Chapter 3 of Eicha is a chapter of introspection and soul-searching. After Yirmiyahu calls upon the people to rectify their deeds - "Let us search and examine our ways, and return to Hashem" - he now turns to rectifying one's thoughts, the intentions of the heart. In this lesson, we will examine three verses: "Let us lift our heart with our hands," "We have transgressed and rebelled," and "You have covered Yourself with anger," exploring a series of explanations from the classic commentators on the Megillah.
נִשָּׂא לְבָבֵנוּ אֶל כַּפָּיִם אֶל אֵל בַּשָּׁמָיִם׃ - Let us lift our heart with our hands to God in heaven.
The author of Lechem Dimah explains: when a person sins in the thoughts of the heart, his heart is, as it were, sunk in the miry clay, stuck deep down in the mud. What should one do when seeking to repent and elevate it? "Let us lift our heart with our hands" - with our own hands we must raise our heart and lift it up out of the mire in which it is submerged, and carry it "to God in heaven." Through this, we purify it of those sinful thoughts that filled it.
Homiletically, commentators explain: often a person hears something inspiring and claps his hands with great fervor. He is told: sir, put the clapping aside - let your heart be in your hands! "Let us lift our heart to our hands" (or "with our hands"), meaning that the enthusiasm and applause should not remain merely superficial. Put your heart into it; invest your heart within the deed, rather than making outward noise while your heart is not with it.
In the sefer Torat Chaim, this is explained based on Chazal's teaching: "Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory." The soul is hewn from beneath the Throne of Glory, and repentance must be such that it reaches all the way to the top, straight to the Throne of Glory. To what can this be compared? To a person holding onto a thin rope, where at any moment the rope is at risk of snapping. If repentance is incomplete, you remain hanging in the middle of the rope, and the rope can tear. What must you do? Climb quickly all the way up and grasp the beam above. As long as you are merely holding onto the rope, the weight slowly strains it until it snaps. This, says the Torat Chaim, is the concept of karet (spiritual excision): you drifted further and further away, until ultimately the cord snapped.
This is what is meant by "and return to Hashem" - that repentance must reach all the way to the Master of the Universe, rather than remaining stuck halfway up the rope. Likewise: "Let us lift our heart with our hands" - how far? "To God in heaven." Repentance must reach all the way to the Holy One, blessed be He, and not remain halfway, for if one stays in the middle, the rope is liable to tear.
The Lechem Dimah further explains: after the author of Eicha calls upon everyone to repent, he instructs that each person, after repenting privately, should display the sincerity of his heart before everyone. One might have thought it better to repent in secret, but the author says no. When you repent publicly, and everyone sees how you improve your deeds and alter your ways, all bear witness, as it were, that this repentance was done whole-heartedly. Furthermore, this creates positive peer pressure that encourages others to repent as well.
We all know that social pressure is the single most powerful factor driving a person to act or to refrain from acting. This is the very definition of fashion: people do something - why? Because today it is in style. A trend (ofna, related to ofan, a rolling wheel) keeps turning: this is what everyone does, and therefore everyone will do it. Everyone wears a certain style; everyone behaves a certain way. "I must have it!" - Why must you? "Because everybody has it!" We all know this classic argument made by children: well, so what if everyone has it? No, if everyone has it, then it is a must.
Studies have been conducted showing just how deeply we are influenced by the herd mentality. In one experiment, a person was brought into an elevator without knowing it was a test, and all the confederates inside were facing the mirror at the back. He intended to face the floor display to see which floor the elevator was on, but suddenly realized he was facing the opposite direction of everyone else - and turned around. Nearly every test subject turned to stand the exact same way everyone else was standing. Where is the logic? Stand facing the door and watch when it opens! Yet, suddenly he feels out of place, and nobody wants to be the odd one out.
In another study, a class was shown two shapes with a subtle yet perceptible difference between them, and everyone was instructed beforehand to state that the right triangle was larger than the left. Everyone complied, except for one student who was not in on the experiment. He clearly saw the opposite, yet he was afraid to speak his mind: "Yes, the right one, the right one..." If everyone sees the right one, how can I suddenly say the left? That is the herd mentality. And when a person acts like part of a herd, it means he lacks independent thinking. That is man's greatest pitfall: doing not what ought to be done, but what everyone else is doing.
