On Repentance 1
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Table of Contents
- The tension between halakhic repentance and philosophical repentance
- Maimonides: righteous, wicked, intermediate, and judgment on Rosh Hashanah
- Difficulties in Maimonides’ words and their implications
- A yeshiva-style explanation: the Ten Days of Repentance belong to the coming year
- The Siftei Chaim explanation: classification is by basic direction, not counting
- The author of the Tanya as an extreme model of classification
- Two models of repentance: a “small” accounting repentance and a “great” essential repentance
- The Maharal and the Thirteen Attributes: “The Lord, the Lord” versus “clears but does not clear”
- Regret as the axis of distinction, and a continuum between the poles
- The laws of repentance as one track, and the philosophy of repentance as another track
- Proofs from the Sages: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya and a thought of repentance in Kiddushin
- Mesillat Yesharim: repentance as the grace of uprooting the will as uprooting the act
- Kovetz Ma’amarim of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman: a difficulty from the Talmud and the Chafetz Chaim’s answer
- Reframing: great repentance as justice, and small repentance as grace
Summary
General Overview
The text presents a tension between the conception of repentance in halakhic literature, which reduces repentance to a procedure of abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, and vidui, and broader philosophical conceptions such as those in Rabbi Kook’s Orot HaTeshuvah. It suggests that in repentance, Jewish law and philosophy are not merely two parallel layers but two different tracks. It opens with Maimonides in the laws of repentance and the judgment of the righteous, wicked, and intermediate on Rosh Hashanah, raises difficulties in both the wording and the mechanism of judgment, and brings two main explanations for why specifically repentance helps the intermediate person and not simply an increase in commandments. From there it distinguishes between a “small” accounting repentance that erases sins one by one, and a “great” essential repentance that changes the direction of a person’s life. It argues that philosophical writings are not merely explanations of Jewish law, but at times an alternative path of repentance that does not rest on all the details of the halakhic procedure.
The tension between halakhic repentance and philosophical repentance
Halakhic literature defines repentance through details such as abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, vidui, and the Ten Days of Repentance, and repentance has certain limited halakhic aspects. Philosophical literature gives repentance a far broader meaning, and in Rabbi Kook’s Orot HaTeshuvah repentance becomes a concept that embraces almost the whole Torah, and maybe even more than the whole Torah. In the world of repentance, the halakhic layer and the philosophical layer get mixed together, to the point that one can see them as belonging to the same plane rather than as two parallel explanations of the “what” and the “why.”
Maimonides: righteous, wicked, intermediate, and judgment on Rosh Hashanah
Maimonides, in the laws of repentance chapter 3, divides the individual, the state, and the world into circles of righteous, wicked, or intermediate according to merits and sins. Maimonides states that one whose sins outweigh his merits “immediately dies in his wickedness,” and likewise a state and the world, and emphasizes that the weighing is not according to number but according to magnitude, and that only the “God of knowledge” knows how to weigh them. Maimonides states that one who regrets his commandments and reconsiders the earlier merits loses his merits, and adds that just as a person is weighed at the time of death, so too each year on Rosh Hashanah: the righteous are inscribed for life, the wicked for death, and the intermediate are left suspended until Yom Kippur; if they repent they are inscribed for life, and if not they are inscribed for death.
Difficulties in Maimonides’ words and their implications
The text points to the difficulty of how one circle can be “wiped out” and still remain in existence in another circle, and also that even a weighted reckoning still does not explain the possibility of the “intermediate,” because the chance of a precise balance seems negligible. It brings, in the name of the Lechem Mishneh, that according to Maimonides there is no commandment to repent, only a commandment to confess “when the sinner repents from his sin,” and asks how repentance helps if it does not add a commandment, and why the absence of repentance leads to being inscribed for death. It infers from Maimonides that the intermediate person judged on Rosh Hashanah does not leave that status through additional commandments but only through repentance, and notes that later Maimonides describes a custom to increase charity and good deeds from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur, explaining this as commandments done as part of the process of repentance and not as an arithmetical tilting of the scale.
A yeshiva-style explanation: the Ten Days of Repentance belong to the coming year
The standard explanation, quoted in the name of Rabbi Kotler, says that the judgment on Rosh Hashanah relates to the year that has passed, while the Ten Days of Repentance essentially belong to the coming year. According to this, commandments and sins during those ten days are recorded in the “account” of the coming year and therefore do not help change the judgment of the past year, whereas repentance helps because it retroactively repairs sins that had already been placed on the scale. According to this description, repentance is no longer a new merit but a correction that removes sins from the previous balance and rewrites history, while doing commandments helps as part of the repentance process but does not by itself change the judgment that has already been set.
The Siftei Chaim explanation: classification is by basic direction, not counting
In Siftei Chaim by Rabbi Chaim Friedlander, the classification into righteous, intermediate, and wicked is not an ordinary or weighted count but an overall characterization of the person and his basic direction. A person can be considered righteous even with many failures, because his desire and direction are positive, and a person can be considered wicked even if externally he performs many commandments, if his direction is not truly committed to the service of God. The intermediate person is someone sitting on the fence who has still not chosen a clear direction, and therefore only repentance, whose meaning here is choice and a change of direction, can move him from intermediate to righteous, whereas more commandments do not change the overall picture.
The author of the Tanya as an extreme model of classification
The author of the Tanya presents an even more extreme classification in which a righteous person is someone who has no evil inclination at all, while an intermediate person is someone who never sins at all but still has an evil inclination and constantly overcomes it. The text sees this as moving in a similar direction to the principle of essential classification, but defines that formulation as unreasonable, and prefers the more plausible formulation of Rabbi Chaim Friedlander.
Two models of repentance: a “small” accounting repentance and a “great” essential repentance
The text presents the first explanation as one that creates a kind of metaphysical “hocus-pocus” mechanism of retroactive correction, and the second as one that does not require backward action but a present change in the person. It argues that these are not merely two interpretations but two actual paths of repentance: a small repentance that is a procedure of erasing sins one by one and balancing merits against sins, and a great repentance that is an essential revolution and a change in spiritual direction. It describes the accounting repentance as petty and clerical, and sets against it an essential repentance that does not operate by squeezing in before the office closes, but by changing the person himself.
The Maharal and the Thirteen Attributes: “The Lord, the Lord” versus “clears but does not clear”
The Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah expounds “The Lord, the Lord” as an attribute referring to before the sin and after the sin with repentance, and the Talmud in tractate Shevuot expounds “clears but does not clear” as “He clears those who repent and does not clear those who do not repent.” The Maharal asks why two attributes are needed for repentance, and answers that “The Lord, the Lord” deals with a person who repents from all his sin, while “clears but does not clear” deals with a person who repents from only some of his sin. The text interprets this as a distinction between a great repentance, which cannot be partial, and a small repentance, in which “for what you repented from, you are cleared; for what you did not repent from, you are not cleared.”
Regret as the axis of distinction, and a continuum between the poles
The text analyzes the four stages of repentance and places the focus of the distinction in regret, while claiming that true regret over one particular sin is hard to define, because regret over “having violated the will of God” in principle includes all sins. It describes the person as complex, and therefore says there are levels of regret that are not complete, and explains that in such a state there is divine grace in accepting a partial “accounting” process, like an orderly procedure of one sin after another. From here it builds a synthesis in which the great repentance and the small repentance are two ends of a continuum, and “the deeper the regret, the broader the repentance,” so that deep regret broadens repentance until it encompasses everything.
The laws of repentance as one track, and the philosophy of repentance as another track
The text argues that unlike the usual structure, in which philosophy explains Jewish law, in the world of repentance what is called “philosophy” is not merely an explanation but an extra-halakhic path of repentance running alongside the halakhic one. It presents the great repentance as an alternative track that does not depend on discussions like “what is indispensable and what is not,” but on an essential transformation, and therefore sees Rabbi Kook’s Orot HaTeshuvah as dealing with great repentance rather than explaining the halakhic mechanism of small repentance.
Proofs from the Sages: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya and a thought of repentance in Kiddushin
In tractate Avodah Zarah, the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya describes a man who “did not leave a single prostitute in the world with whom he did not have relations,” until he came to the realization that “the matter depends on me alone,” cried until his soul left him, and a heavenly voice proclaimed, “Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for life in the World to Come.” Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi cried and said, “There are those who acquire their world in one moment,” and “Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called Rabbi.” The text concludes that his act cannot possibly be a procedure of the four stages of repentance over each and every sin, and therefore this is a total, essential repentance that does not depend on the four halakhic stages. In tractate Kiddushin it is said that if someone betroths a woman “on condition that I am righteous,” then even if he is completely wicked, she is betrothed, “for perhaps he had a thought of repentance in his mind,” and the text sees this as proof that true repentance can come into being immediately, as an inward thought, without technically going through every stage of the procedure.
