Lecture dated 19 Elul 5766, Part 1

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A lecture by Rabbi Yitzhak Rakovitz, on the eve of the 18th of Elul 5766, September 11, 2006.

[Speaker B] That’s also how Yitzhak Rakovitz speaks.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Listen, but if you

[Speaker B] say, you’re saying that this is a repentance that isn’t always done for a sin,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and that’s clear, but if you say, you’re saying that this is a repentance that isn’t always done for a sin, and that this repentance is above the concept of the other repentance, still it’s clear that repentance also erases sins that were committed as sins, right? It’s true that repentance can also be defined without sins, and there is room for repentance even if you didn’t sin, but I’m talking about a situation where you did sin, and there too the solution is repentance, right? The remedy for this whole matter is repentance. And about that I’m asking: how does it erase the past? In other words, in another situation repentance has a different role, right, and I’m asking about this situation, not another one. Okay, I just really want to finish what we did in the last two sessions, maybe with one short section. Basically we spoke about two processes of repentance: repentance that is an inner spiritual revolution, and repentance that is a procedure. One of them is beyond the strict law in the sense that it’s accepted, that the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts it. The second is beyond the strict law in the sense that it’s even possible to do it at all. That’s really the core of it. The question that accompanied us all along, and I also noted it, is what to do with Maimonides. Maimonides defines intermediate people, righteous people, and wicked people in an arithmetic way—at least that’s what it looks like—how many sins, how many commandments, some sort of weighing, not just counting, some kind of overall balance. But still it doesn’t look like the explanation that was said in Maimonides, the explanation that the Sefat Emet gives, for example, that repentance is about what your spiritual direction is. Sorry—intermediate, righteous, and wicked are classified according to what your spiritual direction is. If your inner spiritual direction is positive, you’re righteous. If it’s negative, you’re wicked. If you’re standing between the two sides, or between the two categories, then you’re intermediate. And then repentance is basically some sort of inner revolution, turning toward a positive spiritual direction. That was the basis from which we began this whole issue of deeper repentance, the inner revolution. In Maimonides it doesn’t seem to be the same definition. So first of all, it seems to me—and maybe I already mentioned this one of the previous times—Maimonides is talking about the Laws of Repentance. What’s written here is the Laws of Repentance. All the Laws of Repentance deal with the lesser repentance, because the greater repentance has no laws. If you’re a penitent, then you’re a penitent. It’s not a matter of: did you do this, did you do it in order, when did you do it, in repentance, in repentance—none of those questions are asked about someone who is a true penitent. Someone who really is a penitent, who is now righteous, the Holy One, blessed be He, is obviously not going to sentence him to death. All the halakhic discussions—with details, what invalidates, what doesn’t invalidate, what stages there are, what you have to promise and in what form—all of that belongs to the context of procedural repentance. Because there this is a repentance defined by Jewish law, and you have to work according to the procedure that Jewish law sets. Since that’s the case, if Maimonides wants to write a book on the Laws of Repentance, then he’s dealing with that repentance about which laws were said. Where there are rules, what you do and what you don’t do. That’s only the lesser repentance. The greater repentance doesn’t belong in a legal book. It’s obvious that if you’re righteous, then you’re righteous, so we’re not talking about you. The Laws of Repentance speak—or are speaking, the Laws of Repentance are speaking, I think—no, are speaking—about someone who needs the Laws of Repentance. So there’s some initial condition here that determines who is being addressed. If you didn’t sin at all, then we all agree that, even without this comment, yes, you don’t need to open the Laws of Repentance. Fine, I didn’t sin, everything’s fine, I can rest peacefully in my bed. But the whole discussion here is about someone who sinned. Someone who did genuine repentance is like someone who didn’t sin, so the Laws of Repentance are not dealing with him, that’s all. Maimonides doesn’t disagree with the idea that there is such a thing. We saw that from the Talmudic text, as we brought it, so it’s not reasonable that Maimonides would disagree with that. But still, I would have expected—and especially in light of the unusual poetic quality that hovers over Maimonides in the Laws of Repentance, in several places he really writes things that read like poetry—I would have expected him to mention it anyway. Fine, that he’d say: okay, but there is also some greater process, a process that we’re not talking about in the Laws of Repentance, some process that… I think maybe he mentions it in chapter 2. Maimonides at the beginning of chapter 2 says this—and I’ll read you his language; also notice the order of things, because maybe that’s what he means. He says: What is—this is how chapter 2 begins—What is complete repentance? First of all, notice the term: complete repentance. He doesn’t say what repentance is. He says what complete repentance is. He says: It is when the very thing in which he sinned comes to him again, and he has the ability to do it, and he separates and does not do it because of repentance, not out of fear and not because of weakness. How so? Suppose a woman with whom he had sinned comes before him, and after some time he is secluded with her, and he still loves her, and has the strength of his body, and is in the same place where he sinned, and he refrains and does not sin—this is a complete penitent. Someone who is in exactly the same situation, under the same circumstances, and does not fail—that is a complete penitent. Why is he a complete penitent? Because he really changed. And that’s someone who really changed; it’s not someone who went through a procedure. Someone who really changed—what’s the measure? Put yourself in the exact same situation and see. Like scientific measurement. I want to test a difference in a certain parameter between two things—what do I do? I equalize all the other parameters, isolate only the one parameter I want to test. Here it exists, there it doesn’t. If this is a sample group and a regular group, a test group, I compare them and see. If it’s different, that means something connected to that parameter itself changed. Right? So when I want to test—

