Aspects of Repentance, Lecture 1

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In this Wednesday series I want to talk a bit about matters of repentance. I’ll start by speaking in general about what repentance is, what it means, how one does it, and afterward a bit about other aspects, as much as we have time for. There’s some kind of tension or difference between the description of the concept of repentance in halakhic literature and its description in literature of Jewish thought. In halakhic literature it seems that there’s some kind of procedure here with four stages, roughly speaking, right? Abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession, and all kinds of definitions of when you do it, how you do it, when you’re obligated, when you’re not obligated, every sort of halakhic issue just like any other halakhic topic, more or less. And in literature of Jewish thought you can of course get to all kinds of things up to the heavens, with all kinds of deep meanings and inner psychological processes and things of that sort. Usually when there’s a topic treated in halakhic literature and in literature of thought, then naturally we’d expect that the genre is different and therefore the treatment is different, but basically it’s two sides of the same thing. There are halakhic aspects and conceptual aspects, and one corresponds to the other or explains the other. But it seems to me that here that’s not the case. Here I think the two facets are different facets, not two sides of the same coin. There really are two processes of repentance, two kinds of repentance. One of them is more emphasized, or focused on more, in literature of Jewish thought, and the other is emphasized in halakhic literature, and they are not two sides of the same coin. I’ll try to explain that, and also to explain why one belongs more to the halakhic domain and one more to the domain of thought, what the relation between them is, and so on. I’ll begin from a law in Maimonides which serves me here more as a starting point than as the goal. Meaning, my intention here is not to explain Maimonides in two ways, but to go out from him and continue in two directions. Maimonides writes at the beginning of chapter 3 of Laws of Repentance: Every single human being has merits and sins. One whose merits exceed his sins is righteous, and one whose sins exceed his merits is wicked; if it is half and half, he is intermediate. And so too a country: if the merits of all its inhabitants are greater than their sins, it is righteous, and if their sins are greater, it is wicked, and so too the whole world. Meaning, this classification into righteous, intermediate, and wicked is done in many circles: the private circle, the circle of the city, the country, the world, and so on. What is righteous, intermediate, and wicked? What is the relation between them? So Maimonides in law 2—in fact already in the previous law he wrote, right: one whose merits exceed his sins is righteous, one whose sins exceed his merits is wicked, and one where it is exactly equal is intermediate. In law 2 Maimonides writes this: A person whose sins are more numerous than his merits dies immediately in his wickedness, as it says, “because of the greatness of your iniquity.” And so too a country whose sins are many is immediately destroyed, as it says, “the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great.” And so too the entire world, if their sins were greater than their merits, they are immediately destroyed, as it says, “And the Lord saw that the evil of man was great.” And this weighing is not according to the number of merits and sins, but according to their magnitude. There is a merit that counts against several sins, as it says, “because some good thing was found in him,” and there is a sin that counts against several merits, as it says, “but one sinner destroys much good.” And they are weighed only according to the knowledge of the God of knowledge, and He knows how merits are arranged against sins. Meaning, here he says that even though in the previous law he classified righteous, intermediate, and wicked according to the numbers of sins and merits, in this law he qualifies that a bit and basically says: we’re not talking here about a simple count; we don’t just count. There is weight to every transgression and every commandment. Those weights are not known to us; only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows them. Fine. In law 3—maybe let’s read law 3 too: Anyone who regrets the commandments he performed and questions his merits and says in his heart, “What did I gain by doing them? If only I had not done them,” has lost them all, and no merit of his is mentioned to him in the world, as it says, “the righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his wickedness.” This applies only to one who questions the earlier deeds. That’s a passage in Kiddushin. A righteous person who regrets the earlier deeds, rebels and regrets the earlier deeds, loses his merits. And just as a person’s merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so too every year the sins of each and every one of those who come into the world are weighed together with his merits on the festival of Rosh Hashanah. One