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In the last mishna of Masseches Yoma, Rabi Akiva compares Yom Kippur to a mikvah: “Just as a mikvah purifies those who are impure, so Hashem purifies Klal Yisroel.” What is the correlation between Yom Kippur and the mikvah? A body of water needs to have a minimum of 40 se’ah (a measurement of volume in the era of the Gemara) of water to be used as a kosher mikvah. The Bnei Yissoschor (Reb Zvi Elimelech Spira of Dinov) explains that each day of the 40-day period from Rosh Chodesh Elul until Yom Kippur corresponds to one se’ah of the mikvah and purifies one part of the person that has become defiled. Rav Moshe Wolfson, Mashgiach of Yeshiva Torah Vodaas, expounds on this concept further. He relates that we have this same number in the discussion of malkos, the punishment of lashes. Strangely, although the Torah refers to them as 40 lashes, we are taught that a person was never given more than 39. So why does the Torah use the number 40?

Lashes are given to someone who violates a negative commandment; by breaking Hashem’s law he creates an impurity inside himself. Each lash is meant to purify a part of what he defiled. There are 40 levels to our neshama, and when we sin we defile each level. Hashem, in His mercy, decreed that no matter what we do, there would always be one part of our neshama that remains pure. That’s why the Torah says “40 lashes,” even though, l’maaseh, there are never more than 39 given. One can only defile 39 of the 40 parts of the neshama. Now we can understand why Yom Kippur is the 40th day of this period of teshuva that began with Rosh Chodesh Elul. The 40th day corresponds to that portion of our neshama which can never be defiled. Just like the 40th se’ah of a mikvah guarantees that it is beyond defilement and has the capacity to repair the damage of impurity and bring tahara, so too Yom Kippur has the ability to bring kaparah – atonement – and restore us. The Gemara tells us that the gematria of the word HaSatan is 364. This is because the Satan only rules for 364 days of the calendar. There is one day of the year on which the Satan has no power: Yom Kippur. On that day, Hashem lifts us up beyond the shackles of physicality, giving us the ability to get in touch with the unblemished spark inside ourselves. Only from that point of purity will we be able to sense our true purpose with absolute clarity and feel intense regret for all the iniquities that have caused us to deviate from that purpose. In addition, we need to use that clarity to plot a course of success for ourselves for this coming year.

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I wish all of my readers a Gmar Chasima Tova.

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Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is Associate Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva Passaic Torah Institute, Passaic, NJ.