YOUR NESHOMA

The following is from Toras Avigdor, Parshas Vayelech Shabbos Shiur, “The Gift of Teshuva”

. . .אֱלֹהַי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַֽתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא

Now the neshamah is a difficult subject for us to grasp because it’s invisible.

For our modern minds, even frum minds, it’s not so real; because we believe in

things we see. ….

We think the body is something but actually it’s only a collection of gasses,

mostly gasses, and when the time comes it all dissipates into the air. You think the

body remains in the earth? Nothing ever remains in the earth. After a while the

body disintegrates into gasses and it is wafted away into the atmosphere. That’s the

body. It’s all imagination. כַּחֲלוֹם יָעוּף, it’s like a dream that passes away.

The neshamah however is real, infinitely more real than the body. It’s actually

a chelek Eloka mema’al, an emanation from Hashem, and so it’s more permanent

than anything else.

And therefore it is important for us to always speak to ourselves about the

great subject of our inner existence, what we really are. You are an entity that

transcends all physical existence. The body is not you. The time will come when

you’ll take off your suit of flesh and bones and leave it in the ground, in Beth David

Cemetery or wherever you bought yourself a plot, and it will begin to disintegrate.

But you will still be around because you are your neshamah, not your body.

Now, if a person is so careful about this body that will one day evaporate into

nothing – and he should be! – then how much more should he be interested in the

welfare of his neshamah! The soul is the most vulnerable and sensitive part of his

existence and the truth is that nothing in the world should interest him more than

that.

And therefore it pays for us to listen to what Rabbeinu Yonah says about sins

and the neshamah. He explains that like the body, the soul is subject to certain

maladies, diseases of its own kind, and when a man commits a sin he has actually

put a sickness into his neshamah.

[….]

All your days you’re demonstrating that you don’t believe in the existence of

the neshamah; you don’t really believe that the neshamah can be affected by

external conditions. And that’s serious business because the disease of the

neshamah is the most perilous of all illnesses, more serious, more fatal, than any

illness of the body. הַנֶּפֶשׁ הַחֹטֵאת הִיא תָמוּת– The sinful soul is going to die 

(Yechezkel 18:4). Very many die in this world and those who don’t will find that 

in the next world there is waiting for them even a worse kind of death. Absolutely, 

sin is a cancer on the neshamah.

I always tell you this mashal. Suppose you are invited to a home to stay over

at night and they give you a bed. But underneath the bed sheet, on the mattress,

there is a bean. It’s only one little bean but as you are lying there you are aware of

it; that bean is pushing into you. It’s very uncomfortable; you can’t ignore a bean

that is lying underneath you on the bed.

That’s what a small sin is. It’s not something you can just forget about. It’s

there; it’s very uncomfortable. Only that it’s not a bean; it’s a pinpoint cancer that

is consuming the neshamah. There’s a cancerous splotch on his neshamah and if it’s

untreated then it spreads.

Don’t console yourself with the idea that it’s only words. It’s not just words. If

you could see your neshamah you would see that by putting something into your

mouth without a bracha, the neshamah immediately becomes splotched with

telltale dots of cancer. Who would be crazy enough to take a bowl of sulphuric acid

and eat it?

Now, once a person knows that sin means that there are tumors growing all

over the neshamah, chas v’shalom – tumors worse than cancer, more malignant,

more dangerous, more fatal – so you begin to understand the puzzle that our

kadmonim had. How is teshuvah going to erase that? Just by fulfilling the steps of

teshuvah, the neshamah will be healed? If you know what a sin is and what a

neshamah is, it sounds preposterous.

Imagine someone has cancer chas v’shalom in his liver, or in his lungs chas

v’shalom. Or a tumor on the brain. Ay yah yay! A tumor on the brain! You can’t just

wipe it away. So how can you undo a sin? If a man corrupted his neshamah and

introduced the fatal germs of sin and death into his soul, then how can you undo

that?

Can you say he never did it? He is sorry, ten times sorry, but it’s no use. A man

is dying of AIDS in the hospital; he is very sorry for the things he did that brought

him to this – what will it help him? Or he’s dying of cancer. He’s so sorry that he

smoked for all those years? The surgeon general warned him on every box, “You’ll

get cancer and emphysema and this and that” but he didn’t listen. Now he’s sorry?!

He wants to fulfill all the steps of teshuvah now. He regrets it. It pains him that he

smoked. He promises he won’t do it again. No, it won’t help. He’ll lay there in the

hospital dying anyhow.

And yet, for this cancer of the neshamah, for this fatal disease, something has

been discovered. Along comes Hashem, the great Rofei Cholim who heals all, and

He has invented a chessed called teshuvah.

That’s what Rabbeinu Yonah tells us in his Shaarei Teshuva, in the first chelek,

the first paragraph. “Among the benefits that Hashem Yisborach has bestowed upon

his creatures, one of the most precious is that we can heal our souls.” Hakodosh

Boruch Hu has given us all kinds of benefits – many of them we recognize, some we

don’t – but among the greatest of benefits is that He prepared for us a way by

which we can ascend from the pit into which we fell because of our misdeeds. He

gives us a path to flee from the trap of our actions.

That’s a tremendous kindness, a tremendous gift that Hakodosh Boruch Hu

invented, that it’s possible for us to undo our misdeeds. You can erase past history?!

It’s something we don’t understand. We say it but there is no logic to back it up; it

should be impossible to undo your misdeeds.

It’s a neis gadol! People are constantly getting themselves into all kinds of

trouble and their neshomos are diseased by their actions, and yet Hakodosh Boruch

Hu has given man ways of combating the sickness of his soul which he is causing

by his own deeds. He has provided us with means of protecting ourselves from the

final sentence of going down early to the grave and then being judged in the World

to Come, which is the worst of all misfortunes.

The Miracle Cure

So teshuvah is a miracle. A person can save himself by being sorry! A man sins

and because he regrets his misdeeds Hakodosh Boruch Hu makes a special

dispensation. He changes the course of the nature of the neshamah and He allows

this man to remove from his soul that blemish, that spot of cancer that was to him

a peril.

Of course, there are certain conditions to teshuvah – it’s not as simple as

superficially saying sorry – but the first thing is to realize what a great miracle that

is, to be capable of undoing the past, of wiping out what happened before. Don’t say

it’s simple. It’s only simple if you don’t know what a sin is, what a neshamah is.

And therefore it’s important to always remember what an opportunity it is

that we have. Hashem is willing to cure you and remove all the stains from your

souls. He’ll give you a clean neshamah, אֱלקַֹי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַתָּ בִּי, like when you were born.