sholem aleichem,

This dvar is dedicated to: (1) the members of the Shel Maala Yeshiva discord server, in gratitude for the discussion that inspired it; and, (2) Rav Tyler Dratch, from whom I learned the Talmudic prayer at the center of the dvar.

Yesterday was the beginning of the month of Nisan, which contains Pesach, our festival of liberation.

“[Nisan] shall be for you the first of the months”
(Shmos 12:2)

According to the Torah, we begin counting the months now, in Nisan, not at Rosh haShanah. So by this count, the holiday marking the creation of the world falls at the beginning of the 7th month, not the first.

This seems to reflect something we find in the midrash. In Vayikra Rabbah, Rabbi Eliezer teaches that the creation of the world began on the 25th of Elul, so that the creation of the human occurred on Rosh haShanah. And according to Bereishis Rabbah, time (and other worlds) existed well before the creation the world even began.

Rosh haShanah is, among other things, a holiday of teshuvah: repairing the harms we have caused in the prior year, returning our selves to the right path. Rabbi Alan Lew argues that the process of teshuva begins much earlier than Rosh haShanah, on the 17th of Tammuz, when the walls of Jerusalem were breached. Metaphorically, he argues, the spiritual process of return starts when we let our walls collapse.

I wonder what we could learn if we think of this process beginning even earlier: at the first of Nisan, at the beginning of time. Three and a half months before our walls collapse. Six months before the creation of the world.

As Nisan begins, our preparation for Pesach intensifies. In particular, we begin to remove all the leavened food from our houses, to clean out (almost) every crumb, to prepare for the final chametz search before Pesach.

Our tradition understands that chametz is not only physical bread. Here’s a prayer recorded in the Talmud, likely from sometime in the late 3rd or early 4th century CE:

רִבּוֹן הָעוֹלָמִים, גָּלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לְפָנֶיךָ שֶׁרְצוֹנֵנוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת רְצוֹנֶךָ, וּמִי מְעַכֵּב? — שְׂאוֹר שֶׁבָּעִיסָּה וְשִׁעְבּוּד מַלְכֻיוֹת. יְהִי רָצוֹן מִלְּפָנֶיךָ שֶׁתַּצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם, וְנָשׁוּב לַעֲשׂוֹת חוּקֵּי רְצוֹנְךָ בְּלֵבָב שָׁלֵם

Master of the worlds: it is revealed and known before you that our desire is to do your desire. And what prevents this? The yeast in the dough, and the oppression of governments. May it be desirable before you that you will save us from their hands, and we will return to do the decrees of your desire with whole hearts.

Rashi comments that “the yeast in the dough” refers to the yetzer hara that lives in our hearts, that causes us to rise like leavened dough. This yetzer hara is our desire for power, our chasing after our own glory, our sense of ego and pride.

And so this prayer teaches us something important about teshuvah. In order to return to the right path, in order to do teshuvah, we must first be saved from the yeast in the dough.

As Rebbe Nachman teaches in Torah Vav, the first step toward the path of teshuvah is becoming the kind of person who can do teshuvah. The kind of person who can truly hear criticism, and sit quietly with the difficult feelings that arise, and not respond from the place of the yetzer hara.

The kind of person who can transform her yetzer hara into a korban, a closeness-offering to haShem.

This is precisely the work of preparing for and observing Pesach. And after Pesach, we continue to work on our character through the counting of the Omer. This internal character work is itself a kind of teshuvah, a return within ourselves. But it is also the necessary foundation to do teshuvah externally, to repair what we have broken, to engage in the creation of the world.

When a person comes to purify herself - this is the work of Nisan and Pesach

[in order] to do teshuvah - this is the work of Elul and Rosh haShanah

then she is in the aspect of “I am existing”
Likutei Moharan 6 (with my interpretation)

We should not, gd forbid, save all our character work for Nisan, or all our teshuvah for Elul. But our calendar teaches that there is an order to follow. We must become people who can do teshuvah before we will be able to do teshuvah.

And our calendar teaches us this too: that any time we free ourselves from the yetzer hara, that is an aspect of Nisan and Pesach, of preparing to create the world; and any time we do real repair, that is an aspect of Elul and Rosh haShanah, of the actual creation of the world.

So.

Ribboyn ha-oylamim, You who create the world anew in every moment of every day: may it be revealed and known before You that my desire is to do Your desire. And what is it that prevents me? There is a part of me that is afraid to exist, that is afraid to face the world, that is afraid of government and society, of what people might think of me, of how I might suffer, of what I might lose. But now I come before You, and I am ready to be free. Your servants have taught that “one who comes to purify is assisted”. So, as you helped my foremother Sarah, please help me now, in this season of liberation: to free myself from fear, to offer up my yezter hara to You, to come before You with a pure and broken heart that is ready to return.

Chodesh tov,
ada