Yom Kippur - Rabbi Akiva Said: Happy Are You, Yisroel - Rabbi Asher Perkesh

00:02 I heard a story about a chossid named Reb Mendel Futerfas, one of the great people of mesirus nefesh and one of the great chassidim of the last generation. He was among those who lived in Russia during the hard years of the Communists. He risked his life for Jewish education, for cheders and yeshivos, and was among those who were caught and imprisoned. He spent many years in prison and many years in Siberia, doing forced labor amid the bitter cold and hunger. He went through very difficult years there. Later, he related that in Siberia he was held in a place with all kinds of people: murderers, criminals, scholars, and people of every sort. He followed the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching that one must learn from everything one can. He said that there was a gang leader there in Siberia, a criminal imprisoned for all kinds of serious acts. He was a violent man, even a murderer. If someone got on his wrong side, he would give him a severe beating, and sometimes he was even capable of—

01:33 killing people. Everyone knew they had to be very careful around him. Reb Mendel established [unclear] with him, giving him gifts—a cigarette one time, something else another time—so that he could live alongside him in peace and the man would leave him alone. He related that when Rosh Hashanah came, he observed it. He arranged things so that he would not have to go to work. This was risky, since they were required to work every day, but he managed. He pretended to be ill. What else could he do? He had also arranged things by working twice as hard in the preceding weeks, despite the grueling labor. Several times he managed this way. On Rosh Hashanah he stayed in the barrack where he slept. The others went to work, and he remained inside. Reb Mendel related: Whether he had any particular intentions in his davening, [unclear]. He davened from what he remembered. He sat and davened all day. He had nothing else to say, and there was no food either. He sat and davened and davened and davened. As he davened, he remembered the words said in the prayers of the Yamim Nora’im, the passage “Vechol Ma’aminim.” It goes through the entire—

03:07 alphabet: “And all believe that He is a G-d of faith,” and so on, “and all believe that He alone is He.” The whole of “Vechol Ma’aminim.” As he said “Vechol Ma’aminim,” a question occurred to him: What does it mean? What are we saying when we say “And all believe”? Does everyone really believe? There are many Jews, many people in the world, Jews who do not believe. So what does “And all believe” mean? Does everyone really believe that He is a G-d of faith? Does everyone believe that “He alone is He,” and so on? Everyone believes? This troubled him. He thought about it but was left with the question. The holy days of Rosh Hashanah passed, and he prepared to do the same on Yom Kippur. When Yom Kippur came, he again arranged to get out of work and stayed in the barrack, as they called it—the hut. He stayed there all Yom Kippur. Somehow he had a tallis, and he wrapped himself in it, sat and davened, and of course fasted throughout Yom Kippur. He did not have much food to begin with. He fasted, sat off to the side, and davened all day. But what happened? In the middle of it, he lifted his tallis, looked around, and saw someone else sitting in the barrack, in the—

04:37 hut. And when he looked, whom did he see sitting there? His heart sank, and he was filled with bitterness. Who was sitting there in the hut? None other than that criminal, that hooligan whom everyone in the gang feared—the gang leader. There he was, sitting in the hut where Reb Mendel was davening. Reb Mendel wrapped himself in his tallis again and continued davening. He tried to forget about the man and not look in his direction. As it says in Tanya, he immersed himself in davening, wrapped himself in his tallis, and began to daven with greater concentration. He reminded himself of the Baal Shem Tov’s words: like Moshe, “[unclear]”—surely that was so. That is what the Rebbe says about courage, and that is what he did. He said, “I need to put more effort, more courage, into davening,” and entrusted himself to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. Hakadosh Boruch Hu would protect him from everything. He went on davening. Though he did not want to think about it, he looked again and saw that the man was still sitting there. How could he know what the man was after or what he wanted from him? Who knew whether he was angry that everyone else had gone to work while Reb Mendel had not, and that he still had not... The day passed. Reb Mendel davened with tremendous bitterness throughout Yom Kippur, through the entire davening, and that was how the whole holy day passed for him. Night fell,

