On Repentance

Table of Contents

• A conditional obligatory positive commandment versus an existential commandment
• The relationship between a positive commandment, a prohibition, and neglect of a positive commandment
• Existential positive commandments with a threshold of obligation
• An entirely voluntary existential commandment and the dispute over settling the Land of Israel
• Women and time-bound positive commandments, and the implications of “overrides a prohibition”
• Four or five types of positive commandments, and a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment
• Maimonides: “commandment” as law, and the rationale for counting procedures
• Repentance and confession: procedure, conditional obligation, and a linguistic contradiction in Maimonides
• The ninth principle, a general prohibition, and the conditions for counting: command and content
• The value of repentance as a process and not as a result
• Zeno, speed, and motion as an illustration of the dynamic nature of repentance

Summary

General overview

The text defines different kinds of positive commandments and distinguishes between a conditional obligatory commandment and an existential commandment, using examples like ritual fringes and Grace after Meals to show that when the relevant circumstances exist, an obligation is created, and failing to fulfill it counts as neglect of a positive commandment. It then presents a more complex model of the relationship between a positive commandment, neglect of a positive commandment, and a prohibition, and describes a common conception of existential positive commandments as commandments that contain a minimal threshold of obligation, beyond which everything is voluntary, alongside a dispute over whether a commandment can be wholly voluntary. It then analyzes Maimonides’ approach to repentance and confession, points to a tension between Sefer HaMitzvot and Mishneh Torah, and suggests that the absence of a commandment of repentance from the count stems from the lack of a verse commanding it, even though a practical obligation does exist. Finally, it argues that the value of repentance lies in the dynamic process of improvement and not only in the result, and reinforces this through a discussion of the penitent versus the completely righteous person and a philosophical parallel to Zeno’s arrow paradox.

A conditional obligatory positive commandment versus an existential commandment

The obligation to put ritual fringes on a garment is defined as a conditional obligatory positive commandment, because the obligation arises when one wears a four-cornered garment, and then failing to attach the fringes is neglect of a positive commandment, just like someone who ate to satisfaction and did not recite Grace after Meals. An obligatory positive commandment is defined as a commandment one must perform, such that fulfilling it is fulfillment of a positive commandment and failing to fulfill it is the transgression of neglecting a positive commandment. An existential commandment is defined as a commandment such that if you fulfill it, there is a commandment, and if you do not fulfill it, nothing happens; the distinction is presented as the difference between a situation of zero versus minus, and zero versus one. Neglect of a positive commandment is defined as a transgression that is not a prohibition, and the text emphasizes that comparing a positive commandment to a prohibition is not the same as comparing a positive commandment to neglect of a positive commandment.

The relationship between a positive commandment, a prohibition, and neglect of a positive commandment

When there is both a positive commandment and a prohibition in the same area, as with leavened food, where “you shall remove leaven” appears alongside “it shall not be eaten,” “it shall not be seen,” and “it shall not be found,” one can violate both the prohibitions and the positive commandment. The example of the Sabbath is presented as a case in which there is a positive commandment of “you shall rest” alongside the prohibition “you shall not do any labor,” and the text emphasizes that even without the prohibition, there would still remain an element of transgression through neglect of a positive commandment. This distinction is presented as a model in which “the map is more complicated” once prohibitions are introduced, and neglect of a positive commandment acquires a different status from punishment or from a simple ranking of “minus one.”

Existential positive commandments with a threshold of obligation

“Classical” existential positive commandments are presented as commandments that contain an existential threshold, where up to a certain level the obligation is complete, and beyond that fulfillment is voluntary. Charity is brought as an example according to Maimonides, with a threshold of “a third of a shekel per year”; below that there is an obligation, while above that giving is a commandment, but not giving is nothing. The tithing of money is presented as a question of whether it is a custom or a rabbinic law, and it is said that it is not simply the standard commandment of charity, with mention of the ordinance of Usha, “one who spends should not spend more than a fifth,” and the distinction that exceeding a fifth is not neglect of the positive commandment of charity but belongs to a different category. Torah study is brought as another example, where some views set a minimal obligation such as “a chapter in the morning and a chapter in the evening,” and everything beyond that is existential, at least on the Torah level.

An entirely voluntary existential commandment and the dispute over settling the Land of Israel

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein is presented as innovating that the commandment of settling the Land of Israel is an existential commandment in which “if you lived there, you fulfilled a commandment, and if not, then nothing happened” — in other words, a commandment that is entirely voluntary, with no minimal threshold. Rabbi Avraham Shapira is cited as sharply disagreeing and saying, “There are no such commandments in the Torah,” and that there is no such thing as a commandment that is wholly voluntary, only commandments that contain a threshold of obligation and above that are optional. The text raises an additional difficulty concerning the counting of the commandments and argues that an existential commandment should also be counted, and therefore defining it as existential does not by itself solve the question of why Maimonides does not count settling the Land of Israel.

Women and time-bound positive commandments, and the implications of “overrides a prohibition”

The text presents an opinion that wants to see women’s fulfillment of time-bound positive commandments as an existential commandment, and even mentions the dispute between the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh over whether they may recite a blessing. The author tends to think this is not a formal existential commandment but rather “something of value,” because women are exempt, and therefore the commandment does not really “belong there,” even though there is positive gain in doing it. The Raavad is cited as arguing that an existential positive commandment overrides a prohibition, with the example of women performing semikhah on a Jewish holiday, and the text suggests that from here one can understand that there is nevertheless a status of positive commandment here and not merely a general positive value.

Four or five types of positive commandments, and a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment

The text proposes a division into “four or five” kinds of positive commandments, including an obligatory positive commandment and an existential positive commandment. It presents a third type in which “if I fulfilled it, nothing happened, but if I neglected it, I have neglected a positive commandment,” and identifies this with “a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment,” like the exposition “for eating and not for commerce” regarding Sabbatical-year produce, where commerce is considered a transgression without an explicit prohibition, but rather as neglect of a positive commandment. It also discusses eating outside the sukkah and presents a dispute among later authorities over whether this is an obligatory positive commandment or merely “a positive-commandment prohibition,” while criticizing the conception according to which eating in the sukkah is not fulfillment of a commandment but only avoidance of neglecting a positive commandment. In addition, it presents a fourth type of “commandments that cannot be either fulfilled or neglected,” and cites Maimonides in positive commandments 95 and 96 as procedural commandments such as annulling vows and corpse impurity, in which there is no commandment to do them and no prohibition against not doing them, but rather a halakhic definition of how halakhic reality operates.

Maimonides: “commandment” as law, and the rationale for counting procedures

The text argues that in Maimonides’ jargon, “commandment” functions as the equivalent of “law,” and therefore Sefer HaMitzvot is a “book of laws” that also includes defining or procedural clauses. It explains that Maimonides counts only things that have a verse in the Torah, and therefore halakhic definitions that do not have a verse, such as “a minor,” are not counted. From this emerges a pattern of procedural commandments that enter the count when they are anchored in a verse, even if they do not obligate action or prohibit omission.

Repentance and confession: procedure, conditional obligation, and a linguistic contradiction in Maimonides

Maimonides’ commandment of confession is presented through the wording “that when the sinner repents of his sin, he should confess,” and the text asks whether this is a conditional obligation or a procedure explaining how one repents. It presents an argument according to which, if confession is a conditional obligation, then someone who repented but did not confess ends up “in a worse state than someone who did not repent at all,” and therefore the understanding that seems preferable is that confession is part of the procedural definition of repentance. Later, a contradiction is brought between Sefer HaMitzvot and the opening of the laws of repentance in Mishneh Torah, where Maimonides writes, “There is one positive commandment, and it is that the sinner should repent of his sin and confess,” which sounds like two obligations within one commandment. The Minchat Chinukh is cited as pointing out the contradiction, and the text suggests an explanation according to which the counting of the commandments depends on the existence of an explicit command in the Torah, whereas Mishneh Torah also counts obligations that are not counted as Torah commandments in the formal tally.

The ninth principle, a general prohibition, and the conditions for counting: command and content

The text brings Maimonides’ ninth principle, where on the one hand a commandment that is repeated many times is counted only once because “the content is one,” while on the other hand “a general prohibition” is counted once even though it includes several contents learned from one verse, such as “you shall not eat over the blood.” It notes Yerucham Perla’s question about the contradiction between “we go by the contents” and “we go by the commands,” and proposes a solution according to which, for a commandment to be counted, there must be both a command in the Torah and a unique content. From here it is argued that, according to Maimonides, there is no commandment of repentance in the count because there is no command verse, and Maimonides interprets “and you shall return unto the Lord your God” as a promise about the future and not as a command, whereas confession is based on the verse “and they shall confess their sin that they committed.”

The value of repentance as a process and not as a result

The text states that in the matter of repentance there is something novel beyond merely stopping the sin, because regret, resolution for the future, and confession do not follow automatically from the fact that the act was a sin. It argues that the obligation in repentance is focused on the process itself and not only on the condition of “being righteous,” and brings the dispute of the Sages over whether a penitent is superior to a completely righteous person as proof that the process of repentance has intrinsic value, because otherwise a penitent could be, at most, equal to a completely righteous person. It quotes Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh, part two, that “one of the human perfections is self-perfection,” and presents the idea that perfection lies in the very act of improvement itself. It adds a discussion of “I will sin and repent” as a possible initial assumption of wanting to achieve the perfection of repentance, but concludes that one must not sin intentionally in order to gain that process.

