Aspects of Repentance, Lesson 2
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- Two directions of repentance
- Proofs from the Talmud and from the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya
- When the two tracks take effect, and Maimonides’ framework
- Modes of divine conduct: “The Lord, the Lord,” “and cleanses,” and repentance for all sins
- Mesillat Yesharim: the attribute of mercy and “uprooting the will is like uprooting the act”
- Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s question from the Talmud in Kiddushin
- The 100-shekel parable and defining the question as “changing history”
- The Chafetz Chaim’s answer: repentance out of love and repentance out of fear
- A reservation about that distinction, and a discussion of motives
- “No act is ever erased”: inadvertent sins and merits
- Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s alternative answer: obedience/rebellion versus repair/corruption
- A new identification: small accounting-style repentance versus great essential repentance
- Justice in accepting essential repentance, and grace in accepting technical repentance
- “Until the Knower of hidden things testifies about him” and the rule of “as he is there”
- The limits of repentance: a mamzer and physical consequences
- Sins between one person and another: appeasement, robbing the public, and evil speech
- Free choice as grace, and why it appears in the laws of repentance
- Grace and justice as the distinction between rules and what lies outside the rules
Summary
General overview
The text presents two tracks of repentance: a formalistic-halakhic, technical, accounting-style repentance based on the four stages of Rav Saadia Gaon, as opposed to an essential repentance that is an inner revolution and a change of identity, which can count as repentance even without the formal stages. It brings proofs from the Talmud in Kiddushin about a man who betroths a woman on condition that he is completely righteous, and from the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, and develops a distinction between justice and mercy through Mesillat Yesharim, Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s question, and the Chafetz Chaim’s answer about repentance out of love and repentance out of fear. Later it proposes a new formulation: in essential repentance, acceptance is a matter of justice because the person has become “someone else,” while the deep grace lies in the very possibility of reaching such a state of choice and transformation, linking this to the question of free will and its place in Maimonides’ Laws of Repentance.
Two directions of repentance
The text defines a formalistic, mechanical, halakhic repentance made up of Rav Saadia Gaon’s four stages: abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, and confession. It states that this repentance works according to formal rules, at certain times and under certain conditions, and since the person is acting on a technical track, the response to him is also technical. It then presents a second mechanism of repentance as an inner psychological revolution and a fundamental change of direction in life, and says that this too counts as repentance even if the person did not go through the formal stages.
Proofs from the Talmud and from the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya
The text brings proof from the Talmud in Kiddushin that if a man betroths a woman on condition that he is completely righteous, then even if he is wicked, we are concerned that the betrothal may be valid, even though he certainly did not perform confession, regret, and resolution for the future for all his sins. It adds the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who within one hour merited the life of the World to Come without going through all the formal stages. It concludes that there are really two tracks here: a technical, accounting-style, somewhat petty one, and an essential track of essential repentance.
When the two tracks take effect, and Maimonides’ framework
The text argues that from Maimonides’ starting point, the technical track can only be done during the Ten Days of Repentance, because it works backward along the timeline and erases sins that are still on the scales on Rosh Hashanah. It states that the essential track is effective whenever it is done, because if a person has done it, then by justice he deserves forgiveness for his sins.
Modes of divine conduct: “The Lord, the Lord,” “and cleanses,” and repentance for all sins
The text says that there are two divine attributes that govern these two mechanisms. It attributes the great repentance to the second “The Lord,” what the Maharal calls “repentance for all sins,” and defines it as regret over the very fact that I rebelled against the word of the Holy One, blessed be He. Therefore it is always repentance for all sins, and cannot be done over just a single sin. It also presents the repentance of “and cleanses,” in the sense of “I am the Lord before he sins; I cleanse those who repent and do not cleanse those who do not repent,” and identifies that with the great repentance as an inner revolution, in which someone who has undergone it automatically returns from all sins without needing to go through them one by one.
Mesillat Yesharim: the attribute of mercy and “uprooting the will is like uprooting the act”
The text quotes Mesillat Yesharim at the end of chapter 4: the attribute of mercy is the existence of the world, because if strict justice alone applied, the sinner would be punished immediately, without delay, the punishment would be in wrath, and there would be no repair for the sin because the act has already been done. It explains his words to mean that mercy gives the sinner time to return, that the punishment not be total destruction, and that repentance be granted to sinners as complete grace, such that “uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act.” It clarifies that there is a combination of justice and mercy here, in that one is forgiven for what one repented over, but not for what one did not repent over.
Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s question from the Talmud in Kiddushin
The text cites the Talmud in Kiddushin 40b in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: if someone was completely righteous all his life and rebelled at the end, he lost the earlier merits; and if someone was completely wicked all his life and repented at the end, his wickedness is no longer mentioned. It presents the Talmud’s question: why should the righteous person not be “half sins and half merits”? It then brings Reish Lakish’s answer that the case is one where he “regrets the former deeds,” meaning he regrets the commandments he once performed, and therefore everything is erased for him. It formulates Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s question on Mesillat Yesharim: if uprooting the will is like uprooting the act only as a grace beyond the strict law, how can it also work negatively for a righteous person who regrets his former deeds? After all, we do not “incline beyond the law” in order to make things worse. That implies that this is strict justice, not grace.
The 100-shekel parable and defining the question as “changing history”
The text gives a parable about a salary or a bank account with 100 shekels in order to distinguish between giving up rights and giving up debts, and to argue that one can give up rights but cannot give up debts. It explains that Rabbi Elchanan’s question is not about giving up credit in the balance of reward and punishment, but about a conception in which repentance is a real change in the past, a kind of “rewriting history,” as implied by Ramchal’s language: “Can he remove the act that was done from reality?” It says that if uprooting the will changes reality by justice in the case of a righteous person, then apparently in the repentance of a wicked person too it should be by justice and not by a special act of grace.
The Chafetz Chaim’s answer: repentance out of love and repentance out of fear
The text recounts that Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman asked the Chafetz Chaim, and the Chafetz Chaim answered that this depends on the distinction between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear. It presents the position that repentance out of love is accepted as a matter of strict law, whereas repentance out of fear is accepted beyond the strict law. It explains that this fits very well with the case of the righteous person who regrets his former deeds, because there we are talking about real regret and not fear of punishment or hope for reward, and therefore the change counts by justice.
A reservation about that distinction, and a discussion of motives
The text raises a reservation that the distinction between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear is not always accurate in real life, because leaving religion and returning to religion can both happen for many motives that are not pure, such as ideology, desire, or convenience. It argues that human actions usually involve many motives at once, so it is hard to assign every case sharply to one category.
“No act is ever erased”: inadvertent sins and merits
The text states that “none of our acts is ever erased,” and that even if one repents, no act is removed from history. It says that sins can become inadvertent sins or even merits, and that repentance out of love turns sins into merits, but the act itself is still “there”; it is just “painted in different colors.”
Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman’s alternative answer: obedience/rebellion versus repair/corruption
The text explains that Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman himself did not accept the Chafetz Chaim’s answer, and built an alternative answer based on Ramchal in Derekh Hashem. He divides every commandment and every transgression into two aspects: the aspect of obedience or rebellion, and the aspect of repair or corruption in reality. He argues that the corruption is a reality that cannot be changed by justice, but uprooting the will can work by justice regarding rebellion or obedience, because that is a subjective matter of who the person is now. He brings examples such as “he intended to eat pork and ended up eating lamb” as opposed to an inadvertent sinner, to illustrate the distinction.