[Speaker B] And not because of fear? What? And not because of the fear that’s written there? And not because of fear—that means it’s really an element of

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] repentance. Not out of fear and not because of weakness. Yes, only because of repentance. Because now he really changed.

[Speaker B] What kind of fear does he mean—fear of punishment or fear of…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even fear of God. Even fear of God is still not… We talked about this at the beginning of the year, we talked about what “for its own sake” means, when we said that both fear and love are not “for its own sake.” So here he says not out of fear. I think he means fear of God. It could be that he means not out of fear in the sense that he’s not worried about social pressure, or that people will see him, or things like that. Maybe that too. But it seems to me he also means fear of God. I don’t know; it’s not explicit here. It’s a matter of judgment. But it seems that this law speaks exactly about the complete penitent. A complete penitent means the very person to whom I’m not speaking. That’s the person who really changed. He’s in the exact same circumstances and behaves differently. If we now remember Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner—I mentioned this here once—Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner explains why on Purim one has to drink until one does not know the difference between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai. And that seems, on the face of it, the opposite of logic, because the whole purpose of Purim is precisely to know the difference between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai. What do you mean? Why do I need to blur it to the point that I don’t distinguish between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai? So Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says it’s the same principle that we see here too: in order to distinguish well between Haman and Mordechai, the wisdom is to blur all the irrelevant differences between them. Because the depth of the question is the depth of the distinction—that’s what he writes there. What does that mean? In the children’s books we’re familiar with, they draw Esau as some repulsive, disgusting kind of person, hairy all over his body—