Zeno, speed, and motion as an illustration of the dynamic nature of repentance

The text uses Zeno’s paradox of “the flying arrow” in order to clarify the difference between a static state and a dynamic process, and argues that the mistake is to replace “being located at a point” with “standing still at a point.” It distinguishes between speed as a potential and an existing property “at a point,” and change of place as a result that is visible only over a stretch of time, and criticizes solutions that rely on infinity or on the uncertainty principle as merely shifting the difficulty to another phenomenon that is itself not understood. On that basis, it presents repentance as a dynamic concept in which the main thing is “to improve” and not “to be improved,” and the improvement seen over time is an indication of the process and not its essence. It concludes by saying that Jewish law tends to command static states, whereas repentance is a command or obligation concerning motion and process, and blesses everyone with: “May we all be sealed for a good final judgment.”

No. So what is it? It’s a conditional positive commandment. Meaning, the obligation to attach tzitzit is conditional on certain circumstances being present—namely, that I’m wearing a four-cornered garment. But once I’m wearing that garment, then of course it’s a positive obligation, so I have to put on the tzitzit, and if I didn’t put on the tzitzit, then that’s a neglect of a positive commandment, like Grace after Meals. Grace after Meals too—someone who didn’t eat to the point of satiation doesn’t have to recite Grace after Meals. So what does that mean—that Grace after Meals is a merely existential commandment? No. It’s a conditional positive commandment. It’s conditional on the relevant circumstances being present, meaning that you ate to satiety, but if you ate and didn’t recite the blessing, then you neglected the positive commandment of Grace after Meals. Positive, meaning something you have to do? Yes. Maybe I should have said this earlier: a positive commandment is a commandment that one is obligated to perform, meaning that if you fulfill it, then you have fulfilled a positive commandment, and if you don’t fulfill it, then you have neglected a positive commandment—that’s an offense. Okay? That’s the meaning of “you have to fulfill it.” By contrast, what people usually define as an existential commandment is a commandment where, if you fulfill it, then you have fulfilled a positive commandment, but if you don’t fulfill it, nothing happened. It’s not a commandment you can neglect; rather, if you fulfill it, you gain something. What’s the difference between zero and minus one, versus zero and one? Yes, okay. There is—although here you also have to bring in prohibitions, so the map gets a bit more complicated. Neglecting a positive commandment and violating a prohibition are not the same thing. The question is what counts as minus one. But Rabbi, you said that neglecting a positive commandment is an offense. Yes, but it’s an offense that is not a prohibitory offense. Usually, when you compare one and minus one, that means positive commandment versus prohibition. Positive commandment versus neglect of a positive commandment is not zero, but it’s also not minus one; it’s some other sort of thing, but we won’t get into that here. No. When you have both a positive commandment and a prohibition—for example with leavened food—suppose you violate it: you have “remove it,” and “it shall not be eaten,” “it shall not be seen,” “it shall not be found.” So you violate both the prohibitions and the positive commandment, so now it becomes minus two. You’re right. No, no—but in the definition, not in the sense of how much I accumulate, but whether this is called… I’ll give you an example. There is a positive commandment to keep the Sabbath, and there is a prohibition against desecrating the Sabbath, okay? “Do not do any labor” is a prohibition against doing labor on the Sabbath, and Sabbath observance—yes, “you shall rest”—is a positive commandment. So what does that mean? That resting on the Sabbath is a positive commandment, let’s call that one in this analogy, and not resting—if there were no prohibition—then what would not resting be? Not fulfilling the positive commandment? That would be like zero. So to speak—soon I’ll say it’s not exactly that. But it’s not fulfilling the positive commandment. When there’s a prohibition on doing labor on the Sabbath, that’s minus one. The big problem is that it’s not zero, because if I didn’t rest on the Sabbath, then even if there were no prohibition, there would still be an offense here—it’s just not a prohibitory offense, but an offense of neglecting a positive commandment. That’s why I said it’s minus one-half. Never mind, it’s a somewhat more complicated model. I once wrote a book about that logic. So… anyway, the picture gets more complex when you take prohibitions into account. So let’s get back to our topic. Ricky asked: what is an existential positive commandment? Here too there are several possibilities. The classic existential positive commandments are basically commandments that have an existential threshold. Meaning, there is really a full obligation to fulfill them, a genuine positive commandment, but only up to a certain mark; beyond that point it’s voluntary. For example, the commandment of charity: “A person should give no less than a third of a shekel per year,” as Maimonides writes. And that means that up to a third of a shekel, you are obligated to give—that’s a positive obligation. If you didn’t give, you neglected the positive commandment of charity. But beyond a third of a shekel per year, if you gave, then you have a commandment; but if you didn’t give, nothing happened. Okay? That’s voluntary. And what about tithing money? Tithing money is a question—what exactly is the status of tithing money? Is it only a custom, or some rabbinic law, or what exactly is it? But it’s not… in the straightforward sense it’s not the regular commandment of charity. The Torah-level commandment of charity, strictly speaking, is a third of a shekel per year. There are those who take the tithe only in the sense of—like the ordinance of Usha: “one who spends should not spend more than a fifth.” So there are those who say that it means specifically a tenth—that is, don’t give less than a tenth and don’t give more than a fifth—but all that has nothing to do with the commandment of charity itself. Someone who spends more than a fifth has not neglected the positive commandment of charity; that is another boundary, that you shouldn’t spend too much money, the ordinance of Usha or… So that is the accepted sense of an existential positive commandment: it has a certain threshold, from which point onward it becomes an existential positive commandment, but up to that point it’s obligatory. Another example: Torah study. According to some views, reciting Shema morning and evening is the positive obligation—or a chapter in the morning and a chapter in the evening—and anything beyond that is an existential commandment. If you studied, then you have a commandment; if you didn’t study, nothing happened, at least at the Torah level. There are additional obligations, but not the Torah-level obligation of the commandment of Torah study. So those are existential commandments in the usual sense. There are existential commandments—that’s the threshold model. Then there is what might be a truly existential commandment. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein suggests the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. That’s a major novelty from Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. He wants to claim that the commandment of settling the Land of Israel is an existential commandment. Here you are: if you lived in the Land of Israel, you fulfilled a commandment; if not, then nothing happened. Now that’s a novelty because here there is no minimum threshold up to which it is obligatory and beyond which it is voluntary. Here the entire commandment is voluntary. And on that, Rabbi Avraham Shapira once wrote that he would not accept it under any circumstances. He said there are no such commandments in the Torah. There is no such thing as a commandment that is entirely voluntary. There are commandments that have a certain threshold, but there is some point up to which you are obligated, and beyond that, if you did it, then you have a commandment, and if you didn’t, then nothing happened. But a commandment that is entirely voluntary—there is no such thing. That’s what Rabbi Avraham Shapira says. So there is a dispute whether such a commandment exists. So that’s existential commandments. But what is Rabbi Feinstein’s reasoning? How does he justify it? I don’t even remember. There’s something there—I think maybe it’s connected to Nachmanides’ glosses on Maimonides, as though he’s explaining Maimonides’ position. Could be, I don’t remember. Are existential commandments also counted? The fact that Maimonides didn’t count it—that doesn’t explain why Maimonides doesn’t count the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. If it’s an existential commandment, so what? An existential commandment also has to be counted. It’s a commandment. How do I know that if I do it, then I have a commandment? The Torah has to tell me that there is such a commandment—an existential commandment. There are those who want to say that time-bound positive commandments that women fulfill, for example, are existential commandments. They’re not obligated, but if they do them, then they have a commandment. According to some views they can even recite a blessing over it, as the Rema and the Shulchan Arukh disagree on that issue—that they can even recite a blessing. So there too there are those who want to claim that this is an existential commandment. My inclination is to think that this is not correct. I think it’s not an existential commandment; it’s a positive matter, a worthwhile thing. It’s not an existential commandment, because an existential commandment is a commandment in every sense; it’s part of the formal halakhic system. It’s just that its definition is that it is existential. Women are exempt from this commandment, so that commandment simply does not apply there. If they did it, fine—then they gained something, something positive—but I don’t think it’s correct to define that as an existential commandment. I don’t know, it’s a bit hard to define exactly what the difference is between those two things, but for example the Raavad claims that an existential positive commandment overrides a prohibition. What is his example there? Laying hands on a sacrifice on a Jewish holiday. Women are exempt from laying hands on a sacrifice on a Jewish holiday, and there he wants to claim that an existential positive commandment also overrides a prohibition. That’s the Raavad at the beginning of the Sifra, in his commentary at the beginning of the Sifra. So that may perhaps be the significance of the fact that we are indeed dealing here with a positive commandment. The fact that it’s defined as existential is fine, but from a halakhic standpoint it is defined as a positive commandment. A merely positive matter, some generally good thing, presumably would not override a prohibition. Okay? So that may be a practical implication. Good. That’s regarding the existential positive commandment. Just as an aside—I think I once spoke about this—I think there are actually four or five kinds of positive commandments. A positive obligatory commandment is one where, if I did it, then I fulfilled a commandment, and if I didn’t do it, then I neglected a positive commandment. An existential positive commandment is one where, if I fulfilled it, then I have a commandment; if I neglected it, nothing happened. Now there are positive commandments where, if I fulfilled them, nothing happened, but if I neglected them, then I have neglected a positive commandment. That’s the third kind. What is that—what is it? A positive commandment where, if I fulfilled it, nothing happened, but if I neglected it, then I have neglected a positive commandment. Maybe “you shall rest” on the Sabbath day? No, that’s an obligatory commandment. “You may not ignore”? “You may not ignore” is a prohibition. A prohibition inferred from a positive commandment. That’s what it’s called. The Talmud says as a matter of Jewish law that a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment