Dear Yeshiva Family:
Baalei Teshuva are Better
The Gemara in Berachos (34b) teaches, “B’makom sheba’alei teshuvah omdin, tzaddikim gemurim einam omdin” — in the place where ba’alei teshuvah stand, even complete tzaddikim cannot stand. This is remarkable, and very hard to understand. A person who has sinned, perhaps repeatedly, but ultimately returns to Hashem can reach a place that someone who remained righteous throughout his life cannot reach. Many explanations have been offered for this Gemara. Perhaps we can suggest another approach, based upon a fascinating insight of R’ Yisrael Salanter.
The Gemara in Sukkah (52a) describes what will occur in the future when Hashem destroys the yetzer hara. Both the tzaddikim and the reshaim will cry, but for completely opposite reasons. To the tzaddikim, the yetzer hara will appear like an enormous mountain. They will look at it in amazement and wonder: How were we possibly able to overcome something so formidable? To the reshaim, however, that very same yetzer hara will appear as thin as a hair. They too will cry, wondering: How could we have failed to overcome something so small?
Making Mitzvos or Aveiros a Habit
R’ Yisrael Salanter explains imagine someone who struggles tremendously with speaking lashon hara. The first time he restrains himself, it takes enormous effort. He desperately wants to say something, yet somehow controls himself. The next time, he does it again. And then again. Slowly, through repeated victories, he changes himself. What once required tremendous self-control eventually becomes almost natural. He has trained himself not to speak lashon hara.
One might assume that his later victories are therefore worth less. After all, the first time required enormous effort, while years later he may barely experience a nisayon at all.
R’ Yisrael teaches precisely the opposite. A person is rewarded not only for overcoming the challenge that presently confronts him, but for having changed himself so that the challenge is no longer as difficult. If originally overcoming that nisayon required “ten points” of effort, and through years of work he has reduced it to one, he does not lose the reward of those original ten points. Each subsequent victory is credited to him according to the level of struggle that would have existed had he not worked to transform himself. The ease he now experiences is itself the product of his earlier avodah.
The reverse is true as well. A person may repeatedly surrender to a particular desire until what was once a manageable nisayon becomes an overwhelming one. Perhaps originally overcoming it required ten points of effort, but after years of giving in, breaking the habit might now require one hundred. He cannot claim credit for having a one-hundred-point battle. He himself created much of that difficulty. His true starting point remains the original ten.
This, explains R’ Yisrael, is the meaning of the Gemara. When the tzaddik looks back, he sees a mountain. During his lifetime, many of his later victories may have felt relatively easy. But in Shamayim, all those victories are revealed according to their true value — including the years of work through which he made the difficult easy. What seemed small was actually enormous.
The rasha experiences the opposite. He remembers enormous struggles and overpowering desires. Yet when everything is finally revealed, he sees a hair. Much of the mountain he experienced was a mountain of his own making. What began as a small challenge became enormous only because he repeatedly surrendered to it.
The tzaddik therefore cries and asks, “How did I ever conquer such a mountain?” And the rasha cries and asks, “How did I allow something so small to defeat me?”
The Power of Teshuva
With this we can try understand the extraordinary statement with which we began. But first we have to first understand the incredible power of teshuva. Teshuvah is one of the forces through which HaKadosh Baruch Hu created the world. It has the ability, in a sense, to undo the past. A person who genuinely does teshuvah separates himself from his previous actions. He says: That is no longer who I am. I regret what I did, I have repaired my relationship to those actions, and I am choosing a different identity. Through genuine teshuvah, he emerges as a new person.
Now consider what happens when we combine this with R’ Yisrael’s yesod.
Imagine a person who has spent years repeatedly surrendering to a particular aveirah. Originally, overcoming that desire may have required only ten points of effort. But he gave in again and again, until he habituated himself to that behavior. What was once merely tempting has become deeply ingrained. Today, breaking free might require one hundred points of effort.
According to R’ Yisrael, ordinarily we would say that this does not make his accomplishment worth one hundred points. He himself created the additional difficulty. His original nisayon was only ten, and the mountain he now confronts is largely a mountain of his own making.
But what happens when he does genuine teshuvah?
The person turns to Hashem and says: “Ribbono Shel Olam, I don't want this anymore. This is not who I want to be. My neshamah wants to return to You. But I have spent years training my body and my instincts in the opposite direction. I have sincerely changed what I want — but I am still left fighting the person I taught myself to become.”
Teshuvah changes the equation.
Restting the Base-Line His past may have left very real habits behind. Teshuvah does not necessarily make those disappear overnight. But the person confronting them is no longer the same person who created them. Through teshuvah he has, in a very real sense, reset himself. He is now a new person facing a one-hundred-point nisayon.
And now watch what happens.
He struggles. He falls and gets back up. He fights again and again. Slowly, the one-hundred-point nisayon becomes ninety, then fifty, then ten. Eventually, perhaps, he succeeds in transforming himself to the point that avoiding this aveirah requires only one point of effort.
Standing next to him is a tzaddik gamur. He too has worked throughout his life until this very same area requires only one point of effort. From the outside, the two men now look identical. Both are living correctly. Both overcome the nisayon almost naturally. But their journeys were entirely different.
