Lesson dated 19 Elul 5766, Part 2

This is what he says here. What does Maimonides do with this verse? So Maimonides, in chapter 7 of the Laws of Repentance, halakhah 5: “All the prophets commanded repentance.” But the wording is strange. The Torah commanded repentance — what does “all the prophets” mean? No — there is no commandment in the Torah to repent. “All the prophets commanded repentance, and Israel is redeemed only through repentance, and the Torah has already promised that Israel will ultimately repent at the end of its exile and immediately be redeemed, as it says: ‘And it shall be, when all these things come upon you,’ and so on, ‘and you shall return to the Lord your God,’ and ‘the Lord your God will return your captivity and have mercy upon you.’” So what is that according to Maimonides? A promise. There is no commandment to repent; the commandment is that all the prophets commanded it. In the Torah there is no commandment. What is written in the Torah — “and you shall return to the Lord your God” — is a promise, not a commandment. Nachmanides says it is both, both a promise and a commandment, but Maimonides very clearly says: “commanded” — that is the prophets. There is no Torah commandment, and what is written in the Torah, “and you shall return,” is a promise, not a commandment. So that is consistent with what we saw in Maimonides’ approach, that Maimonides really does not view repentance itself as a commandment. The commandment is only the procedure for how repentance is done — confession and so on.

We know many examples of this, right? Like tzitzit, which was mentioned earlier. If I have a four-cornered garment, I am obligated to put tzitzit on it. If I do not wear a four-cornered garment, I do not need to put on tzitzit. I do not need to wear one, I do not need tzitzit. Today there are those who are careful about it voluntarily, yes or no; there are big debates, I am not getting into that here right now. But according to the strict law, you do not have to wear tzitzit at all. If I put on a four-cornered garment, then I have to put tzitzit on it. If I want to eat, then I have to slaughter the animals. What — is there a commandment to slaughter? If I do not want to eat, then do not eat and do not slaughter. What is the problem? There is no problem there; you are not a criminal. If you want to do something, the Torah determines what the proper procedure is for doing it correctly. So here too we see the same thing.

By the way, it is a mistake to call these things an “existential commandment”; just as a parenthetical note. A lot of people relate to this that way. There is a distinction in halakhic terminology between an obligatory commandment and an existential commandment. An obligatory commandment is one that you must do from beginning to end — putting on tefillin, for example; someone who does not do it is a transgressor. There is an existential commandment — let’s say Torah study beyond reciting Shema morning and evening. According to some opinions, that is only an existential commandment; you are not obligated. It is important, but not obligatory. So what about these commandments — what about tzitzit? Tzitzit is also called an existential commandment: if you wear a four-cornered garment, you put on tzitzit; if you do not wear one, no problem, nothing happened. But many people say that, and it is a mistake. It is a conditional commandment, not an existential one. “Conditional commandment” means that only under certain circumstances are you obligated, but under those circumstances you are fully obligated. That is not the same as Torah study, where under no circumstances am I obligated beyond the minimum; if I want to, it is a commandment; if I do not want to, nothing happened. That is an existential commandment: if fulfilled, good; if not fulfilled, nothing happened. But in all commandments of this kind, it is a conditional commandment, not an existential one.

Fine. But for our purposes, the commandment of repentance according to Maimonides is a conditional commandment. More than that — throughout the discussion we see, as I mentioned earlier, that Maimonides becomes very poetic here in the Laws of Repentance in a way that is highly unusual. Every so often in other laws too a little poetic phrase slips out, but generally speaking — yes, let’s listen to some of his language. “A penitent should not imagine that he is distant from the level of the righteous… and the sages said: In the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand. How lofty is the level of repentance. Yesterday this person was separated from the Lord, God of Israel, as it says: ‘Your sins separated between you and your God’; he cried out and was not answered, as it says: ‘Even if you increase prayer…’; and he performed a commandment and they tore it up before him, as it says: ‘Who asked this of you, to trample My courtyards?… Who among you would shut the doors…’ And today he is attached to the Divine Presence, as it says: ‘And you who cleave to the Lord your God’; he cries out and is answered immediately, as it says: ‘Before they call, I will answer’; and he performs commandments and they are accepted pleasantly and joyfully, as it says: ‘For God has already accepted your deeds.’ And not only that, but they long for them, as it says: ‘Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord, as in days of old and former years.’”

