that the yeshua is the counterpoint to the yissurim and yissurim will be something that a person merely survived and merely endured, but that the yeshua will be the culmination of the yissurim, such that the yissurim will have been productive, such so that the yissurim will have elevated the person, will have helped catapult him to a new and different level. כי החושך סיבת האורה. That the darkness shouldn't simply be dispelled by light, but the darkness itself should be the cause and the source of light.

כמו שכתוב אל תשמחי אויבתי לי כי נפלתי קמתי כי אשב בחושך השם אור לי. ואמרו ז"ל אלמלא נפלתי לא קמתי.

The kima livsof was only possible because of the nefilah. Ilmalei yashavti bachoshech, had I not, had I not had the experience of choshech, לא היה אור לי. The Rav has this idea in Kol Dodi Dofek as well and he elicits this idea, he documents this idea in the posuk of עת צרה היא ליעקב וממנה ייוושע. And the Rav explains that the posuk of umimena yivashei'a should be understood not simply that Yaakov will be saved from the tzara in the sense that they'll be relieved of the tzara, they'll put the tzara behind them, but umimena yivashei'a from within the tzara itself, the yeshua will sprout. This same idea of Rabbeinu Yonah over here that Rabbeinu Yonah is quoting from Chazal, that the choshech is not merely dispelled by the ora so that yeshua represents cessation, but the choshech is the sivas haora. Could be that this idea is also hinted at in the following. We have two very different associations with matzah. On the one hand, the Torah tells us that matzah is lechem oni.

לא תאכל עליו חמץ שבעת ימים תאכל עליו מצות לחם עוני.

The Ramban in Parshas Re'eh explains that matzah is the staple of a slave's diet. The master is only interested in spending as much on the slave as he needs to be able to sustain his free work, his free labor. So he feeds him matzah because since matzah is harder to digest than chametz, so... So it sits in the stomach longer and it gives a person a feeling of being somewhat satiated longer. So matzah is lachma anya, it was the lechem of avdus, it was the lechem of poverty. Me'idach gisa,

מצה זו שאנו אוכלים על שום מה על שום שפסח המקום על בתי אבותינו במצרים ולא הספיק בצקם להחמיץ עד שנגלה עליהם מלך מלכי המלכים הקדוש ברוך הוא וגאלם.

So matzah is also associated with the ge'ula, with the accelerated pace of ge'ula. So the same matzah has dual and, we would have thought, contradictory associations. There's the association with avdus, with oni, and then there's the association with ge'ula. So as it were the Torah didn't have enough symbols or metaphors that this we needed to compress a tartei de'sasrei into the matzah? The pshat is no, the Torah here is delineating for us the relationship between the avdus, the oni initially and the subsequent ge'ula, that it's not that there's a disconnect in the sense that ge'ula means moving away from and cessation of avdus, but rather

החושך הוא סיבת האורה. עת צרה היא ליעקב וממנה ייוושע,

from the tzara itself the yeshua sprouts, and that's what the Torah is teaching through the matzah containing within it, encapsulating both the association with avdus as well as the association with ge'ula.

וכל איש ואיש ביום צרה לו ייתן לבו להבין ולהתענות עם התשובה והתפילה כמו שהציבור חייבים לצום ולהתענות בעת צרתם כאשר תיקנו חכמים ז"ל. וזה צום נבחר ויום רצון.

V'tzom nivchar, right, the phrase comes from Yeshayahu, the haftarah that we read in the morning on Yom Kippur. A tzom nivchar isn't simply the abstention from achila u'shiya, but the abstention from achila u'shiya is intended to be machnia levaveinu that it should be more conducive for teshuva. The kiyyum of a ta'anis is teshuva. To fast without teshuva is k'guf belo neshama.

וכאשר יבוא מוסר השם יתברך על האיש אשר הוא זך וישר.

What happens, how do we understand when yissurim are visited upon a person who's pure? When it's not coming to arouse him to teshuva, it's not coming to be to atone for prior cheit?

יהיה לניסיון ולהגדיל שכרו לעולם הבא. כמו שנאמר למען ענותך ולמען נסותך להיטיבך באחריתך.

V'amru raboseinu zal,

פשפש במעשיו בעת צרתו וחיפש וחקר ולא מצא חטא בידו הן הן ייסורין של אהבה.

So the phrase and the category of yissurin shel ahava is from the Gemara in Berachos daf hei. Rabbeinu Yonah's understanding, and he's by no means alone in this, Rabbeinu Yonah's understanding of yissurin shel ahava is that they are unrelated to cheit, that even though the person is free of cheit, that אף על פי כן there's a hanhaga of hakadosh baruch hu, that hakadosh baruch hu gives him yissurim again to. The Rambam in the Moreh says that this notion is not at all muskom amongst Chazal, that there is such a thing as this hanhogo, as yisurim belo cheit. So Rambam says that's not at all muskom, and the famous meimra Chazal of אין יסורין בלא חטא ואין מיתה בלא עון disagrees with this gemara, not at all muskom. The Ramban, Sha'ar Hagmul, has a different pshat in this gemara. He thinks that this gemara gufa doesn't mean when it says yisurim shel ahavo, doesn't mean the way Rabbeinu Yonah and other Rishonim understand it. For the Ramban, yisurim shel ahavo means let's say a person pishpeish velo motzo is הרי הן יסורין של אהבה. The Ramban says what it means is like this: yitochein that a person is over an aveiro beshogeg and is unaware of it. And even when he makes his cheshbon hanefesh, even when yifashpeish bema'asov and yemashpeish bema'asov, shegi'os mi yovin, Dovid Hamelech says. A person could remain unaware of cheit. A person's unaware of cheit, but that doesn't mean that cheit didn't leave its fingerprints, didn't leave its marks on the person's nefesh. It doesn't mean that the person hasn't been affected by cheit, so Hakodosh Boruch Hu mitoch ahavaso for this person, for the love for the person, so Hakodosh Boruch Hu sends him the yisurim to cleanse. Meaning the dagesh chozok on the yisurim is not an onesh, adaraba, the dagesh chozok on the yisurim is the ahavo that the person should be able to be cleansed even from a cheit beshogeg. Okay, maybe we'll stop here for this morning, and bli neder im yirtzeh Hashem we'll resume at one o'clock. Have a good productive morning rabbosai, be well, be safe.