06:06 and after davening he took off his tallis. The man who was there called to him and said he wanted to speak with him for a few minutes. Reb Mendel was prepared for anything. Who knew what the man might do to him? The man asked him to come with him to a corner—not there among all the people, but outside the camp, to a secluded place where no one could hear. He had something to tell him and could tell him better there. Reb Mendel was prepared for anything. Who knew what would happen? As we said, this was a man who could do whatever he wanted to anyone. Everyone was terribly afraid of him. Reb Mendel said, “[unclear],” as we said, “everything”; he was ready for whatever might come. But the man said, “No, no,” and Reb Mendel went with him. Once they were outside and some distance away, in the darkness, the man suddenly burst into tears. As I described, he was a frightening man, and Reb Mendel had no idea what was happening. But this man, so coarse, so unrefined and so low, suddenly cried like a child. Reb Mendel still did not understand what had happened. He waited until the man finished crying. Then

07:24 the man began to tell him his life story. He said that when he was a child—Reb Mendel may not have known or imagined that he was Jewish—he had been born into a Jewish family. His father died very young, when he himself was a small child; he had hardly known his father. He grew up without a father. He had a mother, but from a very young age he wandered the streets in the company of criminals. That was how he grew up and became a thief and a murderer, and so on. He had completely forgotten where he came from. One thing he remembered: he was Jewish. But that fact had no significance in his life. He did not think about it and had put it out of his mind. But when he saw how a Jew feels, when he saw Reb Mendel davening—especially over the last few days—the old spark was kindled within him. His Jewish spark awakened. He remembered that he was Jewish, the son of a Jewish family, and thought that today must be Yom Kippur. From the way Reb Mendel was acting, he understood that today was the holy day, Yom—

08:43 Yom Kippur. What did he know about Yom Kippur? Nothing. He remembered that there was a Yom Kippur, when people went to shul and fasted. But he himself knew nothing. He could not read and did not know how to daven. When he saw Reb Mendel sitting and davening, he wanted to daven too. But since he did not know how to daven at all, he tried to recall whatever remained in his memory from childhood. He thought and remembered that his mother used to sing “Modeh Ani” with him. That was the one thing he remembered: his mother used to sing “Modeh Ani” with him. He tried to remember it until he recalled the entire text: “I thank You, living and eternal King, for mercifully restoring my soul within me; great is Your faithfulness.” He remembered the words of “Modeh Ani” and began saying them to himself. He saw Reb Mendel davening and saw that on this day he did not go out to work but stayed in the hut all Yom Kippur. He related that all day long he sang and repeated “Modeh Ani” over and over. That was his prayer for the entire day. Now he wanted Reb Mendel to tell him a little about what it means to be a Jew, and how and what he could do. And so

10:01 The G-dly spark, the pintele Yid, was kindled in the Jewish soul on the holy day, Yom Kippur. Reb Mendel [unclear] that awakening, that point of Jewishness within the person, at that moment. He felt that from Above they were sending him an answer to the question he had had on Rosh Hashanah during davening. When he reflected on “And all believe” and asked himself whether that was really so—whether “all believe”—they immediately sent him someone who showed him the answer. Here he saw that, indeed, “all believe”: a Jew, however far he has strayed, however far he has fallen, and whatever state [unclear] a person is in—and yet the belief and Jewishness within him are utterly whole. And what is this really about? This is the overarching theme, the essence and the core, of Yom Kippur. When we consider what Yom Kippur is about, what occupies us on Yom Kippur, we see that this is the central point of the entire day. The Gemara says, “The day itself atones.” What does “the day itself atones” mean? There are several views on this in the Gemara, but as ruled in the Shulchan Aruch and explained in several places, everyone agrees that there is an element of “the day itself atones.” In other words, on

11:30 Yom Kippur, the very essence of the day brings atonement. Within this itself, there is a disagreement about whether teshuvah is required, or whether the day atones even without teshuvah. But what does this actually mean? If the day itself atones, then seemingly, if a person does teshuvah, the entire year is a time for teshuvah. Teshuvah is not limited to a particular time. And if he does not do teshuvah, what does it mean that “the day itself atones”? What happens on Yom Kippur that allows the day itself to have this effect even then? As explained in Chassidus, Yom Kippur is a time when the yechidah of the soul, the pintele Yid, is revealed. In other words, the essence of the day is the very core of Jewishness. Yom Kippur is a time when the pintele Yid is revealed in Jews. This is what the Gemara means when it calls it “a day on which five prayers are required.” It is the only day of the year that has specifically five prayers. The five prayers correspond to the five names mentioned in the Midrash: “It was given five names: nefesh, ruach, neshamah, chayah, yechidah.” The fifth level, corresponding to the Neilah prayer, is the yechidah of the soul. As Chassidus explains, each of the soul’s five names represents a different level, a different way a Jew is connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu: the connection associated

