The Essence of the Laws of Repentance in the Rambam – Lecture 3 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, in the previous two sessions I began with a discussion of the question whether there is a commandment to repent. We saw Maimonides’ position, that apparently there is no commandment, but there is an obligation. I explained from a few angles what the logic of that might be, and I said that in essence it does not really make sense — it simply does not make sense — to command a person to repent, because in principle repentance means returning to being a chooser, and just as you cannot command a person to be a chooser, you cannot command a person to be a penitent. We saw that therefore the contradiction that Minchat Chinukh proposes between Maimonides in Sefer HaMitzvot and in the Mishneh Torah does not exist. In Sefer HaMitzvot Maimonides counts the commandments that the Torah commands us to do, and regarding repentance there is no command in the Torah. “And you shall return to the Lord your God” — Maimonides writes in chapter 7 of the laws of repentance that this is a promise or prophecy of the Torah for the future, and therefore it cannot appear in the count of the commandments according to Maimonides. Because his view is that whatever has no commanding verse is not included in the count of the commandments — even if it comes from exegesis, reasoning, a law given to Moses at Sinai, whatever you want. But in the Mishneh Torah we include everything one is obligated to do, and if one must repent, then the obligation to repent will appear in the Mishneh Torah as well. Since, just as there are rabbinic commandments or commandments that emerge from exegesis or whatever, everything we need to do appears there, therefore the obligation to repent appears there too. Why really does one need to repent? So as I said before, first of all it follows from simple reasoning: from the very fact that you have a possibility of cleansing yourself, it stands to reason that you are expected to make use of that possibility. So much so that the Meshekh Chokhmah, for example, argued — I think I mentioned this — that this is also the explanation for why Maimonides does not count the commandment of repentance, because it is already included within the Torah’s very commands to do this and not to do that. So if someone transgressed those prohibitions, from the very fact that they are defined as prohibitions, why do we need now to add yet another thing saying that he has to abandon them or not do them? Okay? I don’t think that is correct, but I’ll talk more about that later. In any case, at least in the sense that there is a simple logical basis that one must repent — that much I do agree with. The fact that this is not enough to make the command redundant — that part I do not accept from what he said, and I’ll explain later why. So that was regarding the explanation of Maimonides’ view. Nachmanides says that there is a commandment to repent, yes, in this week’s Torah portion — that there is a commandment to repent because “this commandment is not too wondrous for you and not far off” (Deuteronomy 30:11), and Nachmanides says that “this commandment” is really the commandment of repentance. At first he says it means the whole Torah, and afterward he says that more correctly it is the commandment of repentance. And in the previous session I mentioned — I brought other examples in the first session, right? — of commandments, or things we are supposed to do, but for which there is no command: character refinement, and we spoke about settling the Land of Israel, even though that does not really belong here, “You shall be holy” (Leviticus 19:2), and things like that,

