Your book bag you were ambitious. “I'm going to keep this notebook neat and clean. Every page I’m going to write neatly.” What it looks like at the end of the term is a different story, but at the beginning of the term you're full of ambition: “I'm going to make it the best notebook ever.”
And so we have to keep that in our thoughts because that’s what we’re asking for now in our tefillos. “Give me a new clean book this year. Give me another opportunity and I’ll write the most beautiful things there.”
Kasveinu: One Day at a Time
And so, you’ll get up in the morning and you’ll remind yourself that it’s the beginning of a new writing page. And you’ll make the very best you can because you’re writing from the early morning. You open your eyes and say, “I thank You Hashem that You restored my life to me.” That's a good beginning for today’s page.
And then you’ll pour water on your hands three times like you're a kohen about to serve Hashem; a kohen washes his hands before he serves Hashem. Another good beginning to write down. And before you go downstairs you’ll think, “Will I write down now something that I don’t want be remembered about me, that before breakfast I had a quarrel with my mother? This I don’t want.” So erase it before you write it down. And so, you’ll say ‘good morning’ to your mother, and other nice words.
As you go from step to step, all day long, write good things. You meet people and you deal with them, smile to them. Make people feel good all day long. Say kindly words all day long. Think about Hashem once in a while during the day too. Learn Torah, daven with kavanah. Every brachah you’re writing in your book. Every time you say ‘Atah, You’ think that you’re standing in front of the King.
And at the end of the day, if you take out your megillah, “Ah! I'm proud of this megillah. It's a beautiful megillah I wrote today.” That’s called living! That’s the one whose prayers, “Kasveinu b’sefer ha’chaim”, meant something.
Part III. Holy Desires
A Borrowed Body
And now we come to one more of the considerations that are required for us to implement in our tefillos; another idea that we should keep in mind when we come to Hashem now and ask Him for another year of life. Because when we ask for life, we should keep in mind that we’re not asking merely for a vague idea, for life in a general sense. We are asking for a body of flesh and blood—‘Kasveinu b’sefer ha’chaim’ means we want Hakadosh Baruch Hu to loan us our body for another year.
That’s our wish right now that He should once again lend us the body. “Please Hashem! I don’t want to return it just yet. Lend me this head again, these eyes and this mouth. Lend me this torso and these legs. Lend me this stomach. All the organs, lend me for another year.”
Terms of the Loan
Now suppose, let's say, you borrowed a car from a neighbor, and you gave it back a little bit dented in a few places. You were supposed to keep it in tip-top shape, but you didn’t. And now you come back; you’re asking again that he should loan the car to you. So he's thinking it over this time. He's not so sure he wants to lend it to you now. You have to promise him this time you’ll make a good job of it. “I'll give back the car perfectly.”
And so, we're asking Hashem to give us a body again and He says, “What will you do with the body?”
Ooh. We’re scratching our heads. We didn’t realize that we’re just borrowers, that there are stipulations. But that’s the plain truth—we’re coming to Him asking for a body, and He wants to know what’s going to be with it. “You want a healthy, functioning body in all its details? What is it going to look like a year from now?”
Holy Stipulations
And so, let's promise Hashem that we're going to do what He wants us to do with the body: We’re going to make the body kadosh, holy. You have to understand that part of our function in life—not our entire function but still an important part of our function in life—is to make something out of our bodies. That's what Hashem wants from us; that we should take our bodies— nothing but materials and chemicals—and we should make them holy; we should transform them, elevate them.
It’s a metaphysical idea, but it pays to understand it. What is a human being, after all? We are chemicals. We are 70% water and some chemicals. We’re hydrogen and oxygen. Also some nitrogen—that's one of the main components of meat—and carbon and calcium. Some phosphorus too. All these materials, and some others, Hashem combines by means of various chemical changes into a body that we borrow from Him. And the tnai, the borrowing agreement, is that you’ll take this piece of clay and transform it into something holy before you return it.
Not the soul! Oh sure, the soul becomes holy, but we have to understand that the body also becomes holy. Just as there was a change that transformed the original oxygen and carbon and nitrogen into something entirely different, a physical body, now something else is being added and that's the spirituality of the mitzvah. The kedusha of the mitzvah goes into these materials and makes them holy, elevated.