All these poetic passages — and there are a few more like them — do not appear in Maimonides’ other laws, only in the Laws of Repentance. Which means, in the Laws of Repentance it looks like Maimonides is trying to persuade people to repent. In the laws of Grace after Meals there are no poems. It just says what blessing has to be said, here yes, here no, one who did not bless, one who did bless, coerced cases, non-coerced cases, doesn’t matter — halakhic definitions. It is not a book of poetry; it is a book of law. So why here does Maimonides enter into all kinds of statements of this type?

More generally, among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), they wrote relatively few books of moral exhortation, and in fact regarding repentance you see that Shaarei Teshuvah by Rabbeinu Yonah is a whole book trying to persuade people — to repent. Why didn’t he write a whole book trying to persuade us to redeem a firstborn donkey? That is also a very important commandment; it produces exalted rectifications in various places. And there may also be people who do not do it, more or less. So what? Why doesn’t he try to persuade us about that? There is something in repentance that is voluntary. In the commandment of repentance? In repentance — no. There is something — okay, you’re right, that was a Freudian slip. There is something in repentance, not in the commandment of repentance. Am I faking it? Yes. There is something in repentance that is voluntary. It is given over to our decision. And Maimonides and Rabbeinu Yonah are trying to persuade us to repent. The other commandments — I do not persuade you of anything. Don’t do it, you’ll get hit; do it, you’ll receive reward, that’s all. We deal with you in terms of laws; this is a law book. But in the Laws of Repentance there is something beyond law; there is something trying to persuade me to repent. According to Maimonides that is very clear, because there is no commandment to repent. There is no commandment. If I decide, I will repent, and if not, then not. True, if I decide to repent, there is a procedure for how to do it.

Isn’t it at least a rabbinic commandment even according to Maimonides? No, I do not know such a commandment. Maimonides says, “the sages commanded.” What? “The sages commanded.” No, I think the concept of command there means command in the sense of entrusting as well. Meaning, they placed this matter in our hands, they pointed out how important it is. I do not think he brings this as a rabbinic commandment. He has ways of formulating rabbinic laws. If something is a rabbinic commandment — even if not Torah-level, but rabbinic — he says things like “the sages instituted,” “of rabbinic origin,” “from the words of the prophets,” “from oral tradition”; he has all kinds of expressions of that sort. It is not written that way here. I do not think he really meant that. “The sages commanded” means they told us: look how important it is to repent.

So all this leads us to a picture in which we see that Maimonides holds that repentance is not a commandment, unlike Nachmanides, who thinks it is a commandment. Meshekh Chokhmah on Parashat Vayelekh really explains why there is no commandment here, because what sense does it make to command someone to repent? Suppose someone, I don’t know, sorted on the Sabbath. The fact that he has to stop the sin is already written in the prohibition against sorting on the Sabbath. You do not need an additional command for that. The very command that defines this act as a transgression itself tells us that we need to leave it. Why do you need another command to leave it? Therefore he says the only possibility is perhaps to command how repentance is done. There is confession and so on. But the very fact that I need to leave the sin does not require any command; it is written in the very fact that it was a sin. No separate command is needed.

And then he discusses: so how does Nachmanides say that there is a commandment? How are we to understand that nevertheless? Maybe I’ll talk about that later. The problem with all this is that in one source in Maimonides it seems that there is indeed a commandment to repent, and that is in the laws themselves. Before every collection of laws, Maimonides lists the commandments that are detailed in that collection. Always before he begins: there are such-and-such commandments in it, and these are their details: A, B, C, D — and then he begins the laws. Here, in the Laws of Repentance, he writes as follows: “There is one positive commandment, namely that the sinner should return from his sin before God and confess.”

Now notice: the missing “when” here is very important, and that “when,” it seems to me, even according to the Frankel edition — meaning this is probably the precise wording; apparently there are no other versions. Not “when he returns from his sin before God, he should confess,” but “that he should return and confess.” And also the “and” is not “when.” Not “when he returns, he should confess,” but “that he should return and confess.” Here it is no longer presented as something conditional. If it were presented as conditional, the proper wording would have been: “There is one positive commandment, namely that when the sinner returns from his sin, he should confess.” He does not write that. He writes that he should return and confess. So what is the commandment? To return and confess. To carry out one procedure, all of which is the commandment. Meaning this is one positive commandment — that is what he writes. A commandment that has details. Maimonides has many such cases: a commandment counted as one, when the two details are really one whole.