who is found righteous is sealed for life, one who is found wicked is sealed for death, and the intermediate person is suspended until Yom Kippur—not physically, of course. If he repents, he is sealed for life, and if not, he is sealed for death. So there’s this intermediate state: on Rosh Hashanah judgment is made, there’s an intermediate situation in which we’re hanging in the balance, and on Yom Kippur we are sealed. So the first part of the law, about someone who regretted his commandments, places some emphasis on choice: a person can change his path, turn from righteous to wicked, from wicked to righteous. The second part, Maimonides writes there that what a person needs to do in the Ten Days of Repentance—or not every person, the intermediate person—the intermediate person needs to repent in the Ten Days of Repentance. If he repents, he is sealed for life, and if not, he is sealed for death. So it really seems that after the judgment on Rosh Hashanah, when we are initially classified as righteous, intermediate, and wicked, the intermediate person’s possibility of changing his status is only by repenting. Whoever does not repent is finished. Now maybe one more—well. So that’s also what emerges from the Jerusalem Talmud in Rosh Hashanah: only repentance. What if someone does a few more commandments during the Ten Days of Repentance? Maybe he can also tip the scale? He’ll have more commandments. No. In Maimonides it says: if he repented, good; if not, he is sealed for death. Meaning, the classification ended on Rosh Hashanah; from then on what is open to us is only repentance. That’s why they’re called the Ten Days of Repentance. On the other hand, one law later, law 4, Maimonides seems at first glance to contradict this. Even though sounding the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a decree of Scripture, there is a hint in it, as if to say: Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep, and slumberers, arise from your slumber, search your deeds and return in repentance and remember your Creator. Those who forget the truth amid the vanities of time and spend all their years in vanity and emptiness that neither profits nor saves—look to your souls and improve your ways and your deeds, and let each of you abandon his evil path and his thoughts that are not good. Therefore every person should see himself all year long as if half meritorious and half liable, and so too the whole world as half meritorious and half liable. If he committed one sin, he has tipped himself and the whole world to the side of liability and caused destruction. If he did one commandment, he has tipped himself and the whole world to the side of merit and caused salvation and deliverance for himself and for them, as it says, “and the righteous person is the foundation of the world”—this one who acted righteously tipped the whole world to merit and saved it. And because of this matter all the house of Israel has the custom to increase charity and good deeds and to engage in commandments from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur more than during the rest of the year. And they all have the custom to rise at night during these ten days to pray, etc. So here several later authorities already noted that this seems to contradict what he wrote in the previous law, because here it seems that during the Ten Days of Repentance one can do commandments and tip the scale, while in the previous law he said that only repentance helps, meaning commandments do not help. So okay, that’s one initial point, although here I don’t think it’s all that difficult, because one has to do commandments and good deeds, but it’s clear that the commandments and good deeds here are not done in order to tip the scale by their own merit, but as part of the process of repentance. And when a person does commandments, good deeds, a lot of them, right—fasting, charity, and so on—these are basically processes that accompany this act of repentance. No, you’re not doing it in order to—or not only in order to—do more commandments. That too, but not only that. The tipping is done by repentance itself. Fine. This picture that Maimonides describes here—up to this point this is more or less Maimonides’ view—this picture is problematic in several respects. The first respect: why only repentance? Why not really do some more commandments and tip the scale? If in fact the definition of intermediate, righteous, and wicked is according to how many commandments against how many transgressions, then do a few more commandments during the Ten Days of Repentance and you’ll be sealed for life. Why specifically repentance? What is the emphasis on repentance? The second difficulty: in fact the Magen Avot and the Tashbetz really do write that commandments also help, but that’s not what Maimonides seems to imply. On another front: why indeed, if a person does not repent during the Ten Days of Repentance, is he sealed for death? If he did not repent, then he remains intermediate; that’s the Lechem Mishneh’s question. He remains intermediate, and if he remains intermediate, we hold that the Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward kindness, so if he remains intermediate he should be sealed for life.