13:03 with outward actions, with observing Torah and mitzvos, turning away from evil and doing good, and accepting the yoke of Heaven. Ruach is the realm of character traits, thoughts, and feelings. Neshamah is the realm of the mind, learning, and contemplation, and so on. Chayah relates to the will within the soul, to what a Jew wants. He wants something beyond reason: this is a connection that comes from the will within the soul—a Jew does not want to be disconnected from Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and he wants to be connected to Him. This is the will that transcends reason, the chayah of the soul. Then there is the deepest level, yechidah—“the yechidah, to be one with You,” as we say in the Hoshanos. The yechidah of the soul is united, as one, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu Himself, the One and Only. About this we say that a Jew not only does not want to be disconnected—he cannot be. In the Alter Rebbe’s well-known words: A Jew does not want to, and cannot, be separated from G-dliness. The yechidah of the soul is the pintele Yid, the essential bond between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu. From the standpoint of this point, a Jew cannot be disconnected from G-dliness at all. As the Alter Rebbe explains in Tanya, when a Jew commits a transgression, the yechidah of the soul is, in truth, asleep at that moment—dormant, forgotten. The spirit of folly that covers the soul causes a person to forget; he does not take it to heart, or, because of that spirit of folly, he deceives himself and says that [unclear], that he

14:35 will not be that way at all. Yes. But when the yechidah of the soul, the pintele Yid, is awakened in him, the point that he does not want to and cannot be disconnected from Hakadosh Boruch Hu awakens within him. This is the Jew’s intrinsic love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and because of it he simply cannot be disconnected from Him. What happened before was nothing more than a moment of forgetfulness. When this point awakens in him, when he feels that core of Jewishness, he feels that a Jew is, in essence, always connected to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and cannot be disconnected from Him. Therefore, when it awakens, all the blemishes are erased and all the sins are forgiven. This is what Yom Kippur is about: the bond within Jews awakens—the core of their connection, the core of their Jewishness, the bond between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, like that of a child with his father. Then everything is forgiven; then comes forgiveness for their sins. This is the true meaning of Yom Kippur, as explained in a teaching of the Baal Shem Tov. This is also the point made by the Mishnah at the end of Tractate Yoma. The last Mishnah in Yoma is a very interesting one. The Mishnah quotes Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah: “For transgressions between a person and Hashem, Yom Kippur atones; for transgressions between one person and another”—sorry—“For transgressions between a person and Hashem, Yom Kippur atones; for transgressions between one person

16:11 and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until he has appeased the other person.” That is the Mishnah. The Mishnah then continues: “Rabbi Akiva said: Fortunate are you, Israel! Before whom do you purify yourselves, and who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven.” Yes, Rabbi Akiva comes and says, “Fortunate are you, Israel!”—“Before whom do you purify yourselves, and who purifies you? Your Father in Heaven.” He cites two verses in support. One verse is, “Hashem is Israel’s mikveh.” And the verse, “I will sprinkle pure water upon you, and you will be purified from all your impurities; and from all your idols I will purify you.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu says, “I will sprinkle pure water upon you”—He will sprinkle pure water upon us and purify us. This is why “Fortunate are you, Israel”: Hakadosh Boruch Hu is the One who purifies us. And then it says, “Hashem is Israel’s mikveh.” Yes, “Hashem is Israel’s mikveh.” “Just as a mikveh purifies the impure, so Hakadosh Boruch Hu purifies Israel.” This is the conclusion of Tractate Yoma, the tractate associated with Yom Kippur. When we consider the Mishnah, a question arises: What is Rabbi Akiva saying here? And what do his words add to what Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah said? On a simple level, it is to end on a positive note, because he ends with something beautiful. But there is nevertheless a connection between the statements. And we see that the wording of the Mishnah itself points to this: there must be a connection between Rabbi Akiva’s statement and Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s statement, for Rabbi Akiva

