Parshas Nitzavim 5785
A few years ago, I stood in my front yard with a landscaper, sharing my tale of woe. There was a particular bed that, while producing beautiful flowers every spring, was also inundated with weeds and encroaching grass each year. Why was this happening? And what could I spray to kill off what I didn’t want while preserving what I did?
“Well, how’d you first lay the bed out?” he asked. “Did you dig deep enough to get rid of the grass roots? Did put down a weed barrier?”
“Uh…not exactly…”
“Well, in that case, you can keep spray all you like, but the weeds and grass will keep on coming back. If you want to do it right, you’re going to have to get back beneath the surface and kill it all off at the roots.”
Sage advice.
One of the most iconic pesukim describing the process of teshuva, one recited every day of Selichos and throughout the liturgy of the Yamim Noraim, comes from Megilas Eichah. Yirmiyahu implores his fellow Jews, “נַחְפְּשָׂה דְרָכֵינוּ וְנַחְקֹרָה וְנָשׁוּבָה עַד־ה׳—Let us search our ways and investigate, and we will return to Hashem.” (Eichah 3:40)
The process Yirmiyahu calls for demands two actions, “נַחְפְּשָׂה דְרָכֵינוּ—searching our ways,” and “וְנַחְקֹרָה—investigating”. The first term suggests a general surveying of our behavior. What are we doing and what are we not? Which mitzvos are we performing properly, which aveiros are we violating? We are attempting to achieve a baseline consciousness of our own deeds.
“וְנַחְקֹרָה—investigating” is something else. It is a derivative of the word “Chakirah,” a term that in classical yeshiva learning has a very specific connotation. A chakirah is an investigation of a particular mitzvah or halacha, with two or more slightly varied approaches offered to understand how it functions or operates.
Is the Torah’s demand that we see tzitzis (וּרְאִיתֶם אֹתוֹ) a function of the garment, or of the person wearing the garment? Does the halacha require tzitzis only for clothing typically worn in the daytime, when the strings would usually be visible? If it is the former, then any daytime attire, made to be worn during a time of day when the clothing can easily be seen, would require tzitzis, even if one chose to wear such a garment at night. If the latter understanding is correct, the individual would be obligated in affixing tzitzis to any garment, so long as he wears it during the day, when he can see the tzitzis.
Chakirah seeks to understand the underlying mechanics of the mitzvah, not only to classify or describe it at the surface level.
Applied to teshuva, chakirah demands that we not only make a reckoning of our activities or middos, but that we dig deep to discern why we do the things we do. Not only that we notice and identify sin, but that we analyze our own minds and hearts to understand the pathology of sin. What are the stressors that trigger this behavior? In what environment do I trend towards this behavior? Who are the people I am around when I act this way? Has this sin becoming a coping mechanism for some tension I feel in my life?
Yirmiyahu HaNavi insists that teshuva is not just about acknowledgment, but discovery. “נַחְפְּשָׂה דְרָכֵינוּ” is identifying the sin. It is noticing the weeds once they have grown up high and cast an ugly shadow over the surrounding flowers. “וְנַחְקֹרָה” is getting to the bottom of the issue. It’s discovering the weeds at their root and taking measures to ensure that they can never develop in the first place.
In one of his final messages to the Jewish People, Parshas Nitzavim contains a stern warning that Moshe Rabbeinu issues the People, concerned as he is that they may veer towards idolatry upon entering Eretz Yisrael. He questions, “פֶּן־יֵשׁ בָּכֶם שֹׁרֶשׁ פֹּרֶה רֹאשׁ וְלַעֲנָה—Perhaps there is amongst you a root producing poison weed or wormwood”. (Devarim 29:17)
The Tzror HaMor quotes a tradition that the first letters of the final four words of the pasuk above can be assembled to write the word “שופר”. The shofar, he writes, as the blaring reminder that we wake from our slumber and perform teshuva, has the ability to pry up those vile roots that Moshe Rabbeinu referenced.
How does this occur? What sort of teshuva does more than just spraying a topical herbicide, allowing the root of the problem to remain firmly embedded within us, capable of producing unwanted behavioral weeds? What sort of teshuva attacks the sin at it’s very root? A teshuva of chakirah, of sincere self-analysis that does more than identify the problem, but asks earnestly, “Where is this coming from?”
Nachkorah—let us fully investigate. Let’s ask the right questions. Not to simply say what is so often said when we attempt to change behavior, that “I’ll try harder this time.” Let’s recognize that there’s only so much trying that can be done to suppress a weed whose root is firmly implanted. At some point, we must dig deeper, study the environment, the atmosphere, the very soil that permits the weeds to develop, and install a better system that will produce a more beautiful result.