[Speaker C] There’s something negative about remaining intermediate, about staying where you are.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but I’m still where I am. So if I’m intermediate, then what? Did I become wicked by remaining intermediate? Does the timeline work against me? I don’t know. The Lechem Mishneh writes something similar; he says that really the transgression is that he did not repent, as if there’s some sort of transgression there. That is of course problematic. It’s problematic mainly according to Maimonides, but we are talking here about Maimonides’ view, because quite simply in Maimonides’ view there is no commandment to repent. In Maimonides there is a commandment to confess, right? That’s the famous comment of the Minchat Chinukh: there is no commandment to repent, only that if a person repents from his sin, he should confess. That is the commandment. Another point: how can there be an intermediate person at all? If the calculation really is some arithmetic calculation of commandments and transgressions, the chance that we come out intermediate is zero. What are the chances that we’re intermediate? So all the work of the Ten Days of Repentance, which is basically intended only for the intermediate, because the others already finished their careers on Rosh Hashanah—what exactly is the likelihood that we even need to do this? We know that in Jewish law we follow the majority. Most people presumably are not intermediate. If there is even one intermediate person, I’m very doubtful, because exact equivalence is impossible to narrow down to, and the chance that the number of commandments will exactly equal the number of transgressions is negligible. What will you say? Bring me the previous law in Maimonides where he says that this weighing is according to the knowledge of the God of knowledge, and nobody can know; it’s not a simple count. That does not solve the problem, because fine, take the weighting of the God of knowledge who knows—so do a weighted sum, not a simple sum. The question still remains: what are the chances that a weighted sum will come out exactly balanced? Exactly the same chance as a simple sum: zero. There’s no difference there. What difference does it make whether the sum is weighted or not? There’s some weighted function here; the chance that it comes out exactly equal is still zero. So I don’t think that point really changes anything here. One point that maybe could be made here, mainly for those listening to my morning lecture: maybe what’s here is really a claim not that the commandments and transgressions have different weights, but that they are different qualities. We cannot compare them at all. It’s not that there are quantities and we just can’t determine whether this transgression weighs two kilos or one kilo; rather, they are not measured on the same scale at all. Every transgression damages something else, every commandment repairs something else, and therefore in fact there is no basis on which I can weight or sum all the commandments and transgressions in a weighted total. Each one is its own thing. You can’t add apples and oranges, and you also can’t add Sabbath observance and honoring one’s parents. What? These are two different things measured in different units, and transgressions are obviously even more different. If that’s so, then one cannot really make this classification at all. But then the question really arises: so what is the whole meaning of this definition of intermediate, righteous, and wicked? Then basically everyone is intermediate in some sense, because everyone has sides in this direction and sides in that direction and other sides too, and since you can’t weigh them, then basically everyone is intermediate. That is one possibility that solves the problem of how there can be an intermediate person, but it really raises the question of how there can be a righteous or wicked person. So in fact these definitions already become somewhat emptied of content. Yes, but I think these are hypothetical figures. Fine. Up to here is basically the initial groundwork. From here one can go in two directions. I’ll start, perhaps, with the question of why indeed only repentance helps. Why does only repentance help and not doing additional commandments? There are really two directions here. One direction appears in the book Emek Berakhah, by Pomeranchik, for those who know—one of Rabbi from Brisk’s students, died young, managed to write several books, actually several came out not so long ago. Emek Berakhah is his best-known book. On various topics, one of them deals with repentance, and there he asks this question and claims the following. I once saw this also in Rabbi of Monkatsh. He claims that on Rosh Hashanah they basically examine each person’s state—intermediate, righteous, or wicked. They check commandments and transgressions, put them on the scale, right, and decide whether he is intermediate, righteous, or wicked. And that’s it. On Rosh Hashanah the matter ends. What happens from then on? From then on, if you do more commandments, those commandments will be credited to you on the following Rosh Hashanah. The next Rosh Hashanah examines your state in this coming year, but it does not go onto the scale that was already closed on the previous Rosh Hashanah. Therefore, during the Ten Days of Repentance there is no significance from this perspective to commandments you do. They have significance for the judgment of the coming year. What is the one thing that can tip a scale that has already been closed? Repentance. Why? Because repentance, unlike what the Lechem Mishneh said before, is not that you did another commandment and therefore it tipped your scale, but that repentance succeeded in removing some transgressions from the scale that are already lying there. That is the whole idea of repentance: repentance erases transgressions that were already committed. Once it erases transgressions that were already committed, then retroactively you have lightened the side of liability, and therefore you are sealed for life. That is basically the claim.

