MA’ASER
Excerpted from a talk by Rabbi Ahron Lopiansky
In this week’s Parsha, Ki Savo, the Torah instructs us on viduy ma’asser. At the end of the three year tithing cycle we must make a proclamation that we tithed all the tithings in accordance with the prescribed laws. It is noteworthy that this proclamation is called viduy, which means a confession. The question is if we have done no wrong how can this be called a viduy? To what are we confessing?
Viduy is a critical component of Teshuva. Rambam writes “when one does teshuva, they must be misvadeh, confess.” It seems intuitive; if we expect HaShem to forgive us for our wrongdoing we must admit that we did something wrong. So long as we do not acknowledge our wrongdoing, we cannot expect Him to forgive us. Viduy, however, is much deeper than the acknowledgement of the wrongdoing.
Our Sages teach us that Leah was the first person to express hodoah, thanks, to HaShem when Yehudah was born. This needs clarification. Did Avraham and Sarah not express their gratitude to HaShem on the birth of Yitzchok? Did Leah not express gratitude on the birth of her first three sons?
To appreciate the answer let us consider the following two individuals; the son and the or-phan. The child of Weiss family is well pampered and never in need of anything. Even many of his whims and wishes are realized by his gracious parents. Next to the child’s bedroom the Weiss’ have a guest. This guest is an orphaned child whose parents perished in a car accident leaving no relatives behind other than him. This orphan is now 12 years old and has been living with the Weiss family for a year. There is no difference in the way they treat their son and the way they treat this orphan. Without question, the sense of gratitude that the orphan feels towards the Weiss family is far greater than their son will ever have for his parents. Why? Because the son deserves it…., well perhaps he does not deserve it but in some way he feels that as a child of the family, all that love is coming to him. His appreciation is therefore somewhat limited. Whereas the orphan knows that he has nothing at all coming to him. The Weiss family has no responsibility to him whatsoever. Anything they give is totally undeserved.
With the birth of Yehudah, Leah felt like that orphan. She knew that she deserved only three sons from Yaakov. She had no claim whatso-ever to a fourth son. Her expression of hodoah upon the birth of Yehu-dah was unparalleled to any expression of gratitude by those who pre-ceded her. All who preceded her deserved, on some level, the good-ness that was showered upon them like the child of the Weiss family.
The root of viduy, to confess, lies in the word hodoah, to express gratitude. The reason is that gratitude is the expression that wells up in a person upon receiving goodness that they do not deserve. Hence, every expression of gratitude is a confession that the goodness coming to them was not deserved.
Perhaps the reason that the tithing proclamation is called viduy is because there is a lingering sense of deservedness that the owner feels. Consider how much of his hard earned produce he gave away. After all the tithing, he is left with only 79% of his produce. There is certainly a sense of righteousness that he may feel. He might be justified in feeling what a tzaddik he is, giving away his hard earned work. There-fore, upon the completion of the three years of tithing he says viduy, that he is totally undeserving of anything, no different than the orphan. He proclaims that everything he did was in accordance with the prescribed laws because he recognizes that it is his responsibility to live by those laws. His produce was totally underserved, it was gifted by HaShem and it is therefore his responsibility to dispense it accordingly.
How exhilarating viduy can be! Every act of viduy draws us that much closer to HaShem in our awareness of how grateful we must be to Him. Every gift of good health and all the other gifts HaShem grants us becomes so much more appreciated in the context of our viduy.
Have a very safe and very wonderful Shabbos.
Paysach Diskind