Mesillat Yesharim: repentance as the grace of uprooting the will as uprooting the act
Mesillat Yesharim explains that the attribute of mercy sustains the world without damaging the attribute of justice, in that time is given to the sinner, punishment is not “unto destruction,” and repentance was given in complete grace, such that uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act. It describes repentance as complete regret that uproots the will “like the annulment of a vow,” until the sin “actually departs from existence,” and presents this as grace that goes beyond strict justice, while arguing that mercy makes it possible to bring the truest justice into effect.
Kovetz Ma’amarim of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman: a difficulty from the Talmud and the Chafetz Chaim’s answer
Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman raises a difficulty from tractate Kiddushin against Mesillat Yesharim, from the statement that a completely righteous person who rebels at the end loses the earlier merits, and a completely wicked person who repents is no longer reminded of his wickedness, and the Talmud answers, “when he regrets the earlier ones.” He argues that if uprooting the will is like uprooting the act only beyond the letter of the law, then it cannot also apply to someone who regrets his commandments, and therefore he concludes that the erasure is a matter of justice and not only grace. He says he asked the Chafetz Chaim, and the Chafetz Chaim answered with a distinction between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear, such that repentance out of love operates in justice while repentance out of fear is accepted beyond the letter of the law, and he parallels this to the fact that annulment of vows is usually out of love, and therefore the erasure there too operates by justice.
Reframing: great repentance as justice, and small repentance as grace
The text proposes that the more accurate framing is great repentance versus small repentance, not necessarily love versus fear, though they are nearly parallel. It states that great repentance, in which the regret is real and the person becomes “someone else,” is accepted as a matter of justice, to the point that one could claim that if it were not accepted one could “sue” over it in court, because forgiving a person who has truly changed is a natural response of justice. It presents small repentance as a process that is not a full revolution, and therefore its acceptance is a special grace, and in the end it announces that from here the discussion will continue in the next chapter.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Today we’ll talk about repentance. A few years ago we dealt with this, trying to break it down, what exactly we did, and by now those are already things you don’t remember completely.
[Speaker B] That’s it,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You could say about everything that I already don’t know what exactly. I want to begin with some sort of look at the process of repentance, and from within that try to see what the laws of repentance are, what the meaning is, what appears there in Maimonides, whether this is even called laws or not called laws, and why it’s called laws, the laws of repentance. But the question is what the connection is between what appears there and laws. And we’ll see various other issues that maybe, as Rosh Hashanah approaches, will also connect a bit to the meaning of that day. Okay, there is supposedly some tension between the way we look at the concept of repentance in books of thought or philosophy and in halakhic literature. In halakhic literature there is a discussion, admittedly not too broad, but there is a discussion of the laws of repentance with a few details. There is abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, the vidui of the penitent, the Ten Days of Repentance. It has certain halakhic aspects, usually not many, but they exist. But the concept of repentance in philosophical literature receives a much, much broader meaning. This is especially true in Rabbi Kook’s book Orot HaTeshuvah, where it really turns into some concept that embraces almost the whole Torah, and maybe even more than the whole Torah. And the question is: what is the relationship between these two things? Usually when we talk about a halakhic description and a philosophical description of a certain topic, those are supposed, at least, to address the topic on two different levels. There is the halakhic level: what one must do, what one must not do. And there is the philosophical level of why this is so. Why it’s forbidden to do this, or why one must do that. In the world of repentance, it seems to me that the halakhic level gets mixed together with the philosophical level. Meaning, they belong to the same plane, or at least you can see them as belonging to the same plane, and not just as two aspects living in parallel. So maybe I’ll begin with Maimonides as a starting point. My goal is not to resolve Maimonides, but this is a good starting point in order to present the issue. Maimonides, in chapter 3 of the laws of repentance, writes as follows: 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’s half and half, he is intermediate. And so too a state: if the merits of all its inhabitants exceed their sins, then it is righteous; and if their sins exceed, then it is wicked; and so too the entire world. Meaning, there is a discussion in expanding circles, where each such circle falls into one of three categories: righteous, wicked, or intermediate, according to the quantity of commandments or transgressions. Now Maimonides continues and says—and this is law 1. In law 2 Maimonides writes: A person whose sins exceed his merits immediately dies in his wickedness, as it says, “because of the greatness of your iniquity.” And likewise a state whose sins exceed immediately perishes, as it says, “the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah, for it is great.” And so too the whole world, if their sins exceed their merits, they are immediately destroyed, as it says, “And the Lord saw that great was the wickedness of man.” So every such circle has a result to the judgment. After each such circle is classified as righteous, wicked, or intermediate, there is an implication. If it’s wicked, it is immediately wiped out, and if it’s righteous, then not. And here the question arises: how can a person be wiped out in one circle and remain in existence in another circle? Maybe we’ll talk about that later too, but not right now. And this weighing is not according to the number of merits and sins, but according to their magnitude. It’s not an arithmetic count of how many commandments and how many sins you have, but something more complex—rather according to their magnitude. There is a merit that counts against several sins, as it says, “because in him some good thing was found.” And there is a sin that counts against several merits, as it says, “and one sinner destroys much good.” And they are weighed only according to the knowledge of the God of knowledge. He knows how merits are arranged against sins. Only the Holy One, blessed be He, knows how much each thing weighs, how this whole matter is weighed, how this balance is actually drawn up. What each commandment is worth, each transgression, each merit and sin, commandment and transgression—that’s too specific. There are things that are neither commandments nor transgressions, but they still have moral significance; it seems those too are placed on the scale. In short, it’s complicated. Law 3: Anyone who regrets the commandments he performed and reconsiders the merits, saying in his heart, “What did I gain by doing them? If only I had not done them”—such a person has lost them all, and no merit of his is ever mentioned in the world, as it says, “And the righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his wickedness”—this refers only to one who regrets the earlier things. Here we’re talking about someone who goes off the path, leaves religion, I don’t know what exactly to call it, and he has lost his merits. This is a Talmud in Kiddushin. 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 inhabitant of the world are weighed against his merits on the festival of Rosh Hashanah. One found righteous is inscribed for life, one found wicked is inscribed for death, and the intermediate is suspended until Yom Kippur. Suspended metaphorically. If he repented, he is inscribed for life, and if not, he is inscribed for death. So the intermediate person is left hanging, yes? If he repents by Yom Kippur, then fine, and if not, then not fine. From Maimonides’ words here at the end of law 3, it follows that one who did not repent is inscribed for death. The intermediate person who did not repent during the Ten Days of Repentance is inscribed for death. More than that, it also seems from his words that to get out of this status of intermediate, doing more commandments won’t help. Seemingly you’re balanced right now—do a few more commandments and tip the scale. If it’s completely balanced, then you don’t even need to know the weighing of the God of knowledge that he mentioned above; if it’s balanced, then any additional merit tips the scale. But Maimonides says no: if he repented, good, and if not, he is inscribed for death. Meaning, it seems—and a number of later authorities infer this from his words—that only repentance can help. Meaning, doing more commandments won’t help; you’ll be inscribed for death even though by Yom Kippur you have a majority of merits.
[Speaker C] Because the point where he breaks
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the balance here—on Rosh Hashanah they make the accounting and that’s it. Meaning, after that only repentance can help. And therefore in law 4 he says, he elaborates there and says: Because of this matter it has become the custom of all the house of Israel—I’ll read from the middle—it has become the custom of all the house of Israel to increase charity and good deeds and to occupy themselves with commandments from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur more than during the rest of the year. And everyone has the custom to rise at night during these ten days and to pray in synagogues with words of supplication and entreaties until daybreak. So people already note here: you see here that they did indeed have the custom to do commandments. Earlier we said that only repentance helps, commandments don’t help. But the claim is no—you do commandments as part of the process of repentance, not in order to add commandments to the scale that will decide it, to the side of merits that will decide it, but rather the way to repent also involves doing commandments and avoiding transgressions, not so that those things will count on their own. Okay, so there are quite a few difficulties in these laws. The Lechem Mishneh comments that according to Maimonides there is no commandment to repent. We’ll also talk about that later. There is no commandment to repent, at least not one structured that way. “When the sinner repents from his sin, he should confess”—that is how he counts it in the Sefer HaMitzvot. But there is no commandment to repent. And so he says: then why, if someone did not repent—meaning, if someone did repent, that helps—but how does it help that he repents? It doesn’t add another commandment to his account. And why, if he did not repent, is he inscribed for death? There are two sides of the coin here that are unclear.
