The end part of this week’s Sedra deals with forbidden relationships. The Torah tells us that we must distance ourselves from the abominations practiced by the people inhabiting the Land of Israel at the time of Klal Yisroel’s conquest. It is in those terms that the Torah sums up its instructions concerning the various prohibited personal relationships.

While the Torah often concludes a series of detailed instructions or commands on a particular topic with a general warning, the warning here is formulated in a particularly interesting manner.   In referring to the wrongful behavior of the peoples then inhabiting the Land, the Torah speaks of their “practices”, their “traditions” (Chukos).  Why does the Torah need to inject these descriptive terms for the pagans’ wrongful actions? The Torah could have merely said that we should distance ourselves from the abominations of the peoples of the land.  What are these specific words telling us? 

Chazal tell us that if one sees a Talmid Chochom engaging in a forbidden act at night one shouldn’t think poorly of the Talmid Chochom. The reason Chazal give for telling us to view the matter in a positive light is that we must think that the Talmid Chochom might have done Teshuva right away. The Gemorah then immediately amends its own statement by adding that we should think not that he ‘might’ have done Teshuva, but that the Talmid Chochom certainly and immediately did Teshuva. Why do Chazal amend their teaching immediately to tell us that the Talmid Chochom certainly did Teshuva?  Are we not obligated to judge him favorably regardless of whether he might have done, or actually did do, Teshuva? 

It seems that Chazal are teaching us that someone who accustoms himself to learning Torah cannot possibly live in sin.  Rather, if the individual in question sinned, it must mean that while he might have temporarily succumbed to sin, he ultimately – and immediately – atoned for it.

Unlawful (illicit) behavior is habitual. Either someone is in the habit of sinning or he is not. Anybody can succumb to temptation and sin at any given time, and we must therefore always pay attention so as not to be drawn into sin.  What we must strive for, and accustom ourselves to, in the final analysis is a sin-free Torah life style.

A very warm Good Shabbos, Rabbi Y. Dov Krakowski