Self-Awareness / Knowledge in Teshuva

כי
ימצא בקרבך
באחד שעריך
אשר ה' אלהיך
נתן לך איש או
אשה אשר יעשו
את הרע בעיני
ה' אלהיך לעבר
בריתו.
In general, the Torah speaks belashon zachar and Chazal
tell us, as a matter of fact it's a Gemara in Bava Kamma, how we
know that min hastam the Torah intends the dinim to apply
uniformly to men and women. So the Ramban here is prompted by the fact
that that general rule of thumb notwithstanding, over here the Torah
mentions ish o isha.

והזכיר
איש או אשה, says the Ramban, כי
בעבור קלות
דעת האשה
תתפתה לעבוד
עבודה זרה
באותות
ובמופתים
שנעשו לפניה.

Ramban says that the feminine personality is more
susceptible to persuasion, more amenable to being forgiving in a different
context. That same middah, depending upon the context, is a strength or
a weakness. In this context, it's a weakness that she's more prone, more
susceptible to persuasion, to being convinced. What the Torah is
describing over here, that someone may be induced to be oved avodah zarah,
so be it ish or be it isha, either way the Torah proceeds
to tell us that if it's established והנה
אמת נכון הדבר
so then והוצאת
את האיש ההוא
או את האשה
ההיא וגומר וסקלתם
אותם באבנים
ומתו.

What's so interesting according to the Ramban's insight
is that the Torah acknowledges the fact that a woman naturally, because
of the way Hakadosh Baruch Hu designed the feminine personality, may be
more, is more susceptible to this persuasion, but it doesn't make a difference.
It's not any kind of extenuating factor whatsoever.

והוצאת
את האיש ההוא
או את האשה
ההיא.
What the Torah is teaching us according to this insight of the Ramban,
a person can have a weakness, a susceptibility, and maybe at times it's even a
susceptibility or a weakness that a person can't change, that's really embedded
within him or her.

But the Torah expects us to have the self-awareness to
know that and to compensate for it. Maybe let's try to see a couple of other marei
mekomos on this theme and then just slightly, briefly elaborate a little
bit. The Ramban talks about how rachmana litzlan if a person
believes has a corporeal conception of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, he thinks rachmana
litzlan Hakadosh Baruch Hu is physical, the Rambam says that's worse
than being oved avodah zarah. Everything that the Torah tells us
about being oved avodah zarah, that kavayachol it incites Hakadosh
Baruch Hu's wrath, Hakadosh Baruch Hu reacts zealously, כי קל קנא ה'
אלהיך.

that that the aveirah of of this distorted conception
of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is is is worse many many times over than avodah
zarah. Then the Rambam says but maybe you'll defend the person and
saying that he he's not especially philosophically inclined and and maybe maybe
intellectually he's prone to error in in theological matters. So the Rambam
pushes back and says well you could offer the same defense of ovdei avodah
zarah. The ovdei avodah zarah don't go into the beis avodah zarah
spitting and saying sheketz sheketz veshiketzi well they obviously have
a different conception of what the beis avodah zarah represents and yet
you see that the Torah doesn't doesn't take that as some kind of
extenuating factor that they mistakenly erroneously believe it.

Ay, but what about this tayna but maybe the person
again isn't sufficiently philosophically inclined or or astute enough to be
able to figure out the truth? So the Rambam says לכן
אין צידוק למי
שאינו מקבל
מבעלי האמת
בעלי העיון אם
אין הוא מסוגל
לעיון.
He says no one's gonna indict anyone for for what that person's IQ is, for what
that person's intellectual strengths or or weaknesses are. And it's not
necessarily the case that that everyone is again sufficiently in this
translation sufficiently a ba'al iyun that on his own he can sort out
what's a correct conception and belief in Hakadosh Baruch Hu, a correct
way to be עובד
הקדוש ברוך
הוא from what's egregiously wrong. And the fact that a
person doesn't isn't able to do that himself, there's no tayna against a
person for that.

The tayna against the person is that he doesn't defer
to people who know better. But there is an assumption here, an assumption which
is so basic and so self-evident to the Rambam here that he doesn't
really articulate it, which is that the person is expected to have that
self-awareness and that self-knowledge. A person is supposed to know where he
stands. A person is supposed to know what his kochos are, but he's also
supposed to know what his kochos aren't.

