digest
Welcome to class number 12 in that timeless classic of Jewish ethics, the Palm Tree of Devorah (Tomer Devorah), by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero, who passed away in 1570 in Safed. This series is dedicated in the merit of Binyamin Yosef for a complete speedy recovery and many long, happy, healthy, and prosperous years.
We are in the middle of developing the eighth attribute of Divine compassion, intimated by the words of the prophet Micah: "He will again have compassion upon us; He will suppress our iniquities, and You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." Rabbi Cordovero begins to explain to us that there is a fundamental difference between mitzvos and aveiros, mitzvahs (good, Divine deeds) and sins. He says you have to understand that every mitzvah a person performs affects Hashem in the most powerful way, so to speak. It rises up, touches, and causes infinite delight to God Himself, in His essence. Therefore the Gemara, the Talmud, says in Tractate Kiddushin that there is no reward for a mitzvah in this world, because nothing in our world, even the greatest delight and the most abundant goodness in this world, notwithstanding its greatness and even if everybody were blessed with all of it, cannot begin to capture the awesome, infinite magnitude that is contained in a single mitzvah.
The Ramak continues in the middle of the eighth attribute, and for this reason, the Ramak explains, he does not take the bribe of mitzvos. What does this mean? Let me give an illustration. A fellow performed 40 mitzvahs, but he also committed 10 transgressions. The ten transgressions cancel out ten mitzvahs, so you had forty but you had ten sins. Now the forty is reduced to thirty, because ten of the mitzvahs are eliminated on account of the ten sins. So you pay for those ten, so to speak, through these ten mitzvahs, and now the account is clear, and we go back to the thirty mitzvahs. He says this represents a complete misunderstanding. It looks like: there is something the Boss wants me to do, and there is something the Boss really does not want me to do. If I do forty things the Boss wants, but then I do ten things he doesn't want, he says, "You know what, let's forget about those ten things, because they're canceled out by ten good things, and now you're left with thirty." He says you missed the point. Even a complete Tzaddik who performed 40 mitzvahs his whole life, filled with mitzvahs, but who committed one sin, is considered as though he burned the Temple. That is how painful it is, until he can pay back the debt, until he can remove that pain and that blemish. Then this person will receive a reward for every single mitzvah. No mitzvah can ever be canceled, overlooked, or overridden because of sins.
Let us understand what this means. This is a great kindness. It represents the great love that God has toward the righteous, toward the good people. He will never, ever deduct one of the mitzvahs from the calculation because of a sin. Why? Because the value and significance of mitzvos is extraordinarily great. The mitzvah rises all the way to God Himself and has an impact on that level. How could He subtract from any mitzvah because of a sin? There is no sin in the world that could cancel, or cause God to reduce, the power of a mitzvah. There is no such thing as: a person did 40 mitzvahs but 10 sins, so 10 of the mitzvahs are canceled. No. Each mitzvah has an infinite, everlasting, eternal, and enduring impact, because the mitzvah touches God Himself. So the mitzvah is as eternal as Hashem, as wholesome as Hashem, as infinite as Hashem, as sacred as Hashem. You think, "I did a sin, it could cancel out the mitzvah, so now we're even"? No, nothing doing. Every mitzvah has infinite and eternal grandeur and power.
How can you reduce any of the mitzvahs because the person also did some wrong things? The result, the reward, the penalty, the consequence of a sin comes from the part we call Gehinnom and purgatory, from that which is despicable and low. But the reward, the consequence of mitzvos, comes from the most lofty, sacred, and respected reality, the radiance of the Divine. So how could you reduce this because of that? The two completely do not match up. You might say, "Because he did a mitzvah, therefore he won't get the penalty for the sin, and the sin will cancel the mitzvah, so we'll cancel the sin." He says you missed the point. Don't compare the two. The sin comes from the wretched concealments of reality, and the penalty of the sin comes from the wretched components of reality. The consequences of a sin come from the nibs, from the worthless, and the reward for a mitzvah comes from the infinite. So you want a sin to cancel a mitzvah? Even if you committed a thousand sins, you want a thousand sins to cancel them? It's forever: a mitzvah has infinite value. How can something superficial, wretched, and insignificant, which represents the skeleton of a person and covers up the true infinite power of a person, cancel out your true essence? You want your smallness, which is alien to your own truth, to override and cancel out your true infinite grandeur, which the mitzvah represents. It's impossible. The mitzvah is infinity. You want a sin to cancel out infinity? That doesn't happen.