This is what the author of Eichah is saying here: perform your teshuvah publicly. What is its virtue? It draws others along with you. When people see an entire generation seeking teshuvah, everyone is inspired and strengthened. Conversely, there was once an opposite reality, where anyone who observed the mitzvot was not only disregarded, but disgraced and humiliated. Consequently, people were ashamed to observe mitzvot publicly, and naturally grew ashamed to draw near to the service of Hashem. Therefore, there is sometimes great value in expressing teshuvah outwardly - showing openly that you have returned with complete repentance, undeterred by mockers or by what people might say. "נִשָּׂא לְבָבֵנוּ אֶל כַּפָּיִם" - "Let us lift up our heart with our hands" - do not keep the repentant heart hidden away. Lift it up to your hands, so that all can see that we have rectified our deeds and that our hearts are pure and clear. Let them bear witness that this teshuvah is sincere and heartfelt, and through this, we will encourage others as well to repent and draw closer to Hashem.
The Lechem Dim'ah offers another explanation: "נִשָּׂא לְבָבֵנוּ אֶל כַּפָּיִם" - the intention is that we pray to the Holy One, blessed be He, over the Shechinah that has departed from our midst. We are all familiar with the kinah about the ten exiles of the Shechinah: how it journeyed from the keruv to the Heichal, and from there ascended to the roof, where it saw them making sacrificial cakes and bowing to the sun, until it said, "I will go and return to My place," and the Shechinah departed to its place in heaven. The author of Eichah says: let us pour out our prayer before Hashem - "let us lift up our heart with our hands," with all our heart, over what? Over the fact that it is "unto God in heaven" ("אֶל אֵל בַּשָּׁמָיִם") - that the Shechinah has distanced itself from us, and instead of "that I may dwell among them," it has departed to heaven. This should be the primary focus of our prayer.
The Lechem Dim'ah offers another explanation: the essence of teshuvah is that a person's hands be clean of wrongdoing. As is known, during times of drought and distress, when the leaders of Israel would gather the public for prayer and outcry, the soul-searching they conducted focused specifically on honesty and integrity - checking the measuring weights to ensure people were not cheating one another in business.
There is a well-known story of a baker who sold bread by weight and would purchase butter from a dairyman in one-kilogram blocks. One day, he decided to weigh a block and found it weighed only nine hundred grams. He summoned the dairyman to a Din Torah and told the dayan: "For years I have been buying blocks from him marked as one kilogram, and it turns out they contain only nine hundred grams. I demand retroactive reimbursement!" The dayan asked the dairyman what he had to say for himself. The dairyman replied, "To tell the truth, for years I haven't had a one-kilogram weight stone. What do I do? I buy one-kilogram loaves of bread from my neighbor, the baker. I place a loaf on one side of the scale, balance it with butter on the other side, and sell it to him." It turned out that the complaint about the nine-hundred-gram butter had to begin with the baker's own loaves.
A similar phenomenon occurred in our times: singers constantly complained about music piracy, that instead of paying sixty shekels for a CD, an entire country made do with a single copy. People would burn copies, upload them online, and everyone got the new album without paying. Someone once looked into the matter and discovered something astounding: almost all those singers maintain private home studios - nowadays it is simple to turn a room into a studio, which is far cheaper than booking studio hours - and it turned out that nearly all of them had pirated audio software installed on their computers. These are professional programs costing two to four thousand dollars. Would he actually pay two thousand dollars? What others did to him by burning CDs, he was doing to software developers. This does not legitimize the theft done to him, but it illustrates how someone can plead, "Do not steal from me," while having no qualms about stealing from others - not sixty shekels, but two thousand dollars.
Therefore, it is said that the foundation of teshuvah, when seeking to awaken the public and examine why harsh decrees befall them, lies in clean hands - demonstrating that our hands are truly clean and that no dishonesty clings to them. It is told that in Yemen, as in other communities, there was once a severe drought. Everyone went out to pray, and a simple shopkeeper arrived carrying his balance scale. He said: "Master of the Universe, You can testify that I have never cheated with my weights. And if I have never cheated with my weights, please, in this merit, bestow rain upon Your people Israel." As soon as he concluded his plea, rain began to fall. We see that the merit of clean hands is immense, capable of tearing through all the heavens. That is why the leaders of the people, when gathering the public for a fast day, would examine these precise matters with them.
This is the meaning of "נִשָּׂא לְבָבֵנוּ אֶל כַּפָּיִם" - "Let us lift up our heart with our hands": that the purity of the heart must extend to the hands as well. Purity must not remain confined to the heart alone, a heart filled with spiritual aspiration while the hands remain untouched. Did you bring any of that inspiration into your physical actions? Your hands too must be clean and pure, so that the hands need not feel ashamed before the heart. And both of them together we bring before "God in heaven" ("אֵל בַּשָּׁמָיִם"): take the pure thoughts and sincere intentions of the heart and infuse them into your hands, lifting both upward - and then our prayers are truly worthy of acceptance.
