עושק ידינו

this the final חלק of וידוי which must be said on יום כיפור at נעילה? Why were חז"ל קובע that this phrase should be said twice during the נעילה davening – the most precious תפילה of the year?

I would like to tell you a vort from the חידושי הרי"ם, and will explain it with a משל to bring out the point: In America and perhaps in England as well very big companies go to the schools and if they see a promising student with tremendous capabilities they tell the student, “We are willing to invest in you, to pay your entire tuition, we will even give you spending money until you get your diploma and then you will come and work for us for at least ten years...." Many students in America must take loans, they find it difficult to support themselves, so these companies go looking out for the very bright students

יום כיפור has just been and the final words of נעילה are still ringing in our ears, the screaming of "ה' הוא אלקים", these words were chosen to be the final phrase of the יום כיפור davening. What is the message of ה' הוא אלקים?

At the same time after leaving the day of יום כיפור we are now "אין לנו להישען אלא על אבינו שבשמים" going into the יום טוב of סוכות. I would like to explain the connection between יום כיפור the ימים נוראים and the יום טוב of סוכות.1

At נעילה we don't say the על חטא's which we say at the rest of the תפילות on יום כיפור, the ספרים explain that this is because there is simply no time at נעילה to say all the על חטא's. But interestingly we do mention twice at נעילה "למען נחדל מעושק ידינו", which the ספרים write that this is מרמז to גניבה. And the question: is

1 See סוכות תשפ"ג where we explained this with the גאון.

those with the high IQ levels and they invest in them and make them sign a contract that they will work for them for ten years once they graduate.

You have a student who signs on the dotted line and the company invests in him for many years until he eventually gets his degree and qualifies to start working for the company.

However, when working for the company he ends up just spending his day sitting in front of the computer playing computer games.

What has this fellow done wrong?

In essence this fellow is a גנב, he's not paying back the investment that this company made for him, they invested into this student and expected him to work properly for the firm, but he is not doing anything for the firm, he is a thief.

Paying up the investment

Says the חידושי הרי"ם: This is why חז"ל chose this phrase as being the final על חטא and being the message for us because it is so powerful as it encompasses everything we would like to achieve in the coming year.

The רבש"ע invested in us something a lot more than money, He gave us a body, a נשמה, a חלק אלקי ממעל, talents, capabilities, material possessions, הקב"ה has invested in every one of us and He wants us to use this to serve Him.

When we come to נעילה and we look back at the past year and we think, “הקב"ה has invested so much in us, are we repaying that investment?”

Explains the חידושי הרי"ם, we therefore promise הקב"ה, "למען נחדל מעושק ידינו", this is the גניבה that we are referring to, not utilizing what הקב"ה gave us and not making the most out of the investments. We promise that this year we will work on paying back the investment.

I would like to use this theme to explain the "ה' הוא אלקים" in the פשט and in the connection between ימים נוראים and סוכות.

הקב"ה has invested in כלל ישראל in another way as well, the ספרים tell us and as we see in דרך השם numerous times that הקב"ה created the world with a טבע – with laws on nature, everything works according to the laws that הקב"ה laid down at the beginning of creation.

The miraculous changes in טבע that we find are the result of the רבש"ע making a תנאי with the בריאה already from ששת ימי בראשית such as קריעת ים סוף and other changes in טבע which happened at יציאת מצרים. הקב"ה invested to make these miracles at the time of יציאת מצרים, the ten מכות and the קריעת ים סוף which was the climax of all those ניסים and everything else which went with it.

This was an investment הקב"ה made for us, as the רמב"ן in פרשת בא writes, "מן הניסים הגדולים אדם מודה בניסים הנסתרים" הקב"ה invested this investment to be משנה the טבע in such a way in order to understand that everything happening in the world is כולו ניסים as the רמב"ן teaches, "אין בהם טבע ומנהגו של עולם כלל וכלל".

כ"ה אלול תשפ"ד

Two weeks ago the Israelis who bombed a bunker beneath a building in Beirut on שבת and killed their arch enemy, the בקש לאבד ולהרוג את כל היהודים מנער ועד זקן טף ונשים ביום אחד, a רשע מרושע who can be compared to Hitler y"m and all the other שונאי ישראל throughout the generations.