[Speaker C] Just for the Lechem Mishneh—at least the way I understood from you—the Lechem Mishneh didn’t say that if you repent then another commandment is added for you and therefore you’re found—?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, obviously not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the other side of what he said there. I didn’t mean that that’s really what he said. I mean, if I take the Lechem Mishneh’s direction on the other side as well. So that’s one direction. On the other hand, that direction of course doesn’t solve the other questions—how can there be an intermediate person and all the rest. It only explains why only repentance can help. There is another direction. Rabbi Chaim Friedlander goes in this direction in Siftei Chaim on the festivals. And he says that intermediate, righteous, and wicked is not an arithmetic question. It is not a question of how many commandments or even a weighted count of commandments and transgressions one against another. Intermediate, righteous, and wicked is measured by the question: what is your fundamental direction in life? Meaning, if your direction in life, your basic picture, is positive, then you are righteous. If your basic direction in life is toward evil, then you are wicked. And if you’re dancing between the two—limping between two opinions—then you are intermediate. This has nothing to do with the number of commandments and transgressions. Meaning, it could be that you are righteous, but “the greater the person, the greater his inclination,” and since you have such a great inclination you committed many transgressions, but your basic direction is positive—you just failed—so you are righteous.

[Speaker B] But that’s not how Maimonides defines it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] נכון, which is why I said at the outset that I don’t think these two directions can be seen as interpretations of Maimonides. I’m just taking Maimonides as a point of departure. Maybe later we’ll come back to Maimonides and see how perhaps this could nevertheless—but let’s leave that for now. So what he is basically saying is that here it is of course very clear how there can be an intermediate person. That answers that question very clearly. Here too it is clear why only repentance helps. Because exactly—since if you do more commandments or more transgressions during the Ten Days of Repentance, what difference does it make? The number of transgressions and commandments doesn’t matter. You could be a great righteous person with many transgressions. So now you did a few more commandments—so you’re a great righteous person with many commandments too. So what? You’re still a great righteous person. If you’re a great wicked person, then you’re still a great wicked person. The only way you can turn from wicked to righteous is if you repent, not if you do a few commandments. Because repentance is basically some sort of inner revolution. Until now your direction was negative, from now on your direction is positive—sorry, the other way around—negative, and from now on positive. Therefore you are judged for life. Meaning, repentance is unique not because it is some special commandment as opposed to the other commandments, but because we are not dealing here with the performance of a commandment. We are dealing with some kind of spiritual upheaval, some kind of reversal of direction in life, that truly turns you from wicked to righteous. So naturally you are sealed for life. As you rightly noted, fitting this into Maimonides is pretty difficult. Maimonides says according to the number of commandments and transgressions one is righteous, intermediate, or wicked. Whoever is balanced is intermediate; from then on he is sealed—meaning, if he repents he is sealed for life, if he does not repent he is sealed for death. It’s hard to fit this into Maimonides. Maybe we’ll come back to Maimonides later, maybe. But in truth, on the face of it, it’s pretty difficult. A similar direction is also found in the author of the Tanya, for those who know, though in a more extreme form. The author of the Tanya treats the intermediate person as a perfectly righteous person, you know. Someone who has only commandments, but still has an urge also to do evil; he hasn’t yet eliminated his evil inclination. So therefore he is called intermediate. That’s what is called intermediate. So that is an approach that goes in this direction, but of course it radicalizes it very strongly. I don’t mean that direction. I am talking about the person’s fundamental direction. An intermediate person is someone who has commandments and transgressions, a righteous person is someone who has commandments and transgressions, and a wicked person is someone who has commandments and transgressions. The whole question is: what is your basic direction in life? Are the transgressions failures, or