[Speaker B] A long nose.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly, some kind of figure that when you see him it’s off-putting. Jacob is a wholesome wonderful man, with a marvelous and charming countenance, and so on and so on. And what does that really do? It basically says, ah, okay, fine, he was born that charming, with a wonderful nature to begin with, everything’s good, so of course he’s righteous. And the other one, he was born like that, some animal-like failure, so that’s why he’s Esau. The real wisdom, in order truly to distinguish between Jacob and Esau, is to draw them exactly the same. Exactly the same. Just Jacob chose good, and Esau chose evil. That’s the difference between them. Anyone who doesn’t blur the other differences misses something here, because he’s basically saying that maybe the parameter depends on how they were born and not on what they chose—and then it really isn’t important. He says the same thing about the two goats on Yom Kippur. He talks about them, maybe, in the last lecture on the Laws of Repentance. With the two goats of Yom Kippur, the Mishnah says there’s a law that they have to be identical in height, in weight, in value—in other words, in all the parameters they have to be identical. Why? Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner says the same thing. There too I want the only difference between the two goats to be that this one goes to Azazel and this one goes to the Lord. That’s all. Meaning, if it depends on something additional, then we’ve blurred the distinction that we actually want. The lottery, in the context of the goats, of course reflects choice. Meaning, to choose this one. The goats don’t choose, so we draw lots. The lottery reflects, expresses, some process of choice. Choice is a kind of creation out of nothing. So this one is chosen for the Lord and this one is chosen for Azazel. That’s the difference between them, and that’s it. Nothing else. Not because one was born this way and the other that way, but because this one was chosen for this and that one was chosen for that. And in a human being, of course, it’s what the person chooses, not why the person was chosen. Does the person choose good or choose evil.

[Speaker B] And a lottery means God chooses, not the person.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s why I say: the goats are not beings with free choice. It’s only meant to reflect for us what we need to learn from this. So we want all the difference between the two goats to be only choice. That’s all. And the same between Jacob and Esau, and the same here too. The person enters the same place—look, he’s erasing parameters that are completely irrelevant. He says: in the same place where he sinned. It has to be even in the same physical circumstances as before, because then I know it’s only this. Meaning then it’s clear that he changed. It’s not some other influence that happened here. So what is this whole law in Maimonides really? This whole law in Maimonides defines exactly that process we were talking about as essential change.

[Speaker B] Exactly right, and that’s precisely the continuation of this second, detailed part: what is repentance? To regret the matter and not do it again—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Which has to be the legal side. Continue—the next law… No, exactly the opposite. The next law now begins to spell it out, and that’s exactly why I’m about to read it. So this is how Maimonides opens chapter 2. What I just read is the opening of chapter 2. And then he says: This is what Solomon said: “Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.” And if he repented only in his old age, at a time when he is unable to do what he once did, even though this is not the best repentance, it still helps him, and he is a penitent. Even if he sinned all his days, and repented on the day of his death, and died in repentance, all his sins are forgiven, as it says: “Before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain”—which is the day of death. It follows that if he remembered his Creator and repented before he died, he is forgiven. That’s what Maimonides says. And now suddenly, in law 2, he says this: And what is repentance? What is repentance? It is that the sinner abandon his sin, remove it from his thoughts, and firmly resolve in his heart never to do it again, as it says, “Let the wicked forsake his way,” and so too he should regret the past, as it says, “For after I returned, I regretted,” and the Knower of hidden things should testify concerning him that he will never return to this sin again, as it says, “Nor will we say anymore, ‘Our God,’ to the work of our hands,” and he must confess with his lips and say these matters that he resolved in his heart. The four stages of repentance, which Saadia Gaon was really the first to arrange in a defined way, are basically brought here in law 2 of Maimonides: abandoning the sin, regret, confession, and acceptance for the future—that he will never return to this sin again. These are the four stages of repentance in law 2. Maimonides does not say in law 1 what repentance is, and then say, after that, what the indication is that you’re really a true penitent—namely, if under the same circumstances you didn’t sin. It works the other way around. First of all, I’ll explain to you what complete repentance is. What is complete repentance? If under the same circumstances you didn’t sin, that’s a sign you did complete repentance. And then suddenly he says: And what is repentance? A moment ago you explained what a complete penitent is.

[Speaker B] How to get there, so to speak—that’s the stages.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So maybe one could say it’s how to get there, although it doesn’t really look that way. You can also see later that he goes into all the details of the ways of repentance. Meaning, there are things that invalidate and things that don’t invalidate.

[Speaker B] No, it looks like this is the most practical thing, whereas it should be the most spiritual thing. The first part? Yes—not practical in the full sense.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not practical at all.

[Speaker B] Why? To be in the same situation…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s a practical test, but how do you work on it?