is a positive commandment, not a prohibition. For example, regarding produce of the Sabbatical year, it says, “and the produce of the land shall be for you to eat.” And the Sages interpret: “to eat,” and not for commerce. If I trade in Sabbatical produce, then I have violated a prohibition. What prohibition? There is no prohibition; it’s a positive commandment: “and the produce of the land shall be for you to eat.” There is no “do not do such-and-such” here; rather, the wording is positive, a positive commandment. So if I traded in the produce, then I neglected the positive commandment of… aside from Maimonides’ position—and even there I’m not sure the people who interpret Maimonides that way are right—that he wants to claim there is an actual positive commandment to eat produce with the sanctity of the Sabbatical year. But the accepted view is—and perhaps Maimonides too means this—that there is no commandment to eat; rather, there is a neglect of a positive commandment if you did something else instead of eating, like commerce or degrading it or things like that. Eating in the sukkah, not on the first night? Eating outside the sukkah. Eating outside the sukkah on the first night? Right, that’s a positive prohibition, yes. It’s a positive prohibition. Although there, not entirely—well, it depends; there is a dispute among the later authorities. There are later authorities who take it as truly an existential commandment and not an obligatory one. If you ate, then you have a commandment; you’re just not obligated. On the first night you are obligated to eat an olive’s bulk of bread in the sukkah. And there are those who want to claim that it is only a positive prohibition; the Sefer HaChinukh, for example, wants to say it is only a positive prohibition. Meaning that if you ate outside the sukkah, then you neglected the positive commandment of “you shall dwell in sukkot,” and if you eat inside the sukkah, then you have not fulfilled a commandment. Then that really would be correct, and that’s why it seems to me that this approach is not correct. Because then it’s simply a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment. And with positive commandments we don’t find such a definition. If you ate outside the sukkah, didn’t you violate a prohibition? No, there is no prohibition against eating outside the sukkah. There is a positive commandment to eat in the sukkah. So if you ate outside the sukkah, then you neglected the positive commandment, but you didn’t violate a prohibition, because there is no prohibition of “you shall not dwell outside sukkot.” So we said there is a commandment that can be fulfilled and neglected—that’s an obligatory positive commandment. There is a commandment that can be fulfilled but not neglected—that’s an existential positive commandment. There is a commandment that can be neglected but not fulfilled—that’s a prohibition inferred from a positive commandment. And of course there is also a commandment that can neither be fulfilled nor neglected. Hard to believe, but true. Maimonides, in positive commandments 95 and 96—in positive commandment 95, Maimonides writes that this is the commandment of annulment of vows. Maimonides explains there that a husband can annul his wife’s vows on the day he hears them—vows involving affliction, it doesn’t matter, certain vows, on the day he hears them he can annul them. And Maimonides says: understand when you hear this matter from me, that the intention is not that there is a commandment upon the husband to annul, nor is there a prohibition upon him if he does not annul. He may annul, and he may choose not to annul. Meaning, this is not a commandment that can be fulfilled, and it is not a commandment that can be neglected. It commands me nothing, and it forbids me nothing. So why are you putting it at all into the category of commandment? Ah! So what is it then? First of all, before asking why it is included, what does it even mean? It’s a procedure. It establishes a rule for other commandments. It’s a procedure that says: if you want to annul vows, this is how you do it. Or that vows can be annulled. A halakhic definition. Is a bill of divorce like that too? It could be that a bill of divorce is like that too. I once spoke about how in the Sefer HaChinukh it says that someone who divorced his wife not according to the halakhic rules neglected this positive commandment, and his punishment is severe—the important positive commandment of divorcing one’s wife with a bill of divorce. So from the Sefer HaChinukh it appears that it is really a commandment, meaning that you can neglect this positive commandment. Maybe in terms of vows, no? Maimonides says no. He says explicitly no. I mean explicitly no—I meant the same principle. If the husband annuls for her in a way that is not effective as an annulment. It could be, although I don’t know. Then she remains obligated by the vow, that’s all. By the same principle, a bill of divorce should work that way too. Well, in Maimonides, in the straightforward reading, it doesn’t say such a thing. The Sefer HaChinukh says it about divorce, and even that is a novelty. Maimonides does not say such a thing. In the straightforward sense, this is how he explains it: he explains that it doesn’t mean anything. If it did, he would have had to say so. Because then it would have a regular halakhic consequence, and then there’s no problem why it’s counted. But Maimonides is telling us here: no, there is another type of commandment—commandments that obligate you to do nothing and forbid you from doing nothing. By the way, one commandment later—commandments 95 and 96—positive commandment 96 is the same with impurity from a corpse, or other impurities, and in fact it’s true for all impurities. Maimonides says there is no prohibition against becoming impure, and no commandment to become impure; it’s a definition. If you touched a corpse, you are impure. If you didn’t touch a corpse, you are not impure. So why count it as a commandment? Now the question why count it as a commandment is what you asked earlier. It seems to me that “commandment,” in Maimonides’ jargon, is the translation into halakhic language of the word “law.” The Book of Commandments is the book of laws. Now in a book of laws, there are laws that are definitional laws, explanatory laws. For example: a minor for this purpose is anyone who has reached such-and-such age; someone who has not reached that age is this-and-this. And now we say what the status of a minor is, and what… but there is some law that defines the terms the lawbook deals with. And that too is a section in the lawbook, a definitional section. Okay? In Jewish law too there are definitional sections or procedural sections, and they are called commandments because the term “commandment” is only a translation of the term “law.” It doesn’t really command me to do something. Instead of calling it the book of laws, we call it the Book of Commandments. But within a book of laws, there are also definitional laws. What? But then he should also count other procedures that he apparently doesn’t count there, no? Why? Who says? What procedure? Because if there is a procedure regarding a minor, then he should count it too, no? Not a procedure. A minor is a definition, something definitional. Fine—but there is no verse in the Torah that establishes that, so he doesn’t count it. Things like that don’t enter the count of the commandments—anything that has no verse. So we said that’s the fourth type, right? Commandments that can neither be fulfilled nor neglected—procedural commandments. And then there are conditional obligatory commandments. Okay? That is a kind of obligatory commandment: there are commandments which, given certain circumstances, you are obligated to do. But that’s not another separate kind; you could call it part of the obligatory commandments. Let’s return to our topic. So—the commandment to repent, the commandment of confession in Maimonides: “When the sinner returns from his sin, he should confess,” commandment 73. How would you define that? Seemingly, a procedure. What is the commandment of repentance and what is the commandment of confession? Seemingly it’s a conditional obligation—meaning, if you repented, then confess. And to repent itself? That is not a commandment, apparently. Not the commandment, right? Just as divorcing one’s wife is not a commandment—if you divorce, then do it this way. Or annuling vows is not a commandment; rather, if you annul, then annul this way and not otherwise. So too repentance, according to that formulation, is not a commandment to repent. Rather, if you repent, then you have to do it in this way, with verbal confession and all the rest. But it does not seem that confession itself is a commandment either. Confession itself is part of the procedure. You’re saying that repentance is not a commandment, but rather a process, and they tell you to carry out that process according to this rule, but not as a commandment. Here I think Ezra is right and not Arik, and I’ll tell you why. The Minchat Chinukh explicitly notes this, if I remember correctly. Think about someone who repented but did not confess, okay? He repented but did not confess. If Arik is right, then he neglected the positive commandment of confession, because once the circumstances are present—that he is repenting—he is obligated to confess, right? And the fact that he didn’t do so is like someone wearing a four-cornered garment and not putting tzitzit on it. But then it comes out that someone who repented and did not confess is in a worse state than someone who did not repent at all—which is a bit strange. Therefore it seems to me that Ezra’s formulation is more correct: the intention is that this is the procedural definition of how one repents. If someone wants to repent, this is how it is done. If you didn’t do it this way, then your repentance is not good, or not complete in some… it has value, but it’s not… not the full repentance. Okay? So therefore it seems more correct to read this as a procedure for confession. But it doesn’t matter; regarding repentance itself, it’s clear there is no commandment at all. Repentance. Confession—that’s the question we’re discussing here. Given that you are repenting, you need to confess. So is confession existential? It belongs with existential ones, not with obligatory ones. It’s not even existential; it’s procedural. Procedural. Yes. Maybe existential—although I don’t think so. It sounds more plausible in the definition… No, given the condition, it is not existential. I don’t think so, I don’t think so. Meaning, you could define it as a conditional existential commandment. There is almost no such thing as a conditional existential commandment. We knew of a conditional obligatory commandment, and we knew of an existential one. You’re saying this is a conditional existential one. I think the simpler definition is that it’s a procedure. That’s how one repents. If you didn’t do it this way, then you didn’t repent—or not fully repent. It also fits Maimonides’ language there, if I remember correctly, because if it’s a procedure, after all there are components—there is a full procedure: abandoning the sin, confession, accepting for the future, and when such an act comes to his hand… It’s not a commandment; the Torah commandment is only confession. The other three things are not Torah commandments. But it’s the procedure. Fine—but it’s not from the Torah. No, but you defined confession as part of the procedure. Not part of it—it is the procedure, not part of the procedure. That and nothing else. At the Torah level that’s it. Afterward one can discuss further. Although it could be that you can also include it inside confession, because what is confession? Confession is giving verbal expression to regret and acceptance for the future. You could say that regret and acceptance for the future are included in the commandment of confession. And the commandment of confession means to articulate regret and acceptance for the future verbally. And that’s not even… But that too belongs to the procedure. Yes. And what about the other commandments? Say with annuling vows, if he didn’t do it according to the procedure? Nothing happened—the vow was not annulled. No, but he did do something; if he did it that way, did he perform a procedure? He didn’t do it properly. If he did it properly—if he did it properly, then there is no