Raising the Dust: Yaakov's Teshuvah for Slight Sins

32Or we may say that “And Yaakov was left alone, and a man wrestled …” tells how the tzaddik, alone with his thoughts, raises even the dust of his sins. The complete tzaddik, who serves Hashem in truth, always gazes at the greatness of God, blessed be He. He secludes himself in his thought, to rise in it from level to level up to the highest heights. He also always sees his own lowliness and remembers the sins of his youth, as it is written, “and my sin is before me always.”¹ He keeps always before him, as a reminder, even sins that are not full sins but only like dust. Of these Chazal said, “Three things no person escapes on any day: … the dust of lashon hara …”² In his eyes they are as grave as the gravest. He regrets them and returns in complete teshuvah out of love for Hashem. His teshuvah rises up to the Throne of Glory, and everything becomes merits, as Chazal said that for one who does teshuvah out of love, deliberate sins become like merits.³

33This is “And Yaakov was left alone”: when Yaakov Avinu was secluded in his thought, entirely alone, then “a man wrestled (vaye'avek) with him.” Chazal expounded, “They raised dust (avak) up to the Throne of Glory.”⁴ That is, vaye'avek ish is the dust of sins that is with every man (ish). All of it was “with him,” before his eyes, as the complete tzaddik keeps even his dust-like sins before him. And he raised that dust up to the Throne of Glory, as Chazal said, “Great is teshuvah, for it reaches the Throne of Glory.”⁵ “Until the rising (alos) of the dawn”: until he had raised it all up before the Shechinah, Knesses Yisrael, the Assembly of Israel, which is called Ayeles HaShachar, “the hind of the dawn.”⁶