[Speaker B] Torah study, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now, in the previous session I began talking about two paths of repentance, and I said that Maimonides’ laws of repentance are a very unusual set of laws in the landscape of Maimonides’ halakhic collections. There is a lot of aggadic material; very little of it deals with repentance at all. There are four chapters, and then chapter 7 with all kinds of verses and midrashim in praise of repentance, and that’s it. Chapters 5 and 6 are about free choice; chapter 8 discusses all sorts of philosophical issues, but that has nothing at all to do either with Jewish law or with the laws of repentance. And the question is: what is the meaning of this strange structure of the laws of repentance in Maimonides? So I said that I think that in every commandment or in every legal section in the Torah we can distinguish between the formal legal dimension, in which one defines what is permitted, forbidden, and obligatory, and the philosophical dimension, which tries to explain why it is permitted, forbidden, or obligatory to do various things. In the laws of repentance, I think there is a different relationship between the legal dimension and the philosophical dimension. It is not really two sides of the same coin as we know from other contexts; rather, they are two parallel channels for doing repentance. Two ways of looking at the act of repentance — but really these are two different acts of repentance. It is not two perspectives from which to look at the act of repentance, philosophically and legally — no. It is two different perspectives because there are two different acts of repentance here. One act of repentance — and I brought all kinds of sources, I won’t go back over all those sources now — one act of repentance is a legal, formal act. It has four stages: abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession. And this is discussed like every legal topic: what is indispensable, in what order, and so on. That is what we can call the small repentance, the formal, technical repentance. And there is the great repentance, in which a person simply becomes someone else, turns over, changes. Therefore, in the great repentance — what I called the second repentance — there are no legal rules there about what is indispensable and what is not, or what order, and you do not need at all all these details that are mentioned in the context of the small repentance; they follow automatically, but you do not need them. Because the moment you have changed, then you are a penitent, obviously. Legal details are needed only in that channel where you go by the formal legal track, and then one tells him: fine, if you are going by this track, this is what you need to do. But if you are a real penitent, no one needs to tell you anything. If you are a real penitent, then you are a penitent — there is nothing to play games with here. And I said that I began this move with two interpretations of what it means to be righteous, intermediate, and wicked: whether it is a counting of commandments and sins, as Ha’emek Berakhah holds, or whether it is your basic spiritual direction: positive, negative, or — “two nations are in your womb” (Genesis 25:23), so to speak — straddling both directions, which is the intermediate one. And from this the whole story really emerges: according to the second approach, repentance means turning your spiritual direction into a positive direction; according to the first approach, repentance means erasing sins, simply checking off various sins that I have erased. And therefore I explained why only repentance helps during the Ten Days of Repentance and not just doing more commandments, and so on; we saw various implications of that. We also saw in Maharal that he writes explicitly that there are two paths of repentance, learned from — or governed by — two different names in the list of God’s attributes: “The Lord, the Lord” — “I am the Lord before one sins and after one sins and repents” — that is the great repentance; and “and cleanses” — “He cleanses those who return, and He does not cleanse those who do not return” — that is the small repentance. Otherwise, why do we need two attributes in the list of God’s attributes that deal with repentance? I said that the difference is not — yes, Maharal says that the small repentance is repentance for part of one’s sins, and the great repentance is repentance for all one’s sins. I said that if the difference were only quantitative, then do the small repentance several times and it would cover all the sins. So it cannot be only a quantitative difference. So I said that the difference is qualitative, not quantitative. If you regret a particular sin all the way, that regret cannot be only for that one sin. If you truly regret, then you regret the very fact that you transgressed the divine command. It does not matter whether it was selecting on the Sabbath, or not honoring parents, or desecrating the Sabbath, or, I don’t know, eating forbidden foods. It really does not matter what act you did. Deep regret, true regret, is regret over the very fact that you acted against the command. Therefore by its essence such regret is regret over all sins. There is no true regret over only some sins; conceptually it is simply not a coherent notion. If it is over only some sins, then it is not true regret, okay? And therefore the regret over all commandments — all sins — that Maharal speaks about is really the great repentance that I mentioned earlier. And the small repentance is basically to go sin by sin, checking them off, and the Holy One, blessed be He, did us the kindness that this too is accepted and succeeds in erasing our sins. But then every sin you committed, you committed — “He cleanses those who return, and He does not cleanse those who do not return” — what you repented of, you repented of; what you did not, you did not. That is