commandment. The vow was annulled. He simply achieved the result; the vow was annulled. So why is the whole business called a commandment? I said: because it’s a law. It’s only a translation of the word “law.” There is no commandment here in the sense that if you do it, then a commandment exists. So when I return to these four definitions, these four kinds of positive commandments, and I ask myself: so what is the commandment to repent and confess? To repent is not a commandment at all, and to confess is apparently the procedural definition of how one repents. Okay. So that’s one side. On the other hand—well, before getting to the other side: why indeed is there no commandment to repent according to Maimonides? The Meshekh Chokhmah suggests that in fact the commandment of repentance is unnecessary. Why? Because what is the commandment of repentance? Someone who sinned needs to abandon the sin. Not only abandon the sin, but regret the sin. Right, that’s already the next stage—one second. He says: so in essence, the fact that it is a sin is enough to tell me that I need to abandon the sin and not sin anymore from here on. Why do I need another commandment called the commandment of repentance? The very fact that it’s defined as a sin already tells me that I’m forbidden to do it, that I need to leave it and not do it in the future. Why do I need another commandment here, the commandment of repentance? Therefore he says that according to Maimonides it is not a commandment. That can’t be the correct explanation for several reasons, but first of all, on the technical level, after all Maimonides has Laws of Repentance. By his definition, not only is this not counted in the count of commandments—there is no such thing as repentance. There is just: one must keep the Jewish law. That’s all. So what are the Laws of Repentance? If there are Laws of Repentance, that means there is such a thing as repentance. Repentance is not just, okay, keep the commandments. The way he presents it, that’s how it sounds. There is no such thing as repentance; one just needs to keep the commandments, that’s all. And if you didn’t keep them, then stop and start keeping them. So in effect there would be no such thing as repentance at all. It’s not just a question of the count of commandments, whether to count it as a commandment or not, but rather there is no such thing at all. Therefore this is not plausible. Beyond that, as we saw earlier, there are several stages in repentance. Already from Rabbi Saadia Gaon they divide it into four stages—the ones mentioned earlier: abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession. So if we try to analyze these four stages of repentance, abandoning the sin really is unnecessary. Of course. Abandoning the sin just means: don’t do the sin. From the very definition that it is a sin, it is clear that one should not do it. Here we do not need the commandment of repentance in order to tell me that I need to leave the sin. But regret, for example? Regretting that I sinned—that does not follow from the fact that it is a sin. I need not do it. Once I did it, I’m stuck. Fine. Where does it say that I have to regret it? That is the novelty of the commandment of repentance. The fact that one must repent means it is not enough merely not to commit the sins; one must regret the sins one did commit. The same is true of acceptance for the future—that I accept upon myself not to return to this sin. Okay. What does that mean? Here too, if there were no commandment of repentance and only the halakhic prohibition, I would not have had to accept upon myself not to sin in the future. I would simply have had not to sin, that’s all. But this act of accepting for the future not to sin—that is something that is part of repentance. It does not follow from the fact that it is a sin. Okay? And verbal confession of words, of course—all these things are novel elements of the whole matter of repentance, something beyond the mere fact that it is forbidden because these are sins. The fact that there is a commandment of repentance is what obligates me to do these things. So there is something genuinely new in repentance; it is not superfluous. So the Meshekh Chokhmah is explaining what the novelty is in the commandment of repentance. Is that what the Meshekh Chokhmah explains—the novelty? No. The Meshekh Chokhmah wants to explain Maimonides, why there is no commandment of repentance; he claims it’s because there is no novelty. I’m saying it’s very difficult to say that. But in practice, on the face of it, Maimonides doesn’t have such a commandment. True—but that’s not the explanation. So the question remains: why indeed is there no commandment to repent in Maimonides? That’s one question. A second question: at the beginning of the section of laws, the Laws of Repentance in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, the wording there is a bit different. There it says: one positive commandment. He always counts the commandments at the beginning of every section of laws. And at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance he writes: one positive commandment, namely, that the sinner should return from his sin and confess. Not “when he returns, he should confess,” as in the Book of Commandments, but “that he should return and confess.” So he says there is a commandment to repent and confess—one positive commandment with two details. There are many such cases. The four species too are one positive commandment with four details: lulav, etrog, myrtle, and willow. Okay? There are commandments made up of several details, so this is one positive commandment but it contains two details: to repent and to confess. That implies there is an obligation to repent and an obligation to confess—two obligations. That is unlike his formulation in the Book of Commandments, where it seems that “when he repents, he should confess.” There is no obligation to repent; if you repent, then confess. Here it says “he should repent and confess”—two obligations. So the Minchat Chinukh asks: there is a contradiction in Maimonides’ wording. Is there or is there not a commandment to repent? I do not know of a good answer to that contradiction except what I’m about to tell you now. It seems to me that this has to be the explanation. Maimonides writes in several places that—or almost writes explicitly—that if there is no command in the Torah, then the commandment is not counted in the count of commandments. For example, in Root Principle Nine, Maimonides writes on the one hand: if a commandment appears several times in the Torah, it is counted once. For example, if there are twelve places commanding Sabbath observance, then in the count of commandments there appears one positive commandment of Sabbath observance and not twelve commandments, even though the Torah commands it twelve times. Why? Because the content is one. The fact that it is repeated many times—so what? What determines the count is the content. In the second part of Root Principle Nine, Maimonides writes that a general prohibition—and we spoke about this not long ago. When? Ten years ago? How long ago did I talk about this? Probably in another class; I don’t remember exactly. With a general prohibition, it is also counted as one commandment. So what is a general prohibition? For example: “Do not eat over the blood.” From “Do not eat over the blood” several different prohibitions are learned from one verse. For example: if a court decrees a death sentence on someone, it is forbidden for them to eat that day—“Do not eat over the blood”; they must fast, the court must fast. Or it is a warning to the rebellious son—“Do not eat over the blood.” Or eating before prayer—which according to Maimonides apparently is a Torah prohibition. Maimonides there is very strange; I haven’t seen anyone comment on this, but it’s really odd. It seems from him that it is a Torah prohibition learned from “Do not eat over the blood”: when you seek mercy for your blood, don’t eat first. In any case, several prohibitions are learned from this verse. So Maimonides says in the second part of Root Principle Nine that we count only one prohibition in the count of commandments. And Yerucham Perla, in his introduction to Rav Saadia Gaon’s Book of Commandments, says that Maimonides is contradicting himself. Between the first part of Root Principle Nine and the second part there is a contradiction. In the first part Maimonides tells us that we do not go by the number of commands, but by the content. If there is one content repeated twelve times, we count it once. Why? Because what matters is not the number of commands but the content. What happens in the second part of Root Principle Nine? There, several contents come out of one verse, like “Do not eat over the blood,” a kind of general prohibition, and yet he counts one commandment. That means he goes by the number of commands, not by the content. So make up your mind: do we go by the content or by the commands? Okay? That’s his question. What do you say? Whenever they derive all sorts of things from one verse, then it should be counted once. Derashot in general, according to Maimonides, aren’t counted anyway, so that’s another issue. What? According to others they are counted. Fine. So if they accept this principle, then they counted only—well, derivation is derivation, but that still doesn’t mean it is counted in the count of commandments. Maimonides, after all, accepts Rabbi Akiva’s derivations; he doesn’t disagree with Rabbi Akiva. He just doesn’t count them in the count of commandments. What do you say? So there is a contradiction. Is the difficulty even clear to you? Maimonides means to say that in order for a commandment to be counted, it needs a command and it needs unique content—both things are necessary. If there is unique content but no command, or if there is a command but no unique content, then it is not counted. Meaning that both conditions are necessary for it to be counted. Okay? But what do we see from here? That only something that has a command in the Torah and unique content of its own enters the count of commandments. The Or Sameach—the Meshekh Chokhmah—tried to explain that the commandment of repentance does not enter the count of commandments because it has no unique content, because it simply overlaps with the fact that it is a sin; it adds nothing beyond that. So I said: that’s not true. It does add something. It adds the procedure of repentance, not merely refraining from the sin—that is not called repentance. Rather, the procedure for carrying out repentance is the fulfillment of repentance. Now I want to say the second thing: Maimonides does not count it as a commandment because… there is no verse commanding repentance. Therefore he does not count it. “And you shall return to the Lord your God and obey His voice” in the portion of Nitzavim, the section we read last week—“and you shall return to the Lord your God,” right? There is an entire passage about repentance. “And it shall be, when all these things come upon you and overtake you… and you shall return to the Lord your God.” Nachmanides writes on this that here the Torah commanded repentance. There are those who explain that later on, too—“for this commandment is not hidden from you nor far away”—some explain that that is the commandment of repentance, a continuation of the same passage. There are disputes among the commentators there. But Maimonides in chapter 7 of the Laws of Repentance writes: “The Torah has already promised that Israel will in the end repent, as it says, ‘And it shall be, when all these things come upon you and overtake you… and you shall return to the Lord your God.’” Meaning that Maimonides explains this verse as a promise, not a command—a promise that in the future Israel will repent. So we see that when he read that verse, he did not see it as a command. He did not understand it as a command to repent. Meaning that according to Maimonides there is no verse commanding repentance; therefore Maimonides does not count a commandment to repent. And where is the verse for confession according to Maimonides? “And they shall confess their sin that they have committed”—there is an explicit verse. But that too, apparently, is stated in a certain context, no? A guilt offering, or something like that, if I remember correctly. Apparently one could say that it applies only to things that require a guilt offering—offerings in general, not specifically a