17:53 as mentioned, Rabbi Akiva does not disagree with Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah; there is no dispute here. After all, it does not say, “Rabbi Akiva says,” but “Rabbi Akiva said.” The rule in the Talmud, as stated there, is that when it says “Rabbi Akiva said,” it means he is not disagreeing, but adding something. What does Rabbi Akiva come to add to Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s words? The explanation follows from what we have said: Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah’s words concern the holy day, Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur atones for transgressions. In quoting Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah, the Mishnah teaches that Yom Kippur atones for transgressions, distinguishing between transgressions against Hashem and transgressions against another person. But in general, the greatness and special quality of Yom Kippur lie in its being a day of atonement, atoning for a person’s transgressions. At first glance, we understand this to stem from the holiness of Yom Kippur, as in the verse he quotes: “For on this day atonement will be made for you, to purify you from all your sins.” This is the day on which Hakadosh Boruch Hu atones for “all your sins.” But according to the plain meaning of the verse, “For on this day atonement will be made for you”—it stems from “this day.” By virtue of the day’s holiness, by virtue of its service, by virtue of the service in the Holy of Holies—the service of the Kohen Gadol as he enters the Holy of Holies—and by virtue of all the details of the Kohen Gadol’s service that the Mishnah lists throughout Tractate Yoma, this is the day on which “on this day atonement will be made for you” is fulfilled: Yom Kippur.

19:30 Yom Kippur atones. Rabbi Akiva comes and adds to this: atonement for sins does not come only through the service of the day, the service of the Kohen Gadol and the service in the Holy of Holies. Rather, it is “Fortunate are you, Israel.” Rabbi Akiva adds that the atonement Yom Kippur brings every Jew stems from “Fortunate are you, Israel”—from the special quality of the Jewish people. On this day, Yom Kippur, that “Fortunate are you, Israel” is awakened. The essential point of Jewishness is awakened; every Jew’s pintele Yid, the yechidah of the soul, is awakened. That point is [unclear], and it is on its account that we say, “Fortunate are you, Israel.” This stems from the special quality of the Jewish people, which is awakened on Yom Kippur. That is why it says, “Before whom do you purify yourselves, and who purifies you?” There is a reason for this double expression, and for the fact that he brings two verses. He brings “mikveh”—that is “you purify yourselves,” because a person must enter a mikveh and immerse himself. But “who purifies you” comes from above, from “your Father in Heaven”: “I will sprinkle pure water upon you.” That is purification that comes from above. These are two kinds of purification: purification by sprinkling and purification through a mikveh. There are many explanations of this, but this is not the time to go into their details. One should look at the Rebbe’s sicha, the hadran on Tractate Yoma, where the Rebbe explains the details throughout the mishnah. But the point I want to emphasize, the wonderful point connected with Yom Kippur, is this: At the end of Tractate Yoma, after studying the entire tractate—the sanctity of the day, the sanctity of the Holy of Holies and the sanctity of the Beis Hamikdash,

21:23 and all these details—the mishnah comes and says: What is the true essence of Yom Kippur, by virtue of which it atones? Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah cites only the verse “For on this day He will atone for you,” from which one might also understand that Jews are [unclear] in relation to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. But Rabbi Akiva wants to emphasize the special quality expressed in “before whom do you”—the quality of “Fortunate are you, Israel,” the special quality of the Jewish people. That is why he says, “Hashem is the mikveh of Israel.” Hakadosh Boruch Hu is, so to speak, the mikveh of the Jewish people. Because of the special quality of the Jewish people, Hakadosh Boruch Hu purifies them. He purifies every Jew of his impurity, G-d forbid, of undesirable things. Hakadosh Boruch Hu washes them away, because on Yom Kippur the essential point of Jewishness is awakened in every Jew. This is what Yom Kippur is about in general, and particularly when the Ne’ilah prayer arrives. Ne’ilah is also the time, the moment, when, as the expression goes, “all the gates are locked.” Chassidus explains that “all the gates are locked” means that then only the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are together. It does not mean, as people might think, that when Ne’ilah arrives the doors are closed and all the Jews are left outside, G-d forbid. It is exactly the opposite: “All the gates are locked” means that all the doors are closed and everyone is left outside except Hashem and the Jewish people. This is discussed in a maamar of Chassidus, the maamar “And No”