When one hears such a thing, the first thing a person says to himself is, “Ah! Gevaldig! The Israelis know they are doing! They are in control, they have good intelligence." One can feel a certain pride, and what happened a few weeks earlier with the walkie talkies and the pagers blowing up, it's הפלא ופלא, and we tend to think we have a certain level of security in their ability and their intelligence.

But when we think about it a little bit deeper and we think about how the תורה wants us to think about it, we must reset those feelings very quickly.

The משנה in ראש השנה tells us how כלל ישראל pass the רבש"ע on ראש השנה כבני מרון, everybody, every human being and every creature passes הקב"ה on ראש השנה, if Nasrallah was killed on that שבת we have to know that he was already destined to be killed on that שבת last year on ראש השנה, if they wouldn't have bombed him we must believe באמונה שלימה that he would have anyway dropped dead at that very moment, the bunker could have caved in. הקב"ה has many ways to kill someone, and we must believe that he would have been killed on that very spot, as חז"ל tell us, "רגלוהי דבר אינש אינון ערבין ביה" (סוכה נ"ג).2

We saw the President of Iran killed in a helicopter crash a few weeks ago.

2 See פרשת וישב תשפ"ד where we spoke about this ענין.

We must know without any doubts in our minds that at that very spot at that very time his life was destined to come to an end.

We get carried away with the intelligence, the precision bombing and the sophisticated machinery that carried out that killing, and tend to forget the רמב"ן words of the "מן הניסים הגדולים אדם מודה בניסים הנסתרים", there is no טבע, it is all the רבש"ע Himself.

I once heard from ר' מתתיהו זצ"ל that even when we see a כוחי ועוצם ידי when we see events which seem completely devoid of הקב"ה plans in the עולם השקר and in the newspapers, but if you look carefully and scrutinize what happened you will see how הקב"ה always leaves His stamp.

Nasrallah was killed on כ"ה אלול, כ"ה אלול is the day of בריאת העולם, the ספרים write how every יום טוב and זמן the השפעות of that זמן come down again, whether on פסח it's גאולה and on שבועות it's a time of קבלת התורה, the ספרים tell us how on כ"ה אלול every year the world has this extra התחדשות, and the world was created for the righteous and for those who do what הקב"ה wants because the righteous justify the creation of the world, but the wicked make the world a waste of time.

The רבש"ע had this man's soul taken away on that day because that day is the day of חידוש העולם and the world is not created for such people.

I heard someone point out, "ובאבד רשעים רינה", in משלי (פרק י"א פסוק י') when the רשעים are destroyed there is רינה, there is a שמחה as the מהרש"א in ברכות explains בנפול אויבך אל תשמח. Hitler doesn't apply to enemies like y"m and Nasrallah.

"ובאבד רשעים רינה" was only a few hours before we said "לשמוע אל הרינה ואל התפילה" which some מפרשים explain how the ימי סליחות is a זמן of רינה, it's a זמן of שמחה because we are able to cleanse ourselves from our עבירות, it's the התחלה of the ימים נוראים, ובאבד רשעים רינה, and on that night or for some of us the next morning we said לשמוע אל הרינה ואל התפילה.

It's all the רבש"ע

What "ה' הוא אלקים" mean?

ר' חיים מוואלאזי'ין זצ"ל explains that in fact the word "אלקים" here is חול, and the פסוק means to say that all the כוחות in the בריאה is הקב"ה, it may be orchestrated by other people through their בחירה and their intelligence and their sophisticated machinery, ר' חיים מוואלאזי'ין himself is actually speaking about the כח הכישוף and various other כוחות which they had in previous times, but he gives it all this general term, any power in the בריאה is the power of הקב"ה, "ה' הוא האלהים" is the power of all the powers of the world, there are no other powers in the world but ה' הקב"ה "הוא האלהים".

And this is the עבודה of ראש השנה of מלכיות, to internalize how הקב"ה is in control of everything. Our final cry of יום כיפור is ה' הוא אלהים, when we exit a יום כיפור after a זמן of בהיותו קרוב we might start thinking after some time that things happen in the world independent from הקב"ה ח"ו and human beings have the ability to do things and make things happen, we therefore drill in the message as hard as we can, ה' הוא האלקים.