said only about “and cleanses,” not about “The Lord, the Lord.” “I am the Lord before one sins and after one sins and repents” — after one sins and repents, everything is erased; it is not divided into things one repented of and things one did not repent of, because if you truly repented then there are no sins for which you repented and sins for which you did not. True regret is regret over everything. So therefore I think that Maharal’s intention is really these two mechanisms of repentance. And I brought various proofs for this point, that the great repentance does not need all the details. For example, one who betroths a woman “on condition that I am righteous,” even though he is not known to be righteous, she is doubtfully betrothed. Why? Perhaps he had a thought of repentance. And if he had a thought of repentance, so what? Where are regret, acceptance, verbal confession, abandonment of the sin, and so on, for all the sins he committed? For each one, a separate checkmark with all four? He did all that while saying, “Behold, you are betrothed to me”? He did all that there? Obviously not. And another example is Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who within an hour — “There is one who acquires his world in a single hour” — who had committed all the sins in the world, and suddenly cried and cried and was atoned for: “Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is prepared for life in the world to come.” Where are all the formal stages required in the process of repentance? He did not do them. So it is quite clear that there we are talking about someone who truly, sincerely repented. If he truly, sincerely repented, then we do not start calculating with him whether there was verbal confession or not, whether he went through all the sins — no, that is not relevant. You turned over, you are now heading in a positive direction, you completely regret that you acted against the command, so that’s it — you are already something else. Now I want to continue — that is as far as we got. Now I want to continue and move on to the grace that there is in repentance, and once again I will distinguish here between these two mechanisms of repentance. I’m sharing here. One moment. There it is. So Mesillat Yesharim at the end of chapter 4 writes as follows: “And if you say, if so, then what is the function of the attribute of mercy, since in any case judgment must scrutinize every matter carefully? The answer is: certainly the attribute of mercy is the sustaining force of the world, for without it the world could not stand at all” — yes, this is Rashi at the beginning of Genesis there, that the Holy One, blessed be He, wanted to create the world with the attribute of justice and saw that it would not work, so He joined to it the attribute of mercy — “and nevertheless the attribute of justice is not impaired. For according to strict justice, it would be fitting that the sinner be punished immediately, as soon as he sins, without any delay at all. And also that the punishment itself be in burning anger, as is fitting for one who rebels against the word of the Creator, blessed be His name. And that there be no remedy for the sin at all, for indeed how can a person repair what he has already distorted, when the sin has already been done? If a man has murdered his fellow, if he has committed adultery, how can he correct this matter? Can he remove the deed already done from reality?” What happened happened; you cannot rewrite history. “However, the attribute of mercy grants the opposite of the three things we mentioned, namely: that time be given to the sinner and he not be destroyed from the earth immediately when he sins” — they wait a bit — “and that the punishment itself not be unto destruction,” meaning, not to wipe him out, okay? “And that repentance be given to sinners as complete grace, such that the uprooting of the will is considered like the uprooting of the deed.” Even though the deed was already done, now you regret it, your will has turned into a positive will, and beyond the letter of the law we regard it as though you had not sinned — not we, the Holy One, blessed be He, okay? “That is, when the penitent recognizes his sin and confesses it, and reflects on its evil, and returns and regrets it with complete regret, like the regret that annuls a vow, so that he is entirely remorseful, and he would desire and yearn that that thing had never been done, and he feels intense sorrow in his heart that it has already been done, and he abandons it for the future and flees from it — then uprooting the matter from his will is considered for him like uprooting the vow, and he receives atonement. And this is what the verse says: ‘Your iniquity has departed and your sin is atoned for’ (Isaiah 6:7), for the iniquity actually departs from reality and is uprooted by the fact that he now grieves and regrets what was done in the past. And this is certainly grace, for it is not according to strict justice.” According to strict justice there should have been no reason to let human beings off for what already happened, but this is a special act of grace. He does open by saying that “nevertheless the attribute of justice is not impaired.” It is not clear how he explained that — meaning, fine, there is grace here, but why is the attribute of justice not impaired? Apparently that means — obviously no sin remains without response. True, you are allowed to repent, and after you repent everything is fine, but it is not as though they simply waive it for you, period. It is not simply waived. So he says it is grace, but the attribute of justice is not impaired. Meaning there is some kind of combination here between justice and grace. In any case, what he is basically arguing is that repentance is a special grace that the Holy One, blessed be He, does for us. It should not have worked — the mechanism of repentance should not have helped us. Now, yes.

