Blow the horn

AiynBase with R' Paltiel 12/3/09 ThursdayNight 15 Kislev 5770


Continuing to look at how tshuvah relates to Hashem Himself...


Tshuvah aims at the etzem of the baal haratzon.
 Imagine you are a guest in someone's home, and there is food and hospitality, but primarily what you're interested in is relating to the host himself.


Relating to the host himself is not sensed through any faculty.


Like at a fabrengen – people are sitting together – being in the primary relationship with another person. Only in pnimius hanefesh do you have the primary knowledge that you are for real and can experience the reality of others. Whether you're doing anything or not – you're there. In the world presence is based on activity.


Tshuvah is present/possible through the baal haratzon. Tshuvah is possible since he relates to us on an essential level.


Since through tshuvah you draw down the etzem, which includes everything, thus all the revelations/strings/ratzonot are restored too.


The result is acceptance and affection, greater than before the sin. This is since all is re-established by the drawing down of etzem.


The etzem pre-existed all the other ratzonot. Yet He wanted to create a world that contained all the different mitzvot. So etzem contains all, but mitzvot (gilui harotzonot) is the way He reveals Himself. After tshuvah all the ratzonot are gilui, with nimshach of the etzem.


Before tshuvah they were nimshach due to His will, but now after tshuvah they are nimshach not due to will, but due to Him Himself.


This is like the way the king is represented in the country vs. how he is represented by his own presence. All the variety in the country represented the greatness of the king, but when he comes to visit all works in harmony due to his presence.


Blowing of the shofar is part of the matter of tshuvah, so we have the question of how would the chachamim do away with the mitzvah lest the shofar be carried in a public domain.


The principle of tshuvah is in the heart – not a mitzvah of deed.


Tshuvah is a cry from the heart, so you may say the shofar is not so primary, and can thus be removed, nevertheless, tshuvah is also expressed in deed. In this way shofar is really part of tshuvah.


Further, the main part of tshuvah is to effect that the nefesh habahamit turns and comes back to its connection with Hashem. Also the cause of the break in the connection is due to the nefesh habahamit – this is why we blow the horn of a ram. This represents the animal aspect is also included.


So it is very difficult to understand how they decided to nullify a mitzvah due to this concern.


At a certain level the connection of the nefesh habahamit is even stronger than the nefesh ha-elokis. There are different levels of its involvement and it gets affected by the process.


For video, click here.