guilt offering, also a sin offering. Okay, and from there comes the commandment of confession. And what about the other commandments? I don’t know; there is room to discuss it. I don’t remember at the moment exactly how he extends confession to all sins. I’m not sure. I think he does, but at least that’s how it seems to me. But it doesn’t matter—they derive the general idea from what is written in the verse, but there is still a verse. So here we can understand why there is no commandment to repent, why it is not counted in Maimonides’ count of commandments. Why in the Mishneh Torah does it say that one must also repent and confess? There it does say so. Because the Mishneh Torah does not contain only Torah commandments. The Mishneh Torah contains everything one must do. Since one must repent—obviously one must. There is no verse commanding it, so it cannot be counted in the count of commandments. But is there an obligation to repent? Of course. So in the Mishneh Torah, which is a halakhic work, there he writes everything one must do. For example, do rabbinic commandments appear in the count of commandments? No. But in the Mishneh Torah of course they do, right? Commandments derived from derashot do not appear in the count of commandments—this is Maimonides’ second root principle, that something learned from derivation is, for him, of rabbinic status and does not appear in the count of commandments. But in the Mishneh Torah, of course it appears; the Mishneh Torah contains everything one must do. Therefore, in the Book of Commandments there is no commandment to repent, but in the Mishneh Torah, where he counts everything one must do, one must repent and confess, because one really must repent. There is no Torah commandment, but one must repent. Wait—why can’t we view confession as a commandment, not just as a procedure? I mean, maybe I have some analogy—someone who doesn’t exercise, there is “exercise,” and there is a procedure for how to exercise. And if you don’t exercise according to the procedure, then in some sense you’re worse off than someone who doesn’t know. If you exercise in a suboptimal way, it’s still better than not exercising at all, but maybe if you do it wrong it could harm you. Exactly. Yes. The question—I agree it’s not a perfect analogy—but there is still some point: if someone confesses, if the Torah said there is such a procedure, then that’s full repentance. Not just full repentance; it’s because it really helps, not only because it is some procedural thing. But does repenting without confession actually harm? Why? What’s the idea? You did incomplete repentance. I’m not saying it harms, fine, but it’s better than not repenting at all. It doesn’t sound right. Formally you can define it that way, but psychologically it doesn’t sound—it doesn’t make sense to me. No, on the other side I agree that it doesn’t completely make sense, but in this direction of calling confession procedural—that does make sense. It helps, and it accomplishes what needs to be accomplished. The problem is: if you didn’t confess, then are you not worse than someone who didn’t repent at all? That doesn’t sound plausible. Okay, fine, but it still doesn’t come out entirely. So that means there is no obligation to confess, even if you are repenting—that’s the claim. Maybe you could say, as someone here suggested earlier, that the commandment of confession is a conditional existential commandment. Okay, maybe. Meaning, assuming you are repenting, then if you did it with confession, you gained a commandment. If not, then you’re not worse off, but you didn’t gain the commandment. Maybe. That would be an interesting novelty in itself—that there is such a thing as a conditional existential commandment. Because I know of conditional obligatory commandments, but a conditional existential commandment—that needs thought. But if there is a commandment of repentance, then basically everyone who has committed some transgression—any transgression at all—now has another commandment that he is performing, namely repentance for that transgression. In effect, from morning till night everyone would have to keep repenting all day for some transgression they committed. If he committed many transgressions, then yes. Yes—but that’s why I’m saying it’s not a commandment. That forces us to say that there is no commandment to repent. Rather, they tell you: it’s not enough that you stop violating the transgression; you also carry out a certain additional procedure. Before stopping the transgression, you also confess it and say, “I will not do it anymore.” Because, after all, say someone desecrated the Sabbath. So tomorrow he won’t desecrate the Sabbath, and that’s the end of the matter. They tell you: that’s not enough. Think about what you did, confess. So therefore it’s not a commandment. Why? It is a commandment. Well then, why shouldn’t that be a commandment? Because then it’s strange that for every prohibition you violate, you immediately also have a chance for another commandment. What would you say about returning stolen property? And someone who doesn’t commit transgressions loses all these commandments? What about returning stolen property? What? Returning stolen property. I stole, and now there is a commandment to return the stolen item—a fully counted commandment according to all those who count the commandments. Because I come and say: it’s not enough that you decide not to steal anymore. What you did—you also need to perform a certain action. So there, you see, he gained another commandment, the commandment of returning stolen property. Exactly the same question. Or in the case of a rapist: “she shall be his wife; he may not send her away all his days.” After he raped, he has a commandment to marry her, and this is a counted commandment; all the enumerators of the commandments counted it. There are such commandments. I forgot the exact expression, but with a penitent, what exactly are we defining as a penitent? It’s not someone who merely stopped committing one particular transgression. No, of course not. A penitent is someone who lives in a certain way. I completely agree. I’m only saying that what you said as a result—that it doesn’t make sense to define this as a commandment—so what difference does that make? Because it seems to me that basically from morning till night people would be repenting. But as an obligation—if it’s not defined as a commandment, you still need to do it. So what did you gain? After all, you’re still saying it has to be done. So what difference does it make whether it is defined as a commandment or not? If in practice it has to be done, then still from morning till night people will be doing it. And I think that’s good—but whether good or not, I don’t think it matters whether it is defined as a commandment or not. From that we already concluded that the whole point is procedural—it’s a procedure. Right—and still the procedure has to be done? Yes, fine. So if it has to be done, then I’ll now ask you what you asked me. Meaning: from morning till night he will be doing the procedure of repentance all the time? So what difference does it make whether it’s called a commandment or not? Call it a law, an arrangement, I agree. But then in any case he’ll be doing it all the time. I don’t understand why it matters whether it’s defined as a commandment or not. Because at some point, first of all, I already passed 613 commandments long ago—so no, I don’t understand. Infinitely many commandments? For every transgression I now multiply by another commandment? What do you mean? It’s not a different commandment to repent for each transgression. It’s one commandment to repent for transgressions. It’s not 613 commandments, meaning 612 additional commandments. It’s like half a measure. There is a discussion: there is a prohibition of half a measure—a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish. In practice we rule like Rabbi Yohanan that half a measure is forbidden by the Torah. And someone who eats half an olive-bulk or a third of an olive-bulk of pork has violated a Torah prohibition. He doesn’t get lashes, because you need a full olive-bulk for lashes, but it is a Torah prohibition. And they discuss whether for each and every transgression it is a different prohibition of half a measure, or whether there is one additional prohibition of half a measure for all transgressions together—it’s the same prohibition. But even when you say it is a separate prohibition—suppose someone says that half an olive-bulk of pork and half an olive-bulk of forbidden fat are different prohibitions—he still does not count two additional prohibitions in the count of commandments. Rather, it is part of the prohibitions of pork and forbidden fat themselves, that in the case of half an olive-bulk there is a prohibition without lashes. These are not additional prohibitions. It’s like making a vow. What? It’s like making a vow. Yes. Not every single vow counts as a separate kind of vow. Right. But these are still apparently separate prohibitions. So that is really the explanation why there is no contradiction in Maimonides: in the Book of Commandments it is not counted as a commandment, while in the Mishneh Torah he writes that one has to do it. And that also means the Or Sameach is not right. Because this means there is something in repentance beyond simply observing Jewish law, right? Otherwise there would have been no need to write the Laws of Repentance. It wouldn’t have had to appear in the Mishneh Torah either, not only in the Book of Commandments. There would be no such thing as repentance—one just needs to observe Jewish law. What is there in repentance beyond that? Clearly there is something beyond that. And what there is, is the procedure. That itself—that is the matter of repentance. There is an obligation to do it, but no command. Fine. Now here I want to sharpen the point a bit, regarding the procedure of repentance and its significance. There is room to discuss what the value of repentance is. Why is there really an idea of repenting? Is it only a means or instrument in order to become righteous? Meaning, after you repent, then you are righteous; really what you need is to be righteous. And the act of repentance is the way to become righteous. Or is there value in the act of repenting itself? What is this commandment, if there is a commandment, or this obligation? We said it’s not counted among the commandments, but there is such an obligation. According to Nachmanides it is literally a commandment. Okay? So what is this obligation or commandment? Is the obligation or commandment to be righteous, or is the obligation or commandment to go through a process of repentance? Is the commandment in the process or in the result of the process? It seems quite clear that the commandment is in the process. First of all, because the result of the process is at most to be righteous, meaning to do commandments and not commit transgressions. That’s exactly the Meshekh Chokhmah’s point: so why do I need the commandment of repentance? Fine, one needs to do commandments and not commit transgressions. What is there in repentance beyond that? Okay? You could say that the result is being righteous, not in the sense of doing commandments and not committing transgressions, but in the sense of cleansing my sins. That is the result that is the goal of repentance. Is that what you wanted to say—that it is the goal of repentance? That could be result-oriented. But let me show you that I think that too is not correct. Maybe—well, really, one has to examine it. Maimonides writes: who is a penitent? One who confesses and returns, and reaches the point that the Knower of Secrets testifies about him that he will never return to that sin again. Several of his commentators ask: what does that mean? How can there be a situation in which a person is in a state such that the Holy One, blessed be He, testifies about him that he will never sin again? There is no free choice. What? No free choice. Even if there is free choice and let’s say God knows it in advance—the person will choose the good, or I don’t know whether that takes us back to the question whether one can know in advance when there is free choice. If the Holy One knows he won’t sin, then there is no free choice. I agree, but not everyone agrees with that. I agree. So they already note this: how can that be? Even in practice—leave aside the theological and metaphysical problems—for