Maybe one more comment, not from Maimonides himself but from Lechem Mishneh, on the halakhah we dealt with at the beginning of this whole track. Lechem Mishneh, on what Maimonides writes there about the Ten Days of Repentance — he says righteous, wicked, and intermediates. Everyone is written down on Rosh Hashanah. The righteous and the wicked are also sealed on Rosh Hashanah, and the intermediates remain suspended until Yom Kippur. If they repent, good; if not, they are sealed for death. One of the questions that comes up there — and this is the question we dealt with then; let’s complete it now — one of the questions is: why are they sealed for death? If they did not repent, they are still half-and-half. We always say that the Holy One tilts toward kindness, not toward wickedness. So if the Holy One sees a person who is half-and-half and he did not repent — okay, half-and-half — why should he be sealed for death? So Lechem Mishneh writes there that what tips the scale is the fact that he did not repent, because Maimonides may have required repentance.

So what if he did not repent? He still has the previous sins, obviously, but that itself is not a transgression, because there is no commandment to repent. So he did not repent — fine, he remains with his sins — but what transgression is there in the fact that he did not repent? So it seems there are nevertheless some hints in Maimonides that there is a commandment to repent. Minchat Chinukh asks this question, this contradiction in Maimonides, and he remains there with some complicated explanation, not precise, saying there is some sort of approach here, something — not really an essential explanation.

Maybe it can be understood as follows — and this is something that would have to be checked more broadly. From what I know so far, it seems to work, but I’m not fully committing myself; I’m suggesting a possibility. In Sefer HaMitzvot, what is Maimonides’ purpose? Let’s understand how Maimonides worked. I may have described this once as some kind of suggestion from what came before. How did Maimonides work? What was the order of his work when he built the whole… He poured all of Jewish law into some hierarchical mold; he built a structure that holds all of halakhah. How did he work? After all, you need some kind of order for the work. First, the Commentary on the Mishnah: he went through all the material, explained it; he also had commentaries on the Talmud, only very little of which remains, some of it in our hands. And afterward, when he came to write the Mishneh Torah, he had to do some kind of initial classification. How do you make the initial classification? He has fourteen books, as is known, and each book is divided into collections of laws. But the basis of everything is the enumeration of the commandments.

Maimonides wrote Sefer HaMitzvot with a purpose. Unlike others, say, who wrote books of commandments for all kinds of different reasons — or because there is a commandment “and you shall remember all My commandments”; the Chafetz Chaim, for example, in his concise Sefer HaMitzvot writes that for that reason he collects all the commandments. There is a commandment to remember all the commandments; that is one of the commandments in the Torah. Maimonides did not write Sefer HaMitzvot for that reason. Maimonides wrote Sefer HaMitzvot because for him it is the skeleton of the Mishneh Torah. He collects the 613 commandments according to the rules; in the roots, he establishes the rules; in light of those rules he writes Sefer HaMitzvot. Once he wrote Sefer HaMitzvot, he has the 613 commandments plus a few rabbinic commandments — only seven are independent rabbinic commandments; all the rest are details within Torah commandments — and then he classifies all the 613 and the rabbinic ones into fourteen books and collections of laws, sub-books, various collections of laws, and then he starts the whole detailed presentation, and that is how he writes the Mishneh Torah.

What, essentially, appears in the enumeration of the commandments? In the enumeration of the commandments appear the commandments that appear in the Torah. The commandments that appear in the Torah serve to connect, to emerge from the Written Torah and arrive at all of halakhah. The skeleton is taken from the Written Torah, and all of halakhah is spread out over that skeleton. Which means that in Sefer HaMitzvot Maimonides is basically writing what the Torah commands us to do. That is called a commandment.

What happens in the Mishneh Torah? In the Mishneh Torah there are, first of all, collections of commandments in which there are no Torah commandments at all — everything is rabbinic, Hanukkah and Purim, things like that. There are laws in which there are no Torah commandments at all. In the Mishneh Torah his purpose is broader: his purpose is to summarize everything incumbent upon us. Everything that needs to be done — Torah-level, everything, everything, everything a Jew needs to do is supposed to be written in the Mishneh Torah. If there is something I need to do but it is not written in the Torah — there is no command in the Torah, but I still need to do it — what happens with that? In Sefer HaMitzvot it will not appear, because there Maimonides enumerates the 613 commandments that appear in the Torah. It will not appear in Sefer HaMitzvot. But in the Mishneh Torah it must appear. The Mishneh Torah contains everything I need to do, regardless of the sources. The goal is to gather everything — that is what he writes in the introduction — the goal is to gather everything from all the sources, everything a Jew needs to know in order to live as a Jew. There certainly everything has to appear, even what has no source in the Torah.