A new identification: small accounting-style repentance versus great essential repentance
The text proposes translating the Chafetz Chaim’s answer into the language of the two mechanisms presented at the beginning. It defines technical accounting-style repentance as a quick repentance in which the person has not really “turned over,” but wants to erase sins out of fear and avoid punishment, so the regret is only partial. It defines essential repentance as repentance out of love, a “repentance for all sins,” the desire not to be capable of rebelling against the word of the Holy One, blessed be He, and says that this parallels “The Lord, the Lord.”
Justice in accepting essential repentance, and grace in accepting technical repentance
The text argues that in essential repentance, the person becomes “someone else,” and therefore by justice there is no point in punishing him for who he used to be. It describes this as saying, “On Rosh Hashanah, that just wasn’t me at all.” It presents technical repentance as an action within the “bookkeeping” of a scale of merits and debts, and therefore as subject to deadlines, to “closing the door,” and to an accounting framework. It presents as grace the acceptance of technical repentance for what the person did repent over, emphasizing that He “cleanses those who return, and does not cleanse for what they did not return over.”
“Until the Knower of hidden things testifies about him” and the rule of “as he is there”
The text discusses Maimonides’ phrase, “until the Knower of hidden things testifies about him that he will never return to this sin again,” and interprets it as testimony about the person’s condition now, not as a binding piece of knowledge about the future. It uses the phrase “as he is there,” like the judgment of Ishmael, and explains that a person can change again in the future, so future falls do not contradict the truth of the present transformation.
The limits of repentance: a mamzer and physical consequences
The text distinguishes between forgiveness of guilt and the repair of physical consequences, and argues that there are things such as mamzer status that cannot be fixed through repentance. It sharpens the point that the question is what the sinner’s status is after the result has already been created, not whether the result will disappear, and places forgiveness for the guilt within the framework of justice even if the consequence remains.
Sins between one person and another: appeasement, robbing the public, and evil speech
The text says that with sins between one person and another, one must also appease the other person, and it acknowledges the difficulty of evil speech or robbing the public when one does not know whom to make restitution to. It refers to “Maimonides, chapter four, the things that prevent repentance,” and notes that there are halakhic solutions, such as giving to the public fund when it is impossible to return to the person robbed, and that if the person did what he could, it is accepted.
Free choice as grace, and why it appears in the laws of repentance
The text argues that the deep grace in repentance out of love is not that its acceptance is grace, but that the very possibility of making such a transformation exists at all — in other words, the very ability to choose. It explains that Maimonides places the discussion of free choice in the Laws of Repentance because in other commandments, choice is just the means by which one fulfills the commandment, whereas in repentance, choice is the body of the commandment itself: “the commandment is to be one who chooses.” It points to a contradiction in Maimonides between the Book of Commandments, where the commandment is that when the sinner returns from his sin he should confess, and the beginning of the Laws of Repentance, where the commandment is to repent and confess, and resolves it by saying that in the Book of Commandments only commandments explicitly commanded in the Torah are counted, and there cannot be a commandment to be a chooser.
Grace and justice as the distinction between rules and what lies outside the rules
The text defines justice as acting according to rules, and grace as acting outside the rules. It connects this to the idea that choice is “doing an act without a cause,” because if there were a cause, it would generate the act and not the person. Therefore choice does not operate according to a relation of cause and effect. It explains that this is the source of the paradoxes of free choice, because choice departs from the deterministic rules of the world, and therefore it itself is described as grace in the broad sense.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’re before two directions of repentance, two ways of doing repentance. One process is formalistic, mechanical, halakhic repentance, made up of all the stages required by Jewish law, the four stages of Rav Saadia Gaon: abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, and confession. And that kind of repentance really works according to certain formal, defined rules, at certain times, under certain conditions, because the person who does it is also basically operating on a technical track. And therefore the way he is treated is also technical. By contrast, the second mechanism of repentance is some kind of inner spiritual revolution, a fundamental change of direction in life. And that change counts as repentance even if the person didn’t go through the formal stages required by Jewish law. We saw proofs for this from the Talmud in Kiddushin, which says that if a man betroths a woman on condition that he is completely righteous, even if he is wicked we are concerned about the validity of the betrothal. Obviously he didn’t do confession there, or regret, or resolution for the future, and go through all his sins. And also the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who within one hour basically merited the life of the World to Come without going through all the required formal stages. So the claim is that in practice there are really two tracks here: a technical track, an accounting kind of track, a bit petty you could say, and an essential track of essential repentance. The technical track — let’s say, if we start from Maimonides as our point of departure — then the technical track can really only be done during the Ten Days of Repentance, since it works backward along the axis of time, erasing sins that are lying in the balance on Rosh Hashanah. And the essential track, of course, whenever you do it, it helps — it doesn’t matter — because if you did it, then by justice you deserve forgiveness for the sins. That’s the broad picture. We saw that there are two attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, that govern these two mechanisms. “The Lord, the Lord” — that second divine name — is responsible for the great repentance, what the Maharal calls repentance for all sins. We spoke about the fact that repentance for all sins is really a foundational repentance in which I regret the very fact that I rebelled against the word of the Holy One, blessed be He. And such repentance, by its nature, is always for all sins. You can’t do that kind of repentance only for one isolated sin. That’s the repentance of “The Lord, the Lord.” And then there’s the repentance of “and cleanses”: I am the Lord before he sins, I cleanse those who return and do not cleanse those who do not return. That is the great repentance, the inner revolution. And “and cleanses” is the divine name, or the attribute responsible for it, and there — as I mentioned earlier — someone who did this has in effect returned automatically from all sins, and it’s not something that requires going over each sin one by one. Because if I regret all the way down, then when I regretted that I selected on the Sabbath, I regretted not just the act of selecting itself — not only the act of selecting itself — but the very fact that I was capable at all of acting against a command of the Torah. And regret over something like that is, by its nature, regret over all sins. It isn’t regret over one specific sin. That’s a brief recap of where we got to last time. I want now to continue in light of this distinction and see what this really means. And here too I’m going to use a certain lever to present the issue. In Mesillat Yesharim, at the end of chapter 4, he writes: “And if you say, if so, what is the role of the attribute of mercy? For in any case one must be exacting in justice for every matter. The answer is: surely the attribute of mercy is the existence of the world, for without it the world could not stand at all. And even so, the attribute of justice is not impaired. For according to strict justice, it would have been fitting that the sinner be punished immediately, at once upon sinning, without any delay at all. And also that the punishment itself should be in burning wrath, as befits one who rebels against the command of the Creator, blessed be His name. And that there be no repair whatsoever for the sin. For in truth, how can a person repair what he has twisted, once the sin has already been done? Behold, he murdered his fellow, behold, he committed adultery — how can he repair such a thing? Can he remove the deed that has been done from reality?” Meaning, in practice, it already happened. “However, the attribute of mercy grants the opposite of these three things we mentioned.” Meaning, that time is given to the sinner and he is not destroyed from the earth immediately when he sins — he’s given some delay, some time to return — and that the punishment itself not be unto destruction, some irreversible punishment that just wipes him out and that’s it, “and that repentance be granted to sinners as complete grace, so that uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act.” Repentance is some special kind of grace, in that even though the act was actually done, since I retracted the will to do that act, uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act.