all practical purposes it doesn’t happen. Penitents later fall. We’re human beings. Just as we fell before, we can probably fall afterward. If someone sins in something—fine, but “will never return to that sin again” almost never happens. So the commentaries on Maimonides want to say that the meaning is: the Knower of Secrets testifies that right now he is in a state in which he would never return to that sin. Later he may fall, but right now he is serious, determined, he has done genuine repentance, he sincerely intends never to return to that sin. Later he may fall, deteriorate, have desires—everyone has ups and downs, fine. That is later. But right now he would never return to that sin. A dead person for the moment. What? Like acceptance of commandments in conversion. Right, exactly. It works for the present. “Dead for the moment,” yes. Maybe another example just occurred to me—Moses, I think we once spoke about this. Moses: “He turned this way and that and saw that there was no man, and he struck the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.” Right? He saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man. So Rashi brings two explanations there. One is that he literally looked around and saw that no one was watching. And the second is that he saw prophetically that no convert would descend from him. Okay? So I always wonder about that Rashi. That prophecy I could also make. For that you don’t need to be Moses. You’re about to kill him, so of course no convert will come from him. Meaning, you determined the future—you did not foresee the future. You brought it about with your own hands. Once you killed him, you caused it so that no convert would come from him. One could say: except that perhaps descendants could come from him after his death. Exactly. Someone here just said something I understood. Maybe that’s possible, but there were also things before. So Rashi’s point there is that he was looking not at the future but at the present. It’s not a look into the future. Looking into the future is indeed nonsense—of course no convert will come from him, you’re killing him. By the way, did any convert come from that Egyptian man—do you know? Who? From this Egyptian man? Yes, certainly—Shelomit bat Divri, after all, and the blasphemer. No, but a later descendant after that. That can’t be, because he died. So that only sharpens the point, do you see? Meaning, someone did come from him, except what will you say? Fine, he came earlier. Well, obviously he came earlier, because if you kill him, how could anyone come later? You saw prophetically that no convert would come from him. No, why? He saw the potential. Ah! That’s exactly why I’m saying: he was looking at the present, not the future. When it says “he turned this way and that and saw that there was no man,” he saw what his present condition was, not what his future condition would be. He saw that a person like this was in such a state that from such a state nothing good was expected to come. Of course we are dealing with human beings; they can repent, choose the good and choose the bad. The future is open. It’s not… Nor does he judge the person by the future; he judges the person by the present. Not only that—even if he later repents completely and becomes wholly righteous. Why not? What do you mean, why not? A person can repent. Like Pharaoh, whose heart was hardened—and even there not everyone agrees that he was unable. But this Egyptian man—why couldn’t he? Let him repent, come back. The gates of repentance are not locked. Even Aher, who heard from behind the veil, “Return, wayward children—except for Aher.” They said: he heard incorrectly. It was a test. He too should have returned. Anyone can repent. No—perhaps in theory he could, but maybe psychologically he was already in such a state that it was impossible, that it simply wouldn’t happen. No, I think if it won’t happen, then it means he can’t. What do you mean? Anyway, I think the point is that we look at the present, not the future. And this is also true of “until the Knower of Secrets testifies about him.” “Until the Knower of Secrets testifies about him” means that in his present state he would never return to that sin. Later, whatever can happen will happen. Human beings are human beings; they rise and fall, they stumble and get up again. But that is later. Right now, I’m talking about his present state, because that is what matters. “As he is there.” “As he is there,” exactly. So that’s one point. What do we really see from this? If the goal of repentance were to reach a state where I won’t commit transgressions, or where I will perform the commandments, then it turns out that this is a bit empty, because it is only a momentary state, and afterward it will change. If the whole value of repentance is only that in the end I won’t commit transgressions, or that I will do the commandments that I didn’t do until now—then that doesn’t really happen. Even when “the Knower of Secrets testifies about him,” that doesn’t truly endure; it exists only at that moment. So what is the value of repentance? Clearly the value of repentance is the act of repenting. It is not the fact that in the end I won’t commit transgressions or I will do commandments. The same thing can perhaps be seen from the Talmud, which says there is a dispute—a dispute among the Amoraim—who is preferable, a penitent or a wholly righteous person. According to one opinion, a penitent is preferable to a wholly righteous person. Now if the process of repentance were only meant to cleanse me, purify me, and turn me into a wholly righteous person, then a penitent could at most be equal to a wholly righteous person. How could a penitent be greater than a wholly righteous person? The question could only arise according to the opinion that a penitent is less than a wholly righteous person. Once a penitent is greater than a wholly righteous person, then clearly repentance really is something beyond merely correcting the sins that were there. Yes, I’m speaking about that opinion. No—but one could explain according to the other opinion. According to this opinion, though, it is certainly so. So according to the opinion that a penitent is preferable to a wholly righteous person, it is clear that the process of repentance itself has value, not only because it brings me to a complete state. Because if its value were only that it brings me to a complete state, then after repentance I am at most wholly righteous. And even that is a novelty, because after all I am dragging behind me a basket of creeping things. But fine—say repentance cleanses me, and that’s already novel. I become white as snow. Okay, so now I am wholly righteous. But how am I more than wholly righteous? I am more than wholly righteous only if one understands that the process of repentance has value not only because it brings me to a complete state, but because the process itself has value. And this is exactly parallel to what I said earlier against the Meshekh Chokhmah: the purpose of repentance is not to get me into a state where I do commandments and avoid transgressions. The process of repentance itself is the point of repentance—the improvement itself. Not the improved state I reach, but the process of improving is itself the thing of value. That is what we are commanded in the matter of repentance—commanded, or expected, according to Maimonides or Nachmanides, depending whether there is a commandment or only an obligation. So in effect, there we see that the process itself has value, and not only the state to which it leads. In this regard, Rabbi Kook, in Orot HaKodesh, part two, brings something that looks a bit like clever wordplay, but I think he means to say what I’m saying here, only in a very sharp way. He asks there—he says that one of the human perfections is self-perfection. The fact that a person perfects himself, that he improves—that itself is one of his perfections. Exactly as I said before: the process itself has value, not only because it makes me more complete, but because the very act of self-perfecting is itself a perfection. The process itself has value, not only its result. Then he asks: with the Holy One, blessed be He—God is supposed to be perfect, right? Every human perfection that exists in us partially exists in Him fully. So how can He have this perfection of self-perfection? After all, God is perfect. He cannot improve. So then He lacks the perfection of being self-improving. So He is not perfect. If the penitent is greater than the wholly righteous person, yes. What? The meaning of “Muslim.” The Quran says that a Muslim is a perfected person. “Muslim” is the meaning of the word—perfected. Okay. Fine. So that means Muhammad does not accept Rabbi Kook. Could be. Or perhaps he means that the Muslim person is a person who is improving, and therefore really is perfect. You can always work it out that way. But the question is: how can he improve if he is perfect? Fine, that’s an interesting topic. But in any case Rabbi Kook asks: where does this perfection appear in God? So he gives an answer there that isn’t entirely clear. He argues that God perfects Himself through us—that He created a world, deficient creatures whose task is to perfect themselves, because through that, in a sense, this perfects Him. In other words, in certain respects we do some work for Him that He cannot do. “Give strength to God.” Yes. We basically give power to God. There are things we do for Him that He cannot do. This is what the medieval authorities (Rishonim) call “the secret of service—the needs of the higher realm.” Maybe that’s why He created man? Yes, that’s what he says. That’s why He created man—so that there could be such a concept as self-perfection. Because if He had not created a deficient creation, then there would be no possibility of self-perfection; one could only be perfect, but simply being perfect is lacking. There has to be self-perfection for reality truly to be complete. Then a wholly righteous person also does not self-perfect? Exactly. In some sense, according to this, it comes out that a wholly righteous person is a hypothetical figure; there is no such thing. Because man, by his essence—his being lacking is not a flaw; it is of his essence. Man must be lacking in order to be able to perfect himself. Maybe one could solve it in the same way and say that the wholly righteous person gets self-perfection by bringing others to repentance. Okay. So the fact that he brings others to repentance is part of his complete righteousness—no problem. As long as he hasn’t brought them to repentance, then through that he’ll also have the perfection of self-perfection, because he’ll bring me to repentance. No, I’m saying: the fact that he brought them to repentance is itself an action he performed, and that improved his own state. Right. Yes. So he self-perfects even apart from me. But then the question is why the penitent is greater than him. What? I didn’t understand. He brought me to repentance, the wholly righteous person? Yes. Good. So he performed an action that perfected him before I repented. The very fact that he performed a good action—that itself perfects him. So you’re saying: even without my repenting, he was wholly righteous until now. But in order to continue being wholly righteous even at this moment, he has to keep self-perfecting by bringing others to repentance. So then he doesn’t have to be a hypothetical figure. He can be a real figure. Could be. But he is constantly recreating himself anew at every moment, and that is the self-perfection. Fine—but then there is no reason the penitent should be greater than him. What? Then there is no reason the penitent should be greater than him. No, he grows stronger, and the penitent upgrades. Yes, okay. In fact people often think that a penitent is greater than a wholly righteous person because the penitent works, struggles, fights, and the wholly righteous person does not. And that is a big mistake, a very big mistake. What—who says the wholly righteous person doesn’t fight? In my view, to be wholly righteous is a very hard struggle. He fights every single moment and does not fail. Just listen to what an endless struggle that is. I remember once hearing from someone—I think from someone who actually heard it with his own ears, and I think there is some chance it’s even true—that Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky, the author of Chazon Yechezkel on the