The Elon Bachut explains: it is written in holy sefarim that when a person performs a mitzvah lishmah (for its own sake), the mitzvah ascends all the way to the top, to the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself. But when one performs a mitzvah shelo lishmah (not for its own sake), it reaches only the angels, and one requires, as it were, messengers to carry it forward. This is what the verse means: "נִשָּׂא לְבָבֵנוּ אֶל כַּפָּיִם" - let us perform the mitzvah with such devotion, with all our heart, and through this we will reach "unto God in heaven" ("אֶל אֵל בַּשָּׁמָיִם") and not merely the angels. You will reach directly to God in heaven, because your mitzvah is one into which your entire heart was poured.
נַחְנוּ פָשַׁעְנוּ וּמָרִינוּ אַתָּה לֹא סָלָחְתָּ׃ - We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not forgiven.
There is a difficulty here in the verse, which seemingly contradicts itself on the spot: "We have transgressed and rebelled; You have not forgiven." But isn't that obvious? If you have transgressed, why should Hashem forgive? And yet, there is a kind of grievance here: Master of the Universe, why did You not forgive?
The Lechem Dim'ah resolves this: while many people sinned, it is impossible that there were not a few righteous individuals, people who truly walked in the way of Hashem and did not sin. This is hinted at in the wording of the verse: it does not say anachnu fasha'nu, but nachnu, without the letter alef - hinting that the alef represents the achadim (the few individuals); there were a few who did not transgress. If so, Master of the Universe, it would have been fitting that in the merit of those few - since a single tzaddik has the power to shield an entire generation - You would forgive us. Why then, "You have not forgiven"? For it was nachnu who transgressed and not anachnu, and there were individuals who did not sin, and it was proper to protect the entire generation in their merit.
The Lechem Dim'ah offers another explanation: the reason we transgressed and rebelled - fasha'nu denotes willful transgression, and marinu denotes rebellion, compounding sin upon transgression - is because "You have not forgiven." How so? It is written, "For with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared" (Tehillim 130:4). Everyone asks: is it because Hashem forgives that people revere Him? Seemingly, on the contrary! When You tell me, "I will not forgive," You have frightened me; whereas if You tell me that You will forgive, You have not frightened me at all, and I might commit a sin because You forgive!
Rather, the answer is yes. Often, if you tell a person, "I will not forgive," and he knows he has sinned greatly, he will say: "I no longer have anything to lose; You will not forgive anyway, and if I perish, I perish." There is a story told of a person who ran up an overdraft of eighty thousand shekels at the bank - not a business, just a private individual, back when banks allowed such deficits. When asked how he reached this point, he answered: "At a certain stage, I realized it made no practical difference whether I saved another ten shekels or fifty. After all, once I was thirty thousand shekels in debt, I had no idea how to get out of it, so what difference did it make if it was thirty or thirty-five thousand? I didn't know how to get out of thirty either. It reached a point where I spent freely and made no calculations whatsoever." There is tremendous danger when someone is made to feel that he has nothing left to lose - for then he will act like someone who has nothing to lose.
Therefore, we say: Master of the Universe, "With You is forgiveness, that You may be feared." When You pardon and forgive - on the contrary, that generates awe of You, because it means that I can make amends, and so I must be careful not to ruin things further. But if You do not forgive at all, people will say: "It is over; after everything we have done, we have nothing to lose," and they will continue to sin. This is what is meant here: "We have transgressed," and not only transgressed, but "and rebelled." And why? Because "You have not forgiven" - we reasoned that You would not forgive anyway; we despaired of forgiveness. And when a person despairs, it makes no practical difference whether his overdraft is thirty thousand or eighty thousand, since he does not know how to escape either one, and so he adds sin upon transgression.
One might add an explanation by way of wit: In the lengthy Viduy prayers, apparently in the Viduy of Rav Saadia Gaon, poetic phrasing appears: "Just as it is my nature to sin, so it is Your nature to pardon and forgive" - though not everyone recites this, as it is poetic rhetoric and some preferred not to say it. According to this, one could say that they approach here with grievance and astonishment: "We have transgressed and rebelled" - why? Because it is my nature to sin. But "You have not forgiven"? Master of the Universe, it is Your nature to pardon and forgive! As if to say, You did not fulfill Your side of the agreement: we acted according to our nature, yet suddenly You did not act according to Yours.