[Speaker B] Why isn’t that justice? What? Why isn’t that justice?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So it’s not true that justice is impaired. The claim is only that after you repent, they allow you to do repentance, and that’s the grace. But once you’ve repented already, then there is justice. For what you repented over, they forgive you — that’s grace — but they don’t forgive you for what you didn’t repent over. So there’s some kind of combination here of justice and mercy. And so on, in short. Now Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, in Kovetz Ma’amarim, has an essay on repentance. And there he asks the following question on this Mesillat Yesharim. Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says — this is in the Talmud in Kiddushin 40b — the Talmud says like this: “Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: Even if a person was completely righteous all his days, and rebelled at the end, he loses the former deeds, as it says, ‘The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his transgression,’” a verse in Ezekiel. “And even if a person was completely wicked all his days and repented at the end, his wickedness is no longer mentioned, as it says, ‘And the wickedness of the wicked he shall not stumble by on the day he returns from his wickedness.’” And the Talmud asks: “Then let him be half sins and half merits.” Why, if the righteous person changes direction — regrets the former deeds — has he lost his merits? The merits he did, he did. What he does from here on is sins, so let those count as sins. Let him be half and half. Merits are merits, sins are sins. Why erase the merits he already did? The Talmud says: Reish Lakish said, it is speaking of someone who regrets the former deeds. Meaning, someone who not only starts sinning from now on, but actually regrets the commandments he had performed. So someone who just starts doing sins from here on really is half and half: what he did for good remains good, and what he does for bad is bad. But someone who regrets the former deeds, who regrets what he did, all of it is erased for him. That’s the Talmud. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman asks: if Ramchal is really right that uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act only beyond the strict law — as grace, not as basic justice — then how can it be that this also applies to a righteous person? Meaning, if someone committed sins and then repented, then uprooting the evil will he had is considered like uprooting the act, as though he hadn’t done the bad deeds; he’s righteous. Fine — Ramchal says that’s a special grace. But if a righteous person — someone who is righteous, who performed commandments — now goes off the path, right? He regrets the commandments he did. Then the commandments are erased from him, that’s what the Talmud says. Why? According to strict justice, uprooting the will can’t change reality. What was done was done. Only beyond the strict law does the Holy One, blessed be He, count uprooting the will as uprooting the act. So why here? What — do they go beyond the strict law to make things worse? They go beyond the strict law to do good. If someone sinned, they go beyond the strict law and accept his repentance; the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts his repentance, and he is considered righteous. But if someone was righteous and regretted the former deeds, then beyond the strict law they uproot his merits? We know there is an inclination toward kindness, not an inclination toward making things worse. Meaning, the Holy One, blessed be He, goes beyond the strict law to do good. To do harm is according to strict justice; they don’t go beyond the strict law to do harm. So what do we see from the Talmud? That this is strict justice. It’s not beyond the strict law. If someone regrets acts that he did, strict justice says he lost those acts; it’s not some special grace. So if that’s the case, he asks, why does Ramchal write that for a penitent it is only a special grace that his repentance is accepted? If strict justice says that uprooting the will counts as uprooting the act, then of course it should help the sinner as well — by strict justice — so no special grace should be needed; that should simply be the law.
[Speaker C] Maybe you could say, for example: if a person works for a month, then he should get paid. Now let’s say the owner comes and gives him his salary, and he throws it in the trash. That’s your problem, you threw it in the trash. But if someone didn’t work at all, and now wants to get some money, that would already be an act of grace.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Actually, whenever I mention this question, I add something else. Once, when I gave a similar lecture, someone made a comment to me about this, a good comment, very similar to yours. Let’s say someone has 100 shekels in his bank account, right? He goes to the branch manager and says: Listen, this is such a wonderful branch, I like you so much — take my 100 shekels as a gift. Fine, thank you very much, they shake hands nicely and part as friends. Then another fellow comes along, and he’s 100 shekels in debt to the branch. He goes to the manager and says, Listen… you’ve got such a wonderful branch, I really like you so much — take everything I’ve got in my account. They’ll also shake hands and part as friends. You can waive rights; you can’t waive debts. If someone regrets good deeds he did — not bad deeds, good deeds he did — meaning he has merits in his favor, and he waives them, doesn’t want them, despises them, says throw them out — okay, they’re thrown out. That’s really the question, right? But if, by contrast, he has bad deeds he did — a penitent who says, I regret it, I waive the minus in my bank account — so what, by strict justice the debt is erased? Obviously not. So what’s the question to begin with? What is Rabbi Elchanan asking? The truth is that apparently what he’s asking is this: he sees repentance as something more essential than erasing credits or debts that I have — meaning, how much is to my credit or how much is to my debit in the World to Come. If that were all it was, then yes, I can waive what stands to my credit, but I can’t waive what doesn’t stand to my credit, what I lack. But here apparently he understands it — and you can also see this in Ramchal’s wording: “Can one uproot the act that was done from reality?” Meaning, there is something here about changing the past, some kind of miracle. Something happened, and from our standpoint it’s as if it didn’t happen. There his question is valid. If that is the conception — if really regretting the past can rewrite history, meaning change reality — then either it can, for both directions, or it can’t. But if you tell me it can in the negative direction, then apparently that’s strict justice, and so in the positive direction too it should be strict justice. Meaning, he sees repentance not as erasing a bank overdraft — how many sins I have, so please forgive me — but as erasing the basis for the minus 100. Meaning, because I performed acts that were sins, I accumulated a deficit, let’s call it that. I’m erasing the sins, not the deficit. Now how can I erase the sins? I committed them. I can’t go to the branch manager and say, listen, I’m erasing the transaction because of which I lost 100 shekels.
[Speaker E] You can’t erase the transaction, you can erase the 100 shekels. You can’t change reality, right. But maybe the reward I have from the commandments I did — that I can waive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The reward, yes. And really, according to justice, I can’t uproot the sins. I can’t uproot the transgressions. That’s exactly what I said. And that — no, that’s not what I said. The question assumed that what we’re waiving is the reward and punishment due to us for the sins or commandments. And then really there’s no symmetry at all, so what kind of question is there between a righteous person who regrets and a wicked person who regrets? The conclusion is exactly what you’re saying: when we come, we are not waiving reward due to us; we are changing reality, and therefore of course there’s already a difference in the reward and punishment due to us. But with regard to changing reality, there shouldn’t be any difference. If we can change backward, then we can; if not, then not. He answers there in two ways. He asked the Chafetz Chaim about this matter — Rabbi Elchanan asked the Chafetz Chaim — and the Chafetz Chaim told him that one is repentance out of love and the other is repentance out of fear. Meaning, repentance out of love is really accepted by strict law, whereas repentance out of fear is accepted beyond the strict law as well. Accepting repentance out of love is strict justice; repentance out of fear is beyond the strict law. Actually, that answer — that explanation — is very good, sorry, it’s very good because — one second, one second, maybe I’ll turn this phone off, sorry. Yes, the claim that repentance out of love is accepted as a matter of strict law fits very well with the righteous person who regrets his good deeds, because in repentance we know two mechanisms: repentance out of love, repentance out of fear, right? So what happens with the righteous person who regrets the former deeds? Well, going off the path is always from love — “love” in quotation marks — but it’s always parallel to this process of returning out of love, right? He doesn’t become wicked out of fear; what exactly is he afraid of? Meaning, clearly someone who becomes wicked is going through a real reversal, a real inversion, right? That’s not exactly right, though. Why not? A lot of people — I don’t know whether this has been statistically checked, but a lot, maybe even most, of those who leave religion don’t do it out of ideology, or because they suddenly discovered that religion isn’t true, or because they got sick of it. They do it because of desire, because of — well, never mind, never mind — but that still isn’t called fear. It’s not fear, it’s love. And those who return to religion — do they always return from lofty motives? Very often they return not from fear, but simply because it’s more pleasant to be religious, for example. Religion as opium for the masses — people said that before me already. Right? These things exist everywhere. So the claim isn’t precise.