Tosefta, said this. He used to speak in the Slabodka yeshivah once a week, give talks there. So once, during the Ten Days of Repentance, I think, he stood there and said: look, gentlemen, I can tell you—I testify for myself by heaven and earth—that from the age of twenty I did not neglect Torah study for a single second. Not one second did I neglect Torah study. Meaning, I thought in Torah while eating, while walking, all the time. I was occupied with Torah—I did not stop for a second. And I’m telling you this from age twenty onward, because before that I don’t remember. Now, to me that is astonishing. Meaning, if a person testifies this about himself—even if he forgot and it’s not fully true—it’s amazing. A miracle. It’s unbelievable. It is a far greater wonder than all the open miracles that the Hasidim tell about their rebbes that never happened and were never created. Maybe this too never happened and was never created; never mind. So I’m comparing two things that never happened and were never created, and even so this is the bigger miracle. It’s incredible. There’s something about being wholly righteous that is a serious struggle. It’s not that the wholly righteous person was born that way, just born perfect and everything is fine. He only has to remain as he is. A wholly righteous person is struggling all the time. And unlike the penitent, he didn’t fall; he succeeded constantly. So isn’t that a struggle? Doesn’t he deserve a bonus for that? But I think the wholly righteous person is an idealization that all of us—even the righteous—need to aspire to. It may be a hypothetical figure, only a model to aspire toward. Because “there is no man on earth who does good and does not sin.” Even Moses sinned. That’s true. But I’m saying on the conceptual level—even this model, even that hypothetical figure, when I picture such a figure before my eyes, it is still a figure bound up with a great deal of effort. It’s not a figure that… True—the more you get close to it, the weaker the struggle becomes. Therefore I don’t think it’s correct to tie this to the idea that a penitent struggles and a wholly righteous person doesn’t. It seems to me that the more accurate formulation is that a penitent improves and a wholly righteous person does not improve—aside perhaps from what we said earlier, that he renews himself every moment. But the penitent goes through a path, goes through change. And that change itself is a kind of perfection. And in this sense, for example, what the Talmud says: “One who says, ‘I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent’—he is not given the opportunity to repent.” So the Hasidim say—and sometimes the Hasidim also say sensible things—they say: what was the initial thought there, “I will sin and repent”? A person wants to be a penitent, which is greater than a wholly righteous person, so he says: let me sin so that I can become a penitent. Because if I remain wholly righteous all the time, then I’ll be missing the perfection of repentance itself. So he wants to sin and return, so that he can have also the perfection of the penitent. They just say: don’t do that, because you won’t be given the opportunity to repent. It’s not recommended. Give up on that perfection—that particular work, don’t do it. If you fell, you fell; repent. But don’t fall intentionally just so you can repent. That is not required—or rather, a person is required not to do that. But such an initial thought does exist. And such an initial thought would be a serious one: “I will sin and repent.” In any case, what does this really mean? It means that the value of repentance—I’m returning now to the starting point—the value of repentance is not that I reach a state where I do commandments and avoid transgressions. That would be being wholly righteous. But if there is in the penitent something beyond the wholly righteous person, that means there is value in the process of repentance, not only in the product, when I become wholly righteous. The process of repentance itself—and that is the commandment of repentance. Because to be wholly righteous you do not need a commandment. To be wholly righteous simply means to do all the commandments and not to commit transgressions. The commandments and transgressions themselves tell me not to do the transgressions and yes to do the commandments. To be wholly righteous, there is no separate commandment. The commandment is simply to do the commandments, that’s all. End of story: wholly righteous. If you do not fail in anything, you are wholly righteous. Why does a penitent have a commandment? Because here we are dealing with something beyond the commandments that obligate us by virtue of the system of 613 commandments itself. Rather, the commandment is in essence this process of self-perfection, of reaching the state of a penitent. The electricity fell, or what fell here? Okay. So this really brings us back to the concept of the commandment of repentance. The commandment of repentance in its essence—or the obligation of repentance according to Maimonides, for whom it’s not a commandment—is a commandment about process. And here it differs from all the other commandments in the Torah. All the other commandments in the Torah are commandments that require me to do something or not do something. The commandment of repentance also requires me to do things, yes? Abandoning the sin, regret, confession, acceptance for the future. But the basic idea of the commandment of repentance is not to command some state of affairs, but to command a process. And that process itself is a kind of perfection. Just as a side note, let me say this briefly—I once wrote a philosophical article about it. There is—do you know Zeno’s arrow paradox? Zeno, the Greek philosopher from the Eleatic school, challenged the very concept of motion. He thought motion is a fiction, an illusion. There is no motion in the world. The opposite of Heraclitus, who says everything flows; with Zeno, everything stands still. He said there is no motion. Why? Because the concept of motion involves all sorts of paradoxes—among them Achilles and the tortoise and various other paradoxes he created in order to undermine the concept of motion. One of the paradoxes is the flying arrow. He says: let’s look at an arrow in flight. At every moment, the arrow is standing at a different point. Now it’s standing here, then it’s standing there, then it’s standing there. So when does it move between places? At every moment it is standing somewhere else, so when does it go from one place to another? Therefore, he says, there is no such thing as motion. It’s some optical illusion—I don’t know what he thought it was—but it’s a fiction. There is really no such thing. That was one of his paradoxes. Now, the treatments I usually saw, before I wrote my article, relied on infinitesimals—that in fact we are speaking of an interval of time not as composed of points but of infinitesimals, of intervals as short as you like, not points. Therefore one cannot really speak about a point of time; one can speak of a short interval of time. There is no time-point; there are short intervals of time, as short as you like. What is the difference between an infinitesimal and a point—do you know? An infinitesimal also has zero length, or tends toward zero. But an infinitesimal has one dimension, because it is an interval. A point has zero dimensions. That is the big difference between an infinitesimal and a point, because the infinitesimal is an interval, not a point. An interval as short as you like. Okay? So the claim is that a line or a continuum is not composed of points, at least not in any simple way, but of short intervals. I’m formulating this in a very simplistic and imprecise way. Did people accept that definition? No, they didn’t accept it. What—which definition? That everything is not in motion but everything is standing still? No, of course not. I think even Zeno himself understood that not. He says: yes, there is a paradox, but I don’t understand how it can be. I understand that there is motion—after all we see something—but something here is not logical. It involves contradictions, and therefore he says: there’s some issue here with this whole matter. I wrote an article on this, and I think it has nothing to do with infinitesimals at all. In my opinion the solution is elsewhere. I added there another point: in quantum theory, one cannot speak of both the position and velocity of a body simultaneously—its exact position and exact velocity at the same moment. If it has an exact position, it has no velocity; if it has an exact velocity, it has no position. That’s the uncertainty principle in quantum theory. Because we don’t know. The accepted interpretation is that it doesn’t have them. Although there are those who want to say it’s only that we don’t know—that there are all sorts of measurement issues and limitations. It’s a complicated story; it depends somewhat on interpretation. But in an essential sense, we cannot measure it. It’s not just some current technological problem or something like that. So there is an inherent problem here in any case. And then apparently this resolves Zeno’s paradox, because it means that you can’t look at a moving body and ask what its position is at a point in time. If it has position, it has no velocity; if it has velocity, it has no position. So you can’t talk about both position and velocity together. But I claimed that this explanation is a kind of English-English dictionary. You know the difference? It was the nightmare of my high school years. You have one word you don’t understand, and they explain it to you with ten other words that you understand even less. That’s the glory of an English-English dictionary. I never understood the idiocy of forcing people to use an English-English dictionary. You want to understand one word, so now you have to think about eleven words instead of one. It’s just absurd. Only the Ministry of Education can come up with things like that. Still, I think sometimes it helps. In my opinion it really doesn’t help. Certainly not more than an English-Hebrew dictionary. Maybe it helps a bit, gives you some idea about a word you don’t understand, maybe. If you keep following the loop—look up all the other words that appear in the entry, and then look those up too—eventually maybe you’ll close the loop somehow and understand what’s going on. But in the end you reached the right explanation. Fine, but forget it—just give me an English-Hebrew dictionary and that’s it. As a Hebrew speaker, do you use a Hebrew-Hebrew dictionary? Like Even-Shoshan? Almost never. Maybe just laziness, I don’t know. It could be that that too we’d sometimes need. No, but in Hebrew-Hebrew, the point is that the Hebrew words I do understand. And if there is one Hebrew word I don’t understand, they’ll explain it to me with ten others—and the odds are I’ll understand those ten, because it’s rare for me not to know a Hebrew word. But in English, when we’re talking about someone—I’m not talking about English speakers, I’m talking about Israelis who don’t know English—so you explain a word to me… it’s everyone’s daily experience. Any high school student will tell you that the greatest nightmare is opening a dictionary. Chinese, French. Everything I learned in university courses in English was how to read the English text without opening a dictionary. To this day I’m grateful to our lecturer. The only dictionary I opened this week translated “skeptical” for me as “skeptical” from English. Just amazing—more efficient. By the way, sometimes it helps. When you read it in English, you don’t tie it to the concept “skeptical” in Hebrew. What? Does that reduce the probability that you won’t know the word? Does it reduce the probability? It increases it. An English-English dictionary increases it. Why? Now instead of one word, you don’t know ten. No, but the one word—if you looked it up, that means you already don’t know it, so that’s one hundred percent that you don’t know it. Fine, but of the others, maybe nine out of ten I don’t know, but one I do. Now I need to look up nine more. How does that help me? Why? Usually you already know most of the other words. Fine, fine, let’s not get into this joke now. It’s not a joke, it’s true—not a joke at all. I think that’s right, but anyway, let’s not waste time on it. One should use English-Hebrew and stop bothering people. There is nothing wrong with that; on the contrary, that’s