After we have screamed that message we then come to a יום טוב of סוכות, and the יום טוב of סוכות is "צא מדירת קבע ושב בדירת עראי", which perhaps there is a powerful message in this: throughout the year when we live in our דירת קבע we may feel protected with a proper roof over our heads, the תורה is telling us, בא מדירת קבע, there is no difference where you are living, it makes no difference what protection one has, there is only one protection and that is the רבש"ע, the סוכה is a זכר for the ענני הכבוד which protected כלל ישראל at יציאת מצרים from any dangers, even a דירת עראי can give protection.

This is how we must look at all the miracles which have been happening to us the past few days, so many missiles coming into ארץ ישראל, every single one of them is dangerous, the iron dome and various other methods can miss and malfunction, they don't have to work, we must look at all of this that it is the רבש"ע, of course we can explain it על פי דרך הטבע, but we must know that it is the רבש"ע having רחמנות on us and every מצוה and every אמן יהא שמיה רבה, every word of תורה is a protection for כלל ישראל.

הקב"ה invested in us when He made the many miracles of יציאת מצרים, it was an investment, He was משנה the טבע for us, and in return what הקב"ה wants from us is to work on this area, "מן הניסים הגדולים אדם מודה בניסים הנסתרים", a person must be מודה that in everything that is happening there is no טבע at all, he writes very strongly, "שאין לאדם חלק בתורת משה" – a person has no portion in תורת משה, "בכל דברינו", until he believes, "עד שנאמין ומקרינו שכלם נסים אין בהם טבע ומנהגו של עולם" that everything that happens in this world is all a miracle!

And this עבודה isn't that easy in the present situation with all the sophisticated machinery and the intelligence which we have out there, we must work on this and overcome that feeling of כוחי ועוצם ידי which the leaders in ארץ ישראל maybe don't know better but that's the way they speak, “We are going to get them! We will retaliate! We will go and get our enemies!" That message shouldn't become part of our way of thinking, we mustn't let that affect us in any way.

This is the עבודה, and הקב"ה gave us all a message last year which maybe we have forgotten a little bit, on October the 7th - שמחת תורה, how we saw so clearly "אם ה לא ישמור עיר שוא שקד שומר" even with all the sophisticated machinery protecting the border it's all the רבש"ע.

This is really an important חלק of what we are supposed to take out from ימים נוראים, we start off with מלכיות, then there is the final cry of נעילה when we scream "ה' הוא האלהים", that is the message for us in these months when we can get carried away ח"ו and that is the message which we continue to take with us into the יום טוב of סוכות, we go into a דירת עראי, we have the protection of הקב"ה, it makes no difference what we live in, whether it's a דירת קבע or a דירת עראי, the flimsy covering is no less of a protection than a strong covering, whether it's a roof of a house or all the other protections which we have in ארץ ישראל, it makes no difference to the רבש"ע, we must work to eradicate the feelings of כוחי ועוצם ידי which can creep into us, and the correct השקפה which we have mentioned in the past with what the רמח"ל writes very clearly in תהלים קכ"ד is that ישמעאל is going to enable us to bring משיח because we are going to daven to הקב"ה through the צרות which they are going to give us באחרית הימים, they are here to stay until משיח comes, פרקי דרבי אליעזר writes the same thing about the "אימה חשכה גדלה ברית בין הבתרים" in פסוק "נפלת עליו", the מדרש writes that each one of these descriptions refer to one of the four גלויות that כלל ישראל will endure, the last word "עליו" – refers to the final גלות of ישמעאל, "משום עליהם בן דוד יצמח", משיח is coming through ישמעאל.

The רמח"ל wrote ברוח קדשו a few hundred years ago that this is why he is called ישמעאל because "ישמע א-ל", הקב"ה will listen to our תפילות through the צרות which ישמעאל give us, they are here to stay until משיח comes. He continues there that the עבודה of גלות ישמעאל which we can really feel today is, אין לנו להישען אלא באבינו שבשמים, people didn't realize then what the test will actually be to have this mindset, it's not easy to think like this because of their sophisticated weaponry, and the support they receive from America, but that is the ניסיון, and overcoming this ניסיון is what is going to bring משיח.