[Speaker F] It is precise, because that distinction exists both in repentance and in leaving religion. And therefore you can make the distinction here and there. Among people who leave religion, some do it out of ideology, some do it out of desire—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And some do it for I don’t know what reason. And in repentance too it’s the same. So what’s the difference? The processes are similar. Someone who repents because it feels good — can we call that repentance out of love? Maybe he’s doing it, but it’s not out of fear. It’s not out of fear. If we’re making the distinction between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear, then the one who leaves religion resembles love more than fear. It’s real — he really regrets it. So what if he surrendered to desire? So he decided to surrender to his desire — so what? That too is his decision. It’s not fear. It’s neither fear nor love. It’s neither this nor that. The comparison doesn’t — and even love isn’t really pure love.
[Speaker F] What do you mean? Every act we do involves several motives.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you repent out of love, it isn’t always some pure, distilled love. Very often it comes together with lots of other things. A person is a complicated person. So in repentance and in leaving religion, it’s the same. Leaving religion too — part of it is—
[Speaker F] ideology, and part of it is desire, and part of it is many other things.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe desire — in the negative image corresponding to repentance out of love — is everyone who leaves religion? Of course it’s exactly the same thing. Exactly the same thing. In repentance out of love too there is a drive to repent, so what? It’s a drive. A drive in every respect. Later on I’ll come back to that. It’s the same thing. Good inclination and evil inclination are both inclinations. There’s no difference between them.
[Speaker F] I don’t understand the whole subject, the logic of repentance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning, a person committed crimes and wickedness and all kinds of acts, and many great and terrible sins. Why suddenly, when he repents — what exactly is he doing here? Maybe he’s starting something new. No, no, he regrets what he did. He can’t — he can’t waive everything. He can maybe—
[Speaker F] ask God not to punish him too harshly for the past. But it’s not suddenly a blank page. A person decides, I regret it and now I repent — what, does he suddenly start putting on phylacteries? What changes here? What is this element of repentance that causes a change in all those years in which he acted the way he did?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Repentance — I defined it last time; I think you weren’t here — there are two mechanisms of repentance. One repentance, the simple repentance that is also defined in books of Jewish law, consists of four stages. Repentance means regret over what I did, a resolution for the future that I won’t return to that sin, verbal confession, abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, and verbal confession. Okay? That’s the procedure. Now, you… what he remembers… it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. Whatever he remembers, he confesses; whatever he doesn’t remember—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] he repents over in a general way. He says, I regret the very fact that I committed sins at all. Right now I’m not getting into the details. That thing — that is one mechanism of repentance defined in Jewish law. That mechanism was defined by the Holy One, blessed be He. Now true, that’s exactly what the Ramchal I just quoted says: that according to strict justice, it really shouldn’t help at all. The grace that the Holy One, blessed be He, did is that it nevertheless does help. That’s why it’s a special grace. Okay? In general too, that’s — I mean, it makes sense. A person himself even feels that it makes sense that there should be justice for what he did, for what happened. Fine, maybe at most one can hope that the Holy One, blessed be He, will make it less severe… it’s not as though it’s a blank page. If you’re advising the Holy One, blessed be He, not to accept him — well, the Holy One, blessed be He, said He does accept him. If you were the Holy One, blessed be He, maybe you would act differently, okay. But the Holy One, blessed be He, does accept him. Those are the givens; we’re working with the givens right now.
[Speaker F] The givens are that the Holy One, blessed be He, did an act of grace for us; He is willing to accept this repentance as full repentance. Okay? That’s one kind of repentance. The second kind of repentance we defined here is essential repentance, where you don’t have to do those four little stages—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] but rather you undergo some kind of inner revolution, you try to work on your psychological structure, you change the whole thing that brought you to sin in the first place. You became a different person. So that is repentance — what we called the great repentance, the essential one. That’s something else. Here, in a moment, we’ll see regarding the question whether that too is a special grace or not — just a moment. But what he says here, the Chafetz Chaim, regarding the difference between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear, is that repentance out of fear is indeed a special grace of the Holy One, blessed be He, that He accepts it. Repentance out of love is not grace; it is strict justice. And therefore the Talmud in Kiddushin, which speaks about a righteous person who rebelled, who regretted his former deeds, fits this very well, because there it is a mechanism of love — a mechanism where you really do regret what you did. It’s not that you do it because of some fear of punishment or hope for reward. And since that’s the case, there it really does, by strict justice, change history. And in repentance too, if the repentance is out of love, then by strict justice it changes history — that’s the claim. By contrast, repentance out of fear — if there were such a thing on the other side as well — there it would be beyond the strict law. But there isn’t; there’s no such thing as leaving religion out of fear. If a person actually worships idols out of fear, for example, that’s some sort of leaving religion out of fear. He’s afraid that this idol will harm him, or show him something, or whatever. Forbidden sexual relations — is that Daniel? What? Forbidden sexual relations — sorry, by mistake, folks… Could there, in principle, be repentance out of fear? That is repentance out of fear. I’m talking about apostasy out of fear. Yes. There can theoretically be such situations. Maimonides is interesting on this: someone who worships idols out of love or out of fear is exempt, in fact, and that’s a different discussion.
[Speaker G] Yes. In my opinion, in Mesillat Yesharim there really is grace in what God does, because someone who repents—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] his sins become inadvertent sins for him, or merits. By contrast, someone who leaves religion — the commandments don’t become sins, they’re erased. Like inadvertent sins — Heaven forbid, not erased. They become inadvertent sins. That’s an important lesson. None of our acts is erased, even if we repented.
[Speaker H] Either it becomes an inadvertent act, or it becomes a merit. There is no act that becomes irrelevant. No act is really erased from history. You can paint it in different colors. Either it becomes a less negative act — an inadvertent one — or the act even suddenly becomes a positive act, but an act is not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] erased from the world.
[Speaker H] If someone did an act, it’s there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But is there no situation where it becomes irrelevant? For example, you brought the case of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya — so you can’t erase everything that was until now? It became merits. It became merits — that’s the Talmud’s claim. That repentance out of love turns sins into merits. Can you explain again why the Chafetz Chaim’s question is relevant at all after the 100-shekel parable?
[Speaker I] So I said — you already stated it yourself, what do you mean?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The 100-shekel parable is talking about the reward and punishment due to us for commandments and transgressions. On that level, it really isn’t relevant.
[Speaker J] But he sees it — and that’s also how Ramchal presents it — as some kind of process of real change in history. Now, if uprooting the will is really like uprooting the act by strict justice—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because in the case of the righteous person we see that it works, then in repentance too it should work. Wait, but the righteous person is waiving the reward, but that’s… No, he’s not waiving the reward. His claim is that when someone regrets the former deeds, the Holy One, blessed be He — you can’t waive reward. That’s exactly the point. You can’t waive the reward because it’s essential to your state. If your state is such-and-such, then you’ll receive the reward even if you don’t want it.