[Speaker B] But in the case of murder — a murderer, someone who killed another person — so what is his repentance worth?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, what is it worth? In relation to whom? And if he sorted on the Sabbath, what is his repentance worth? What? If he sorted on the Sabbath?

[Speaker B] No, I mean his relationship with the Holy One, blessed be He. Fine.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here you are doing

[Speaker B] something to someone else — you killed him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but here too you sorted.

[Speaker B] It is not even a case where he can undo it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here too you sorted, so what? You sorted. What can you do? It already happened.

[Speaker B] Taking a life is like sorting?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I did not say it is like sorting. It is the same idea. More severe — so what? It is the same idea. Something happened, and nevertheless you can repent. There is damage here… there is damage there too; you just do not see it with your eyes, so what? Damage to a person’s soul. So what? What exactly is the difference? Damage is damage.

[Speaker D] So it is more

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] severe, less severe — so what? What difference does that make? On the principled level it really should not have been atoned for, and yet there is grace, beyond the letter of the law, and it is atoned for. Why? Justice is barren? He sorted too, so what? What difference does it make whether it is between man and man or between man and Heaven? The fact that between man and man you also need to appease your fellow — fine. But if you murdered him, he can no longer be appeased. So therefore, his claim is basically that this is a special grace. So Rabbi Elchanan, in Kovetz Ma’amarim — Elchanan Wasserman, yes? — in Kovetz Ma’amarim, in the essay on repentance, raises a difficulty against this Mesillat Yesharim from the Talmud in Kiddushin. Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says: Even if a person was completely righteous all his life and rebelled at the end, he loses the former deeds, as it is said, “The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his transgression” (Ezekiel 33:12). And even if a person was completely wicked all his life and repented at the end, his wickedness is no longer mentioned, as it is said, “And the wickedness of the wicked, he shall not stumble because of it on the day he turns from his wickedness” (Ezekiel 33:12). But why should it not be as though he has half sins and half merits? Why erase his past? The past should remain in place, and what he does from now on should remain in place, and let him be half and half. Reish Lakish said: this is speaking of one who regrets the former things. Meaning, there is someone who changes his path, for better or for worse, changes his path, but what was, was, and from now on he changes. And there is someone who regrets what was. Now if from now on he continues, but he does not regret what was, then indeed it remains half and half. But if he regrets what was, then he has lost his merits or his liabilities, depending on whether he repented or went off the path, yes? So then he lost what was in the past, for better or for worse. That is what the Talmud says. Rabbi Elchanan asks: we know that the Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward grace. That means He goes beyond the letter of the law to do good; He does not go beyond the letter of the law to do harm, right? To do harm, that is according to strict justice — you get what you deserve, but not more than you deserve. Reward or benefit — that the Holy One, blessed be He, also gives beyond the letter of the law. So now, if Mesillat Yesharim is right, that really regret should not have helped according to strict jusAnd this is a special kindness that the Holy One, blessed be He, did for us: uprooting the will is like uprooting the deed. We erase history, what happened. So that should have helped only a penitent, only someone who repents, but not someone who leaves religion. If I am now righteous and I regret what I did, then you say that strictly speaking regret does not change what was, right? So what, only beyond the letter of the law? In the case of someone who repents, beyond the letter of the law they erase my sins. But in the case of—well, in the case of a sinner, I do not know what to call it—if someone leaves religion, then if he regrets what he did, why should they erase the good things he did beyond the letter of the law? That is beyond the letter of the law in the bad direction, you see? So how can this Talmudic passage go against Mesillat Yesharim? That is his claim. So, let us see whether you are yeshiva boys or not. What do you say about this question? I am a yeshiva boy; I got stuck on this question. Yeshiva boys get stuck here, but ordinary laymen immediately see that it is not a question.

[Speaker D] No, no,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A fence is all very well even around the deed of this wicked person—but why should what happened be erased? Think for a moment. Once I was sitting in a class and I said this, and someone there said to me: I do not understand. He said to me: Suppose I come to— I do not remember whether this was his example or mine, but that was the spirit of it. You go to the bank manager and say: Look, this bank is a wonderful bank, really a first-rate bank, as the Gashashim say, okay? So I have 10,000 shekels in my account, and I am giving it to the bank employees—buy yourselves Bazooka gum for everyone, okay? For the benefit of the staff. Fine. The bank manager shakes his hand, says: More power to you, thank you very much, everything is fine, goodbye. Next time someone else comes and says to the bank manager: Listen, your people really are wonderful. I have an overdraft of 10,000 shekels at the bank, and I am giving that to you. Buy yourselves whatever you want with it, as a token of appreciation for your work. There too will he shake his hand and say: More power to you, and that is it, all fine? You can waive a positive balance that you have, right? You cannot waive a negative balance, right?

[Speaker E] Right? So what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore he can waive it. That is not beyond the letter of the law; that is the law itself. What did Rabbi Elchanan ask? Rabbi Elchanan asked: if regret over the past is beyond the letter of the law, then how does it help when a righteous person rebels at the end and regrets his earlier deeds? How does it help him to give up what he did? Because giving up positive things you did is not beyond the letter of the law; it is the law itself. You can waive a credit balance that you have. Therefore it helps. But a penitent wants to waive the minus in his bank account. That does not work—strictly speaking, I mean. That can work only beyond the letter of the law.

[Speaker E] That the bank manager

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is willing to accept your minus—that is beyond the letter of the law. Ah, you are tough yeshiva boys indeed. Very hard with you. Right, that is it. Need to get yourselves together. I thought there might be a few laymen here for the meal. In short, what I want to say is this: if you say that you are a penitent, okay? If you are a penitent, you have a credit balance—sorry, you have a debt balance. Okay? Now you regret the debt balance; you want to waive it, erase the debt balance. Can you? You cannot erase a debt balance, right? Therefore strictly speaking it cannot work. The Holy One, blessed be He, beyond the letter of the law allows us nevertheless to do that; He erases the debt balance for us, okay? Now the reverse: a righteous person who regrets his earlier deeds, who rebels at the end, okay? He has a credit balance, right? Now he wants to waive the credit balance; he gives it up; he is not righteous. A righteous person wants to…