The tzaddik began with a ten-point nisayon and, through years of avodah, transformed it into one. Following R’ Yisrael’s principle, each later victory is credited to him as though he had overcome the original ten-point struggle.
The baal teshuvah, however, began his new life facing a one-hundred-point nisayon. Through teshuvah he became a new person — but a new person who inherited an enormous battle from the person he used to be. He then fought that battle until his one hundred also became one.
If R’ Yisrael teaches that a person continues to receive credit for the nisayon that he worked to make easier, then every subsequent victory of this baal teshuvah carries the weight of that original one hundred!
So Baalei Teshuva are better!
And now we can understand the words of Chazal very literally: “B’makom sheba’alei teshuvah omdin, tzaddikim gemurim einam omdin.”
Imagine these two people many years later, having both reached the same level in their avodas Hashem. (Indeed, this must be the type of comparison Chazal are making.
Certainly, the Gemara cannot mean that every baal teshuvah stands above every tzaddik gamur; rather, we are comparing a baal teshuvah and a tzaddik who have ultimately reached the same level, and asking where each one stands within that level.) The tzaddik gamur began with a nisayon that required ten points of effort. Through years of avodah, he has reduced it to one. R’ Yisrael teaches that he does not thereby lose the reward of his original struggle. Every time he now overcomes that one-point nisayon, he is credited as though he had overcome the ten-point nisayon with which he began.
The baal teshuvah has also reached the point where the nisayon requires only one point of effort. But his starting point — after becoming a new person through teshuvah — was entirely different. At the moment he did teshuvah, the habits created by his previous life remained so deeply ingrained that overcoming them required one hundred points of effort. That was the nisayon faced by the new person who emerged through teshuvah. And from that point forward, he worked until his hundred-point nisayon also became one.
If we apply R’ Yisrael’s principle, every subsequent victory of the baal teshuvah is therefore credited according to his starting point — one hundred points. The tzaddik and the baal teshuvah may eventually stand side by side, both facing what presently feels like the identical one-point nisayon. Yet one is receiving the reward of ten, while the other is receiving the reward of one hundred.
This is the remarkable advantage of the baal teshuvah. Teshuvah does not necessarily remove the difficult habits that his previous choices created. Rather, it creates a new person who must now overcome those habits. And once he does, those very difficulties become his new starting point. The tzaddik gamur may ultimately reach the same level of behavior, and his present struggle may look exactly the same, but he can never reproduce the journey that began from the baal teshuvah’s one-hundred-point starting line.
Thus, when everything is ultimately revealed and each person sees the true dimensions of the yetzer hara he overcame, the tzaddik will indeed see a mountain. But the baal teshuvah will see a mountain many times larger. What became easy for both of them later in life is credited according to the battle each one originally had to fight. And it is in that sense that “b’makom sheba’alei teshuvah omdin, tzaddikim gemurim einam omdin” — the baal teshuvah can reach a place that even the tzaddik gamur cannot reach.
We are Baalei Teshuva
There is a powerful message here for all of us, particularly during these days of teshuvah. For most of us, growth is not a perfectly straight line. We are not born at one point and simply travel steadily upward until we become tzaddikim gemurim. Our avodah has bumps and detours. We grow in certain areas and fall in others. Sometimes we take two steps forward and then three steps back. And sometimes, unfortunately, we allow a negative behavior to repeat itself often enough that it becomes part of us.
At that point, getting back is no longer as simple as deciding to do better. It requires undoing habits that we ourselves created. Perhaps it is a temper that we allowed to become uncontrolled. Perhaps it means putting a filter in place after allowing ourselves access to things we should never have been seeing. Perhaps it is a weakness in davening, learning, shemiras halashon, or any other area where repeated behavior has slowly created a new pattern. Getting back can be difficult precisely because we have made it difficult.
And that can be terribly discouraging. We look at the struggle and think: I did this to myself. Why should it be so difficult to get back to where I once was?
But this is exactly where the extraordinary gift of teshuvah enters.
If, while standing on that lower rung, a person genuinely does teshuvah, that lower rung can now become the starting point of a new person. From there he begins climbing. He works on himself until he reaches the level where he once stood, and then continues climbing beyond it. Eventually, through repeated good choices, what was once enormously difficult may again become natural. Those later victories do not lose the value of the struggle with which his new journey began. If his teshuvah began when overcoming the nisayon required one hundred points of effort, then even when years of growth have reduced that nisayon to one point, he can continue to receive the reward of the one-hundred-point battle.
That changes the way we look at our failures. Certainly, we never want to fall. We never choose a lower starting point. But once we are there, we need not be paralyzed by the fact that we created some of our own difficulties. Teshuvah gives us the remarkable ability to take even that place and turn it into the beginning of an entirely new ascent.
May we be zocheh during these days to do genuine teshuvah, to find the strength to climb from wherever we presently stand, and to transform even the places in which we have fallen into opportunities for extraordinary growth and closeness to Hashem.
Have an amazing Shabbos and Yom Kippur.
Rabbi Moshe Revah mrevah2@touro.edu |