[Speaker K] And that’s his assumption.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not… okay, so that’s the Chafetz Chaim’s position. Rabbi Elchanan himself didn’t accept it. He has a very interesting essay where he builds an alternative answer. I think it’s very hard to fit it into Ramchal, but the essay is interesting in its own right. I very much recommend that you read it. There he talks about a distinction: in every commandment and in every transgression — and he brings another Ramchal, from Derekh Hashem — in every commandment and every transgression there are two aspects. There’s the aspect of obedience in a positive commandment, or rebellion in a prohibition, and there’s the aspect of repair or corruption. Meaning, what repair the commandment brings about, and what corruption the sin causes. His claim is that with respect to the psychological aspect of rebellion or obedience, it works retroactively by strict justice. If I committed a sin, there were two problems in it. First, I rebelled against a command of the Holy One, blessed be He. Second, I did something that simply has bad consequences — it damaged something. Okay? The damage is a reality. You can’t change it out of the world. So that can’t work retroactively according to strict justice. The fact that you regretted it can’t change reality. But uprooting the will — that does work by strict justice. Meaning, to atone for the fact that you didn’t obey, because that’s a subjective matter. Now you have become someone who does obey. So that is uprooted by strict justice. That’s his claim. He makes distinctions there: someone intended to eat pork and ended up with lamb in his hand — right? That’s someone who has the element of rebellion, but not the element of damage. By contrast, an inadvertent sinner is the opposite. There is the element of damage, but not the element of rebellion. Right? An inadvertent sin counts as a transgression. Correct? And someone who intended to eat pork and ended up eating lamb — that’s not a transgression, unless you follow the Brisker Rav’s view, but that’s a lone opinion. It’s only internal — it’s not okay, but it isn’t really a transgression. But in Ramchal it says that the act itself is repaired. What? In Ramchal it says that the act too is repaired according to this.
[Speaker D] Right, and that’s why I’m saying that the… no, sorry.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman says that what the Ramchal says, that this is a special kindness, he means that it also repairs reality, because it really is kindness. It doesn’t happen as a matter of strict justice. What the Talmud in Kiddushin says, that a righteous person who rebels at the end loses his merits, applies only to the element of obedience, not to the actual repairs that were made. You can’t erase them from reality. Those are repairs that exist. And that may be beyond the letter of the law, but to do harm beyond the letter of the law—the Holy One, blessed be He, does not do that. That’s his claim. Fine, I don’t think it’s so easy to fit that into the Talmud in Kiddushin, but that’s his argument. I think that really the Chafetz Chaim—if I remember correctly—has a better answer, and maybe if I translate it into our language, then it is exactly the two mechanisms I spoke about. In practice, repentance… the smaller repentance, the technical, accounting-style repentance, is basically repentance out of fear. What, are you really regretting the fact that there is something in you that causes you not to listen to the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He, not to obey the Holy One, blessed be He? You haven’t really turned over. You haven’t really changed. So what are you doing? You want to erase sins because you’re afraid. You want to gain reward and avoid punishment. That’s all. He says, “I regretted and I was ashamed.” He says that. He says this repentance is real regret. Yes, he regrets—but because, you know, it’s like, who really said this? “They forced him until he said ‘I want to.’” When they force someone until he agrees to a sale, that too is real consent—he really wants to, so that they won’t beat him. Fine, here too it’s the same thing: he really wants to so that they won’t beat him. That doesn’t mean much. Does he want not to anger the Holy One, blessed be He? He doesn’t care about eating meat on the Sabbath. So I say—as we discussed last time—that this is partial regret, but it is never full regret over the very fact that I did not listen to the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is already an intermediate stage, and I’ll get to it later. So here it seems that repentance out of love and repentance out of fear—I don’t know if it fully overlaps, but it has a high correlation with this distinction between the small, accounting-style repentance and the essential repentance. Repentance out of love means: I truly do not want to be what I was. I truly do not want to be in a state where I can defy the word of the Holy One, blessed be He. That is repentance for all the sins; it is repentance of “the Lord, the Lord,” not of “and cleanses.” And therefore it is repentance out of love, and it atones for all sins, and it is done as a matter of justice. And therefore also a righteous person who truly regrets what he did—his merits are erased, because this is a matter of justice. You are now someone else, that’s it. If you are someone else, then why punish you for what you were? Why should it matter what you were? I am now standing in judgment before the Holy One, blessed be He. After all, what was the question I asked about the small repentance? Right now, during the Ten Days of Repentance, I did all the repentance, everything is fine, I did commandments—I didn’t do repentance. So the scale tips in favor of the commandments. The Holy One, blessed be He, says to me: forget it, office hours are over, we closed the door on Rosh Hashanah, you die on the spot. Right? Whoever is liable dies immediately, so to speak. That’s how Maimonides writes it. What is this, bookkeeping? So the answer is yes, it is bookkeeping. Meaning, if you go on the bookkeeping track, then that’s the track you chose to take, so you are basically operating in an accounting system. You want to erase transgressions, you want to avoid punishment, so fine—you are going on the track of repentance out of fear with the required halakhic procedures. But if you have truly changed, then you are not coming before the Holy One, blessed be He, with one scale-pan that has more commandments than the scale-pan of sins. It’s simply not the same person. On Rosh Hashanah, that wasn’t me at all—that was somebody else. I have now changed; this is someone else. What sense would there be in punishing me for that—I don’t understand. To punish me for something I once was? Why should that matter? That’s already dead. What I used to be is gone. Today I am new, I am someone else. What is there to punish me for? What would anybody gain by punishing me for that? So this is a matter of justice. It is not beyond the letter of the law that they judge me favorably—that is, that they accept my repentance. It is a matter of justice; it does not require kindness. That is what the Chafetz Chaim says: repentance out of love is accepted as a matter of justice. For that no kindness is needed at all. The kindness is that even small repentance, accounting-style repentance, is also accepted—for what you repented over, of course, for what you repented over. He cleanses the one who repents, and does not cleanse for what he did not repent over. If he truly changed, what does it mean that he “returns to his wrongdoing”? If afterward he goes back to his wrongdoing, it could be that he changed again, but right now he changed. That is what Maimonides writes: “until the Knower of hidden things testifies about him that he will never return to this sin again.” Well, have you ever seen someone like that? So apparently the Knower of hidden things is giving false testimony? Rather, what it means is that He testifies about him right now: his intention is genuine. But human beings are human beings; afterward, just as I decided to repent, it could be that afterward I suddenly fall again. What can you do? Yes, that phrase “until the Knower of hidden things testifies about him” does not mean that the Holy One, blessed be He, is making use of it. Rather, the person calls the Holy One, blessed be He, as his witness—the person turns to the Holy One, blessed be He, and says: Please, O Lord, be witness that I am repenting. But He can’t be witness to that if it isn’t true. What is this? Why not? Because he turns to the Holy One, blessed be He, and the Holy One, blessed be He, says to me: sorry, something here—because that isn’t repentance. If the repentance is not complete, that doesn’t solve the problem; the Holy One, blessed be He, can’t testify to it either. This is testimony in the sense of: listen, Master of the Universe. But He cannot testify that I will never return to this sin forever. Either way—can He testify to it or not? It makes no difference whether it is on His initiative or mine. Can He testify to that? Am I really in that state? Can I accept that? Because the person takes the Holy One, blessed be He, upon himself, and he is the one who says: I. But still—are you in that state or not? Are you in that state? If you are in that state, then fine. That’s what I’m talking about: I have changed completely. So fine—but then why should it bother us that the Holy One, blessed be He… the Knower of hidden things knows what will happen tomorrow? No, He does not know what will happen tomorrow—He testifies about me now. Now, if I really am such a person, then He too can testify about me that I am such a person. And if I am not such a person, it won’t help even if I ask Him. I think that in any case you are