[Speaker E] To waive the good deeds? He goes secular.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regretting the earlier deeds, yes—going secular. Now he wants to erase the debt balance—the credit balance he has. No problem; it is yours. It is your credit balance; you want to erase it, fine, health and happiness to you. So that works according to the law itself, not beyond the letter of the law; of course it works. Just as I can give you 100 shekels that I have in my account, I cannot give you a minus 100 shekels that I have in my account unless you are willing to accept it beyond the letter of the law. And I cannot give that to you on my own initiative just because I decided so, right? So what kind of question is that? Now, when Mesillat Yesharim says regarding a penitent that repentance cannot help according to strict law, only beyond the letter of the law, then if you say to him, “So why does it work in the negative direction?”—in the negative direction it works because erasing a credit balance works according to the law itself, not beyond the letter of the law. Therefore it works.

[Speaker D] What is the difference? What does it mean to erase?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now does the murdered person come back to life?

[Speaker D] Does the murdered person come back to life?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Does a murdered person come back to life? he asks. He regrets it, very good—but does that mean he did not…

[Speaker D] What does that have to do with regretting merits?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He regrets the deeds he did. He cannot change the deeds he did. All he can do is waive the bonus they give him. Now the question is whether it is a positive bonus or a negative bonus. Okay?

[Speaker B] Why

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] are the yeshiva boys still having trouble with this? Fine, so one has to say something in your direction. And the claim is probably that the bonuses you receive cannot be detached from what happened in reality. If something happened in reality, the result is the bonuses you received. Therefore, if you cannot change reality and rewrite history, then you cannot change it either for the good or for the bad. If we are talking only about a bank balance, then fine, only about the bonuses, then there is a difference. But if these bonuses merely reflect things that happened in reality—the damage I caused or the good results I produced in reality—then it really is the same thing. If you cannot change what happened in reality, then you cannot change it in either direction. Fine, one could say that this is a difficult objection. Usually people say a difficult resolution, not a difficult objection. But fine, that is the question.

[Speaker B] No problem, it is his right. Suppose the Holy One, blessed be He, beyond the letter of the law, does not want to accept.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is willing to accept your positive things beyond the letter of the law?

[Speaker B] Yes. Not willing to accept your 1,000 shekels? If the bank manager were willing to accept

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] your 1,000 shekels, would you say that he

[Speaker B] is doing so beyond the letter of the law?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there were a policy not to accept—what do you mean, a policy? He can choose not to accept. But he decided to accept the 1,000 shekels you gave him. Is that beyond the letter of the law? What does that have to do with anything? He can choose not to accept, fine? Now I ask: he decided yes to accept the 1,000 shekels you gave him; do you call that beyond the letter of the law? Give me a brand new Mercedes as a gift right now, okay? I am willing to accept it. Did I do something beyond the letter of the law? I was willing… after all, I could have refused, right? So is that beyond the letter of the law? You can say that. You can say many things. You can say it, but it is not correct.

[Speaker B] You are not

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] obligated to accept anything.

[Speaker B] You

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] are not obligated to accept anything, but

[Speaker B] that is not beyond the letter of the law.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so you can play with the words and say it. I said, you can say whatever you want. It is not right. It is not—anyway, the claim is that this is what Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman asked the Chafetz Chaim. What? He asked it to the Chafetz Chaim; after all, he was a student of the Chafetz Chaim. He asked the Chafetz Chaim, and he received from him: this is repentance out of love, that is repentance out of fear; he made various distinctions there. Rabbi Elchanan himself uses this in a different direction. He wants to claim—he also brings it from Ramchal in Derekh Hashem—that in every commandment and every transgression there are two aspects. One aspect is the problematic or positive result of the commandment or the transgression,