[Speaker B] Yes, but the test should be a practical test. You need to bring yourself to that state where you won’t commit the sin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Don’t bring yourself there, don’t bring yourself there.

[Speaker B] No, no, that’s an interesting question.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sefat Emet really comments here—the Sefat Emet notes the question. It seems to him somewhat from Maimonides that Maimonides is arguing that although ordinarily a person may not put himself into a situation where he could come to sin, as part of the process of repentance it could be that from this Maimonides you can learn that one may place himself back in that exact same situation in order to test himself as part of the process of repentance. That’s a very big novelty. According to Jewish law, in principle, it’s forbidden to do such a thing. But that’s how he learns it. It’s not clear that this is really what is written in Maimonides. It could be that this is only a test after the fact.

[Speaker B] What? Why on earth? He needs to distance himself; he shouldn’t come near it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, no—to distance himself from the sin itself, but not from the circumstances. The circumstances are only a measure for seeing where I stand. I want to know.

[Speaker B] But usually, the more you understand the sin, the more you also distance yourself from the circumstances. That’s obvious.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if you still want to test whether you’re a true penitent or not—after all, if you’re righteous and you know, it’s called—

[Speaker B] Like Shmuel said, in order to repent

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] you need to come closer—not in order to test. Like Shmuel said?

[Speaker B] No, I mean—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here in Maimonides it looks like it’s for testing, not for repenting. For repenting, the details come later. But here it looks as if, in order to return, you need to do this… No, I’m not sure. I’m not sure about that, even though that’s why I brought the Sefat Emet, because in the Sefat Emet it really looks like if this is permitted—if it’s only for testing, it doesn’t seem likely there’d be permission to do it. If you just happened to end up there, then fair enough—

[Speaker B] that you’re really a true penitent.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if this is really part of the repentance process itself—