He's supposed to know how far his kochos extend, how
far his kochos reach, but he's also supposed to know where they stop and
what's beyond his ability to form judgments on. And in the theological context
in which this Rambam is talking obviously it has applications in so many
other contexts. The Rambam says what's indefensible is not that the
person on his own if left to his own resources will will err. What's
indefensible is that he doesn't recognize that about himself and doesn't defer
to people who know better.

The common theme between those two sources the Ramban
here, the Rambam, is that a person can have a weakness and in these two
contexts we're about to see l'chora the more common context and in each
of these two contexts it's not really a limitation that a person can change.
It's not really something that a person it's hardwired into the into the
person. But a person can and therefore is expected to have that self-knowledge,
that self-awareness, being honest with himself about himself and compensating
as the context warrants. The Rambam in the beginning of Hilchos Deos
describes how there's a wide range of character traits and dispositions.

דעות
הרבה יש לכל
אחד ואחד מבני
אדם וזו משונה
מזו ורחוקה
ממנה ביותר and
they go from one end of the spectrum to the opposite end of the spectrum.

יש אדם
שהוא בעל חמה
כעס תמיד. There's some people who are so hot-tempered that they're
always getting angry.

ויש
אדם שדעתו
מיושבת עליו
ואינו כועס
כלל.

Then there are other people you can't disturb their
equilibrium.

יש
והוא בעל
תאוה—I skipped one example—יש
והוא בעל תאוה
שלא תשבע נפשו
מהלוך בתאותו. There's some who are so hedonistically
inclined that they can never satisfy their desires.

ויש
שהוא טהור גוף
ביותר לא
יתאוה אפילו
לדברים
מועטים שהגוף
צריך להם.

And other people are ascetics.

יש בעל
נפש רחבה שלא
תשבע נפשו מכל
ממון העולם. Some people have such a voracious
appetite for money that you can't satisfy that appetite כענין
שנאמר אוהב
כסף לא ישבע
כסף. Ve-yeish
mekatzer.

Some are so disinterested שדיו
אפילו דבר
מועט שלא
יספיק לו ולא
ירדוף להשיג
כל צרכו. Others are so disinterested that they're not even interested
in earning enough money to pay the rent and to pay the grocery bill. The Rambam
says subsequently, obviously that both extremes are wrong, person's supposed to
be in the middle. Where do people get these deos from or the extreme deos?
The Rambam says be-chol hadeos, he says יש
מהן דעות שהן
לאדם מתחלת
ברייתו לפי
טבע גופו.

He said some of these deos are innate. The starting
point is dictated, is determined by a person's DNA. He says others, ויש מהן
דעות שטבעו של
אדם זה מכוון
ועשוי לקבל
אותם במהרה
יתר משאר
הדעות.
It's not in his DNA in the sense that he's born already with that disposition,
with that character trait, but he's born with a predisposition to developing
that extreme character trait.

And then the Rambam of course goes on to tell us that this
fact notwithstanding, that we begin with regard to some character traits,
dispositions so off-center, that that's again a natural innate weakness, he
says, but the mitzvah is that a person has to work on himself until he
gets himself into the middle. See here too, the weakness, the deficiency is
natural. But again, what's axiomatic is that a person has the self-awareness to
recognize that deficiency. And here it's not a question of it being something
which is intractable, which a person can only compensate for.

Here, which is the more common situation, the more common
context, that self-awareness reveals to us something that we can and therefore
are obligated to correct. Such a tremendous yesod. Every בכל עת ובכל
שעה that a person has to be honest with himself about
himself. Again, it's a truth which is perennially relevant, fundamental, but
obviously its relevance, its significance, its importance is magnified in the
context of teshuvah.

So Rabbeinu Yonah writes at the very beginning of Sha'arei
Teshuvah in discussing the negative fallout from procrastinating in doing teshuvah,
Rabbeinu Yonah writes: v'ka'asher ye'acher lashuv when a person
procrastinates in doing teshuvah, he's aware of the chet but he
procrastinates. u'vo hachet leyado when that same chet will cross
his path a second time, if he hasn't done teshuvah, yipol bemokesh
k'vatchila, he's going to fall into the trap the way he did the first time.
However, this time: ויגדל
העוון האחרון
מאוד,
but the second, Rachmana litzlan, he says the second violation is much
more chamur than the first one. It's the same chet, it's the same
chet externally.

