In this week’s parsha we have the Parsha of Vidui Ma’aser. At the end of the third and sixth year of the seven-year Shemitah cycle, a person needs to make a declaration that he has fulfilled all the halachos regarding the various terumos u’maasros obligations. He has given them to the correct people, he has given them at the right time, he treated the ma’aser like the halachah demands. At the conclusion of this declaration he states, “I have fulfilled and kept all the halachos... I have done all that You have commanded me.” (Devorim 26:14).
One of the more famous questions asked about this parsha is – Why is this called the Parsha of Vidui Maaser (literally, the Confession of tithing). Vidui is a confessional. We are familiar with the term from the Vidui recited on Yom Kippur. The recitation of full compliance with all the terumos u’maasros requirements as specified here does not sound anything at all like “Al Chet, we have done this; Al Chet, we have done that.” Ashamnu, Bagadnu, Gazalnu, and Al Chet, Al Chet, Al Chet... are confessions. “I have done all that You have commanded me” sounds just the opposite!
What did he do wrong here that this is called “Vidui“? On the contrary he claims he did everything right!
Many commentaries are troubled by this question – including the Seforno. The Seforno writes that when a person states that he has taken terumos u’maasros and given them to the Levi and to the poor and to all who are supposed to get them, that is an admission of a terrible situation: If things were like they were supposed to have been, the First-born’s would be the Divine Servants in the Beis HaMikdosh. The First-born son in each family would be the family’s own “built-in Kohen/Levi.”
Every family would have an in-house family member to whom to give the ma’asros. Why do we give it to the Levi? The answer is, the Seforno writes, “Because of our sins, the duties of the Beis Hamikdosh were removed from our forefathers.” Things are not the way they were supposed to be. When we admit that things are not the way they were supposed to be, that itself is a Vidui.
This means a person can be doing everything correctly—and indeed did do everything correctly—but yet the situation is strictly a b’dieved [post-facto] situation. This is not the way things should be. The way things should be is that I should never need to say “I removed the holy foods from my house” (Devorim 26:13). I should never have needed to take them out of the house, because I could have just given it to my oldest son.
The “confession” that he now needs to give terumos u’maasros to the Levi is an admission – says the Seforno – that “my sin is great for I have caused the departure of this holy produce from my house. Even though I have done what I am supposed to do at this time, I pray for your Mercy that you will give me blessing, rather than the punishment I deserve for my past sins which brought this situation about.”
This is perhaps a very appropriate message for us at this time of year. I am sure that most people reading this sheet observe mitzvos meticulously, and that there is no need to talk about shemiras Shabbos and kashrus, and there is certainly no need to talk about talmud Torah, as the mere fact that you are reading the above shows you learn. However, we go into Yomim Noraim and we cry out “Woe! We have sinned, we are full of iniquity, we have rebelled before You!...Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu,” Fine, maybe we should daven a little more with kavanah. Maybe we slip up with lashon horah every once in a while. But, look at us – especially relative to the state of Judaism among the masses today. So where is the place for the Vidui?
I believe the answer is that – yes, we are all great, but it is still not the way it should be. It is not shanim k’tiknan. It is not k’shanim kadmoniyus [Years the way they should be; times the way they once were].
R’ Yissocher Frand relates the following:
This past summer, I was on a tour in Europe and I spent many hours on a bus getting from place to place. Before I left, someone gave me a very interesting book called My Father’s Journey: A Memoir of Lost Worlds of Jewish Lithuania. It is written by Sara Reguer, chair of the Department of Jewish Studies in Brooklyn College, based on a written Hebrew memoir of her father. This is not an Artscroll book. This personal memoir does not contain any sugarcoating of life in Jewish Lithuania.
Sara Reguer’s father was Moshe Aharon Reguer, son of Rav Simcha Zelig Reguer. Rav Simcha Zelig Reguer was the Brisker Dayan. He was extremely close to Rav Chaim Soloveitchik. They lived in the same two-family house. Rav Simcha Zelig paskened all the shailos in Brisk. This family was literally the “Real McCoy Litvaks!” and they were proud of it.
What is this book about? It is the story of Rabbi Doctor Moshe Aharon Reguer, who eventually became a professor of Judaic Studies at Yeshiva University. He was a typical Yeshiva bochur in Lithuania at the beginning of the twentieth century. If I remember correctly, he left Lithuania in 1927. He attended some of the great Yeshivos in Europe, including Slabodka (from which he was thrown out for not being a “typical Slabodka student.”) If someone wants to know what it was like to be a Yeshiva bochur in Europe in those tumultuous times when “new ideas” of communism and socialism were sweeping Jewish society, the Russian Revolution, and the First World War – this book really gives you a taste of what Europe was like.
One of the Yeshivas he studied in was the Yeshiva in Slutsk. The Rosh Yeshiva in Slutsk was Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer (father-in-law of Rav Aharon Kotler). Moshe Ahron Reguer described what the month of Elul was like in Slutsk. One day in shiur this year, I read this page to my students: What was Elul like in Slutsk? We are not talking five hundred years ago. We are talking about just 100 years ago – the twentieth century!
Meanwhile, the month of Elul approached. In that month, issues of the Day of Judgement darkened the Yeshiva. The walls of the Yeshiva and the people within took on a new form – that of pain and suffering and weeping. In every corner, you could feel that it was a season of repentance and that all were breathing with a difficulty borne of internal danger, fear for the soul and knowledge that the future was covered in fog.
In those days, Rav Isser Zalman himself dedicated himself to rousing repentance. He was an expert in this work. Morning and night he would speak of the approaching Day of Judgement and the preparations for it that had to be done in our hearts. With himself as an example, he roused us. One example he gave rings in my ears – even today – that of a poor lamb ready for slaughter who bleats loudly and feels that this is her last moment. Who knows who this lamb is? “Who is going to die?” he would ask us. He would look at us for an answer and there would come only sobbing. Our tears wet the floors of the houses.
That was Elul in Slutsk, circa 1915. There is not a Yeshiva in the world today where anything like this takes place.
This is what the Seforno is alluding to. Yes, we are all Shomer Torah U’Mitzvos, etc. etc. But look how low we have sunk compared to what was only a hundred years ago. In fact, it is not even a hundred years ago. I am sure that in the Mir in Europe and in Shanghai it was also like this. Shanghai is not a hundred years ago! Therefore, when we are finished patting ourselves on the back and we say, “Ah! What do we have to worry about? Remember this Seforno: If we are not up to snuff of what could have been and should have been, then we need to recite a Vidui. And remember this story from “My Father’s Journey” of what Yeshiva life was like a mere hundred years ago in Europe. The bochurim would literally cry out of fear. That is a generation that no longer exists. (R’ Frand)