[Speaker B] He changes the transgressions.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, in just a moment we’ll see—that’s the standard explanation. Another issue: why specifically repentance helps and not the other commandments? Let him leave the status of intermediate and become righteous. Why can only repentance rescue the intermediate person from his state? There is another difficulty: how is a state of intermediate possible at all? The well-known difficulty. What are the odds that I am intermediate? Merits and obligations—you can’t make them line up exactly. What are the odds that all my commandments, all my merits, and all my obligations over the year are exactly balanced?
[Speaker B] Someone who is righteous doesn’t need to repent.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s unrelated, because he does need to repent, but his judgment for this year doesn’t depend on that. Just as a general question: what’s the status of repentance if it’s not a commandment? We’ll get to that. That he has to repent is obvious, but it’s not a condition for his being sealed for life. Meaning, okay, if he’s righteous, then fine. So the question remains: how can an intermediate person exist at all? The odds of there being an intermediate person are zero. For a person to be exactly intermediate—the odds are zero. So in practice, true, we cannot know, but if you had to bet, there is no reason from that perspective to do anything during the Ten Days of Repentance. Either I’m righteous or wicked, but to be exactly balanced—the chances… There are those who say that the weighing is according to the knowledge of the God of knowledge, so it’s more complex and not an arithmetic calculation. But of course that doesn’t help at all, because even a weighted sum of the two sides—the chance that it will stop at exactly the same level in the end—is still zero. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a weighted sum or a regular sum; that has no significance. Therefore we need to understand how an intermediate person is possible at all. That’s another difficulty in this whole matter. So I want to start from this issue. And again, I say: I’m not here to resolve—at least not at this stage—I’m not here to resolve Maimonides. I’m using him as a springboard for the distinction between two…
[Speaker C] There’s another small difficulty: meanwhile we see lots of people who don’t repent at all, and Rosh Hashanah…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s not a difficulty. I’m already used to not being confused by facts. Yes. And maybe the biggest difficulty in this matter—though maybe we’ll say something about it. I spoke about this a bit last year, or two years ago, I don’t remember anymore. I spoke about it in Elul, at the Halfei gathering, there was one once, a year ago or two years ago, I don’t remember. I spoke a bit about the relationship between what they teach us, what they keep telling us about the significance of these days, and what we really think about them. A weak relation, I would say. Okay, anyway, for now let’s stay at the level of what they tell us, and maybe we’ll also touch a bit on what it really is. There are two explanations for the question why specifically repentance helps. Why doesn’t doing more commandments help tip the scale? Why specifically repentance? So the standard explanation in the yeshivot—that’s the standard explanation—I once saw it quoted in the name of Rabbi Kotler. I don’t know who the first source is, but that’s the standard explanation, a somewhat sharpened explanation. And this explanation basically says that on Rosh Hashanah the Holy One, blessed be He, makes the balance sheet. That’s when it is determined whether I am intermediate, righteous, or wicked. The Ten Days of Repentance, in their essence, already belong to the coming year. The judgment takes place on Rosh Hashanah for the year that ended on Rosh Hashanah. What happens in the Ten Days of Repentance? During those days a second chance is given, but it’s not a second chance to add more commandments or transgressions to the scale. Commandments or transgressions that I do during those ten days will sit on the scale of the coming year, because those ten days belong to the coming year. So what can one do during those ten days? As their name indicates, one can repent. What does that help with, repentance? Because repentance—as I mentioned before, according to Maimonides there isn’t even a commandment to repent—so what is this thing called repentance? It is to repair transgressions, or a condition created by the transgressions that I committed. If so, then it’s clear why only repentance can help. Because repentance can remove from the scale sins or liabilities that are already there, that were from the previous year. Because it repairs what was. Repentance is not added here as another merit, so that because I repented it tips the scale. If that were the case, then it couldn’t work. That’s a merit relevant to the judgment of the next Rosh Hashanah, like any other commandment I do during those days. All that repentance can do is repair one transgression or certain transgressions that are lying on the scale, and thereby change the state retroactively, rewrite history.
[Speaker B] There are commandments from which maybe it could be that they have double value, both for next year and for repair?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As repentance, if they are part of the process of repentance. But if not, then it may be that you can do commandments without repenting for the previous year—then that has no double value. And therefore I say: it’s not really a double value, but if you do commandments it also helps you repent. The commandment in itself is a commandment; it will be counted next year. According to this perspective—and it sounds a bit like bookkeeping, clerical, I agree, we’ll get to that in a moment—anyway, that’s the first perspective, the first explanation of this matter. In Siftei Chaim by Rabbi Chaim Friedlander, he writes differently. He claims that repentance actually—he starts from the question of the classification of righteous, intermediate, and wicked. He basically says that righteous, intermediate, and wicked is not a regular sum and not even a weighted sum. It is some kind of perspective on your overall state. If I need to characterize a person in one word: righteous, intermediate, or wicked. And obviously each of us has many sides; he did lots of things in this direction and that direction. But in the end you have to aggregate it all, collect it all, sum it all up, and say what the person is, where the person stands. So if the overall picture—yes, the general view of him—is positive, then he is righteous. If the general view of him is negative, then he is wicked. And if he’s this sort of fence-sitter, still hasn’t clearly chosen a direction, then he is intermediate. It’s not a question of counting commandments and transgressions, and not even a weighted counting, but some kind of overall perspective on a person. And therefore he said, if that is—
[Speaker B] Isn’t that not what Maimonides says?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. I said, right now I’m not yet explaining Maimonides. We’ll get to Maimonides. Later on I do think this can also explain Maimonides, but for that we need more. Basically let me formulate it differently for you. So I say like this: the classification into righteous, intermediate, and wicked is basically according to your basic direction. You might have more transgressions than commandments—even not just in arithmetic terms, but even in terms of weight, okay? You might have more transgressions than commandments and still be righteous. Why would you be righteous? Because in the end your direction is positive. You failed many times, you had desires, you were weak, but you want the positive thing. You are basically headed in a positive direction. That’s what you want. You don’t want it enough, and that’s where the failure comes in—maybe we’ll talk about that too—the weakness of the will.
[Speaker B] So the value is what determines it, not the derivative?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll talk about that too. It could be. It’s not exactly the same thing. The question is what you want, even if it has no effect at the level of the derivative. Meaning, absolute penitents—like we talked about once, that a penitent is greater than a completely righteous person—that means that the derivative determines, not the function. But the claim is that basically the classification into righteous, intermediate, and wicked—so says Rabbi Chaim Friedlander—is determined by the basic direction. What direction are you headed in? Not the question of what you did. What you did—”the greater a person is than his fellow, the greater his inclination is than his.” By the way, that’s not only mysticism. I think there are also very simple things in it. And therefore you fail a lot. That can happen. But your direction is positive. You want the positive, so you are righteous, you are sealed for life. Fine. And you have many transgressions. It can also be the opposite: maybe you have more commandments, but only because it’s pleasant for you to do them. But it’s not really service of God, it’s not really something of commitment to the commandments and to avoiding transgressions. Rather you just don’t have a big inclination, or you don’t feel like it, or I don’t know, whatever, circumstances didn’t arise. But bottom line, you have more commandments than transgressions—and you’re wicked. It doesn’t matter what the number of commandments and transgressions is, and not even the weighted number. And if your direction is one in which you still haven’t chosen, you still haven’t decided what your direction is, then you are intermediate. That’s the principle. If so, says Rabbi Chaim Friedlander, if that is the classification between righteous, intermediate, and wicked, then it’s clear why only repentance can help. That’s the second explanation. Because only repentance—repentance here obviously means something a bit different from what I spoke about before, but we’ll come back to that—repentance changes your basic direction. So what if you do a few more commandments or a few more transgressions? What difference does that make? You’ll have a few more commandments, but you remain in the same place in the spiritual total picture, when they look at you in one overall glance, like sheep being counted, all your deeds like sheep being counted. So you’re still in the same place. What difference does it make if you did a few more commandments? Or transgressions, in the opposite direction. It doesn’t change anything. What you need in order to move from the status of intermediate to the status of righteous is to choose. To decide. To change your basic direction, not to do more commandments. And only repentance does that. And therefore only repentance can help, and not the doing of commandments. That’s the second explanation. Let’s look at both of them for a moment. Maybe before I look at both, in the Tanya, he takes this approach in a more—sorry—he takes it to a more extreme place. His position is well known. He wants to say that a righteous person is someone who has slaughtered the inclination, who has no evil inclination at all. With him it’s not only that he doesn’t fail—he has no evil inclination at all. A righteous person is one who has only a good inclination; he has already slaughtered the evil inclination. And an intermediate person is one who does not sin at all. At all. Not that he has a majority of commandments—he does not sin at all. He just also has an evil inclination. He constantly overcomes it, and he has an evil inclination. That’s the intermediate person. And someone who also sins, then I don’t know what his status is; I’m not sufficiently versed there in all the matters of the Tanya. But that’s his classification, and that takes it too far. It sounds completely unreasonable to me. But the direction is similar to what Rabbi Chaim
[Speaker B] Friedlander says. I
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] think that Rabbi Chaim Friedlander’s formulation is much more reasonable.