It's the same chet, but he says that in Dinei
Shamayim, Rachmana litzlan, the second instance is much more
egregious than the first one: ותולדתו
רעה לפני השם. Why?

כי
מראשיתו לא
חשב כי פתאום
יבוא היצר
השודד עליו. He says the first time, so maybe it's taka,
it is an extenuating factor at times that maybe the person had a weakness that
he wasn't aware of. Maybe he had again a susceptibility that he wasn't aware of
or not fully aware of and that's why, as it were, the yetzer was able to
ambush him.

However, says Rabbeinu Yonah: אך
אחרי אשר ראה
דלות כוחו
ואשר גבר יד
יצרו עליו וכי
עצום הוא ממנו. But when the first, but when the person
has seen that weakness that he has, that he can be overcome by temptation in a
certain situation: היה
עליו לראות כי
פרוע הוא. So then the person is supposed to have developed and acquired
the self-knowledge to recognize that vulnerability: ki parua hu. That
he's vulnerable, that he's exposed.

And what should his response have been? So maybe overnight: ולשית
עצות בנפשו
להוסיף בה
יראת השם
ולהפיל פחדו
עליה ולהצילה
ממארב יצר
ולהשתמר
מעוונו. Rabbeinu Yonah isn't necessarily assuming that the
person will be able to correct that shortcoming instantaneously, maybe he can,
maybe he can't. But even if he can't, says Rabbeinu Yonah, but a person
can put into place counter-forces that will compensate. He can strategize, v'lashit
eitzos benafsho, he can strategize להוסיף
בה יראת השם
ולהפיל פחדו
עליה to instill within himself Yirat Hashem
and in so doing that counter-force will be stronger than the force of the yetzer
which induced him to chet.

And then Rabbeinu Yonah says such a gevaldige peshat
in the pasuk in Mishlei. He says Shlomo HaMelech says in Mishlei:
ואמר שלמה
עליו השלום
ככלב שב על
קיאו כסיל שונה
באוולתו. A dog re-ingests its own vomit and Shlomo HaMelech uses
that as a mashal, Rachmana litzlan, for a fool.

כי
הכלב אוכל
דברים נמאסים.

A dog eats disgusting things. However, ka'asher yekienu,
but when the dog then vomits it, nimas mima'us, says then what the vomit
is even more disgusting than what the dog originally ingested. Which then means
that when the dog again is shav al keio, so what it's ingesting the
second time is more disgusting than what it did the first time. And that's the moshal
Shlomo HaMelech is giving.

והוא
שב עליהם
לאוכלם כן
עניין הכסיל
כי יעשה מעשה
מגונה.
He says the first cheit is meguneh. Takeh, it is some
something which is a davar meguneh, something which which should be
disparaged. However, כאשר
ישנה בו מגונה
יותר.

But it's even worse, that same act when it's repeated is even
worse, ka'asher be'arnu. The yesod hayesodos in in general in avodas
Hashem and in particular in avodas hateshuva is that it begins with
the self-awareness, the self-knowledge with each one of us being completely and
totally honest with himself and about himself. What that honesty reveals to a
person maybe maybe at times this is the miyut situation, maybe at times
he can't change that weakness. And the avoda for him with that when he's
equipped with this self-knowledge is to compensate for it.

A person can't change his can't change his IQ, he can develop
whatever kochos he has, but but he can't he can't change the amount of
raw ability that Hakadosh Baruch Hu gave him. A person can develop it
and and and make the most of it and make the best of it, but he can't change
the Hakadosh Baruch Hu's decision what what how much raw ability each
person has. But a person can be and has to be aware of it and has to therefore
compensate for his limitations which we all have and know when to defer and
when not to to rely on himself. Ramban's example.

Other times, the most of the time what the self-knowledge and
the self-awareness self-awareness teaches us are things that we can correct.
But the yesod hayesodos is that we we have a capacity also for denial,
we have a capacity for self-deception. It's part of the koach habechira
to deceive oneself, to be in denial. But a person has the koach, a
person has the koach to also be honest with himself about himself and ואין הדבר
תלוי אלא בנו.