[Speaker B] if not—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if you didn’t sin, then you’re forced to bring yourself into the situation. No, but if you remained under compulsion, then you’re really under compulsion. If you weren’t there under compulsion and you didn’t repent, and it’s not compulsion, then you should have held out. So really, fine—if you take this as an actual permission, then it seems it really is part of the repentance process itself and not just an after-the-fact test. That’s like “one may not read by candlelight lest one tilt the lamp.” No, there it’s a rabbinic enactment from the outset. They forbade reading by candlelight. Yes, but as a general guideline that says “lest one tilt”—if you want to repent… A guideline… There it’s a rabbinic enactment. There was Rabbi Ishmael, and Rabbi Ishmael nonetheless put himself in the position of saying, I will read and I won’t tilt. Yes, and then he said, how great are the words of the Sages. Yes, but he didn’t need to put… Yes, but there it’s a case where the Sages explicitly established a prohibition on reading by candlelight. If the Sages had not established it, I would only know that there is a concern that perhaps I might tilt it. Would I really be obligated on my own not to read by candlelight? No. Why did the Sages institute it? So once they instituted it, I’m already obligated. That shows it’s a principle: don’t put yourself into the situation. So this principle we saw elsewhere. There it’s just the language of the enactment itself. The enactment says: don’t read by candlelight, and the reason is lest one tilt it. And where do we see this principle? “Go around, go around, we say to the nazirite, and do not come near the vineyard.” In other words, go around the vineyard; don’t come near the vineyard if you’re a nazirite. There you see that one should not put himself into the situation. Right, and about that the Sefat Emet says that maybe in the process of repentance there is an exceptional case, where they do permit it, even though ordinarily it’s forbidden. That’s the whole novelty. He said that ordinarily it’s forbidden to do this, but if you really need it for the sake of the repentance process, it could be that this too is permitted. It’s a major question whether this can really be inferred from Maimonides or not. So should we move on to the prohibition of seclusion? What? So should we move on to the prohibition of seclusion? For example, yes. Although the prohibition of seclusion is an actual prohibition. I don’t think he would permit that. I’m talking about entering a situation where you could come to sin, where the situation in itself is not a sin, but it’s a situation from which you could come to sin. Usually you’re forbidden even to enter such a situation. And that one could perhaps permit. But something that itself is defined as a sin—like reading by candlelight, what Yitzhak mentioned earlier—I don’t think he’d tell you to read by candlelight in order to make sure you don’t tilt it. There are many arguments there about candlelight and not reading by candlelight. Not to read? Exactly. That may be a case where it would be possible. Or, say, with the door open? Yes, like that. Exactly. Something that doesn’t itself fall under the formal halakhic prohibition, but it’s not advisable under normal conditions. In any case, this is not the kind of thing you say to the general public. Yes, well, there are many things. No, it’s still… after all, when you test statistically, you don’t test only once. Meaning here too, he did it ten times, and he didn’t sin in all of the… surely fifteen times he tried, and one time he committed the sin. And now they tell him: come do the test once when you’re already prepared for it. And it’s once, maybe he had several opportunities, I don’t know. It doesn’t say. No, I mean, there is no concept—it may also be symbolic. Could be. I’m saying, I don’t think this inference from Maimonides is necessary. Meaning, that Maimonides is really saying it’s permitted to do this. Maimonides gives us a criterion. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s also permitted to do it. I’m just noting—since you brought it up, I said that the Sefat Emet raises the possibility that one might perhaps even infer from Maimonides that it’s permitted. For our purposes, what is written here in Maimonides, apparently, is that on the one hand he begins with: who is a complete penitent? And that’s basically, according to the approach we’ve taken up to now, exactly the person to whom we’re not speaking. Meaning, he changed, he did everything. All the procedure that comes afterward—abandoning, regret, confession, acceptance for the future—all that isn’t said about him. After that: and what is repentance? The halakhic repentance I’m talking about. What? So then how does someone who does need to repent do it? So there are its stages, and this is how it must be done. Now, true, it definitely could be that law 2 is the way to reach law 1. Meaning, to become a complete penitent—how do you do it? You begin with the procedure and deepen it until you reach law 1. But even that doesn’t contradict anything. Because really one possible way to understand the relationship between these two processes of repentance is that they’re not just two alternatives, where I decide how I want to be, whether to be here or there. It could be—after all, even in the procedural process of repentance there is a stage called regret. An inner stage. Meaning, examining one’s deeds and seeing that he doesn’t… doesn’t… that’s repentance… What? Repentance… No, Maimonides says the repentance does not have to be complete repentance, and even so it is accepted. But clearly the aspiration should be complete repentance. How do you get there? It may well be that Maimonides—and this is also true and doesn’t contradict anything—in law 2 is telling us how to get to the state of law 1. Start the procedural repentance. You can’t just produce