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The shiur in English
The Yanuka’s own words in this shiur, translated into English by Lehallel · 799 words · 3:40. Press a time to hear it said.
0:00 - Rav Uri Zohar, my Rav, of blessed memory, said that we are not baalei teshuvah, we are tinokos shenishbu, children taken captive, according to the Rambam, so we don't need to do teshuvah. Because all the deeds we did before we returned in teshuvah, yes? They were simply... we didn't know at all that there are mitzvos. The reasoning of the Chazon Ish, which he explains about this. Do you agree with that? - I, look... I am too small to agree with a great man like him. I can't agree with him. Like, who am I to agree? I can tell you what I think. I think that... - No, it is not charged to a person as debts, because he did not know.
0:33 According to the Rambam, a baal teshuvah is only a person who learned and left, yes, and then he returned in teshuvah, right. - The point is that... look in the Rambam, in the Laws of Teshuvah, in chapter 2, halachah 2, and in chapter 2, halachah 4, the Rambam lists several things... for example, Heaven forbid, a person who has stolen property in his hands, a person who stumbled in what the eyes see, these, so to speak, the Rambam lists as things where a person is holding on to a path of evil.
1:01 These are things that hold back teshuvah. That is, it is a kind of awareness of his deeds. He, like, knows that he is doing things that are not good, and he keeps on doing them. So that holds back teshuvah. - Thought. - What? - Thought too. - Thought. All the things that are in a person's hands... look, thought is not so much under a person's control. It is written that it is one of the twenty-four that hold back teshuvah. It holds back teshuvah, but it is different from what the eyes see. With what the eyes see, a person can still try to overcome it, he has the ability. But a thought sometimes seizes him.
1:30 So too it is brought in all the books of Chassidus. So when a person overcomes it each time, he fulfills: "You shall guard yourself from every evil thing." And if he sanctifies himself, then "In all your ways know Him," so to speak, he can strengthen his kedushah more. But what is true, if you look at it well, the meaning is that a person is protesting against his reality. He doesn't want the reality he is in, you understand? Today, if we look at it truly: after all, according to the Sages, a tinok shenishba is a person who was kidnapped when he was a baby, into captivity, they raised him in a country abroad, he got used to living like a non-Jew, and afterward he met a doctor in a hospital, who did some DNA test on him and told him: you are a Jew.
2:12 From there he came to know of his Jewishness, he begins... You ask: what about what I went through all those years? They tell him: listen, it is not counted against you. That is the law of a tinok shenishba. Today, today in our days... I don't know, so surely what you are talking about, you are talking about a period many years ago. Today, in our generation, today, to say tinok shenishba in this generation, of 5785... - What do you mean, in the generation? I am sixty. I am talking about thirty years ago. - So in your case it is tinok shenishba. - Yes? - Yes! Today...
2:38 - Already you say no: with all the media, people can know everything, yes... - Today the exposure and the awareness of spirituality and of kedushah is greater. Once, it truly was "tinok shenishba", because people did not so much merit... But today many people are exposed to Torah, to rabbis, to the spreading of G-dliness. On every corner a person has the ability today to come close to Hashem, in every place. And then how can you come and say tinok shenishba today, in our days? Therefore tinok shenishba is... it is a definition of something that changes with place and with time.
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3:12 That is, it could be that in some country now, in Holland, or abroad, it is a reality of life that exists there, and in some community there will indeed be a tinok shenishba. Because it changes from place to place. In the Land of Israel. In the Land of Israel it is a bit hard to say tinok shenishba today. That is, it changes with place and time. That is the halachic definition of tinok shenishba. May there be good tidings, a good final sealing, salvations and joy. And I was glad to hear you, sir.
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