assuming that at least—again, maybe no one really is. This model, this utopia that we are talking about, of someone who is entirely different, who changed, who changed all the problematic points within himself completely—someone like that really is someone who should not sin from here on out. That doesn’t mean that afterward he won’t fall again. Right, and therefore he still might sin. In this state, he will never sin. But a person is a person; just as he changed for the better, he can also change for the worse. Therefore this does not contradict the testimony of the Knower of hidden things. Meaning, the testimony of the Knower of hidden things is “as he is there,” just as Ishmael was judged “as he is there.” He too is judged according to what he is now. I judge you according to what you are now; tomorrow, if you choose differently, we will judge you differently tomorrow. So therefore it is a matter of justice, not beyond the letter of the law. If I am now truly a perfectly righteous and innocent person, I erased all the problems that were in me—how can you judge me to death? I’m asking you as human beings, not as God. A person comes to me, someone who hurt me, and I see that he regretted it to the core—that is, he became like my brother, my best friend, he regretted it completely—I would forgive him. You don’t need the Holy One, blessed be He, for that. There is a difference. Why? Because it’s very fluid over time. Let’s ask a question the Talmud discusses elsewhere: is there a mamzer from this? No, whether there is a mamzer from it is something else. I mean in terms of guilt. But I’m talking now in terms of guilt. Facts are facts—that I agree with. When I speak about abstract facts, let’s call them that, or sins, then basically the question is only how I… You could say the question is only how I relate to the matter. I would forgive completely. That’s kindness—it isn’t, it’s justice, it isn’t kindness. Even a human being would forgive in such a case. If it doesn’t end over time, then no—not over time. The question is what over time means: are there events? Do you relate to it as some kind of reality? Then you’re right, but that’s… okay, let’s assume so. Actually, even this reality—what is this reality? Rav Gedaliah Nadel said altogether that he does not understand all these actions backward in time. When a person sins, some stains are created. When he repents, he erases the stains. So what—what reality was in the world that now has to be changed? There is no need to change anything about the past. The world is damaged now—what do I need to repair, the world that existed a hundred years ago? The world that existed a hundred years ago no longer exists. There is a mamzer in reality now. Huh? That mamzer is walking around among us. No, no, that’s why I say—we need to distinguish here between cases like that, where there is a mamzer, and cases that are only some kind of spiritual consequences. Fine? In a case where they are spiritual consequences, then fine—clean up the spiritual consequences now too. Some say there is a difference. Huh? As the Talmud says, if there are physical consequences you cannot repair them. No, some say there is no difference, and the Chafetz Chaim says there is a difference. That is the explanation—I’m suggesting an explanation of his words. Maybe if there isn’t some physical thing like a mamzer. No, in a case where there is a mamzer, then probably if the forgiveness… No, forgiveness toward me would be according to justice, not kindness, even regarding mamzer status. The fixing of the mamzer—not only would that be kindness, it would not happen at all. You cannot fix the mamzer through repentance. So that’s why you need to distinguish between two situations. You will not fix this mamzer—no repentance will help here. Not through kindness and not through justice; it simply won’t happen. He remains a mamzer even if you repented. But the question of whether I am forgiven is not the question of whether he will be a mamzer or not, but rather what my status is after that mamzer was created. And in that sense, it is according to justice. It’s maybe a somewhat provocative question, but I’m sorry. The question is whether Judaism sees the Holy One, blessed be He, as really only doing kindness, or whether there is also an issue here of reward and punishment? If we judge it by the Jewish people, then we see that there is reward and punishment throughout… But that is what we were reading far beyond what I’m talking about. Obviously the Holy One, blessed be He—at least that is what many sources tell us—obviously at root He does kindness with us, but also to deal with us by the attribute of justice is a kind of kindness. That is what we read earlier in the Ramchal. One who sins needs to take a hit, and he will take a hit. No, not everything is forgiven. But we are talking about someone who repented, so there is a certain kindness that if you repented, although in fact you sinned, if you repented your repentance is accepted—and that is kindness. That does not mean that the attribute of justice is erased. That is exactly what the Ramchal was talking about earlier, that the attribute of justice remains. Meaning, one who sins will take the consequences for it. So they forced him, they told him, retract, confess—or they even told him genetics. You know, genetics is not a new invention. No, that is not the Judaism I know. The Judaism I know is that there is seriousness here, there is strictness—nothing just passes for free. I don’t know what Judaism you know; I know what I know. So what I know is that when one repents, it is atoned for. I’m glad to hear someone with a different approach. No, no, the fact that there is a certain similarity to Christianity—What? Regarding the Jewish people it is pretty clear. What exactly is pretty clear? That there is reward and punishment. Of course—everyone has reward and punishment. Who said there isn’t reward and punishment? But who said there isn’t reward and punishment? Did I say there isn’t reward and punishment? Of course there is punishment. The punishment is forgiven when one repents. There are serious people. Serious people—so what? Fine, but the punishment is forgiven when one repents. No one says there are no punishments in the world. No, and where is the kindness? They do kindness. Kindness about what? About the fact that one who repented—no. He will not receive punishment. But one who did not repent—there is no such kindness. None. That might be Christian kindness, where confession is enough. Confession in their sense. Repentance is not—I don’t know whether repentance cancels the punishment. Meaning, in the system of my merits and obligations, now I’m okay, but in terms of punishment—is repentance relevant? What punishment—court punishment are you talking about? Because not only court punishment. It also says, for example, that if he committed an offense punishable by death, there are things for which repentance and suffering atone, and there are things for which repentance and death atone. So there is punishment, even if he repented. Right, there are things for which repentance is not enough. So when I say repentance, I mean that you did the required categories of atonement for that type of transgression. “Repentance” is a general term for all of them. But there is a kind of punishment that is part of repentance. Suffering. Yes, but that’s not exactly punishment. Suffering is a condition, not a punishment; it is a condition for the forgiveness of punishment. Even Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, in the end, died. Okay, fine. I’m saying—but still, in the end he was forgiven. So that’s it—that is the kindness. Still, there is nevertheless a point here that is a little hard to accept in such a straightforward way. Even in repentance out of love, the great repentance, there is a certain dimension of kindness. It is not entirely correct that this is strict justice, full stop. The difference is that first of all, in terms of the sources—there is no need to quote them here—there are very many sources that speak about repentance as a special kindness. To say that all these things are always talking only about repentance out of fear sounds pretty strained to me. And I think that when you really think about it, there really is kindness here—not as an excuse for the difficulty. There is kindness here, but it is kindness of a different kind. In Shaarei Teshuvah of Rabbeinu Yonah, he writes there at the beginning: “And know that when the sinner delays repenting of his sin, his punishment grows much heavier every day, for he knows that wrath has gone forth against him and that he has an escape to flee there, and that escape is repentance, and yet he remains in his rebellion and persists in his evil and has it in his power to come out from the upheaval, yet he does not fear the anger and fury; therefore his evil is great.” And our Rabbis, of blessed memory, said on this matter—Kohelet Rabbah, that is a midrash—by way of a parable: to a band of robbers whom the king imprisoned in jail, and they dug a tunnel, broke through, and escaped, fled. And one of them remained. The chief jailer came and saw that a tunnel had been dug and that the man was still imprisoned there, and he struck him with his staff. He said to him: “Miserable man! The tunnel is dug open before you—how did you not hurry to escape for your life?” It seems to me that in this situation, what exactly is the chief jailer’s claim? The chief jailer says to him: look, there is a tunnel here—why aren’t you making use of it? And it seems to me that this opens up the possibility of understanding that there is a difference between repentance out of fear and repentance out of love. In both there is a dimension of kindness, but the kindness is found at a different stage. In repentance out of