Elul: The Fish that Got Away

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein** (0:06)
Okay, so tonight we have a very interesting shi'a. We're going to have to take our minds and twist them a little bit from our normal way of thinking, if they were normal, if it works in this shi'a. But we have to change our minds a little bit. I don't know if I should do the pascha shi'a first. No, we're going to do that. Okay, so the opening question is the following. It says like this.
On Rosh Hashanah, there's a judgment.
The tzadikim are judged for life.
The reshaim are judged for death, and the beinim, which is most of us, the ones that are in between, they hang, they're not judged yet until Yom Kippur. So, your balance sheet is equal, and you do tzuva, right? And that saves your life.
So, the famous question is, why do you have to do tzuva? If it's exactly equal, you have various in your mitzvahs, do another mitzvah, and you won.
Why don't you do tzuva? I go out, I give a poor person a dollar, now it's not even anymore, my good side is higher.
Why don't you say tzuva, you have to do tzuva. What? It's a bomb question, with a bomb answer. And the answer is, that at the end of Rosh Hashanah, you cannot change the numbers.
50 of areas, 50 mitzvahs, equal balance, that's it. So you cannot change it. So by doing a mitzvah, mutter Rosh Hashanah, that doesn't change your balance for Rosh Hashanah. That's ready next year.
So, but if you do chuvah me'avah, right, if you do chuvah me'avah, so if you just do chuvah, if you do chuvah me'avah, what happens is, that the mitzvah, the averah, becomes a mitzvah. Once the averah becomes a mitzvah.
You get true out of fear, true out of love. What does it mean to do chuvah me'avah? What does it mean? I love you, I'm sorry! You do chuvah me'avah, you don't love it? What does it mean?
That's yirev.
No, you don't want to do chuvah me'avah. You want to do chuvah me'avah. Chuvah me'avah turns the right wall. I told you this story last night. I went to my Cracker Jacks when I was a kid. I knew it wasn't kosher, but I wanted to get to the prize. And then once I got to the prize, he said, I was like, no, no, don't eat anything, just get to the prize. I wasn't going to throw that out, so the itzer went into this, and he said, Wallerstein, throw it out, it's Valtashvist. It's an ameirah to throw it out.
Ah, it's a mitzvah to eat treif, beautiful. I mean, it wasn't treif. I hope it wasn't treif anyway, but I thought it was.
So I told you a few years ago, I'm standing there at Tzitzal, in Eitzachai, I'm in Onyum Kippur, and all of a sudden I'm getting into my head. You know, you were 14 years old, you ate crackerjacks. I'm like, get out of my head. What are you bothering me now? I got much bigger avayers than that. Come on. I know, you better take care of that crackerjack thing. So I was like, Hashem, I was a kid. What did I know? I didn't know who you were. I didn't have a connection. I had no relationship with you. I love you now. We have this relationship. I would never eat crackerjacks. No way. That's true of my avaks. It's not coming from my... It's going to bring me... But we're going to learn something tonight. It's going to blow everyone who's listening to this. I don't know why nobody ever teaches us stuff.
So this is Mishra Torah, O Rambam, right? And he has a Sefer on Chuvah.
And we started learning last week, the beginning of it, but by the time I finished it, I want to go to the tenth tarik. We never get to the tenth tarik. You hear? We just got Kala Lushan on just now for the tenth tarik. This is going to blow you away because this is the opposite of the way we're brought up. Totally the opposite. Okay, you ready for this? I spoke about it in Los Angeles last night. We had our first Zivino Makenu event. I want to tell everyone in Los Angeles, you're the best. We went to the valley. It was in the valley. It was fantastic. It was beautiful. All the people came out. We had a big chivzi. Unbelievable.
Listen to this. A person should never say, I am doing the mitzvah of the Torah, and I'm occupying myself with its wisdom, because I want to get reward. A person should not learn Torah, do mitzvahs for reward.