To Answer Questions
Rabbi Dovid E. Eidensohn
Question One
I complain about people not marrying, but what about older people who are alone without marriage?
Answer: Older people are often without the biological problems that affect younger people, and they are less prone to sinning even if they are not married.
Question Two – How can we say in Tachanum that we and our forefathers sinned? Is this not an insult to the father and forefathers? And how does a young child who says this know that his father sinned or his forefather sinned?
Answer: I have an answer to this based upon gemoras and Kabbala. It is basically this: People come into this world which is designed not for human perfection, because almost nobody is perfect. So people sin, and this is expected by heaven, with the condition that a person sin and then do teshuva. There is a gemora that the greatest Jews did the greatest sins, such as David with Bas Sheva, and Israel at Sinai who then went to worship the Golden Calf. But both of these repented which is the true purpose of the world. This idea that human beings were created with great impulses and tendencies to sin with extremely few exceptions, emphasizes to us that penitence not perfection it the purpose of life.
There are discussions of this in Kabbala about the first humans and their experiences with evil that had nothing to do with their sins but with the will of heaven. Indeed, the gemora says that HaShem declared that He must repent regularly because he rejected the Moon. The Moon wanted a world free of evil, and felt that a world with living sinners was a disgrace to heaven. HaShem said that to kill out all of the sinners would destroy the world, because sinning is what most people do. But to teach people that the purpose of life is penitence, not perfection, HaShem offered to Himself to teshuva, as if it could be, to teach everyone that the purpose of life is not perfection but imperfection followed by penitence.