[Speaker B] The whole point here is a book of intermediates.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? He explains this Maimonides, I don’t know, I don’t even remember because I saw it so many years ago. Maybe he writes something there, I don’t know, we’d have to look there. Siftei Chaim. Anyway, these two directions basically reflect two kinds of perspective. Because in fact, in the first perspective, when I say that repentance repairs the transgressions backward, this is basically some kind of metaphysical hocus-pocus. Meaning, you committed transgressions, and if afterward you repent, it’s fixed retroactively. It fixes last year for you. You’re already in the next year during the Ten Days of Repentance, the beginning of a new year, but repentance has this kind of special power to repair history. Like Stalin’s dream of dreams—if he had a way to rewrite history, well, here there is one: you can repent. It’s probably not the kind of rewriting history that he wanted, but still, there is some kind of metaphysical hocus-pocus here, however you want to look at it. In the second perspective, you don’t need to get to that at all. Right? In the second perspective, repentance is not something that works backward; it’s something that repairs now. Meaning, you now change direction. When you get to Yom Kippur, if your direction is positive, they don’t kill a person who is now righteous. So what if on Rosh Hashanah he was wicked? Or intermediate, sorry, not wicked—he was intermediate. But on Yom Kippur he’s righteous. What, are they going to kill a righteous person? No, they don’t kill a righteous person. So there is no need to assume that repentance works backward.
[Speaker B] But there’s a problem with that. Then why is a wicked person already sealed for death on Rosh Hashanah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, sealed for death—but they still haven’t killed him yet. They’re waiting to see whether he repents. But then again, ignore reality for a moment, that wicked people don’t die on Rosh Hashanah. We’ll get to that on the logical level. That’s it, he’s already dead, that’s it, there’s no need to take the wicked person into account, the wicked person isn’t with us. Do you see wicked people? Here is the command to judge everyone favorably. Whoever is still with us is apparently not wicked, by virtue of the fact that he’s still alive. Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far. In any case, you can distinguish here. You can go with the defender of Israel line in this whole story. No, no, not Israel, in general. What?
[Speaker B] There isn’t only Israel in the world, there are other things too. But there is some kind of general accounting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, the defender of Israel.
[Speaker B] It could be that the general accounting is like that because the Jewish people are among us,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe. I’m not sure about that, but maybe. Okay, anyway, I don’t know the mortality statistics, but let’s say I’d bet that mortality during the Ten Days of Repentance is not higher than during any other ten days of the year. That’s my guess. I haven’t checked.
[Speaker B] Fine, but just because he’s part of the Jewish people doesn’t mean he stays alive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Immediately dies
[Speaker B] on the first day.
[Speaker C] Immediately dies on the first day.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not only that—if he doesn’t immediately die on the first day, then why specifically on Rosh Hashanah? Then why should the wicked person repent? If on Yom Kippur you’re not going to kill him—or on Passover kill him? He’s already righteous, just like the intermediate person. Why do I care what he was in the past? Okay, that’s again the relation between the slogans and what actually happens. Maybe we’ll come back to that at some point. I’m not sure you understand what I think about these slogans. Anyway, these two conceptions of repentance each suffer from certain difficulties. Let’s start with the first explanation. The first explanation, which Rabbi Aharon Kotler brings—it’s brought in Yemei Berakhah, a number of later authorities bring it too—this is the standard yeshiva explanation. The main difficulty that, in my eyes, arises is of course, first, it didn’t solve the problem of who is intermediate, who is righteous, and who is wicked. How can there be an intermediate person? We should have dealt with that; that’s where it starts. But in this approach that remains problematic. Second, it turns the whole process into something too small. A kind of bookkeeping of commandments and transgressions. The office hours closed, because you were wicked, so that’s it—on Rosh Hashanah the office closed. If you repent, that repairs things backward, so no problem—you managed to get through the door before it closed, and then everything is fine. In the end, if you look at someone who does more commandments as basically righteous, then it’s really hard to accept that the Holy One, blessed be He—say you were intermediate… and now I did more commandments but I did not repent, which in the smaller accounting perspective is different. So I was intermediate and did a few more commandments. Now I get to Yom Kippur, the Holy One, blessed be He, looks: commandments don’t help, only repentance. Fine—but now I’m righteous. And if I had been in this very state on Rosh Hashanah, everything would have been excellent, right? But on Rosh Hashanah I wasn’t in that state in terms of the deadline. So now I come to Yom Kippur, and the Holy One, blessed be He, decides to kill me. Why? But had I been in this exact same state on Rosh Hashanah, I would have been sealed for life. Now I’m righteous—do You kill righteous people? “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” What difference does it make to You that I did it now? Bottom line, the moment You kill me—if You loved me already on Rosh Hashanah, we talked about this—I’m no longer with You. But I’m speaking about the intermediate person. The intermediate person is indeed suspended until Yom Kippur, right? He wasn’t killed. So he gets to Yom Kippur and he did more commandments, but he didn’t repent. So what’s the problem with that? Bottom line, on Yom Kippur he is righteous, so why kill him? Again—it’s petty, let’s call it that, strange. I understand the logic; you can define it that way and everything is fine. But it’s petty. It’s petty if that is really the definition of righteous, intermediate, and wicked. Then there is something here that seems problematic.
[Speaker B] What’s the meaning at all of after a year?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What’s the meaning of a year?
[Speaker B] Why judge after a year, at the end of every year? Why not judge a person on his birthday, after a year that he worked?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why after a year and not after two weeks? There is something fixed in the Torah, in this whole business of a year. I don’t know. I already said that I don’t know where this determination of Rosh Hashanah and the Day of Judgment comes from. An invention of the Sages. Maybe “today the world was conceived.” Maybe there is some verse in which this is written, and even then it’s not really something you can see as a genuine source. Fine, maybe I’ll talk about that later. So the difficulty in the first accounting is basic.
[Speaker B] In the accounting of the open book and the closed book. Could be.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Basically the approach, say, of the Imrei Baruch, yes, of Rabbi Kotler, is an approach that sees repentance—the whole process, not only repentance—as something that is overall just accounting. They count commandments, count transgressions; who is more righteous, who is less wicked. You repented, they remove this commandment—sorry, this transgression or that transgression—they count again and everything is fine. In short, this whole business is a bit childish, a bit too small. On the other hand, as Shmuel noted, in the plain meaning of Maimonides it doesn’t seem to work exactly like that. There is some sort of weighted sum there, but it’s still a sum of commandments and transgressions. Therefore, what I actually want to claim is that we are dealing here with two modes of repentance, both of which exist. These are not two interpretations of the concept of repentance, but two modes of repentance, two models. And both exist. We choose which of them to follow. In fact, if I formulate this a bit more sharply, the repentance of the accounting type—let’s call it small repentance—that really is a repentance that works with accounting. Meaning, they count commandments, transgressions, you repent, it erases this transgression or that transgression, and that lowers the burden, and then they judge you according to that balance on Yom Kippur. So that’s a procedure. And that procedure really works with office hours. With all the pettiness I described before, yes? Someone who chooses the accounting track—then it works with accounts. Someone who chooses the track of great repentance, essential repentance, changing spiritual direction, not erasing this or that transgression from the balance—then they don’t deal with him that way. It doesn’t work through bookkeeping. It’s something else. Everything depends on the question of which track we choose. For now I’ll present these as two extreme poles; later on I’ll try to bring them both into one picture.
