Ki Teitzei: 5785 - "Had we not delayed, we would have already returned twice": Chassidim expound this verse regarding the month of Elul, teshuvah tata'ah (lower repentance), and teshuvah ila'ah (higher repentance). Presented by…

00:01 Speaker 1 We are already well into the month of Elul. Chassidim used to say about the verse, “Had we not delayed, by now we could have returned twice”: Yehudah says this to Yaakov when Yaakov asks them to go down to Egypt again, and they say, “We cannot go down unless our youngest brother is with us.” Chassidim would explain: “Had we not” alludes to the month of Elul. “Delayed” means that we are delaying during Elul; “by now we could have returned twice” means we would already have done teshuvah twice—teshuvah tata’ah and teshuvah ila’ah. One of the main forms of avodah in Elul is saying Tehillim. We add three chapters throughout Elul, and we say more Tehillim. The same is true in Tishrei. There are several dates on which we say the whole book of Tehillim. If you count them, it comes out to about eight or nine times during Tishrei. It is the “season,” as the Frierdiker Rebbe put it, the season for saying Tehillim, because this is the time for it. And simply saying Tehillim has an effect, even if a person reads it with mistakes and does not know what he is saying—“he does not know what he is reading.” The very act of saying Tehillim works; it has an effect. Elul and Tishrei are the time for saying Tehillim. They tell a story about the wife of the Tzemach Tzedek, who said a great deal of Tehillim. Once she said, “I say Tehillim so many times. How is it that I still don’t know it by heart?” She said it so often that she felt she should know it by heart. She did not say this to the Tzemach Tzedek, but to one of their sons. Her son said to her, “Do you know why you don’t know it by heart? Because every

01:57 Speaker 1 time you say Tehillim, you make different mistakes.” She was deeply hurt. She came to the Tzemach Tzedek and said, “If so, I’ll stop saying Tehillim.” The Tzemach Tzedek told her, “No, keep saying Tehillim.” And when the Tzemach Tzedek saw his son, he rebuked him for what he had said to his mother. He told him, “You should know that my success in Petersburg was because of her Tehillim.” That shows how much Tehillim accomplishes, even when a person says it with mistakes. The very act of saying Tehillim has an effect. In yesterday’s daily Tehillim, we said the verse, “And with You, Hashem, is kindness, for You repay a person according to his deed.” The question is: What is the kindness in repaying a person according to his deed? That is justice. So what does it mean, “And with You, Hashem, is kindness, for You repay a person according to his deed”? There is a beautiful explanation, given through a parable. A servant in the king’s palace needed to repair something and needed a piece of string. He looked around for one but could not find any. Then he saw an expensive chandelier hanging from the ceiling, adorned with precious stones but suspended by a long cord. He thought, “I’ll take a piece of that cord.” He cut it, and the chandelier fell and shattered. Causing such damage in the king’s palace deserved severe punishment. It was a very expensive chandelier. But the king said, “No. We will punish him according to what he did. What did he intend, after all? He did not mean to break the chandelier. He did not mean to damage the king’s palace. He was only looking for a piece of string. So we will punish him only according to what he intended to do.” In the same way, King David says, “And with You, Hashem, is kindness, for You repay a person according to his deed.” When a person commits a transgression, what did he intend? Did he intend

03:56 Speaker 1 to rebel against Hakadosh Boruch Hu? After all, when he commits a transgression, he causes damage throughout all the worlds, throughout the entire order of creation. But that was not his intention. All he wanted was a piece of string. Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “For You repay a person according to his deed”—only according to what he intended. May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help that in this month of mercy and forgiveness, every Jew be granted a good and sweet year.

04:19 Speaker 2 Amen.