So what happens? He says God will exact the debt for the sins. There has to be cleansing, therapy, as a result of my sins. But God will reward you for every single mitzvah. Just a simple example: imagine you're marrying off your daughter, and you've been waiting for this moment for years. It is one of the greatest, maybe the greatest, moments of your life. In the middle of the wedding, somebody comes over and says, "You know, you got a ticket on your car. You were parked illegally, so you got a ticket for $120." Imagine a father or mother saying, "Oh wow, my whole simcha, my whole joy, is now destroyed because of the ticket." You don't even notice it. After paying the caterer and all the other expenses, you certainly don't notice it. Besides that, somebody says, "You got a flat tire." Okay, I'll deal with a flat tire. It's not fun, but to tell me that the flat tire or the ticket cancels the joy of the wedding? You're joking. This is a joy coming from my deepest core. It's rooted in my deepest love for my children, in the fact that for years I was preparing for this great day when my child is ready to soar and build his or her own future. The flat tire is a nuisance. I don't like getting a flat tire, and I certainly don't like getting a ticket, but this doesn't cancel the joy. It's inevitable. That is what the Ramak is saying: yes, you have to clean up the flat tire, it has to be repaired, and the ticket has to be paid. A sin is serious, as he says, that a Tzaddik who does one sin is like he burned the Temple, because it betrays the Divine will, the Divine plan, the Divine intimate desire. Absolutely. So I have to do what I have to do in order to return, to repent, to cleanse that sin. But to say that a sin will take away a mitzvah, reduce a mitzvah to valuelessness, saying the mitzvah amounts to nothing because you have a sin that canceled it, the Ramak says you're missing the point. Nothing can cancel a mitzvah. A mitzvah is infinite. The mitzvah touches God Himself, and therefore every mitzvah gives you infinite reward, notwithstanding how many sins I may have committed, which I will have to cleanse, for which I will have to do teshuvah, for which I need atonement and forgiveness. But never does it take away the infinite positivity you created through your mitzvahs, even one mitzvah.
The Ramak says now we understand what it means that God suppresses our sins. Hashem doesn't allow sin to have the same impact and value as mitzvahs. It's not that the mitzvahs come up to Him and touch Him in the most positive way and the sins come up and touch Him in the most negative way. No. He suppresses the sins; He holds them down, so to speak. He doesn't allow them to ascend, and they can't enter His space. It's not that He is oblivious, and it's not that He is apathetic. God's providence supervises and scrutinizes the ways of every single person. Every time I choose to do a positive thing, and every time I sadly choose to do something toxic and destructive, He sees, He supervises, He cares. But the goodness in your life He will never suppress. It blossoms and soars very, very high. One mitzvah is subsumed in another mitzvah, and together they create an infinite mansion, a structure, a Divine structure, a Divine garment, because a mitzvah, like one brick, adds up to another brick and another brick, and creates a Divine edifice and a Divine cloak, which is awesomely respected and sacred. Sins don't have this power. God suppresses them. They shouldn't have this success; they should never enter His chamber. Therefore you could never compare the power of a sin to the power of a mitzvah. You don't say this is the power of positivity and this is the power of negativity, and that they parallel each other, so one cancels the other: the mitzvah cancels the sin, and the sin cancels the mitzvah. They are completely two different worlds. The sin is a sin; I need cleansing, I need atonement, I need to get rid of the debt and do what I have to do. But the mitzvah is beyond anything else, to the point that, as he said, there is no reward even in this world for a mitzvah. That is how powerful a mitzvah is. The Ramak will continue to show us how this can be reflected in our own lives as human beings who mirror this eighth attribute of the Divine.
This class is brought to you by Yeshiva.net. Please help us continue the classes. Make even a small contribution at www.theyeshiva.net.