are the transgressions your direction? That is the question. If the transgressions are failures, then he is righteous. If the commandments are failures, then he is wicked. Okay? And if he always fails, then he is intermediate. Fine. Maybe in this context it’s worth mentioning Elijah’s favorite example on Mount Carmel. Elijah says to the people: How long will you keep limping between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow Him, and if Baal, follow him. Usually we understand that statement as some kind of rhetorical cornering. He’s just doing a rhetorical trick to back the people into a corner and rebuke them. He doesn’t really mean that if Baal is God in your eyes, then go after him. But it seems to me that he does mean it. He really does mean it. He says to them: Friends, decide. Meaning, if you really think that Baal is god, then go ahead, follow him. If you think the Lord is God, then of course follow Him. The worst thing is to sit in the middle. Like the old comedy sketch, you know: Is the son going with the father or with the mother? I don’t know, I went with the guys. Fine. Meaning, someone who goes wherever the wind takes him—that is someone in this middle condition, someone who hasn’t decided. In a certain sense he is worse than someone who decided for evil. Therefore he says: if Baal is god, follow him. It’s the famous joke, right, about the Religious Zionist—you probably know it—in Bnei Brak it’s very common, about Rebecca going to—right—“and she went to inquire of the Lord,” and Rashi says there “two nations”—how does it go there?

[Speaker C] She passes by the doors of study halls…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. So Rashi says there—I don’t remember exactly how the verse goes—Rashi says there that when she passed by study halls, she felt kicks, someone wanted to come out; when she passed by houses of idol worship, there too he wanted to come out. “And she went to inquire of the Lord.” What was said? “Behold, two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your insides,” and then she calmed down, everything was fine. Why did she calm down? At first she thought she had someone confused. Meaning—at first, sorry—at first she thought she had two… okay? At first she thought she had someone confused, someone who hadn’t—

[Speaker E] decided, one time he goes—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] here, one time he goes there—a Religious Zionist. They come and explain to her: no, you have a righteous one and a wicked one. A righteous one and a wicked one is better than a Religious Zionist. Meaning, that’s what calmed Rebecca down. And of course “Religious Zionist” here is not a question of the color of the kippah, needless to say. It’s a question of directions in life. That’s the intermediate person we are talking about here. So of course this is one aspect. Maybe I’ll come back to it later. There is one aspect in which someone who hasn’t decided is indeed worse than someone who has decided, even someone who decided for evil. There is another aspect in which not. Meaning, the ranking here is of course more complex. Fine. In Rabbi Chaim Friedlander’s approach there is of course no need to assume that repentance works backward in time, right? According to Emek Berakhah, why does only repentance help? Because repentance erases transgressions already committed in the past; it somehow works backward in time, a kind of mysticism. According to Rabbi Chaim Friedlander, no. I am simply judged according to what I am. If I repented, then now I am righteous, and I am judged according to what I am now. There is no need to assume that repentance works backward in time—another gain in this approach, in this explanation. So we really have two directions for understanding why only repentance helps during the Ten Days of Repentance. One of them is a technical direction that says only repentance can change something that has already happened; commandments or transgressions I do now will help me in the future, but they won’t change something that was already closed on Rosh Hashanah. The second direction seems more essential, less technical, a direction that says that in truth you are judged according to what you really are, not according to an account of commandments or transgressions. And repentance can change what you really are; therefore only repentance helps. The direction of Emek Berakhah—the direction of Siftei Chaim is hard to fit into Maimonides, as we said before; in Maimonides it’s hard to fit that in. But Emek Berakhah’s direction is a problematic one. The most basic problem really is this technique of determining intermediate, righteous, and wicked. What, we count commandments, count transgressions? That is what is called intermediate, righteous, or wicked? On the simple level it really seems that Siftei Chaim is right. I’m not even speaking in