סַכּוֹתָה בָאַף וַתִּרְדְּפֵנוּ הָרַגְתָּ לֹא חָמָלְתָּ׃ - You have enveloped Yourself in anger and pursued us; You have slain without pity.
The Lechem Dim'ah explains how many upheavals we experienced between the reality of the Exodus from Egypt and the reality of our departure from Eretz Yisrael. Like that paytan mentioned previously, who composed the kinah comparing "When I went out of Egypt - when I went out of Jerusalem": Come and see the immense contrast, the extraordinary privileges we possessed when leaving Egypt, versus the terrible degradation when leaving Jerusalem. When we left Egypt, the Holy One, Blessed be He, hovered over us all day with the Clouds of Glory; but now, "You have enveloped Yourself in anger" - instead of Clouds of Glory, with what did He shelter us? With wrath, with anger.
Not only that: anyone who counts the forty journeys will see that our actual wandering was quite limited. "So you stayed in Kadesh many days" - some say they dwelt in Kadesh for nineteen years, and some say thirty-eight years, with all the other journeys divided among the remaining years. Thus, the actual travels were few. But here, "You pursued us" - the journeys were ceaseless, we were hounded from place to place, "You have slain, You have not pitied." What a stark contrast: there, the cloud hovered over us all day long, while here, anger and wrath accompany us and screen over us.
The *Akeidat Yitzchak* explains: *sachotah* denotes a canopy and a veil. As it were, the Holy One, blessed be He, placed a canopy and a screen before His face, and through this, "You pursued us." For if the Holy One, blessed be He, beholds our sorrow and affliction, the Attribute of Mercy cannot help but pity and spare. But what does the Holy One, blessed be He, do when Israel strays from the path? "And I will surely hide My face from them" - and then, "and they shall be devoured." As long as the Holy One, blessed be He, looks upon us, suffering cannot strike: "For by the light of Your countenance You have given us... Torah and life, love and kindness, righteousness and mercy, blessing and peace" - all this unfolds when the light of His countenance shines upon us. But when He intends to bring troubles upon us, He places a veil, which is *hester panim* (the concealment of the countenance). And this is the meaning: because "You have screened," because You placed a veil before Your eyes like one who does not see us, thereby "with anger You pursued us" - fury and wrath hold sway over us, to the extent that "You have slain, You have not pitied."
One may also explain the verse in another way: after all, "God seeks the pursued." When someone is pursued, the Holy One, blessed be He, stands up for him; even if the pursuer is in the right and the pursued is in the wrong, whenever someone is hounded, Hashem seeks out the pursued. It is told of the Brisker Rav that a man once committed an improper deed, and people came to the Rav to ask about various measures to take against him. The Brisker Rav instructed them on what to do, but added: one must be extremely cautious not to cast him into the role of the pursued. For if he becomes the pursued, "God seeks the pursued," and whatever you try to do will fail while he will actually succeed, because Hashem will come to his aid and assist him - since the Holy One, blessed be He, embedded it into His world, as it were, to champion the pursued.
And that is what is expressed here: "You have screened with anger and pursued us" - even though we were pursued, a state in which it is Hashem's way to show mercy, since God seeks the pursued, nonetheless "You have slain, You have not pitied." As it were, something beyond nature occurred here: we were the pursued, yet Hashem did not pity. And what is the explanation? As explained earlier: since "You have screened," since a partition stood between us, since there was a concealment of the countenance - even though we were relentlessly pursued in the most harrowing way, the Attribute of Mercy did not spare or relent.
In these three verses, the author of Lamentations moves from rectifying action to rectifying the heart. "Let us lift up our heart to our hands" - to pull the heart out from the mire, to invest the heart within the deed rather than settling for superficial fervor, to repent with complete teshuvah that reaches all the way to the Throne of Glory and does not stop halfway along the rope, to engage in open repentance that draws others along, to pray for the Divine Presence that departed, and above all, to elevate the purity of the heart to the hands as well, so that the hands need not be ashamed before the heart, for only then does the mitzvah ascend directly "unto God in heaven." "We have transgressed" teaches us that even in a sinful generation, there were pure individuals worthy of protecting the community, and that despairing of forgiveness is itself what compounds iniquity upon transgression - therefore, "For with You is forgiveness, that You may be feared." And "You have screened with anger" reveals the root of the affliction: the concealment of the countenance, for the veil between Hashem and us is what allows the pursuit to continue without mercy. From here, there is only one path forward: to remove the veil through complete repentance, with heart and hands as one.