the right way to do it. In any case, here too I’m saying the same thing: using the uncertainty principle to explain Zeno’s arrow paradox is an English-English dictionary. Meaning, you explain one unclear phenomenon by means of another even less clear phenomenon. That doesn’t really help. So I suggested there: let’s explain the paradox of the flying arrow, and by means of that perhaps also understand the uncertainty principle—not use the uncertainty principle to explain the arrow paradox. So in my opinion the explanation of the arrow paradox is very simple. Where did Zeno go wrong? He simply erred in the meaning of words. With the arrow, it is not correct to say that at every moment the arrow is standing at a different point. At every moment the arrow is located at a different point. There is a difference between saying it is located at a point and saying it is standing at a point. “Standing at a point” means being there at zero velocity. Having come to rest, yes. Being located at a point—you can have velocity and still be located at a point. At every moment you are located at a different point. Your position is x equals three, but that does not mean you are standing at x equals three. It means you are located at x equals three. What led to this confusion? I say: until I wrote that article, no one wrote this—the paradox, in my opinion, had not been solved until the article I wrote, I think. At least based on what I searched and what the referee approved. What leads to the confusion? What leads to the confusion is that physicists find it very easy to miss this. Physicists think that velocity does not exist at a point in time; it exists only on an interval—as short as you like, but still an interval. Over an interval of time there is velocity, and there is no velocity at a point in time—that’s a fiction. When we look at velocity at a point in time, if you ask a physicist, he’ll tell you: what I mean is over a very small interval of time around that point. The derivative at x, x plus delta t, minus x, divided by delta t. Exactly. So you look at a very small interval around the point in question. But that’s not velocity at the point; it’s velocity over a small interval around the point. That’s not right. A body has velocity at a point in time. The derivative, which says I take the difference of positions divided by the difference of times—that’s an operational definition of velocity, meaning that’s how you calculate velocity, but it is not the definition of velocity. A body has velocity also at a single point in time. A body can have velocity of eight meters per second at a point in time. That’s its velocity at that point. What’s the problem? The change in place that comes about as a result of having velocity—of course, in order to see change in place, you need an interval of time. A body doesn’t change place at a point in time. You need a short interval of time, and then you’ll see change in place. But velocity is not change in place. Velocity exists at a point; change in place needs an interval. What does this really mean? It means that we tend to confuse a phenomenon with its implications. The fact that a body has velocity is a potential for change in place. It doesn’t mean it is changing place. It means it has the potential for change in place. That potential also exists at a point in time. When will that potential be actualized—meaning, how will the body change place? If you wait a bit. Then you’ll see the body change place, because at one point in time it cannot change place. Fine? But that is only the indication, the way to compute velocity; it’s not the definition of velocity. Velocity exists at a point. Therefore, when I look at the arrow in flight, I say: at every moment in time the arrow is located at a different point—not standing there, but located there—and at that point it has velocity: eight, ten, one hundred, whatever. At that point it has velocity. You ask: when is it moving? At the very point at which you’re looking at it, it is moving. If you ask: when is it changing place? Changing place is certainly only over an interval, not at a point. One cannot change place at a point in time. Right? Zero time times whatever velocity you want still gives zero distance. One cannot change place at a point in time. But that only means that you won’t see the implications of its velocity unless you look over an interval of time. But the fact that it has velocity is true even at a point in time. And I think that is what confuses people when they get tangled up with this arrow paradox and resort to infinitesimals. You don’t need to get to infinitesimals according to what I’m saying. On the contrary, the infinitesimal only confuses things, because it makes you think that the body’s velocity really exists over a segment of time, because an infinitesimal in calculus is over a small interval of time. And I’m saying: not at all. The infinitesimal only confuses the matter here; velocity exists at a point. The way you compute it is by expanding to some interval around the point, and then… derivative—that was a small lesson in calculus, on the concept of the limit as delta x approaches zero. No, no—that’s exactly what I’m saying. Because the limit still leaves you with an interval as small as you like. The limit of intervals never actually reaches a zero-dimensional point; it remains an interval. An interval whose length is zero is the limit. I’m speaking about a point. But the derivative f-prime at x is defined— Isn’t it defined? In mathematics it’s used to define the derivative at a specific place, at a point. First of all, that’s the difference between Leibniz and Newton. The notation—he tried otherwise, and that’s exactly the philosophical difference. Because the definitions using differentials are operational definitions: how you calculate the derivative. But the result is a derivative at a point. Yes. The derivative exists at a point, not over an interval. Only in order to compute it do I have to expand to an interval. That’s the distinction I’m talking about. Yes, right. And the derivative exists at a point. Yes, there’s a difference in notation, for those who know. Newton used the more mathematical form, and Leibniz the more physical one. Leibniz used the differentials dy over dx, and Newton wrote it with a dot over y—at a point in time, at a point in place. And Newton solved the phenomenon. Ah, yes. And mathematicians really use Newton’s formulation. There is a book I know by a very famous logician who wrote a calculus book in a Leibniz-style formulation that was fully consistent. That was the novelty some twenty or thirty years ago. Until then, there was no fully consistent Leibniz-style formulation of calculus. Fully consistent formulations existed only in Newton’s style. In any case, back to our matter. I just want to close the circle, because I see we won’t continue further. Just to close the circle—what does this really mean? When I now look at the process of repentance, the value of repentance is the process. The fact that I improve my condition is like the relation between velocity and change in place. The fact that I improve my condition is an implication of the fact that I am in a process of repentance. It is not the essence of the process of repentance. The process of repentance is the dynamic process—it is the fact that I am in motion, that I have velocity. I can be a penitent while still in a bad state and before I’ve started to move at all, because I have velocity at a point in time. I am already in a dynamic process of repentance. In order to see the implications of that process, you need to wait a moment, and then you see that I am also improving—that is, I become better. Okay? But when I measure the value of repentance, I measure the value of the dynamic process itself, not the state changes that result from it, which are implications of the fact that I have the potential for that change—the process of repentance. Therefore, in essence, the concept of repentance is a concept that is dynamic by its very nature. And that may be one of the reasons we are not commanded in it explicitly, because Jewish law generally tends to command states. Just do this, be in such a state, don’t do this—in other words, it looks at states, just as in life generally. When we look at the arrow, we look at where it is. Our perspective is a static perspective on states. We do not see the motion. Motion is a kind of interpolation that we perform between different static states. Yes? When we construct a film reel. How is a film reel constructed? It photographs at a very high frequency, and when it is projected in sequence, a kind of illusion of motion is created. But we build motion from a collection of static shots, because the way we sense and think is static. The dynamic is constructed in us through interpolation between different static states. But that is only because that is how we are built, how we perceive. It is our limitation. In principle, theoretically, there could have been a creature that would look at a body and see that it is moving, and not see its position at all. Because it is built differently from us; it has a dynamic mode of perception. Then it would have to arrive at position by taking the integral of the velocity. We arrive at velocity by taking the derivative of position, because we perceive positions as our basic mode of perception, and in order to define velocity we need a derivative. There could be another being—a hypothetical creature, or maybe not hypothetical, I don’t know, maybe such a creature exists—that looks at a body and sees the velocity; it does not see the position. For it, position is some kind of fiction, which is the integral of the velocity. That’s all. From the perspective of motion engineering, Professor Merhav at the Technion—a person can control a system either by controlling velocity or by controlling position. The problem is that many systems—for example, the steering system of an airplane or a car, and really the steering wheel of a car too—when you move it right or left, you create acceleration. Right? Centrifugal acceleration. Meaning, therefore first of all in control systems they insert a gyroscope that measures angular velocity, because otherwise you can’t control the system stably. A person is able to control the system stably. Yes, fine, but that too is by means of instrumentation. It’s like the Doppler effect. With the Doppler effect, you measure velocity not through—supposedly—not through differences in position divided by differences in time. Seemingly the Doppler effect is a measurement of velocity at a point in time. That’s not right, but that’s how it seems. Theoretically, the Doppler effect would have to be something like measuring velocity not through time differences, but directly seeing velocity. If there were such a thing that measured velocity directly, then it would see velocities and would not see positions. That is in fact the principle of certainty. The question is whether you wear glasses that perceive states—that’s the position picture—or the momentum picture, for those who know. Or whether you wear glasses that perceive velocities, in which case you won’t see positions. But you can’t wear both kinds of glasses. Either you’re with these glasses or with those. We usually wear position-glasses. Therefore everyone who studied physics knows that the momentum picture is very confusing, while the position picture is simpler, more intuitive. Because that’s how we are built—we are built for static perception. Even though on the logical level it is completely equivalent. There could be a creature that lives in the momentum picture, and that would be perfectly fine for it. So I say, let us return to the process of repentance, and here I’ll stop. What I want to say is that the concept of repentance is essentially dynamic. The commandment of repentance is a commandment to move; it is a commandment to improve. That is the commandment—not to be improved, but to improve. Therefore it is true that the indication that I am in motion is that if you wait a moment, then you’ll see that I’m in a better state. But that’s not the point; it’s not the goal of repentance. That is only an indication that you are a penitent—the fact that you improved. Then a wholly righteous person too would need to do this. If there is such a thing. And that takes us back to all the discussions we had earlier. Fine. May we all be inscribed and sealed for a good year.