terms of objections; these are questions. How can it be that this is really what determines it? What—if I have one transgression here, one transgression there, hop—then I deserve to die? And if by chance I have one less transgression, then I’m in life? It’s nice as a way of motivating me to do commandments, as Maimonides says: a person should always see himself and the whole world as half meritorious and half liable. Fine, that motivates us to do commandments. But is that really how the Holy One, blessed be He, judges us? It’s very strange. Another thing, and maybe even more difficult: why indeed does only repentance help? I still don’t understand the explanation. What is this—bookkeeping? Meaning, if I did a few more commandments now during the Ten Days of Repentance, then if they judged me now, I would deserve to live forever—forever meaning of course until next Rosh Hashanah. I deserve to live, I’m innocent, everything is fine. Okay? But what? Office hours closed on Rosh Hashanah. On Rosh Hashanah there was judgment; they still haven’t killed me—if they killed me, they already killed me, I’m done; they haven’t killed me yet, they’re waiting for the sealing. But office hours are over. Meaning, if I do a few commandments, it won’t help; that’s already for next year. Come back then, we’ll talk to you. Right now the clerk has gone to sleep, lunch break. What does that mean? What is going on here? If in truth I now stand, according to this accounting calculation, in a place where the number of commandments determines my status, then why indeed does doing a few more commandments not help? My status now is fine. So Rosh Hashanah was three days ago—so what happened? Now I did a few more commandments. I didn’t repent, but I’m not lost. Only what changes what was on Rosh Hashanah counts. And what? If I were judged now, I’d be judged for life, right? And now you’re going to kill me on Yom Kippur, seal me for death—why? Because office hours are over. I’m innocent now. Right now I’m a person who has more commandments than transgressions at this moment on Yom Kippur, but they’ll kill me. Why? Because office hours are over. These commandments went into that account, not this one. Sounds a bit problematic. I don’t know. This bookkeeping sounds a little…

[Speaker D] Is that how to understand Maimonides?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I’m saying—that’s how Emek Berakhah understood it. So I’m asking: how do you understand that? What is the meaning of this whole thing? What is this scribal bookkeeping? What is this accounting? Are these clerks?

[Speaker D] Why not add those commandments of the Ten Days of Repentance to the previous year?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly what I’m asking. Fine indeed. After all, You still didn’t kill me on Rosh Hashanah. I’m still waiting until Yom Kippur. On Yom Kippur You judge, and now You look: I didn’t repent, but I did a few more commandments during the Ten Days of Repentance. It won’t help at all, says my friend Emek Berakhah, sorry, we’ll meet next year. Right now, die; next year we’ll talk. Okay? That’s basically what he says. Nothing will help you, because office hours are over. What does that mean? But if now you really put the scales down, הרי I would come out righteous. You came out righteous, as they say, right? I would come out righteous, right? So what—what does that mean? So two days passed, three days passed, and that’s it? Office hours… After all, it still hasn’t happened in practice. I’m not asking You to change something that already happened. Not yet. You’re waiting; after all, You’re going to seal me on Yom Kippur. So what kind of logic is that? What is this, bookkeeping? I’m just sharpening the point: this whole conception is an accounting conception. This conception that says numbers of commandments, numbers of transgressions, some kind of beginner’s reckoning, office hours ended, come tomorrow, put it into that account. What is this, are we joking? Is this how we judge? Is this how the heavenly court would sentence someone to death? Meaning, what, this is how the Holy One, blessed be He, judges people? This is how He judges them? For that He needs to be the tester of kidneys and heart? I can do that too. You need to see who the person standing before You is, not how many technical items happened to come out for him this year. Yes.

[Speaker F] It’s a kind of ignoring where you are now. Because if now, say, you add a few more, then it’s like you’re saying okay, what was was, now beyond that I’m okay, let it go for me, and then after—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It could be that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow you’ll go back to that same place again. Not “right now I’m okay”; cumulatively I’m okay. I’m not saying “let it go for me.”

[Speaker F] So come on, then let’s meet next year.