Why Do We Sing While Asking God for Forgiveness? | Rabbi Yaniv Meirov

Imagine for a moment a child does something really really terrible. His father is very upset at him >> [music] >> and the child comes over to the father and he starts singing, "I am [singing] so sorry, please forgive me." How's the father going to react? This is a child. You did something wrong and you're singing, [music] "I'm sorry." Or an individual is involved with the wrong things, he's brought to judgment to a court case and he starts singing that I did something wrong. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm so sorry. And he starts singing and singing. >> [music] >> So, in essence, this is what we all do. As far as what are we singing? rakhem alenu. What does that mean? Khata'nu lefanekha, we have sinned before you. Rakhem alenu, have mercy on us. How are we saying shouldn't we be saying Khata'nu lefanekha, we've sinned before you. Rakhem alenu, have mercy on us. We should be sad. What are we singing? And they answer the khakhamim, the rabbis of blessed memory, say so so powerful. This is so important. And that is there's two ways of doing teshuvah, repenting. [music] The first way is what many people do and that is out of fear. Oh my gosh, you know, someone passes away or I'm someone gets sick and you know, bad decrees happen to an individual. So, they're out of fear, they're like, you know, we have to repent. That's fine. That's okay. But, there's a better way of doing teshuvah. There's a better way of repenting. >> [music] >> And that is teshuvah me'ahavah. To do repenting out of love. God almighty, you're so good to me. You give me so much happiness [music] and health and family and community and parnassah, livelihood. You give me this, you give me that. How could I sin? [music] How could I do the wrong things? And the good news is that when a person does repenting out of love, all the sins, every aveirah, every bad thing that a The did, >> [music] >> turns into mitzvot, into good deeds. So in essence, all the negativity, all the bad stuff are used as a building block for you to continue doing good. It's similar to a trampoline. A person goes all the way down, what happens? The harder you go down, the higher you go up. And now we can understand that baalei teshuvah in a place where people that have repented are standing, tzaddikim righteous completely righteous people do not stand in the same level. The baal teshuvah, the person that repented, is on a higher level like most people in the community. You know why that is? Because they've been there and done that. This person individual is pure and holy, hasn't had any tests or or challenges. But he's tried it and he's done this and he's done that and he changes his life around, he's at a much higher level. Plus all the sins became mitzvot to a much much higher level. So every single one of us should do teshuvah, we should repent out of love. We should be zocheh to have a shanah tovah u'metukah.