23:01 “And no person shall be in the Tent of Meeting.” In the maamar, the holy Shelah cites the Midrash on “And no person shall be in the Tent of Meeting”: When the Kohen Gadol enters the Holy of Holies, he enters in such a way that “no person”—not even beings of whom it is said “the face of a man,” meaning even angels called “the face of a man”—is there. No one can enter the Holy of Holies except the soul of the Kohen Gadol. The Kohen Gadol, who enters as the emissary of all Israel, is the only one in the Holy of Holies. In the words of the Zohar: “Israel and the King alone”—the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu alone. That is all that is there. And during the Ne’ilah prayer, the yechidah is awakened. This is the locking of all the gates. As the maamar cites from the Zohar, [unclear], as we find with Yosef the Righteous: When Yosef the Righteous revealed himself to his brothers, while all the brothers were standing there, he said, “Have everyone leave me”—no one was to remain. “And no one stood with him when Yosef made himself known to his brothers.” When Yosef the Righteous revealed himself to his brothers, “no one stood with him.” As the Zohar says there, “no one stood with him” means that no one stood there—not even heavenly angels or the higher sefiros, the whole order of hishtalshelus. Only Hakadosh Boruch Hu and the collective soul of Israel are there, alone. And this revelation begins on Yom Kippur, at Ne’ilah, when a Jew stands and

24:39 they cry out, “Hear, O Israel, Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One,” followed by the verses “Blessed be the name” and “Hashem is G-d” seven times—the verses proclaiming His oneness. Then a Jew’s point of connection, the yechidah, is awakened. A Jew is bound to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, and “no one stood with him.” No one else is there, because at this place, at this level of “Israel and the King alone”—the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, one and indivisible—no one else has any connection; no one else has any existence. G-d forbid, [unclear] from this world. Nor from the entire order of hishtalshelus, nor even from heavenly angels and the higher sefiros; there is only the Jew with Hashem’s very Essence and Being. And this gives rise to tremendous joy. As the Frierdiker Rebbe explains in his well-known maamar from the evening after Yom Kippur 5691, “And He Will Tell You the Secrets of Wisdom,” in which the Frierdiker Rebbe explains at wonderful length the order of the service of Yom Kippur: A Jew is a king’s son. He cites there the teaching of our Sages in the Gemara in Shabbos: “All Jews are the children of kings.” Abaye said: Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael all said that all Jews are the children of kings. On Yom Kippur, this quality—that a Jew is a king’s son—is revealed in every Jew. Therefore, even if his conduct throughout the year has left him in captivity, because he is a king’s son he can break free and leave

26:06 captivity—his own captivity, the captivity of the animal soul and the yetzer hara. On Yom Kippur he stands face to face and asks for forgiveness and pardon. And when the Ne’ilah prayer arrives, tremendous joy is awakened, as the maamar says: tremendous joy over this closeness, over the king’s son who has returned to his father the king. There is the joy of the king’s son who has come home, and the joy of his father the king, whose son, after being distant, has drawn close to him again. There is also joy that, although until now he was full of sins, “his deliberate sins have become merits for him”—real merits, the merits of a baal teshuvah, which are even loftier merits. From this comes the tremendous joy of the evening after Yom Kippur, and from there we dance into the joy of Sukkos and Shemini Atzeres. Of Shemini Atzeres, the Zohar says that it is the true joy, when “no one stood with him,” the joy of “Israel and the King alone.” May Hakadosh Boruch Hu help that in these days of the Ten Days of Teshuvah, about which the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah says, “Here it refers to an individual; here it refers to a community”—“community” refers, as the Alter Rebbe explains, to the soul’s ten faculties, and “individual” to the yechidah of the soul—so that “here it refers to an individual”: during the Ten Days of Teshuvah, the yechidah of the soul begins to awaken in every Jew. And on Yom Kippur in particular, “once a year,” which is

27:30 the “one” within the yechidah, the yechidah of the soul is awakened in every Jew. From then until Ne’ilah, “Israel and the King alone” is awakened in every Jew—the Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu are together. From this comes the great joy, the joy of teshuvah and the joy of the days of “the season of our rejoicing.” “Then the maiden shall rejoice in the dance”—as cited in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, the word “in the dance” alludes to forgiveness: through the forgiveness of Yom Kippur, “the maiden,” the collective soul of Israel, “shall rejoice.” May there be true joy, and may we merit to go from this joy to the joy of the true and complete Geulah. And especially we, who are in a year of the mitzvah of Hakhel: may we merit to see the King at Hakhel on Sukkos, when He will reveal the Torah to us—“A new Torah shall go forth from Me”—and may the verse be fulfilled: “Behold, I am bringing them from the north country and gathering them from the ends of the earth; among them are the blind and the lame, the pregnant woman and the woman in labor, together; a great assembly shall return here”—to the true and complete Geulah.