[Speaker C] You returned in repentance because of repentance. The Talmud in Yoma 86 says there are transgressions for which repentance is not enough, where repentance is suspended.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so I’m not familiar with that. In any case, there’s the track of small repentance, or the bookkeeping repentance of the scribes, and there’s essential repentance. Small repentance means correcting one transgression at a time—that is, regret over the past, abandoning the sin, verbal confession, that familiar sequence of repentance. I cleaned up one certain type, one certain transgression—it’s erased. Another transgression—this is how I take sins off the page. That’s the bookkeeping process. And then there’s the essential process, which is to change my basic direction in life, like you said, Heisenberg—what do I want? To make decisions about what I really want. These ideas have a source in the Maharal. When the Maharal explains the thirteen attributes of mercy—“The Lord, the Lord, God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant in kindness and truth,” and so on—the Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 17 says this: “The Lord, the Lord”—when it explains these attributes—“I am He before a person sins, and I am He after a person sins and repents.” So the two divine names are one before the sin and one after the sin—after the sin and the repentance. “The Lord, the Lord” is essentially the attribute responsible for repentance. In the Talmud in Shevuot 39, the Gemara explains there the attribute of “and He cleanses.” “The Lord, the Lord” opens the attributes, and “and He cleanses” concludes them: “and He cleanses; He does not cleanse.” So the Gemara there says: “But isn’t it written: ‘and He cleanses; He does not cleanse’? That is needed for the teaching of Rabbi Elazar, as it was taught: Rabbi Elazar says: It is impossible to say ‘He cleanses,’ since it already says ‘He does not cleanse’; and it is impossible to say ‘He does not cleanse,’ since it already says ‘He cleanses.’ How so? He cleanses those who repent, and He does not cleanse those who do not repent.” Fine. So that sounds a little banal, let’s say. Okay, He cleanses those who repent and does not cleanse those who do not repent. What—okay, obvious. What do you want Him to cleanse? What’s the novelty here in “He cleanses; He does not cleanse”? Was there a thought that He would cleanse everyone automatically? It’s already understood that He won’t cleanse anyone if he hasn’t repented. There’s a better initial thought. Right, and that’s the well-known midrash about repentance, where before the Holy One, blessed be He, says: A sinner—yes—a sinner, what is his punishment? I don’t remember the wording anymore, there’s some midrash there in the Gemara on this matter.
[Speaker B] That the Holy One, blessed be He, came to repentance? What? That the Holy One, blessed be He, came to repentance and to wisdom?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “a sinner—what is his punishment?” I don’t remember the exact wording of the midrash. “The wicked”?
[Speaker B] Huh? “The wicked”? What does the Torah say?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, “the wicked,” something like that. I don’t remember that verse exactly. So the Maharal asks there: why do we need two attributes in this list, both of which are responsible for repentance—both “The Lord, the Lord” and “and He cleanses”? And then he says that the attribute of “The Lord, the Lord” deals with a person who repents from all his sins, while the attribute of “and He cleanses; He does not cleanse” deals with a person who repents from only some of his sin. Not a completely righteous person. On the face of it, that’s hard to understand, because why do you need two more attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He? Just activate the attribute of “and He cleanses” several times until all the sins are cleaned up—what is this, something quantitative? So what difference does it make whether you repent for all the sins or repent for only some of them?
[Speaker B] Repentance only for some of them. What does that even mean, exactly?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—that’s technical. So then what?
[Speaker B] It’s hard to clean molecule by molecule—just clean everything. I didn’t understand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If that’s possible, then everything can be done that way, so why do you need the second one? If it cleans everything. It seems to me the point is this. Let’s look for a moment at the process of repentance. In the repentance process where a person repents for a sin, the medieval authorities (Rishonim)—I think it starts with Rav Saadia Gaon—say that this involves four parts, four stages. The first stage is abandoning the sin, of course. The second stage is regret—regretting the sin, regretting having sinned. Regret, acceptance for the future—not to continue sinning, not to return to the sin—and verbal confession, meaning to say it out loud. Okay, these are four stages of repentance. Now the question is: what does it mean to regret? Regret—let’s talk about, let’s focus for a moment on regret. Abandoning the sin—fine, I sorted on the Sabbath, I stopped sorting on the Sabbath, but I still continue trapping on the Sabbath. Fine, I stopped sorting. Okay, you can abandon one sin and not abandon another sin, though all the sins of that type have to be abandoned—if I violated sorting on the Sabbath several times, say, okay, you can distinguish between sorting and trapping. But what does it mean to regret one transgression? To regret one transgression, in my opinion, is impossible. There’s no such thing. Not impossible because it’s hard—the process just isn’t defined. When you regret that you trapped on the Sabbath, that you sorted on the Sabbath—okay, what are you regretting? That you trapped? You regret that you did something forbidden, something the Holy One, blessed be He, prohibited, right? Then by that you regretted all the sins. Because what—you regret only that you violated God’s will not to sort on the Sabbath, but the fact that He wants me not to trap, that doesn’t bother me, that I trapped? Why, what? Isn’t the point not trapping or sorting on the Sabbath? The point is that there was a violation of God’s will here. So if the problem really is that there was a violation of God’s will here, then how can you regret just one transgression at all? There’s no such thing as regretting one transgression.
[Speaker C] That sorting isn’t worth violating God’s will for me, but trapping is? Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look at what a self-serving thought from the evil inclination. To regret—to regret means that I don’t want this, that I’m not in a state where I’m willing to violate God’s will. Okay, let’s come back to this a bit, because I presented it in an extreme way on purpose. Therefore, when I regret a particular transgression, when you think about it, it’s clear that this is regret over all the commandments. There is no regret over one commandment or over one transgression or over only part of the transgressions. In its essence, regret is over all the transgressions. There is no partial regret—there’s no such thing. If you regret partially, you haven’t regretted. And therefore, this process of repentance of four stages, when people do it, as if, for every repentance—for every transgression, sorry—they do the four stages, you understand that the moment I did it for one, I did it for all of them. So what if I didn’t abandon the other sins? In what sense did I regret them? I started with regret, but suddenly I actually did everything. Because if true regret is regret over all the sins, then obviously the moment I genuinely regretted, I also abandon all the sins and I also decide not to do them in the future—that’s part of the regret. You can’t separate these processes from each other if I really take this all the way, okay? Therefore, it seems to me there’s no escape but to say the following. In practice, even when I look at a person regretting an act he committed, regret can exist on many levels. A person is a complex creature—it’s not that you either regretted or didn’t regret. Yes, a certain thought passes through me, costs, as we said—the cost isn’t worth it to me to commit a transgression; at another price, that pork is really tasty, that one no, that I’m continuing with. Fine. A human being is a complex creature. It’s not that simple logic of either you regretted and then you’re wholly a servant of God, or you didn’t. There’s some dimension of regret here, but it isn’t full. It has to be that way, because otherwise there’s no such thing as one transgression. If that’s the case, then indeed this is not true regret. So why does the Holy One, blessed be He, nevertheless accept something like this, where you only did one transgression? It seems to me that this is some kind of kindness, a type of going beyond the strict law, where the Holy One, blessed be He, says: if you perform this procedure, the transgression you did this for will be erased, okay? Now if you do this for the other transgressions, no—you’ll have to do this procedure for each one of them in order to erase it. Why? Because the truth is that you didn’t really get rid of that transgression. Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, does us a kind of kindness—He is willing to accept even a bookkeeping process of this type, a kind of small process, a somewhat petty process. Well, all right—but if you do it according to the rules. You want to work with some sort of renewed rules? Fine. If you worked according to the rules, I’m willing to accept it.