fear, or the accounting-style repentance, the kindness is that the repentance is accepted. But the kindness in repentance out of love, or complete repentance, is that it is possible to do it at all. Meaning, the fact that someone who did this has his repentance accepted—that is strict justice. As the Chafetz Chaim says: you are someone else now; how can they punish you when there is no sin left on you at all? You are completely clean and pure. You changed entirely. You are a perfect righteous person. So now you’re going to take a hit because of someone you once were? That is strict justice. There is no kindness here. But there is kindness behind the whole matter: how did I get into this situation? How can a person do such a thing at all? Here there is something that goes beyond the usual rules. In that sense it is kindness. Meaning, in repentance out of fear, the small accounting-style repentance, the kindness is: you can do this, it’s not a problem, do the four steps, check the boxes, your repentance is accepted. Why is it accepted? That is kindness, because in truth you do not deserve it. There is kindness in accepting the repentance. Repentance out of love, the full repentance, is repentance that is accepted according to the strict law, because you really are someone else; you deserve to be judged favorably. The kindness there is that you can undergo this process at all, that a person has this power at all. Yes, maybe if there were free choice—if you hadn’t sinned, you wouldn’t have sinned, that’s all. Maybe not, maybe there would not have been an evil person, maybe he would commit the act of sin. There would not have been a sin, but he would not commit the act of sin. Obviously. The sin, yes—but wait, then why is that such kindness? After all, free choice is so dependent on… Because apparently that is exactly connected to the order and not to the alternative. Apparently giving me free choice in such a way that I can both sin and return is a better state than being without free choice in such a way that I neither sin nor do good. Does the Rabbi agree that free choice allows both sides? Obviously. Not that it forces, but that it allows. It allows. Yes. And that is still better than a state in which I have no free choice and I do neither merits nor sins. Wait a second. What? No, no, no. What “bread of shame”? I don’t think this is the question of bread of shame. There is something here in the human condition. It is better that you be a human being than a cat. That’s all. Not because of bread of shame and all that—those are all excuses that, I don’t know, I don’t buy. And actually, I think I prefer to be a human being rather than a cat, that’s all. Absolutely. There is a very interesting dialogue. There is some Jewish-American logician named Smullyan, Raymond Smullyan. He does logical stand-up comedy. He has all kinds of performances like that, an amusing fellow. He wrote a book—one of his books was translated into Hebrew not many years ago, The Tao Is Silent, I think, something like that. He was a Taoist, defined himself as a Taoist. And one of the dialogues there is a dialogue in which a person conducts a conversation with the Holy One, blessed be He, and asks Him to take away his free will, his freedom of choice. Then the Holy One, blessed be He, begins leading him around in circles and shows him the paradoxes involved in that, because if you did not have free will, you could not even ask for that. After all, even this request itself—to take away my free will—is because you decided that you do not want free will. If you do not have the ability to choose or decide, you could not even ask for that. And at the root of the matter—it is an extremely amusing dialogue, and I think there are many beautiful ideas behind it, I highly recommend reading it. But what lies behind it, beyond all the logical tricks, is exactly this point. Namely, that a state with free choice, where you can do both this and that, is better than a state without free choice, in which you neither sin nor receive reward. Why? I don’t know why—just because. It’s a postulate. To me it seems self-evident. Someone to whom it doesn’t seem that way—I don’t know how to persuade him. Yes, right. Okay. Fine, but I think this as someone who has free choice. I’m making this whole move here. But in terms of the definition of “better,” after all, good itself stems from the fact that there is choice. No, a better state of the world. It’s not that I do better actions. Which world is better? A world in which there are creatures who have choice, or a deterministic world that only carries things out? In what sense? On what scale? On the scale of good. I don’t know. In what sense is it better not to murder than to murder? On what scale? On the scale of good, I don’t know. It is better to do this than to do that. There is some scale of what is better; I don’t know how to translate it into some other scale. Because once I translate it into another scale, you’ll ask me—and on what scale is that scale better? At some point you stop. You stop at the point where your intuition tells you that this is better. Rabbi, everything we’re talking about applies to transgressions between man and God, but not to the others. What difference is there? What difference is there? Say slander, or robbing the public, and things like that. The repentance you do at that moment… Well? It doesn’t give you… you regret before the Holy One, blessed be He… No, then you also need to appease your fellow. Fine. There are things you can’t reach, like slander, like robbing the public. Meaning that you don’t remember whom you spoke about, or you don’t know where it had an effect? Exactly. Fine, so what can you do? Repent as much as you can. What? No chance? No chance at all to repent? No, precisely for that reason… Yes, but okay, maybe we’ll talk about that. It’s chapter four in Maimonides, the things that impede repentance. What, Rabbi? He said that even in such a case, then it really is done… This already appears in the halakhic decisors. These are halakhic questions. What does a penitent do if he doesn’t know to whom to return what he took? These are Talmudic discussions. If he doesn’t know to whom to return it, from there various halakhic decisors also derive additional things. What are you supposed to do? Give it to the public fund over there. There are all kinds of solutions they make. And in the end it seems that if you did that repentance and did what you could, then fine, it is accepted. There’s nothing… Could one say that free choice exists on two levels? The first level is that I can choose what to do, but it takes more free choice to change things within one’s character traits or soul on that level? I didn’t understand. As the Rabbi said in the previous lesson, it is a fact that there are people who repent all the way, all the way, all the way. Not common. There really aren’t such people. Maybe there are… Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, for example—there aren’t such people… Okay. Because there is one such case. So the fact that there is the ability to repent on such an extreme level—perhaps that is the kindness of the Holy One, blessed be He, that exists in the second attribute of “the Lord.” The kindness that is actualized, perhaps. What? Wait a second, but it is not connected to free choice. Free choice is a lower level of kindness. But the kindness—the kindness that there is such a possibility and no one actualizes it—what did we gain? That it takes tremendous effort to get there. Yes. That sounds problematic to me. It sounds problematic to me also because, okay, so Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya merited through the kindness of the Holy One, blessed be He—what does that have to do with all the rest of us? Everyone can get there. Fine, but they don’t. So now what? Fine, it’s unrelated. Is there some sense… in what sense did I benefit from that kindness? After all, I… And if I do not want to repent, then in what sense do I benefit from that kindness? I don’t benefit. So there is no kindness of the Lord? Of course there is. But I do want to repent; I just can’t do it, I didn’t get that far. We are talking about someone who does want to repent. And second, I don’t think there is anything there beyond ordinary choice. It is just more of the same. So why assume that the “more” is the kindness and the same thing is not? It’s more and less, but still, the very fact that it can be done—that is the kindness here. In Maimonides—the fact is that Maimonides places the discussion of free choice in the Laws of Repentance. Why doesn’t he place the discussion of free choice in the Laws of Grace after Meals? You have a choice whether to recite Grace after Meals or not, right? Or the redemption of a firstborn donkey. Why not place it there? Either redeem it or don’t redeem it, right? What’s the issue? Because in repentance—in the other commandments, repentance, the other commandments—choice is a means, a tool I use in order to fulfill the commandment. In repentance, choice is the very substance of the commandment. The commandment is to be choosing. That is the commandment. It is the body of the commandment. Not that you need to be choosing in order to fulfill the commandment. The commandment is to be choosing. Therefore the discussion of choice appears specifically in the Laws of Repentance. More than that, there is a contradiction—if I’m already continuing this parenthesis. The Chinukh asks: in the Book of Commandments, positive commandment 73, Maimonides writes there that there is a commandment that when the sinner returns from his sin, he should confess. So the commandment is basically to confess; there is no commandment to repent. If you repent, you need to confess. It’s that kind of conditional commandment. At the beginning of the Laws of