So now maybe we can understand the meaning of this contradiction in Maimonides. When he speaks in Sefer HaMitzvot about the commandments that appear in the Torah, that the Torah commands us, there is no command in the Torah to repent. There is a command to confess. “And you shall return to the Lord your God” is a promise, not a commandment. So there is no commandment there to repent. There is a procedure there — confession — that is what was commanded; a conditional commandment, that if you repent then you need to confess. That is what is written in Sefer HaMitzvot.

But in the Mishneh Torah he writes for us everything we need to do — not only what the Torah says we need to do, but everything we need to do. Repentance too needs to be done. It is not written in the Torah, so does that mean it does not need to be done? Of course it does. But it is not written in the Torah, so in Sefer HaMitzvot it will not appear. Wait — so in Sefer HaMitzvot it does not appear, but in the Mishneh Torah it does appear. Not only does it appear, it appears as an obligation. And one who does not do it — says Lechem Mishneh — the intermediate person who did not repent, then failure to repent is a sin. Why? Because repentance has to be done. Someone who does not repent has committed an iniquity. It is not the neglect of a positive commandment — there is no positive commandment to repent — but it is still a transgression, and there is punishment for it, and it has the weight of a sin, and it also counts among a person’s sins.

What is the meaning of this? How do we understand such a thing? This really brings us into a broader topic of obligations that are not written in the Torah. Are there obligations incumbent upon us that are not written in the Torah? Not written in the Torah and not even rabbinic — obligations that in fact have no formal halakhic source with binding force? It is pretty clear that there are such obligations, and we find this in several places. Let me give one example from the Talmud — maybe the most famous one. The Talmud in Berakhot, page 35, discusses blessings over enjoyment. The Talmud says there: From where do we know that one blesses over food beforehand? “Who creates the fruit of the tree” — where do we know that one has to bless? So the Talmud discusses it there, and in the end it reaches the conclusion that it is not from a verse but from reason that one must bless. Why? Because one who enjoys this world without a blessing has committed misuse of sacred property. Misuse. And since that is so, it is a matter of reason: you cannot enjoy something that the Holy One created for you without blessing Him first. You must bless.

Pnei Yehoshua asks there — actually it is Pnei Yehoshua, not Tzelach — we know that blessings, blessings over enjoyment, are a rabbinic obligation. In cases of doubt regarding blessings, we rule leniently. If I do not know whether I already blessed or not, I cannot bless again. Rabbinic doubt — be lenient — I do not bless again. Why? Because the obligation to bless is rabbinic. Grace after Meals is a Torah obligation; blessings over Torah study, according to Nachmanides, are also Torah-level. But the other blessings, blessings over enjoyment, are rabbinic. Pnei Yehoshua says: something that derives from reason is a Torah-level law; it is not a rabbinic law. So how can it be that the Talmud says the obligation to bless over enjoyment is the product of reason, but the definition of blessings over enjoyment is a rabbinic obligation? If it comes from reason, it is a Torah obligation — that is what Pnei Yehoshua says.

How does he know that? Because in many places the Talmud says, “Why do I need a verse? It is logical.” They bring a source and a verse, and then the Talmud says: why do I need a verse? It is logical. Why would you need a verse? To know that I am obligated. No — if it is logical, you do not need a verse. Why? Because whatever reason tells me, I am obligated to fulfill. So Pnei Yehoshua says: well then, here too. In blessings over enjoyment, reason tells us one must bless, so it is a Torah commandment; doubts should be treated stringently; all the rules of Torah law should apply, even without any verse at all.

There is some answer given there, but it is not a good answer. I have a better answer for it, but we will not go into that topic now. In any case, that is the conception that emerges there. Indeed Tzelach — the author of Noda B’Yehuda, in his work on the Talmud called Tzelach, Tziyun LeNefesh Chayah, that is what the acronym stands for — there he in fact disagrees with Pnei Yehoshua. He says: how can it be that everything derived from reason will be Torah law? Only what is written in the Torah is Torah law. What does it mean that something derived from reason is Torah law? Now, is he arguing with the Talmud? The Talmud itself says, “Why do I need a verse? It is logical.” Why are you bringing a verse? There is reason. We see that the Talmud takes it for granted that if there is a source derived from reason, you do not need a verse; that means it is equivalent to a verse. Clearly he is not arguing with that. What he wants to say is that there is a difference between a case where the reasoning is interpretive reasoning, interpreting some law that the Torah introduced — reason is always involved in the interpretive process. That is clear. “Why do I need a verse? It is logical” means you do not need a verse to explain that law if reason would have understood it that way on its own.

