Elul 5784 – Hilchos Teshuva 8: Arriving at Busha Through Kirvas Elokim

כיצד מצוות וידוי אומר אנא השם חטאתי עויתי פשעתי לפניך ועשיתי כך וכך והרי נחמתי ובושתי במעשי ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה זהו עיקרו של וידוי.

So on the ikkar shel viduy the Rambam gives us only the most essential elements of the viduy. So one of those elements is that a person has to be able to honestly say that boshti, that I feel a sense of shame in thinking about the chet. We know the Rambam's makor. We say the pasuk in Selichot אלהי בשתי וגם נכלמתי להרים פני אליך. But how do we know that that's something which is so essential, so indispensable? So lechora as as follows. On the one hand, every chet sort of has its own its own dynamic. When a person is nichshal in ma'achalot asurot, it's because of a specific type of a ma'achalot asurot. If he's nichshal in arayot, it's because of a yetzer hara for arayot. If he's nichshal because of middat haka'as, it's a susceptibility to to anger. So there's a different dynamic in each situation. But on another level, leaving aside the conceptually exceptional case of a tinok shenishba, there is a common denominator to every chet. And that is, as Rabbenu Yonah writes in Sha'arei Teshuvah

אין זה אלא היות השם יתברך רחוק מכליותיו. משל למה הדבר דומה,

a person is is sitting for for the MCATs and it's his life's dream to go to medical school. But for whatever reason, he's not adequately prepared. So he's devised a system that that he's gonna cheat. He's rationalized it for himself. He's he's good to go. But the proctor is staring at him the whole time. The proctor is staring at him the whole time. There isn't a minute when the proctor takes his eyes off of him. So it doesn't matter how strong the yetzer hara to cheat is, if if he's aware of the fact that the proctor is staring at him every second. So it doesn't matter, maybe he has this yetzer hara to cheat and the person sitting next to him has a different yetzer hara to cheat. Lema'aseh, if if there's an awareness that the proctor is staring and there's going to be consequences of the fact that the proctor sees him cheating, he's not going to cheat. The yetzer hara's going to be suppressed. That's what Rabbenu Yonah says. That's what Rabbenu Yonah says, that every chet, again, leaving aside the the exceptional category of of tinok shenishba, so the common denominator is אין זה אלא היות השם יתברך רחוק מכליותיו. What's the definition of middat habusha, middat habusha? So again, take a mashal. So let's say a person walks into an empty room and his shoelaces were untied and because of that he clumsily he trips over his own feet and falls flat on his face. But the room is empty. So he's going to look around and see no one is there and he's going to give a breathe a sigh of relief. He's not going to be embarrassed. And let's say there's a hundred people in the room and the same the same thing plays itself out. So then he's going to be terribly embarrassed. So busha is is something that a person experiences only in the presence of others when one's inadequacy, inconsistency, weakness, shortcomings are on display, so then then that's when we feel a sense of of busha. A person has to be able to say to HaKadosh Baruch Hu boshti because the whole source of chet is the lack of awareness of being in the presence of of HaKadosh Baruch Hu. The teshuvah is that the person is mitvadeh lifnei hakel as the Rambam emphasizes חייב להתוודות לפני האל. There has to be a he has to rectify that and that's why it's so indispensable that he has to be able to say not only nichamti, but Ribbono Shel Olam boshti. We'll continue this bli neder tomorrow.