[Speaker B] There was that strange story about someone who was careful with washing hands, I just remembered. That he too can divide things—even though he says, I don’t do all the commandments, I will do one commandment, and it’s really the same thing only—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the opposite direction. He can also regret only about… yes, I said that a person is a complex creature, this can happen, but it certainly isn’t full regret. Full regret means that you abandon all the sins. What does full regret mean only about the fact that you washed your hands? I don’t…
[Speaker B] It’s impossible, it’s not even defined, there’s no such thing if it’s only something people do.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, assuming he has other sins, but he regrets only this one—
[Speaker B] Because that’s the only one, that’s the only thing that bothers him. He doesn’t lose from not keeping the Sabbath… but why? I don’t know, it bothers him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, now—so what does he think, that the rest is not something the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from him? So if that’s the case, he’s simply mistaken. What, does he think the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted everything? So what are you regretting with regard to washing hands? That you violated God’s will? So what’s the difference between this will of God and that will of God? Rather, this isn’t regret. Regret over the fact that you violated God’s will by not washing hands—that isn’t regret. Full regret is not over any one single transgression; it won’t help, there’s no such thing. It’s simply not defined. Now, if I really carry regret through to the end, then by definition it is regret over all the sins; it is repentance for all the sins, right? That’s the difference between the repentance of the Maharal and the repentance of the Shem MiShmuel and the repentance of the Bnei Yissaschar. The Maharal says that the repentance of the Shem MiShmuel is repentance for all the sins together, in the quantitative sense. You violated this transgression and regretted, not fully, over transgression A, and afterward over transgression B, and over transgression C, until you reached transgression 365, yes? Three hundred sixty-five, yes? You regretted each and every one with that partial regret—you’re not clean. True regret does everything all at once, but only because it is true. The little regrets are little regrets that are accepted, but it doesn’t really change—you haven’t changed direction, in the language of Rabbi Chaim Friedlander. So it seems to me that what the Maharal means is exactly the same distinction we saw earlier. The repentance of the Shem MiShmuel—that’s the repentance Rabbi Chaim Friedlander is talking about, meaning the great repentance. If you really did it, you changed direction, now you want the good, you’re no longer sitting on the fence. In such a state, by definition it applies to all the sins. You can’t say it applies to one transgression or part of the transgressions. By definition it applies to all the sins. That is the repentance of the Shem MiShmuel. The repentance of “and He cleanses” is a very big novelty. If you can’t manage to make this essential revolution, then the Torah, or the Holy One, blessed be He, allows you to do a bookkeeping process, relatively petty. Each person, to the extent he can do it, a technical regret, almost lip service—not entirely, lip service is nothing at all—a certain regret, not deep. But then, do a structured job, one transgression at a time. And that’s what is written in “and He cleanses; He does not cleanse”—He cleanses one who repents and does not cleanse one who does not repent. What does that mean? Not one who repents and one who doesn’t, but rather: for what you repented, you are cleansed; for what you did not repent, you are not cleansed. Therefore, that’s what the Maharal means when he says this applies only to some of the sins and not all of them. He does not mean one person who repented and another person who did not. He means: what you repented for is cleansed for you; what you didn’t repent for is not cleansed for you. In the Shem MiShmuel, you can’t say such a thing, because in the Shem MiShmuel, if you repented, you repented for everything. There is nothing for which you will not be cleansed. That is the great repentance. Therefore the repentance of the Shem MiShmuel and the repentance of “and He cleanses; He does not cleanse”—these are the same two mechanisms I spoke about earlier; these are the two kinds of repentance. And essentially the point is this: if I now build this complex structure. Usually when they describe an analytical inquiry in yeshivot, there are two possibilities: either say this or say that, one possibility or the other. Usually one of the very strong things in our generation is disappointment with this analysis, this constant Brisker approach, which thinks there are only two options—you’re either here or there. Usually the truth is some sort of combination of the two possibilities. That’s usually what the Briskers are less willing to accept, but we’re here in the study hall. And I’ll be careful—we once talked about this in yeshiva, didn’t we, about learning methodology? There was once a class about that. And I said that it’s not right to give up the Brisker analysis, but it’s also not right to get stuck in it. That is, you need to begin, and then thesis and antithesis, and in the end synthesis. So here too, it seems to me that the inquiry won’t be a good inquiry—and in a moment I’ll continue it—but I’ll already say in advance that this dichotomous perspective, in light of what I explained, is not correct. There’s a continuum. And the depth of the regret determines the breadth of the repentance. The deeper your regret, the more real it is, then accordingly the breadth of the repentance—the number of transgressions, or the number of aspects in the soul that it covers—is broader. Full regret covers everything. And if you regretted deeply, all the way, then you don’t need to do it for each and every transgression; you covered everything. If you do it partially, then it’s partial. Meaning: the depth of the regret determines the breadth of the canvas of repentance. And that is really the point. Therefore, in practice, the two poles that I described are the two extreme ends of the scale. Obviously in the middle there is the whole continuum. That is, the depth of the regret—regret is the parameter that moves us between the pole of the great repentance and the pole of the small repentance. Completely small repentance, in the pure sense, is basically without any regret at all, in the psychological sense. I’ll say words that I regret, but it’s nothing, okay? Once I start a little more to really enter into the depths of the soul, the depths of the sin, and really regret, psychologically, a little, begin to enter—I’m already in the middle of the scale, I’m already starting to move toward the pole. When I reach full regret, I’m already in the great repentance. That’s the parameter that moves me across the scale. Therefore there is really a continuum of processes, not two. But for now—I’ll come back to this later—but for now I assume there are two, okay? Either the small one or the big one. And let’s try to see this. The importance—the dichotomy was very important to me before doing the synthesis. That’s the mistake made by those for whom the solution is just to throw out the dichotomy. It doesn’t work. True, it doesn’t work—but it’s a mistake to throw it out. You have to start with it and then try to understand how to synthesize the two possibilities. But it’s good that they’re distinct, because only then do you understand each one on its own. And then you can make a more correct synthesis.
[Speaker B] That’s also basically Maimonides’ description, isn’t it? What? That’s also basically Maimonides’ description. Maimonides describes repentance in very technical processes like that, ready-made, these stages. And he actually describes it as a general picture. So we’d have to look at his wording.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I agree, but for that we need to look a bit more, to go back to his wording. We’ll see that later.
[Speaker B] In Maimonides too there is—
[Speaker C] Reference to two kinds of repentance, that there is complete repentance.
[Speaker B] Yes, that’s what Maimonides means.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll still see—we’ll still see Maimonides’ formulations, and that’s why I said that right now I’m not going to try to reconcile Maimonides. But afterward we’ll return to Maimonides and it may be that one can see these two tracks in him too. But right now I’m just trying to build the concepts, trying to present the concepts. So let’s nevertheless try for a moment to examine these two mechanisms. I want to claim that what is called the laws of repentance—I’m going back to the introduction. In the introduction I spoke about the fact that there is a conceptual aspect and a halakhic / of Jewish law aspect. I said that usually the conceptual aspect is the other side of the coin of the halakhic / of Jewish law aspect. It’s the same thing, two discussions of the same thing from two angles. The halakhic / of Jewish law aspect says what is forbidden to do and what must be done; the conceptual aspect explains why. In the world of repentance, it’s not like that. In the world of repentance, what is called the conceptual aspect is not a conceptual aspect. It’s an extra-halakhic aspect. It does not explain the thought that stands behind repentance; it offers a different track of repentance. And that exists parallel to the halakhic track. Not behind it, not beneath it, not at its foundation. That’s the claim. The great repentance is not the essential thought standing behind the process of repentance, the thought that explains to me what repentance is. No, no—it is an alternative repentance. There are two types of repentance, okay? And therefore, when Maimonides speaks about the laws of repentance and includes within them all the things that are connected neither to laws nor to repentance, that is not accidental. And here I—I said, I’ll come back to this. But let’s try to see it. One of the implications I want to claim—a halakhic implication; again, I’m bringing the test case. So the halakhic implication is that the four stages of repentance are not required when a person does great repentance. You don’t need them. You don’t need to go through those four stages in some halakhically welded form. I’ll bring two proofs for this idea from the words of the Sages. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah 17 brings the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. “They said about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya that he left not one prostitute in the world with whom he had not slept. Once, there was one prostitute in the coastal cities who charged a purse of dinars as her fee. He took a purse of dinars”—because there was one prostitute he still hadn’t gone to—“he took a purse of dinars and went and crossed seven rivers for her with self-sacrifice. At the moment of the act she passed wind and said: Just as this wind will not return to its place, so Elazar ben Dordaya will not be accepted in repentance.” Who exactly said that? Not clear. A heavenly voice? Did the thought tell him? Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya? Let’s see—maybe it was the prostitute herself, I don’t know. “He went and sat between two mountains and hills and said: Mountains and hills, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said: ‘For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed.’ He said: Heaven and earth, ask for mercy for me. They said: Before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said: ‘For the heavens shall vanish like smoke and the earth wear out like a garment.’ He said: Sun and moon, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said: ‘Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed.’ He said: Stars and constellations, ask for mercy for me”—I’ll continue why I’m reading this whole story—“they said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said: ‘And all the host of heaven shall rot away.’ He said: The matter depends on no one but me. He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul departed. A heavenly voice went forth and said: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is prepared for life in the World to Come.” There too, in the context of the Gemara, “Rabbi wept and said: There are those who acquire their world in many years, and there are those who acquire their world in one hour. And Rabbi said: Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called ‘Rabbi.’” Not enough that he repented—he became Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. This story actually enters its second part later on, but let’s talk for a moment about the first part. He sat and wept and wept, and his soul departed. If we imagine and think that while he was weeping he took a notebook and wrote there all the transgressions he had committed in his life, and for each one he regretted it, accepted it for the future, made verbal confession, and did the four stages of repentance required—abandoning the sin he couldn’t do, because he died, so afterward he couldn’t stand the test and not return to that sin—he did not do the four stages of repentance for every one of the transgressions. Within one hour he went through this whole business, was accepted into the World to Come, was called Rabbi, clean as the day he was born. How does that happen? What about the four stages, which are indispensable, the conditions of repentance? Elazar ben Dordaya did essential repentance. One who does essential repentance and truly and totally regrets does not need verbal confession and does not need to go through every transgression he committed and regret it aloud. What is needed is to regret in principle, to return in repentance and change your spiritual direction. If you really did that, that is the great repentance—you did everything all at once. You don’t need the four stages. The laws of repentance in the bookkeeping sense, in the sense that the four stages of repentance were said only about the small repentance, not about the great repentance. A proof of this: the Gemara in Kiddushin says on 49 there: “On condition that I am righteous—even if he is completely wicked, she is betrothed, perhaps he contemplated repentance in his mind.” A man betroths a woman on the condition that he says, “on condition that I am righteous.” A famously wicked fellow—Elazar ben Dordaya before the repentance—comes and betroths a woman, a thoroughly wicked man, “on condition that he is righteous.” Fine, there should be no concern about the betrothal at all; everything is fine. The Gemara says no, there is concern about the betrothal. Why? “Perhaps he contemplated repentance in his heart.” The later authorities say that when one betroths on condition that he is righteous, that itself is some kind of hint that maybe he really is contemplating repentance. Otherwise you can’t understand how the betrothal could take effect through this. It may be that this is indeed part of some process of complete repentance; he didn’t go through everything one by one for the purpose of this concern. But still there is concern there, and therefore it may be that he is righteous, and she is doubtfully betrothed; we take the betrothal seriously. And once again the question arises: he contemplated repentance. He says, “on condition that I am righteous”—in the few seconds in which he said that, did he, in the meantime, do abandonment of sin, regret, verbal confession, acceptance for the future, for every transgression? We are talking about a completely wicked man. Not likely. So what is it? We are concerned that he did real repentance. Not that he did repentance—real repentance doesn’t need all the stages, all the ten stages? Real repentance is accepted immediately. That’s what… he’s even called Rabbi. It may be that the reason he is called Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is that a rabbi is someone who teaches us something. Elazar ben Dordaya taught us that there is a process of repentance that is not the repentance the halakhic decisors talk about. You don’t need the four stages. Within an hour—and that’s what Rabbi says: “Not only are penitents accepted.” “There are those who acquire their world in many years, and there are those who acquire their world in one hour.” Rabbi wept and said: “There are those who acquire their world in many years, and there are those who acquire their world in one hour.” And Rabbi said: “Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called Rabbi.” Why is he called Rabbi? Because he taught us this—that there are those who acquire their world in one hour. That is how he is our rabbi, that’s what he taught us. Because we would have thought that there are those who acquire their world in many years—you need work, go through every transgression, the four stages. That is the small repentance. Elazar ben Dordaya taught us, and therefore he is called Rabbi, that there is another repentance, there is the great repentance—it happens, one acquires his world in one hour. You don’t need to go through all the technical halakhic stages. That is intended for bookkeeping repentance. In essential repentance—bingo, and done. Bingo and done, if you really did it of course. If you didn’t do it, then you didn’t. Therefore this process, these two processes that I described earlier in the explanation of Maimonides, are two processes that are apparently both correct. One of them is more technical—you can call it halakhic / of Jewish law. The second maybe we’ll call conceptual, because I’m speaking here of a practical matter, but it’s not connected to halakhic discussions. There are no questions here of what is indispensable and what is not. But the halakhic discussions around repentance are not relevant regarding the great repentance. It’s not connected. And there you can speak about the meaning of repentance, the conceptual revolution of repentance, and all of Rabbi Kook’s Lights of Repentance and whatever else you want, put it there—that speaks about great repentance, not small repentance. So it’s as if it’s a conceptual book. I want to claim it is not a conceptual book. It is a book of an alternative to Jewish law. Thought explains Jewish law; it is not an alternative to Jewish law. It explains why Jewish law is this way and not another. Here I am speaking about a track that bypasses Jewish law. These are not explanations of why Jewish law is this way. In that sense it is not a conceptual book. There are conceptual aspects there, but the track of great repentance is not the philosophy of repentance; it is an alternative repentance track, another repentance track. Usually when people speak about the philosophy of repentance, they’re talking about it. This is the thought of the small repentance; that is the meaning of the great repentance. Usually. Maybe we’ll get to that. Let’s go one step further. Let’s continue with this distinction—meanwhile I’m still working with it dichotomously. Let’s continue with it a bit further. In Mesilat Yesharim, at the end of chapter 4, he writes as follows: “And if you say, if so, what purpose does the attribute of mercy serve, since in any case the law must be exacting with regard to everything?” There’s no waiver; “whoever says the Holy One, blessed be He, overlooks things—his own intestines will be overlooked.” So what is the attribute of mercy? The Ramchal’s answer later on: “Certainly the attribute of mercy is the sustaining of the world, for without it the world would not endure at all”—as we mentioned, Rashi there in Genesis, that God created the world with the attribute of justice, saw that the world could not endure, and combined with it the attribute of mercy. So Mesilat Yesharim continues: “for without it the world would not endure at all. Even so, the attribute of justice is not impaired.” Even though the attribute of mercy is involved, the attribute of justice is not impaired. “And this is because according to strict justice, it would really have been fitting that the sinner be punished immediately, straightaway upon sinning, without any delay at all. And also that the punishment itself be with burning wrath”—that is, without any concession—“as is fitting for one who rebels against the word of the Creator, blessed be His name, and that there be no correction for the sin at all. For indeed, how can a person repair what he has twisted, when the sin has already been done? The man murdered another person? The adulterer? How can he repair such a thing? Can he remove the act that has been done from reality? However, the attribute of mercy gives the opposite of the three things we mentioned.” That is, “that time be given to the sinner”—so it does not happen immediately; the three characteristics that should have existed, the attribute of mercy says no, we don’t do them. It doesn’t happen immediately; “time will be given to the sinner to repent, and he will not be destroyed from the earth immediately when he sins. And that the punishment itself will not be unto destruction”—even if there is punishment, it doesn’t wipe you out. “And that repentance be granted to sinners in complete kindness, such that uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act.” Even though the act could not be uprooted—here I repent, I uprooted my will but I did not uproot the act—uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act. “That is, when the penitent recognizes his sin and admits it and reflects on its evil and returns and regrets it with complete regret from the outset, like regret over a vow itself”—that he regrets completely, and would wish and long that the thing had never been done, and is distressed in his heart with strong pain over the fact that it was already done, and abandons it for the future and flees from it—and this is clearly great repentance—“then uprooting the thing from his will is considered for him like uprooting a vow, and he is forgiven. And this is what Scripture says: ‘Your iniquity is removed and your sin shall be atoned for’—the iniquity is actually removed from reality. Not just that you are forgiven. ‘Your sin shall be atoned for’—the iniquity itself is removed, erased, history is rewritten. And it is uprooted by the fact that he now grieves and regrets what existed before, and this is certainly a kindness not required by strict justice.” There’s an interesting point here. Basically, one should have been wiped out immediately. So mercy is applied. Fine—if mercy is applied, then it isn’t true that the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t waive things—He does waive things. No. The Holy One, blessed be He, does not waive. The possibility of delaying the matter brings us to the more correct justice. Because if we repent, then indeed it would not have been correct to uproot us. In other words, the fact that we wait a bit allows justice to appear in a fuller form. That’s the combination of the attribute of mercy and the attribute of justice. The attribute of mercy does not gnaw away at the attribute of justice. Because if in the meantime I did repentance, I really am a whole person—so what do you want? Justice says that, not mercy. Mercy is only the possibility of turning myself into a