But where reason creates a special, novel law, something that is not a detail in some Torah commandment, a new law that is entirely derived from reason — Tzelach says, absolutely not. There is no such thing. If it is not written in the Torah, then it is not Torah law. But Pnei Yehoshua says even such a thing is Torah law. The students of Rabbeinu Yonah there say that someone who eats without a blessing brings a guilt offering for misuse of sacred property — a guilt offering to the Temple, a sacrifice — which is certainly Torah-level. And what does that actually mean? According to Tzelach, it is not Torah-level. So at least according to Pnei Yehoshua, we see here a good example — and that is also the plain meaning of the Talmud — that a source grounded in reason obligates us even where there is no source in the Torah.

In the enumeration of commandments, the obligation to recite blessings over enjoyment — “Who creates the fruit of the tree” — will not appear in Maimonides, because there is no verse in the Torah for it. The 613 commandments are the commandments written in the Torah; in Sefer HaMitzvot it will not appear. But in the Mishneh Torah, where everything one needs to do is written, everything appears there — everything that needs to be done appears there. That is rabbinic. What? Rabbinic? No, no — according to Pnei Yehoshua it is Torah-level. I said the answer he gives there is not a good answer; in any case it is a commandment. A Torah commandment? Yes, a commandment — but one that comes from reason and not from a verse. And therefore in Sefer HaMitzvot Maimonides does not bring it, because it comes from reason. But here it says: “There is one positive commandment, that the sinner return from his sin and confess.” Meaning there is an obligation to confess.

I return again to the question of why he starts with the description of confession, because I think this is still the description that begins from what is written in the Torah. The source of this is the Torah, and the whole enterprise — Sefer HaMitzvot too was written as the source for the entire Mishneh Torah. The source always begins from the Torah; the additions come afterward. It is a suggestion; I do not really know. Good question — I do not know. In any case, it seems to me that this is also what Maimonides means to say about repentance, and that is why he tries to persuade us to repent. He says: there is an obligation to repent. This obligation comes from reason, not from a verse. I cannot tell you: here, someone who did not repent neglected a positive commandment written in such-and-such a verse. I want to persuade you why it is right to repent. Let me explain to you why it is simple common sense, and if you are persuaded, then you will repent, because all there is here is the reasoning. So what Maimonides is doing is explaining the reasoning. What is the reasoning? That if a person was distant, isolated, banished from the Holy One, and now he cleaves to Him, and so on — that itself is the reasoning. If you have such a thing, such a powerful tool for drawing close to the Holy One, do you need a command to tell you to do it? On the contrary, any thoughtful person understands that one must do such a thing. If there were a command, that would actually lower it, because then I would do it as someone commanded, as something that is just one item among obligations.

There is a whole series of obligations — and by the way, almost all of them appear in the Laws of Repentance. It seems to me that this is the line that weaves together everything in the Laws of Repentance, because the final chapters of the Laws of Repentance deal with things where it is really not clear at all what they have to do with repentance: serving God for its own sake, serving out of love, serving out of fear, the coming of the Messiah, resurrection of the dead. What does all this have to do with the Laws of Repentance? It seems to me that the Laws of Repentance are the laws that deal with all a person’s obligations that derive from reason and not from a verse.

Even love of God — that passage that is written in the Laws of Repentance, let me see for a second — that is in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance: “A person should not say, I will fulfill the commandments of the Torah and engage in its wisdom in order to receive all the blessings…” rather, he should serve for its own sake, and one who serves in this way serves out of fear, and this is not the level of the prophets, and people do not serve God this way except the ignorant masses, and so on — rather, they should serve out of love. What does that have to do with here? And second, why does the commandment to love God appear here? The commandment to love God appears in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, and there Maimonides details what pertains to the commandment of loving God. So why is it relevant here? Because here he wants to tell us that there is something beyond the commandment. As with Torah study — this is true there too. Don’t say: the commandments of the Torah and Torah study because it says “you shall meditate in it day and night,” in my language. Rather, someone who understands what Torah is should understand that one needs to study Torah — not because it is written. On the contrary, the most fundamental things of all are not written in the Torah, so that we do them מתוך the fact that we understand how fundamental they are.

