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Friday

י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

Friday
י"ט אדר ב’ התשפ"ד

חיפוש בארכיון

466. Accident (1)

One who sins by accident must perform a good form of Teshuvah (repentance) and if he does not do this he will surely be punished. In the days when the temple was standing he would have brought an offering for his sin and while doing so would have repented and have received an atonement. Even nowadays that we do not have the holy temple he must perform Teshuvah and in place of bringing an offering he must fulfil the verse “And our lips will replace the bulls!”. The majority of people believe that one is not at all liable to punishment for an accidental sin and even if he regrets it a little then his regret and pain part very quickly. In our many sins a person will feel more pain when losing a small coin than when having transgressed one sin. In truth it is fitting to feel pain and regret over the sin with a deep pain which touches the soul more and more than the separation of soul and body. In the same way as one who kills his only son by accident will feel tremendous bodily pain as well as his soul being in mourning, so too one should feel even more pain over having committed a sin even when it was committed by accident. In the same way as one who has poured a jug of oil on his most beautiful clothes even by accident then his clothes will become dirty and if they are the clothes of the king then he will surely be punished for not having paid the right amount of attention and not having taken the correct precautions and the tremendous amount of care necessary, and even if it was forced upon him and he could do nothing about it, even though he will not be punished but nevertheless he will need to correct that mistake that he had made and to wash the clothes properly and to fix them and bring them back to their original state, so too is this matter of the accidental sin. It is, however, true that one commits a sin deliberately will receive a greater punishment, but nevertheless even a person who sins by accident will surely be punished for not having had the fear of Hashem on his face to take the greatest possible care and to stand guard to keep himself from sin as if he is saving himself from a sword and he did not dig down and make every effort to know the sin to be able to guard himself from it, and even though his punishment will not be as great as that of someone who sins deliberately, nevertheless he must fix that which he has damaged just like one who has  sinned deliberately.

“My brothers and my nation, take this sefer Torah, and with this, and like this learn well, so that you should have it good; listen and enliven your soul, and achieve gladness and joy in this world and the world to come” (From the author’s intro.)