a revolution out of nothing; it’s very difficult to do such a thing—we spoke about this last time. So then what do you do? How do you do it anyway? You have to begin with a process that is, as it were, only procedural, only by stages, a process that is seemingly mechanical. Not completely mechanical. There is regret there, there are inner elements there, it’s not just empty procedures. And you do it, and you bring the regret into it, and you start thinking more, and you examine a little more, and you get more into the matter, and increase good deeds, and so on, humble the heart, and all kinds of things like that. And slowly you advance until perhaps in the end you can become a complete penitent. And then, true, you no longer need anything. Fine. But it could be that the way to reach the state of a complete penitent is to begin with that procedural repentance, that lesser repentance. So it has two roles. One role is for someone who didn’t succeed in doing complete repentance—he also has the procedural option. The second role may be that this is the path by which one also reaches full repentance. This whole approach would have worked if this were chapter 1, but it’s not chapter 1, it’s chapter 2. What do you mean? In chapter 1, in the details or in the concepts derived from it, he talks about confession. More accurately, we’ll talk about chapter 1—so what? The scapegoat… no… the commandment of confession… We said that that’s really how one performs confession. And the wording of confession. Because the commandment is confession. We’ll talk about that in a moment, but confession is only one detail. We begin with it. The logic really would have been that that’s the commandment: to describe what repentance is, how one repents. No, because confession is the commandment—about that I’ll speak today. According to Maimonides there is no commandment to repent; there is a commandment of confession. So Maimonides begins with what is written in the Torah. In the Torah it says: “and they shall confess their sin that they committed.” So from that he understood—later he gradually arrives and says what this does—the meaning of it is repentance, and that’s how the scapegoat works, that’s the whole meaning. And then he starts explaining: okay, now let me explain to you what repentance is. The logic would have been to begin with what ideal repentance is. But I think there is a method here that can also be understood differently. Because you begin from what is written in the Torah, because Maimonides’ whole book works that way. You begin with the commandments written in the Torah and then start detailing them, and in the end you reach the whole structure as much as you can. But the starting point, the foundation, is what’s written in the Torah. And what is written in the Torah is the commandment of confession—that is Maimonides’ view, it seems. So I’m not sure how much of an objection one can really raise. In any case, that’s just to close the loop from what we did in previous sessions. What I really want to do today is return to chapter 1 in Maimonides. That was chapter 2. Return to chapter 1 in Maimonides, and we’ll also touch on what follows, and there it says this. Maimonides, in the Book of Commandments, commandment 73, positive commandment 73, writes as follows: commandment 73 is that He commanded us to confess the iniquities and sins that we have sinned before God and to say them together with repentance. What’s the commandment? To confess the sins we sinned together with repentance. Meaning that when one repents, one must confess. And this is the confession, and its intent is that he should say: “Please, Lord, I have sinned, transgressed, and rebelled, and I have done such-and-such,” and he should elaborate and request forgiveness, and that is the matter according to the elegance of his language. And know that even the sins for which one is liable to bring one of the kinds of sacrifices mentioned, about which it says that he should offer them and he will be atoned for—even with their offering, it is not sufficient without confession. The Torah says that one brings a sacrifice and is atoned, and Maimonides explains to you that the sacrifice does not atone automatically. There must be confession together with the sacrifice. The basic commandment, in essence, is to confess along with sacrifices—not connected at this stage to Yom Kippur and not to the ways of repentance—but with the sacrifice. When a person brings a sacrifice for a sin he committed during the year, he must confess, because otherwise he does not receive atonement for the sin for which the sacrifice was brought. And later Maimonides writes: It has thus been clarified to you that all kinds of sins, great and small, and even positive commandments, require confession. And because this command came—a Torah command—”and they shall confess their sin that they committed” together with the obligation of a sacrifice, one might have thought that confession by itself is not a commandment in its own right, but something that is drawn along after the sacrifice. One might have thought from the language of the Torah that there is no commandment to confess, but that it’s part of the procedure of offering the sacrifice. Part of the procedure is also that one must confess, otherwise there is no atonement. And therefore they needed to clarify this in the Mekhilta in the following language. In other words, the teaching in the Mekhilta is needed to remove the thought he just presented. You might think that when they bring sacrifices they confess, and when they do not bring sacrifices they do not confess? Scripture therefore says: “Speak to the children of Israel, and they shall confess.” And still this implies confession only in the Land of Israel. From where do we know even in exile? Scripture therefore says: “And they shall confess their sin and the sin of their fathers.” And so too Daniel said: “To You, Lord, is the righteousness,” etc. It has thus