What does it mean to serve God out of love? When I do any commandment out of love and not out of fear, I am certainly fulfilling the commandment to love God — that is obvious. But I am not obligated to do it from the standpoint of the commandment to love God. The commandment to love God — every morning I can meditate for two minutes to love God and then go on my way. For the other commandments I only need to intend to fulfill my obligation, and that is all. There is no condition in the commandments that one must love God. Someone who loves God also through the commandments — that too is love of God, obviously. But there is no such obligation. That is why it appears in the Laws of Repentance. Maimonides writes that when you perform commandments out of love, that will not appear in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah, because it is not part of the commandment to love God. It belongs to what is beyond what one is obligated to do. Everything that is beyond what one is obligated to do appears in the Laws of Repentance, because repentance as a whole is like that. It is something beyond what one is obligated to do in terms of what the Torah commands. It is something that anyone who understands what repentance is realizes must be done.

Rabbi Kook writes about the obligation to improve one’s character traits. Rabbi Kook writes about this: why does the Torah not command that? This is already an old question — why does the Torah not command us to improve our character traits? Why does it command…? In my opinion there is a commandment; I never understood the question. It says “and you shall walk in His ways,” and from there it follows what is required. But okay, I do not know — many people ask why there is no commandment to improve one’s character. So Rabbi Chaim Vital writes why there is no such commandment: because the Torah speaks to human beings. Someone who is not a human being cannot be spoken to. You need to understand on your own that you have to improve your character traits. If you need a command for that, then there is no one to command anymore. To whom exactly would I give this command? Every command has to be addressed to human beings. But if someone is not a human being, how can I command him to be a human being? You cannot do that. Either you are subject to command or you are not. So there are conditions for receiving the commandments, and they come before the commandments; they are more fundamental. These are conditions that precede my beginning to command you — this is what you are supposed to understand.

Rabbi Kook writes more than that. Rabbi Kook writes that if such things had been commanded, it would detract from them. Why? Because the sages tell us that greater is one who is commanded and does than one who is not commanded and does. Our simple intuition says the opposite, of course — that greater is one who is not commanded and does, right? So Rabbi Kook says: for the Torah’s commandments, the Torah wrote them because there, in fact, greater is one who is commanded and does. But there are things where the simple intuition remains true — that greater is one who is not commanded and does. And those things the Torah leaves unwritten, not only because there is no point in writing them, but because writing them would be harmful. Because if the Torah had written them, then I would do them as one who is commanded and does, and that is worse. They need to be done as one who is not commanded and does.

I do not remember whether I brought this here; I am already getting mixed up between things. There is a well-known yeshiva joke about that boy who went out for matchmaking. Well, all kinds of girls came, he met them, none of them found favor in his eyes. He came to the mashgiach, and the mashgiach said to him: Listen, my friend, it cannot be that no one is suitable for you. You need to work on your character. Sit for a year and work on your character, and next year come back to the whole section of the man betrothing. So he sits and works on his character, strongly, enthusiastically, passionately, reading books of moral exhortation. After a year, again, the process starts, they bring all the girls he is going to meet, and so on. Again, nothing looks good to him. The supervising rabbi says to him: tell me, what did you do this year? Did you do anything? He says: what do you mean? Of course. I worked on my character; I am now a certified humble person. So he says to him: then how can it be that no one suits you? So he said: what do you mean? When I was arrogant, none of them suited me. Now that I am also humble, all the more so none of them suit me. Now I am really a perfect person.

He says: that is what someone looks like when he serves God because it is written in the Shulchan Arukh, and improves his character because it is written in Shulchan Arukh, section 119, paragraph 3, that one must be humble. He says: you cannot write such a thing, because if you write such a thing, it ruins it. So with repentance too — same thing. Repentance has to come from some kind of voluntary motivation. Meaning, if there is a commandment to repent, then once again it becomes part of the procedure. And that completes what I said in previous times too: there is repentance that is procedure, and there is repentance that is essence. And the repentance that is essence cannot be commanded. The procedure really does depend on confession; confession is part of the procedure. But repentance that is essential repentance does not really need confession in the end either, as we said in previous sessions.