Repentance it says that there is one commandment, namely that the sinner should return from his sin and confess. Meaning, there is a commandment to repent and to confess. It is one commandment because of the rules for counting the commandments, but it is one commandment that includes two details. One must repent and confess. Like a sacrifice—you need slaughtering, sprinkling, receiving the blood, carrying it—but it is one commandment, never mind, and you need all of them. Okay? So the Chinukh asks: there is apparently a contradiction in Maimonides. And I think the simple answer is that in the Book of Commandments, Maimonides counts the commandments that we were commanded in the Torah—the 613 commandments. A commandment that we were commanded in the Torah appears in the Book of Commandments. A commandment that we were not commanded in the Torah does not appear there. It is impossible that the Torah should command us to repent. Why is that impossible? Because if repenting means being choosing, then how can it command me to be choosing? If I choose to obey that command, then I am already choosing anyway. And if I choose not to obey that command, then I am also not choosing anyway. So that command adds nothing. The commandment is not to be choosing. The commandment is not to be choosing—it is to choose the good. What? No, no, wait, that gets ahead of me a bit. To be choosing. What? “And you shall choose life.” That is not a commandment. The Holy One, blessed be He, says that He expects you to be choosing, of course. But He cannot command you to be choosing. To expect it from you—that is perfectly fine, there is no problem with that. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: I expect you—exactly, that’s the point—I expect you to be a human being and not a cat. He expects you to be choosing. He cannot command you to be a human being and not a cat. Because either way, if you are a human being then you are already a human being, and if you are a cat it won’t help to command you. In other words, no—such a commandment has no meaning. It is a bit similar to what we discussed today in the Isaiah lesson about commandments that command you to perform commandments. In the fourth root, Maimonides says that there are inclusive commandments such as “You shall be holy.” That is a commandment that commands you to do the commandments. So people think—medieval authorities think—that Maimonides there is speaking about redundancy. We don’t count that commandment because the regular commandments are already counted, and that commandment is just a duplicate commandment, so there is no point in counting it. But that is not correct. We do not count that commandment because it is not a commandment at all. A commandment that tells us to do commandments is not a commandment. Commandments tell us to do acts. Commandments that tell us to do commandments are not commandments; that is something meta-halakhic. There is no law that commands me to keep laws. What commands me to keep laws is something outside the legal system. Because otherwise, if the law commanded me to keep laws, then why should I keep that law itself? So obviously the anchor must be outside the thing it anchors, right? Otherwise we get Baron Munchausen—running out of the pit to bring a ladder in order to get out. There was something I said, where I said commandments, I said it was something—I said the opposite thing. Now this is, say, exactly the opposite. Enough with your provocations. The truth is that in my feeling it is obvious that the Holy One, blessed be He, does kindness with us. That is obvious. And if you look at the half-full cup, then everyone here—we all receive kindness. The fact that we are sitting here and learning is enormous kindness. Good, thank God. So first of all the point of view has to be that the Holy One, blessed be He, does kindness. Now regarding repentance and all sorts of things—the general kindness is not what we are dealing with at the moment. We are dealing with kindness connected to the process of repentance. The kindness connected to the process of repentance seems to me, in the great repentance out of love, to be the very fact that it can be done. The very fact that we were given the ability to choose. That ability to choose is the kindness being referred to when people speak about the process of repentance, and repentance in its essence is basically to return to being choosing. And therefore I also began with the contradiction in Maimonides, so I say: what appears in the Book of Commandments is that when he repents, he should confess. There is no commandment to repent. Why is there no commandment to repent? Because it is impossible to command me to repent. In the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides does not bring only commandments—rabbinic laws appear there too. What appears in the Mishneh Torah? Everything that needs to be done. You need to repent. Of course you do. So then in the legal code it has to appear that you need to repent, right? Such a commandment cannot exist in the Torah, so it will not appear in the Book of Commandments. But in the Mishneh Torah there are also things that do not appear in the Book of Commandments. Everything that needs to be done is supposed to appear in the Mishneh Torah. One needs to repent, so it appears in the Mishneh Torah that one needs to repent. Fine, and therefore—that is the point. And why really can’t one command this? Because commanding repentance is a contradiction in terms. Repentance is to be choosing. You cannot command someone to be choosing, because if you choose not to choose, then you also will not keep that command. But repentance in the Mishneh Torah is like a fine. As if there is some penalty in the law that you have to do thus and such and such, and then it will be atoned for. I’m talking about repentance out of love, not repentance out of fear. I am talking here about repentance out of love. Repentance out of fear is certainly not like that. Repentance out of fear is not like that. In repentance out of fear, the kindness is that it is accepted. The fact that it can be done—that’s not the point there. One can look at it as a law, really like a law, like a command. The repentance we are talking about—you ask why he didn’t bring a commandment to do repentance out of fear? Is that what you asked? I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t one, because he didn’t find a source. There is no such commandment. He didn’t bring it because there isn’t one. Yes. The Rabbi defined that in the great repentance, the kindness is the very fact that I can do it. Now let’s say that doesn’t fit, perhaps, with Maimonides—for example, when he says about Pharaoh that the Holy One, blessed be He, took away his choice to repent? Well, he defines that as a punishment. So then that should not be a punishment; it should simply be that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not doing that kindness with him. The punishment is that He does not do that kindness with him. What do you mean? That is the punishment. The kindness of the Lord—all that the Holy One, blessed be He, gives us is kindness. So if He doesn’t give it to us, you can only relate to that as an absence of kindness, not as punishment. Fine, that is what is called the punishment. Kindness by definition is beyond—beyond strict justice. Beyond the letter of the law. And if Maimonides defines as kindness the fact that I can repent, that means I can be choosing. If I cannot be choosing, then justice is irrelevant. The whole framework of justice—what do you want from my life? Here actually is the next stage—I want to deal with that next time. I’ll just say in a couple of words. The concepts of kindness and justice are much broader than people usually take them to be. Kindness and justice, in the simple meanings we know, are kinds of paradigms. Justice means acting according to the rules. That is the true meaning of justice. Justice is according to the rules, and kindness is outside the rules. That is the essential definition of kindness as opposed to justice. Fine? Now in that sense, choice is something outside the rules. Because choice is basically doing something that does not operate according to rules. What are rules? Rules are cause and effect. A rule says that if this, then that, right? A relationship of cause and effect is the paradigm of rules. Rules always say: if there is a cause, there will be an effect. Legal rules too: if this is the case, then you must do this. Physical laws too: if this is the state of affairs, the result will be such-and-such. Fine? So a rule is always some kind of relationship of cause and effect. Choice is performing an act without a cause. Because if there were a cause, then I did not do it—the cause produced it. So in other words it is not according to the rules. Therefore it is kindness. Not in the sense of not according to the justice of the Shulchan Arukh, but in the sense that it is against the rules. Fine?
[Speaker F] So that’s why all the paradoxes
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] surrounding the concept of choice are because it doesn’t fit for us with the regular rules we are used to.
[Speaker O] The rules of cause and effect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The deterministic rules that we know from the world around us. And suddenly within ourselves we discover some anomalous thing, and that is what gets us into all these tangles, because it does not
[Speaker F] work according to the rules.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] because it is kindness.
[Speaker K] Kindness in the broader sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now that really is the point
[Speaker P] about which maybe I
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] will speak next time, so let’s stop here.