I will now proceed to introduce the subject of sin and repentance.

It is said in the name of the great scholar, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, may his memory be blessed, that the evil inclination deals with three types of personalities. One type is a person with a strong character who refuses to listen to him. Another type is a person who will initially not listen to him, but after much persuasion will follow him. A different type, is a person with a weak character who will go after temptation on his own. The evil inclination helps him increase his misdeeds in quality and quantity.

There are three categories of sinners. One type of person knowingly sins, and also knows that what he is doing is wrong. He may be doing it to enjoy life in this world, and as far as his judgment day after death, he will then take the matter up with his Creator. He may feel that his Creator did not treat him properly, and therefore, he will not listen to Him. Another type of person is basically a God fearing person but he is not careful in his ways and often sins accidentally or carelessly. A different type of person who is God-fearing and careful in his ways and generally does not sin, but he will not sacrifice his life for the Torah when required.

Let us attempt to understand the sin of Adam and Eve, which was the first sin. God commanded Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of understanding. This tree was forbidden because it gave Adam the choice of good and evil. Adam was created with having the choice to do good or evil, therefore, he was warned that if he eats its fruit he will be punished and die. The reason the fruit was forbidden is that it gives man understanding about the evils that he may do on earth, which will put man in difficult and trying situations where he can easily sin. This was man's first lesson in conducting himself on earth. It is not for man to tempt evil and test himself, it is God who tests man.

The evil inclination first approached Eve and convinced her that no harm would come to her by eating the fruit of the tree of understanding because, when she would eat it she would be transformed into a deity and a deity cannot be punished. Her sin was heresy because she believed that she could become a deity. The bad character trait that led her to this deed was that she did not fear the awe of her Creator but she feared His punishment, and if He cannot punish her she can ignore His command. Adam however, sinned out of temptation, because he listened to his wife. The actual sin for which their punishment was meted out was for not obeying the command of their Creator, and not because of the evil that they brought upon themselves by eating the fruit.

If Adam and Eve had not eaten this fruit, they would have merited the World to Come within the Garden of Eden. God banished them from the Garden of Eden because he felt that they cannot be trusted and they will not accept their punishment to die, but they will try to outsmart God and eat from the Tree of Life in order to live forever. It is obvious to us that if God decrees death on a person he cannot escape this decree even if he eats from the Tree of Life. However, it is not proper to allow people who have become corrupted to live in the holy Garden of Eden, and they must be banished.

After man's sin, he was obligated to repent this sin and correct his bad characteristics in order to work his way back upwards to the Garden of Eden and the World to Come. Mankind was then given seven moral ethical rules and commanded to obey and enforce them.

By committing the first sin, they also profaned the name of God (chillul Hashem), since Eve sinned by heresy, and Adam violated a direct command from God without any excuses. Forgiveness for this sin when there is no Holy Temple and therefore no special Yom Kippur sacrifices, requires repentance, suffering, and death.

After some generations, the master plan for man to work his way back upwards did not work out. They violated their seven moral laws by stealing, immoral relations, idol worship, witchcraft, homicide, feticide, infanticide, and many more abominable practices.

Then arose the religious activist, the patriarch, Abraham, who, on his own, realized the falsehoods of idol worship, and the necessity of the seven moral laws, and debated with kings and monarchs. He braved the fires of Nimrod, and other persecutions to sanctify the name of God our Creator. He also attended the religious seminaries of the sons of Noah, Shem and Ever, and there he studied the 613 Mitzvos which were to become the basis of the Jewish religion and Jewish nation. The 613 Mitzvos at that time were not obligatory, but the great men of those generation practiced them out of love for their Creator.

God our creator was disappointed that Abraham did not succeed in changing the world, He decided to build a Jewish nation from the seed of their patriarch Abraham, and with the expectation that this Jewish nation might influence the nations to believe in God our Creator.

The Jewish nation started with the giving of the Ten Commandments and the 613 Mitzvos (oral law) on mount Sinai. For this, Moses the prophet studied on mount Sinai forty days and nights. This includes the thirteen principals of faith of the Jewish religion. These mitzvos purify the individual and bring the people closer to God and merits the person in the World to Come.

The evil inclination began its deception at the onset, just forty days after the Ten Commandments were given. It began telling them that Moses would remain in heaven and that they needed a new leader. They could have chosen Aaron as their new leader. It appears that there were idol worshipers amongst them who denied the unity of God their Creator, and these people believed in a second god or idol. Their second god was the golden calf who, they claimed, punished the Egyptians and took them out of Egypt. The God who gave them the Ten Commandments was the superior God who abides in heaven, but the god who deals with what is below heaven, who punished Egypt, is the golden calf. This still does not explain how they twisted the words of God, Who explicitly forbade idol worship in the Ten Commandments, unless they bound the Ten Commandments with Moses. That is to say, that Moses is so holy that he can communicate with the superior God, and therefore, it is forbidden to worship the lower gods only as long as Moses is our leader, if he went to heaven then we must worship the golden calf as usual. The idolatrous group was a very small group, yet, because the Hebrews minded their own business and did not stop them, it was considered complicity in this sin, and they were all guilty. God accepted their repentance after they destroyed the idolatrous group.

Not long after this sin, came the heretical theological rebellion of Korach who challenged both the prophecy of Moses and his authority as teacher of the oral law. They were the forerunners of later heretical movements, more notably the Tzedukim (Saducees) who did not accept the Talmudic interpretations of the Bible and Rabbinic law. Then came the Reform movement and the Conservative movement, who do not accept the halacha, and have rejected many of the thirteen principals of faith of the Jewish religion.

In recent generations we have witnessed an erosion of traditional Rabbinic rules used in rendering halachic decisions.

The first breach is, that anyone who has Rabbinical ordination may render his own decision for others, even if it conflicts with the decision of the Sages of the generation.

The second breach is, that anyone who has Rabbinical ordination has no obligation to adhere to the accepted opinions of the Sages about matters of religion concerning the orthodox community (Daas Torah).

The third breach is, that anyone who has Rabbinical ordination may overturn a halachic ruling that was accepted and practiced for generations by a community, and even if the contemporary majority opinion is against his ruling. (According to halacha, only a body of Sages who are greater in Torah wisdom and greater number than the previous body of Sages may overturn an accepted decision providing that this body of Sages represent the majority opinion of the time.)

The fourth breach is that they created a new law that permits them to allow people to violate a lesser law in order to prevent them from violating a more severe law. This breach was first used to permit mixed dancing between Jewish singles in the synagogue's party room with the excuse that they are giving Jewish singles an opportunity to meet and perhaps find a husband or wife, and thus they are preventing intermarriage. When they were asked how do they permit mixed dancing at weddings and Bar-Mitzvos, their reply was, that they permit only husband and wife dancing and not exchanging partners.

A recent version of this breach is with the construction of so-called Eruvim in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Manhattan of New York City, although it was an accepted ruling for generations that these boroughs are public domains. The vast majority the Rabbinical authorities have ruled that nothing has changed and that these boroughs remain public domains.