The Eternal Body
That’s why, eventually, a person’s soul and his body will be reunited. The Jewish body, is not just the chemical elements, even when it's laid in the grave to disintegrate after 120, it doesn’t go lost. That's one of the great teachings of the Torah, that יםƒ ̇≈מ ֹ̇יוֲחַה¿ל הָּ ַ̇‡ ןָמ¡‡∆נ¿ו. When the time comes, Hashem will gather together all the atoms that once formed part of the original body and it will be reconstituted in a brand new edition, a better edition than before.
That's one of the fundamentals of the Torah. And it's based on the idea that not only is the soul indestructible, but the body, if it is invested with certain qualities, is also eternal.
But that's on condition that you catalyze that change. When you do mitzvos, it makes a chemical change—call it a ‘chemical’ change, an ‘idealistic change’, a ‘metaphysical change’; call it what you want but it actually changes the body. It makes the body live forever because the chemicals of the body are not just chemicals anymore—they were niskadeish; they were invested with a spirituality, an eternity.
Holy Tzedaka
That’s included in the queer story the Gemara tells about Mar Ukva. Mar Ukva used to give charity to a certain poor man in his neighborhood, but he did it in a way that the recipient shouldn’t know it’s him. He didn’t want to embarrass him, so he sent it with messengers or sometimes he used to go at night and slip money underneath the door and then run away. Sometimes he would go out with his wife in order that nobody should suspect him, and he would make a secret drop-off.
Finally, this poor man decided he wanted to discover who is this fellow giving him money secretly. So he hid behind his door and when he saw that a man and his wife were coming stealthily in the darkness and slipping money under his door so he approached to see who it was. But Mar Ukva and his wife, they didn't want their secret to be discovered so they started running away. But this person was persistent; he was running after them and there was no place for Mar Ukva and his wife to hide until they saw a hot furnace where the fire was just put out. They quickly ran into the furnace and shut the door so they shouldn't be seen.
Holy Feet
But the floor was very hot and Mar Ukva’s feet were burning. So his wife said, “Stand on my feet.” And that’s how they remained hiding; they were in a hot furnace and Mar Ukva was standing on his wife’s feet and that way his feet weren’t touching the hot floor.
So Mar Ukva was distressed. His wife has more protection from Hashem than he did—her feet didn't burn in the hot furnace and his feet were burning. And so he was downcast. There must be something wrong with him.
So his wife said to him, “There's nothing wrong with you. Only that my feet became especially holy because hungry people come to the house all the time for tzedakah and I'm busy all day with the preparations. I’m walking back and forth in the kitchen all day long, back and forth, back and forth, in order to give them good meals to eat. I'm doing it with your money—it’s your mitzvah—but I am doing with my body more than you do. And so my body was changed more than yours.”
A Holy Chosson
And so we see, that it’s not just a mitzvah. It’s not just the reward in Olam Haba and it’s not even just that your neshamah is changed—your body itself is transformed!
That’s what the Gemara says ֹחוּלו¿ׁ̆ƒּבƒמ ר≈ֹ̇יו ֹוּב הָו¿ˆƒמ – if you have a mitzvah to do, it’s better to do it on your own than by means of an agent. Let's say if you have to get married but you're too busy to go to the wedding. You decide to stay home that night and you’ll send an agent instead. It’s perfectly valid. You’ll send an agent of yours to the wedding, and he stands under the chuppah and he says to the bride, “harei at mekudeshes, I betroth you to Mr. Chaim So-and-So who sent me here with this ring, k’das Moshe v’Yisroel.”
The kallah also, if she finds out her chosson is not coming to the wedding so she says, “I won’t come either.” She wants to take a walk with the chosson— both can take a walk on the avenue whereas in the hall, her proxy and his proxy are at the ceremony. His agent gives her agent the ring and he says, “The one who sent you is mekudeshes to the one who sent me k’das Moshe v’Yisroel.” Perfectly legal.
But the Gemara recommends that they should be present. ר≈ֹ̇יו ֹוּב הָו¿ˆƒמ ֹחוּלו¿ׁ̆ƒּבƒמ – Why is it more a mitzvah to do it yourself than to do it by means of your agent? Because when you do a mitzvah yourself, it makes you kadosh. The more your body is involved, the better. You're making your body even holier.
