Sorry, We Made a Mistake

Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi Popular Torah teacher and author

This week I have been talking with sweet female students who have come from the United States for a week. As always, when we are not on our phones, we just talk about it. About addiction, about wanting to quit, about being able to talk face to face again. At the end of the conversation, a sweet nineteen-year-old girl came up to me and told me that she can not imagine moving on after falling off the wagon a bit in terms of modesty. She feels like a liar, she looks like a righteous daughter of Israel, and inside her – this terrible lie, or is it actually her truth.

There are boys and girls who walk among us certain that they are lying: beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside, and all they need is this wonderful speech from Parashat Bechukotai, in which G-d promises, “I will be present in your midst.” And Rashi, in one of his wonderful commentaries, interprets, “I will, as it were, walk with you in the Garden of Eden, as though I were one of yourselves and you will not be frightened of Me. One might think that this implies: you will not fear (reverence) Me! Scripture however states, ‘but I will be your G-d’.” Wow G-d promises that G-d “walks” in each of us as it was in Gan Eden, as it was in reality before sin. This is the true face of everyone! If this is so, then why the dirty feeling? Here is the second part of Rashi’s words: precisely because G-d is among you. This awe that you feel is precisely the proof that your soul is so pure, for otherwise you would not be so shocked at yourself...

And what do we do now?

Only the one who understands that G-d is in him, who is a bearer of heaven, can fall, say “I was wrong” and recover. That is why the celebration of Har Meron is always celebrated before the celebration of Har Sinai. Who will climb the mountain of the Lord? Only those who rehabilitate themselves after a fall. Rabbi Akiva built a huge life enterprise, but he admitted that he had obviously made a mistake. He started all over again. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai opened the eyes of the “ordinary” people, turned them into a wave of bones, and when he realized that he was wrong, (!) he gave this people the most popular holiday, Lag Ba’Omer. From Har Meron it is already possible to climb Har Sinai.

Judaism is very simple, I explained to the sad girl. Unlike the new psychic practices that tell you, “It’s not you,” and that only make you feel more guilty, Judaism says simply: man must admit the evil he has done, just as he acknowledges the good he has. What a reformed society we would become if we, as educators, could also say, “I was wrong.” Gan Eden is not a utopia, it is always there... The feeling that we have fallen testifies to its existence like a thousand witnesses. Have you fallen? Get up, my beautiful one, and go, G-d is with you now.