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Does attending Rosh Hashanah services actually affect whether you'll survive the year? The Rambam (רמב"ם)'s ruling that those with more sins than merits "die immediately" seems contradicted by the fact that wicked people often live long lives. The shiur resolves this by distinguishing between living as a divine gift and earning the right to live—Rosh Hashanah offers the opportunity to justify one's existence through merits, transforming life from charity into earned entitlement.
Rabbi Zweig opens with a fundamental question: Does attending Rosh Hashanah services actually make a statistical difference in whether one will live through the year? If not, what is the point of the entire yom hadin (day of judgment) experience? He notes the apparent disconnect between our stated belief that life and death are determined on Rosh Hashanah and the observable reality that wicked people often live long lives while righteous people sometimes die young. The shiur then analyzes a perplexing Rambam (רמב"ם) in Hilchos Teshuvah (Laws of Repentance, chapter 3). The Rambam states that if a person has more sins than good deeds, he dies immediately. The Raavad challenges this: we see wicked people living all around us, so how can the Rambam claim they die immediately? Rabbi Zweig notes that the Rambam himself brings a proof from Sodom and Amorah—when a city has more sins than merits, it is immediately destroyed. But this proof seems to contradict the Rambam's own statement, because the Torah (תורה) explicitly tells us that Avrohom Avinu argued that if there were ten righteous people in Sodom, the city would be saved. How can the Rambam use Sodom as a proof that wicked communities are "immediately destroyed" when the Torah itself says that ten righteous people would have saved it?
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