Cleaning Instructions for a Neshamah
We raised the question whether Shovavim is something relevant to our generation. Let’s talk about it.
My maternal grandfather was a great tzaddik. He came over from Europe and never ate purchased kosher meat in America. He would take a live chicken over to the shochet that he knew personally. He would say that every American Jew of that time has a little pig in his stomach, because a person eats a candy that has a treif ingredient, and then eats another something, and over the years it adds up to become “a little chazir.”
We go down the street and see improper things, we hear improper things on the bus or the train or in the shopping center, and so forth. Do you realize what this does to our neshamah? Someone once told me, “You know why I stopped smoking? I was present at a lung operation one time, and I saw how the lung had turned completely black from cigarette smoke. I never imagined that smoking does such immense damage!”
As we mentioned before, the mitzvos we do have a deep effect on us that reaches all the way down to our very neshamos. And the same is true with negative things we encounter. They have a deep effect.
Just think what our neshamah looks like after everything we have taken in. You know what color it is? You know how many layers of filth it has?
We are covered by filth on top of filth, and then we open a Gemara and don’t understand why it doesn’t penetrate us, why it doesn’t get in. Why don’t we understand? Hashem says נשמה שנתת בי טהורה היא – He put a pure and clean soul into us. But do you know how many layers have accumulated on it?
If a person can clean himself up, he should do it.
How do you clean up a neshamah?
There are people who fast, do teshuvah, weep to Hashem. This is a wonderful thing. But what I suggest for people like us is a little different. We, too, have a way that we can do it.
הָבָה תְּכַסֶּה עַל כָּל פְּשָׁעִים – Love will cover up all sins.1
This is a very important idea. Love of Hashem has the power to cover up all sins. To become cleansed by means of teshuvah and maasim tovim is the method of yiras Shamayim. It is a kind of purifying fire. But there is another type of fire: love. Love of Hashem, which is called שלהבת י־ה, “the flame of Hashem.” This fire of love has a special power. If a person loves Hashem, the love cleans up his neshamah.
What is love? Matan Torah was an expression of love. Love has two parts.
יִשָּׁקֵנִי מִנְּשִׁיקוֹת פִּיהוּ – “May He kiss me with the kisses of His mouth.”2 This kiss was the Giving of the Torah. The Vilna Gaon asks why is the word “kisses” in the plural?
When husband and wife have a loving relationship, it stands on two foundations. The first is that the wife is faithful to her husband and doesn’t look to other men. The second is that the wife loves her husband.
“The kisses of His mouth” expresses these two foundations. It expresses the two fundamental commandments of לא יהיה לך אלקים אחרים על פני – “You shall not have other gods beside Me.” And it expresses אנכי ה’ אלקיך – “I am Hashem your G-d.”
The first means we are faithful to Hashem and don’t look to other gods. The second means that Hashem is ours. We love him. “I am Hashem your G-d.”
This is what a loving relationship is based on. And a love relationship requires privacy.
What we need to do, at the least, is to love Hashem. To make Hashem the focus. To get the other stuff out of our lives.
Today on the El Al planes they have a new thing. Everyone has his own private screen on which he can watch whatever movie he wants. I fly a lot. Once, recently, I was very tired, but I didn’t sleep all night. I noticed that there is an animated movie of “Bugs Bunny” and I said to myself that three minutes of Bugs Bunny won’t make me into a goy.
I want to tell you that it killed me. It grabbed my heart. For days afterward when I davened Shemoneh Esreh all I saw was Bugs Bunny. It was worth it to make this mistake in order to learn a lesson, to learn what an idiot I was for watching that movie.
What sin did I commit? I didn’t see any forbidden sights. Indeed, as far as matters of yiras Shamayim are concerned, it really wasn’t so terrible.
But what about love? If a person needs to eat, he is allowed to enjoy the food. We need to eat in order to be healthy. But connecting to extraneous matters is like avodah zarah. is not consistent with love of Hashem. Let’s say a chasan and kallah are sitting in the cheder yichud and a non-Jewish woman walks in and says, “It’s okay, I’m not trying to disturb you.” But it’s a cheder yichud. It’s supposed to be private. If someone else comes in, that’s not privacy.
If we want to have a loving relationship with Hashem we need to get all the other stuff out. This is the meaning of the kiss of “You shall not have other gods beside Me.” If we want to focus our lives on Hashem, we can still have a family, we can still have a business. But if we start looking to the side, if we look in other directions, it’s not love.
Believe It
Believe what Hashem said: “Love will cover up all sins.” Getting all the “avodah zarah” – all the other stuff – out of our lives is the first step in love. If we take the first step, the love will start to burn. Hashem will do His part and clean up our neshamah, and the layers of filth on our soul will fall away.
The second “kiss” is אנכי ה’ אלקיך, “I am Hashem your G-d.” This is the actual closeness to Hashem. In my opinion, fulfilling “I am Hashem your G-d” means reciting a hundred blessings a day. What is this mitzvah of me’ah berachos? It means talking to Hashem. Not just in the three fixed prayers, but all through the day.
However, if a person just rattles off berachos without paying attention to what he is saying, that’s not much of a relationship. That’s not really thanking Hashem for all the beautiful things we have. Baruch Hashem we have eyes, we have a mind, we have children. We have so much from Hashem.
This Shabbos when I recited berachos here, there was so much food on the table, so many colors, so much grace, so much chesed. We have so many fruits and vegetables, plentiful food, drinks. I began to say הזן את העולם כולו בחן, בחסד – saying thanks to Hashem expresses love. Saying the words אשר יצר את האדם בחכמה – what a wonder it is that we are healthy and our bodies function properly. Hashem gives us health, He gives us children, you come home and your child jumps on you. Be happy, say thanks to Hashem.
ברוך אתה ה’. Say to Him פוקח עוורים, מלביש ערומים, מתיר אסורים – you can move your arms and legs!
In my opinion, we don’t have a choice in our generation, because our neshamah is covered with layers of soot even without doing a single aveirah. Every mitzvah we do has an effect on us. Why do we eat matzah? To be a tzaddik gamur? No, but it packs kedushah into our heart. And so it is with every mitzvah.
We might not find ourselves immediately aflame with love for Hashem, but we can at least try. Hashem will surely do His part, if we do ours, and will clean up our neshamah so we can feel love for Him.
And there is no better feeling in the world.
1 Mishlei 10:12.
2 Shir Hashirim 1:2.