The Holy Hand
That’s what we say before a mitzvah: יוָֹ̇וו¿ˆƒמ¿ּבּנוָׁ̆¿ּ„ƒ̃ ר∆ֲׁ̆‡ – You make us holy with Your mitzvos. That's the idea that your body becomes ennobled when you do something good. Let’s say, you moved into a new apartment and you have to put up mezuzos. So you can call somebody. It makes sense; you can call a carpenter and he’ll do a neat job—you'll pay him to put mezuzos on your doors.
Or if you'll hear this lecture, you'll decide you'll do it yourself. Why? Because before you put the mezuzah on you say נוָׁ̆¿ּ„ƒ̃ ר∆ֲׁ̆‡ – You're making us holy with Your mitzvos, הָזּזו¿מ ַﬠֹוּב¿̃ƒל. The body, the hand that nails the mezuzah to the doorpost is becoming elevated. It's being changed. It's becoming ennobled.
Now that's a very important point that most people never thought about. Whatever you can do personally is going to change, not only your neshamah, not only it will change your intellect, but it will change your physical being. When you put on tefillin and tzitzis and eat kosher and dress b’tznius, you're making your body eternal. Without any special thought, without the slightest intent, just by doing the legalistic bare fundamentals, you become different. You're bestowing on the body an eternal quality.
Transformed by Shabbos
And so when we ask for life, we’re asking for that opportunity to make our bodies holy. We say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, “Hashem we're going to make our bodies holy during the coming year, whatever we can. We want to borrow this body again in order to live through another fifty plus Shabboses. We’ll keep Shabbos in all its details; my hands will keep Shabbos and my feet and my mouth and I’ll make myself more holy.”
It’s a fact—every Shabbos, a change takes place in your physical being, an added kedusha that doesn’t go away. That’s why an old Jew is more holy than a young Jew; because he kept more Shabboses. It adds up; the kedusha that you gain each time adds up. It’s not lost. Even when you sit on the couch; you sit all Shabbos and don't do anything, you become a kodosh when you’re keeping Shabbos. Your body is not the same body it was before Shabbos.
Our Prayer
And so we say to Hashem, “Give us our bodies back for another year, and we’ll do our part. We’ll see to it that nothing wrong gets inside of the body. Only a reliable hechsher I’ll eat. I’ll use my eyes only for seeing good things— I’ll look in the Gemara always—and my mouth, my tongue, only for good words. My ears and my feet and my hands, only for mitzvos. All the details of life that You’ll lend to me again, I’ll make them holy bli neder.”
And that is one of the arguments that we come with before Hashem when we ask for life. “Hashem,” we say, “Kasveinu b’sefer ha’chaim! Please give us our bodies for another year. Not only we’ll guard our lives in the physical sense but we’ll make use of it for eternity, for ה∆ּזַה םָלֹעוָּב ַ̇חַ‡ הָﬠָׁ̆ הָפָי. And one of the ways we’ll do that is by being mekadesh the body you gave us—we’ll make it more and more holy this year.”
And Hashem says, “Oh, that’s already a very big teshuva, a big kapparah! Because I see that you’re not only asking for life. You’re asking for the best life possible. You'll be to me an Am Kadosh? You’ll make your bodies holy? Oh, that's what I want. I see you mean business and therefore I'm going to give you your bodies; not only for this year, but for many, many years and for long and happy years.”
Have a Kesivah Va’chasimah Tovah
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Let’s Get Practical
Praying for a Year of Life
During the Aseres Yemei Teshuva we entreat Hashem for a year of life. But when we ask for life, we ask for a life of eternity, a life in Olam Hazeh that is directed towards earning Olam Haba and gaining eternity for the body by investing it with holiness. This week, at least once per day, I will bli neder be extra careful when I cross the street, thinking to myself that I hope to preserve my life, because I desire life. After crossing the street I will spend thirty seconds thinking about how I can direct the life I’ve been given toward eternity.
This week’s booklet is based on tapes: 313 – Mitzvos and the Body | 661 – Sinning Against Yourself | 754 – The Day of Judgement | 803 – Asking for Life | E-197 – Program for Salvation
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