whole person, giving me the possibility to do that—but there are no waivers. That is, only if I become a whole person, then I am truly atoned for. “My iniquity is removed and my sin is atoned for.” In that sense, he says, there is really no contradiction; the attribute of justice is not impaired if you use the attribute of mercy. The attribute of mercy sometimes enables me to bring out the truer justice. This is also a point… it’s true in life too. Many times, from the standpoint of strict justice, you can take what is due to you. But if you’re smart, in the end it’s not always a zero-sum game. In the end you’ll both gain more. Meaning, justice will come out more correctly if you can give up a little of what is due to you by law. Justice will come out more correctly too. Also creditors—many times with someone who owes. Banks—people laugh, they say they don’t need to let him off, they need to squeeze the juice out of him. If they let him off and he goes to work and earns the money back, they’ll get their money back. Justice will come out more correctly if they let go, not only will they come out as better people, they’ll also truly earn what is due to them, the money due to them. By the way, very often the harassment by creditors comes out of a desire for revenge. Therefore banks often do things that are really acts of kindness and people don’t understand it. They do it in order to get the money back; it’s more worthwhile. They don’t operate with vengeance. A private person who was hurt takes revenge. A bank makes a cold calculation. It knows that if it puts the person in prison it won’t see a penny from it, so what did you gain? Maybe it influences others to be careful, fine, but you don’t gain from it. If you do a haircut, you’ll at least get the money he can manage to obtain. Therefore, in a cold calculation, you’re willing to let him off; you’ll let him off because justice will come out more correctly that way. Not because you’re such a great merciful person. Therefore, many times mercy serves justice; it is not an alternative to justice. That is what Mesilat Yesharim claimed. Now, in Kovetz Ma’amarim of Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, there is an essay on repentance. I already mentioned it once; it’s an essay I like. He raises a difficulty on this statement of Mesilat Yesharim from a Gemara in Kiddushin. The Gemara on 40 says: Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says, “Even if one was completely righteous all his days and rebelled at the end, he loses the earlier ones.” We read this in Maimonides. “He loses the earlier ones, as it is said: ‘The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his transgression.’ And even if one was completely wicked all his days and repented at the end, they do not mention his wickedness to him anymore,” okay? “As it is said: ‘And the wickedness of the wicked shall not cause him to stumble on the day he turns from his wickedness.’” The Gemara asks: “Why not let him be half sins and half merits?” Why erase? If he repented, then his sins are transgressions, and what he does from now on is repentance, that’s merits. And the reverse: he went off the path? The merits he has—why should he lose the merits he has? This doesn’t rewrite history—we settled that. History was what it was; he did commandments. Why take away his merits? And on the other side too—what’s so bad? Why should he take the… “why not let him be half sins and half merits?” Then Reish Lakish comes: “where he regrets the former deeds.” Reish Lakish says this is talking about a situation where he regrets what he did. Meaning, he doesn’t just leave what he did and now go in another direction; he also regrets what he already did. Like that regret Mesilat Yesharim spoke about earlier. So in such a case, he also loses what he did. And then it comes out that also a righteous person who rebelled at the end—if he regrets his righteousness, then he loses his merits. And a wicked person who repents and regrets the sins he committed loses the sins, okay? That’s what the Gemara says. So Rabbi Elchanan says: if Mesilat Yesharim really says that the fact that uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act is a special kindness, that by strict law you acted, you sinned, and that cannot be changed—here the Gemara asks exactly that: “why not let him be half commandments and half sins?” Strict justice says that what you did is what you did; it can’t be corrected, okay? That’s what should have been. And what do they answer? “Where he regrets the former deeds”—Reish Lakish. Meaning, Reish Lakish is basically saying no: if you corrected what you did, then strict justice is that it is—
[Speaker B] Erased.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That uprooting the will is considered like uprooting the act by law, not beyond the strict law. How do I know this? Because Reish Lakish is speaking about a righteous person who rebelled at the end. So what—do they treat him beyond the strict law and he loses his merits? The Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward kindness; He doesn’t waive, He doesn’t give leniencies—you get what you deserve, fine? But He doesn’t make things worse for you beyond what justice requires. If mercy is used, then it inclines toward kindness; it doesn’t incline toward harm. So if in fact regretting former deeds—uprooting the will, in the sense that it is considered uprooting the act—is beyond the strict law, then it should have applied only to penitents, not to those who go off the path. If someone regretted sins, then the Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward kindness and erases his sins. If someone regrets commandments, then we follow justice. And what is justice? What was done was done; uprooting the will is not uprooting the act according to justice, only beyond the strict law. So why does the Gemara apply this also to a righteous person who rebelled at the end? That is Rabbi Elchanan’s question. Therefore, he says, from the Gemara there in Kiddushin we see that the fact that uprooting the will is like uprooting the act is a matter of justice, not beyond the strict law. But then the opposite question arises. So what is the kindness in repentance? If according to justice, if I really repented, then I fully deserve complete forgiveness, the iniquity is removed, uprooting the will is like uprooting the act—then what kindness is there in this? That’s clearly justice itself. It’s true that Mesilat Yesharim explained that the kindness, or the mercy, is really the way to bring the true justice, or truer justice, more fully into actualization. But bottom line, in the final analysis, it’s justice. So what is this great kindness that the Holy One, blessed be He, performs? He wants to carry out justice to the end. That is the justice. What’s the problem? Why is this such a wondrous kindness that Mesilat Yesharim marvels at? And many others too, not only Mesilat Yesharim. “Repentance preceded the world,” and all sorts of statements in various rabbinic midrashim, that repentance goes against the definitions, against logical order, against legal justice, and nevertheless repentance is accepted. A special kindness, a special tunnel that the Holy One, blessed be He, dug beneath His throne of glory, like the well-known midrash of Rabbeinu Yonah at the beginning of Sha’arei Teshuvah. How are we to understand this special kindness if in truth we are dealing with strict justice? So Rabbi Elchanan himself writes there in the essay that he asked the Chafetz Chaim this question, and the Chafetz Chaim answered him that this is repentance from love and repentance from fear. Repentance from love—if you regret the former deeds from love—then that is by justice. And if you regret the former deeds from fear, because you’re afraid of punishment, then that is only beyond the strict law. Then by law you do not deserve that it be considered uprooting the act, only uprooting the will. And there is a special kindness that the Holy One, blessed be He, counts it also as uprooting the act—uprooting the will as uprooting the act. Why does this solve it? Because let’s look for a moment at the righteous person who rebelled. Is that going off the path from love or from fear? Did he go off the path from love or from fear? Clearly from love, right? That parallels one who returns in repentance from love, not from fear. He doesn’t do it because he thinks he’ll be punished for the commandments he did, usually—unless he went off the path to become a missionary, I don’t know, and thinks that if he were an observant Jew he’d be punished, I don’t know exactly. But in the simple case, we’re talking about someone who says: I see no value in these commandments, it’s nonsense, I regret what I did—real regret. Okay, so basically that is going off the path from love, not from fear, right? So there indeed, by strict law, he loses his deeds. Because someone who truly regrets what he did—then it really does not exist. Why should I care that he really did it? You no longer have any connection to it. If you don’t really want it anymore, then no, then it’s not yours. That is justice, not beyond the strict law. In the process of repentance there is repentance from love and repentance from fear. Repentance from love is accepted by justice. Repentance from fear—its being accepted is beyond the strict law. In the process of going off the path, there is no such thing as going off the path from fear; going off the path is always from love. Therefore there, this distinction cannot be made. And so, when Mesilat Yesharim says there is a difference between justice and beyond the strict law, he is speaking about repentance. When the Gemara in Kiddushin says that uprooting the will is like uprooting the act, that is justice, not beyond the strict law, because it is speaking about leaving observance, not about repentance. Actually, if we try to adjust this slightly, we can apply it more—it’s even more accurate than repentance from love and repentance from fear, although it’s almost parallel—the great repentance and the small repentance. Great repentance is truly regretting what I did. And if it is regret over what I did, then by justice I deserve for it to be erased. Just think of an ordinary person—not the Holy One, blessed be He, and not inclinations toward kindness and special righteous people. Someone sinned against me, okay? And now let’s say I had some revelation from heaven that tells me: listen, he genuinely regrets it, really. We can’t know what’s in the heart—he genuinely regrets it. Wouldn’t I forgive him? Of course I would forgive him. He plainly deserves to be forgiven. Why should I bear a grudge against someone who once was someone, and today is someone else? Really—he deserves it by justice. Any normal person would do that. This is not some special kindness of the Holy One, blessed be He. You deserve it. If the Holy One, blessed be He, doesn’t accept your repentance when it is repentance from love, true repentance, then sue Him in a religious court. It’s due to you. And as Mesilat Yesharim says, because it is justice. The kindness is that they allow you to do it, but if you did it, then by justice it is accepted, okay? Therefore indeed uprooting the will is like uprooting the act, and that is justice. If you do small repentance, that is a special kindness. You did not truly do genuine repentance. In such a case there is kindness in the process of repentance. If you did it in repentance, then they accept it. I think no—there is no chance at all that such a thing should stand. Therefore it seems to me that the more correct formulation is not repentance from love and fear, but the great repentance and the small repentance. And from here I’ll continue in the chapter.