been clarified to you what we said: that confession is an obligation in itself. It is an obligation upon the sinner for every sin that he sinned, whether in the Land of Israel or outside the Land of Israel, whether he brought a sacrifice or did not bring a sacrifice—he is obligated to confess, as it says, “and they shall confess their sin.” And in the language of the Sifrei: “and he shall confess”—this is verbal confession. The exposition of the Sifrei. Maimonides is basically saying: there is a commandment to confess. It is written in the verse as part of the procedure of bringing the sacrifice, but there is an exposition in the Mekhilta and in the Sifrei that this is not only when one brings a sacrifice. There is an obligation to confess every sin, independent of the sacrifice as well. If one did bring a sacrifice, one does it together with the bringing of the sacrifice. When there are no sacrifices, or for sins for which no sacrifices are brought, there is also an obligation of confession without a sacrifice. That’s what Maimonides says. So what appears from Maimonides’ language? That there is a commandment to confess a sin. Is there a commandment to repent? There is no other source, and this is the only source there is in the Book of Commandments. “And you shall return to the Lord your God” in the Torah—perhaps there is—but in Maimonides’ Book of Commandments this is the only source there is. How should we understand this source? This source does not seem to indicate that there is a commandment to repent. Rather, as he says there, when one does repentance—then how does one do it? One must confess verbally. Repentance in the heart is not enough; there has to be confession with the mouth. Perform the confession, perform repentance. No, no, no—the language is the opposite. That’s important. The language is the opposite. So what? So now your argument is that one needs to repent? In a moment we’ll see, in a moment we’ll see. That’s our topic. So too at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance. Positive commandment 73: that He commanded us to confess the iniquities and sins we have sinned before God, and to say them together with repentance. Is that the source? No—when you do repentance, the commandment is to accompany it with confession. That’s seemingly like the commandment of fringes, which applies only if you have a four-cornered garment. That’s what it looks like, yes, that’s what it looks like from Maimonides’ language. Meaning that if you decided to repent—that’s your decision—there is no commandment. If you decided to repent, there is a procedure for how to do it. We’ve already discussed the procedure. There is a procedure for how to do it. Part of that procedure must be confession with the mouth. You can’t suffice with repentance that takes place in the heart. That’s the first Torah-level rule. Regret, abandoning the sin, and so on—those are additions that come afterward through the Oral Torah. But as far as the count of commandments goes, what’s written is confession. Where else do we see this? At the beginning of the Laws of Repentance. Maimonides writes this: All the commandments in the Torah, whether positive commandments or prohibitions—if a person transgressed one of them, whether intentionally or unintentionally—when he repents and returns from his sin, he is obligated to confess. Do you hear the formulation? Meaning, if he repents, then the commandment is that he must confess. Indeed, many later authorities inferred from Maimonides’ language, both here and in the Book of Commandments, that Maimonides basically holds that there is no commandment to repent. The Torah does not impose on us an obligation to repent. All the Torah establishes is that if you want to repent, how to do it properly. How? With verbal confession. It has to come out of the mouth too, not just remain in the heart. Still, he doesn’t bring a source from there. Maybe he wants to say the opposite: that confession without repentance is worthless, even though it’s a positive commandment. But his wording isn’t like that. Otherwise he would have had to say the opposite: there is really a commandment to repent, and repentance has to be accompanied by confession. So from where, really, do we get repentance? That’s the great question. Fine, we’ll get to that in a moment. But in the meantime he said nothing, right? So it seems there really isn’t one. Now, if we nevertheless want to get to the verse “And you shall return to the Lord your God,” then Nachmanides, in his commentary on the Torah, indeed writes this, on chapter 30 verse 11 in the portion of Nitzavim. On the phrase “For this commandment is not too wondrous for you, nor is it far off,” and so on, he says: this commandment refers to the entire Torah. And the correct interpretation is that concerning the entire Torah it says, “all the commandment that I command you today.” But “this commandment”—what does “this commandment” mean? That’s not the whole Torah; what is “this commandment”? He says: “this commandment”—”For this commandment is not too wondrous for you”—refers to the repentance mentioned. For “and you shall take it to heart, and you shall return to the Lord your God” is a commandment that He commands us to do so. That’s what Nachmanides says. And it is stated in the present participle form in order to hint, as a promise, that this thing will indeed happen in the future. Why doesn’t it say that he will return from his sin, or something like that? It says “and you shall return,” in a present-like form, because it also wants to hint at another meaning: that the Torah is also promising that Israel is destined to repent. But that is parallel to, and in addition to, the commandment. There is a commandment to repent. And that is the meaning of “in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it,” the continuation of that verse. What does “in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it” mean? Here confession is stated.