Elul / Shoftim – The Venom of Sin

SHOFTIM / TESHUVAH / IDENTITY
The Venom
of Sin
How an aveirah attacks not only behavior,
but identity - and how Torah restores the person
beneath the shame
“The yetzer hara wins once when it causes us to
sin. It wins a second time when it convinces us that
the sin is who we are. That second victory is the
venom.”
WRITTEN BY
Rav Mordechai Burg
THE CLOUDS COME AND GO. THE STARS REMAIN.

SHOFTIM / TESHUVAH / IDENTITY
Nitzotzos Rav Mordechai Burg 1
THE TORAH’S QUESTION
In Parshas Shoftim, the Torah describes a person who intentionally murders
another Jew and then attempts to find refuge in one of the arei miklat:
DEVARIM 19:11
ְוִכי ִיְהֶיה ִאיׁש ׂשֵנא ְלֵרֵעהּו ְוָאַרב לֹו ְוָקם ָעָליו ְוִהָּכהּו ֶנֶפׁש ָוֵמת
“But if a man hates his fellow, lies in wait for him, rises against him, and strikes him
mortally…”
Rashi notes that the Torah appears to include an unnecessary detail. Why does the
Torah need to tell us that the murderer hated his victim? It could simply have said that
one man ambushed another and killed him.
Quoting the Sifrei, Rashi explains that the murder did not begin when the man lay in
wait for his victim. It began much earlier, when he allowed himself to hate another Jew.
First, he violated Lo sisna es achicha bilvavecha - “You shall not hate your brother in
your heart.” Ultimately, that hatred brought him to shed blood. This, says Rashi, is the
principle of aveirah goreres aveirah: once a person transgresses a seemingly minor
aveirah, he may eventually come to violate a far more serious one.
But how exactly does this halacha demonstrate the principle of aveirah goreres aveirah?
The progression from hatred to murder sounds like a natural psychological pathology. A
person nurtures his resentment. The resentment grows into an obsession. If it is never
confronted, it may eventually erupt into violence. One does not need to know that
hatred is an aveirah for that to happen. The fact that hatred is an aveirah seems to be of
no consequence to the downward spiral that ends in murder.
What, then, is the Torah teaching us about
the spiritual dynamic of sin itself?
A second, even more troubling question, emerges from the continuation of the pesukim.
After instructing the elders to remove the murderer from the city of refuge and hand
him over for execution, the Torah says:
DEVARIM 19:13
ֹלא ָתחֹוס ֵעיְנָך ָעָליו
“Your eye shall not pity him.”

SHOFTIM / TESHUVAH / IDENTITY
Nitzotzos Rav Mordechai Burg 2
Rashi explains the pity the Torah is warning against. We might say: One Jew has already
been killed. Why should we now kill another and leave two Jews dead?
Clearly, then, the Torah is addressing a case in which Beis Din possesses the halachic
authority to execute the murderer. But such cases were exceedingly rare. The Mishnah
(Makkos 7a) teaches that a Sanhedrin that executed once in seven years was considered
destructive; Rav Elazar ben Azariah says even once in seventy years.
The requirements for conviction were extraordinarily demanding. Two valid witnesses
had to warn the murderer immediately before the crime. They had to tell him that the
act was forbidden and carried the death penalty. Silence was insufficient. Even saying, “I
know,” was insufficient. The murderer had to respond, Al menas kein ani oseh - I
understand, and I am doing it anyway - and then commit the crime within toch k’dei
dibbur - literally, “within the time required for speech,” the brief span needed to utter a
short phrase (see Rambam, Hilchos Sanhedrin 12:2).
This murderer had so many ways to avoid execution by Beis Din. He could have
remained silent. He could have paused for several seconds before murdering his victim.
Yet when he was warned that the act would cost him his life, he openly accepted the
consequence and immediately struck the fatal blow.
His hatred was directed toward his victim.
Why was he so willing to destroy himself?
THE INNER MECHANISM OF AVEIRAH
When Hatred Turns Inward
Rav Yochanan Zweig shlit’a explains that to answer these questions, we must
understand what an aveirah does to the person who commits it.
We tend to imagine that an aveirah is something we did. It may have harmed another
person. It may have damaged our relationship with Hashem. But once the act is over, we
remain essentially the same person we were before.
It does not work that way.
Every action leaves something behind in the person who performed it. When I
repeatedly behave beneath my dignity, I begin to experience myself as someone without

SHOFTIM / TESHUVAH / IDENTITY
Nitzotzos Rav Mordechai Burg 3
dignity. When I treat another human being as worthless, something in me begins to feel
worthless as well.
This is particularly true of hatred. In order to sustain hatred, I must gradually strip the
other person of his humanity. I tell myself that he does not matter, that his pain does not
count, that he is not really my brother.
But perhaps the hatred did not begin with the other person at all. Sometimes what I
cannot tolerate within myself gets projected onto someone else. I attack in him the
weakness, shame or worthlessness I secretly fear is in me. The other person becomes the
screen onto which I project my own self-hatred. In that case, the hatred does not
eventually turn inward. It was directed inward all along.
Either way, the hatred he feeds does not leave his inner world untouched. It deepens the
very self-contempt from which it may have begun.
This is the inner mechanism of aveirah goreres aveirah. The first aveirah does not simply
make the next aveirah more tempting. It changes the way I see myself. Once I identify as
someone degraded, I begin to behave in ways consistent with that identity.
Guilt says, “I did something wrong.”
Shame says, “What I did reveals who I really
am.”
There is a world of difference between guilt and shame. Guilt says, “I did something
wrong.” Shame says, “What I did reveals who I really am.”
If I did something terrible, then I can do teshuvah. I can admit what I did, repair
whatever can still