[Speaker D] and the aspect

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] second is disobedience or obedience. Okay? Suppose I keep the Sabbath. First of all there is the benefit in a person keeping the Sabbath, some spiritual benefit of one kind or another, and second, there is responding to the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. That itself is something of value. If I desecrate the Sabbath, then there is the problematic result of desecrating the Sabbath, and there is also rebellion against the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. These are two things. So he says there are various practical implications there: “If one intended to eat pork and mutton came up in his hand”—someone who intended to eat pork and mutton came up in his hand—then from the standpoint of disobedience there is a problem here; he is not obeying the command of the Holy One, blessed be He. In practice the bad consequences will not be there, because he ate mutton, not pork. Okay? So here there is only the subjective dimension; there is no objective dimension. And what is the opposite of that? He intended to eat mutton and pork came up in his hand, which is what is called an inadvertent sin. Right? So in an inadvertent sin, what happens? There is no rebellion against the command, but there is the transgression, the act of transgression itself, objectively. So these are the two sides of the same coin. In any case, for our purposes, he basically wants to claim that according to strict law, uprooting the will uproots the subjective dimension. That is, if I was once wicked, yes? I did not obey the command of the Holy One, blessed be He, and now I have repented and become righteous, there is no reason to relate to my wickedness from then. It no longer exists; now I am righteous. So that is according to strict law. That is, the judgment of the person can change with regret according to strict law, but erasing the deed is beyond the letter of the law. Because the deed is a deed; you cannot erase it. Okay? That is his claim. Therefore he says that in the case of a penitent, uprooting the will is like uprooting the deed—that is, uprooting the will in itself, with regard to the person, is according to strict law. The fact that it is also considered like uprooting the deed is beyond the letter of the law. But on the negative side, with this wicked person who errs about—meaning the righteous person who regrets his earlier deeds—there indeed the will is uprooted, while the deeds remain. Only his will is uprooted. Therefore he will not receive reward either, because he is no longer the person who deserves reward for the good deeds that were done there; he is now another person. But the deeds remain, that is what he wants to claim.

[Speaker B] If a person has a desire to keep—he says, some of the commandments I do and some I do not, by my own choice. I say: I sanctify the Sabbath, but I watch soccer, I do not know. So can you say, okay, but in terms of desire he is fine regarding Sabbath observance?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, he is not fine. What do you mean? It is a partial desire, so he is partially fine.

[Speaker B] The question is whether that is considered as if it cancels the whole…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is considered part yes and part no. He receives reward for what he deserves, and he will receive punishment for what he deserves. Why do you have to decide that it is all or nothing? Why do you…

[Speaker B] No, because it is like a hypocritical game.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What game? It is not a hypocritical game. He thinks this he wants to do and that he does not want to do. You see? What is hypocritical about it? That is his decision. In fact it is very straightforward: in accordance with his decision, that is what he does. Fine, what will he get?

[Speaker B] You would not say, okay, if you accepted, then accept everything.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, he is not okay, okay, for that he will get what is coming to him. But regarding the fact that he does accept what he accepts, why should he not receive reward for that? What is the problem? He is okay in this respect, and not okay in that respect. Fine. Anyway, the claim is that there—maybe that is what you asked—I think that with respect to the person, you are right. Meaning that when he does something he is commanded to do, that is not really a response to the command, because if it were a response to the command he would do everything; he is also commanded about that. So why does he decide to do this and not that? Apparently he does not truly have commitment to the command. But as for the positive benefit of the deed: what he did, he did; what he did not do, he did not do. So here too I think you can apply it according to that same distinction of Rabbi Elchanan. In any case, I want to claim that basically one can distinguish this in relation to the greater repentance and the lesser repentance. Let us think for a moment: when the righteous person regrets his earlier deeds, leaves religion and regrets the earlier deeds, what is that like? Greater repentance or lesser repentance? It is a question, not repentance—but a greater abandonment or a lesser one? Greater, right?

[Speaker D] It is

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] obvious that he did not perform a formal act: regret, abandoning the commandments, accepting for the future not to do commandments anymore, confession. He genuinely regrets what he did; he changed. Right? It is obvious that this is the greater process, not the small formal process, right? The greater process works according to strict law. If you changed, you changed; why come to you with claims about things that were, or give you reward for things that were? Today you are someone else, another human being; you changed, okay? So that is according to strict law, not beyond the letter of the law. And therefore one who regrets his earlier deeds really does become wicked; he lost those merits there because he is someone else. Those merits belong to someone who no longer exists. True, he will not receive the merits for them, because it is not him. Those merits are not due to him. He will not receive the merits for those deeds; the deeds are there, but he is not the person to whom merits for those deeds are due. He is another person; he changed. Why should one give reward for commandments to a person who is wicked? He now tells you: those commandments do not interest me at all. After all, he even regrets his earlier deeds. He says they do not interest me. What, are you going to force reward on him for commandments he did? No, according to strict law. Okay? Right, and also in the case of a penitent, in greater repentance, it is according to strict law, not beyond the letter of the law. And here indeed I preserve the symmetry between the wicked person and the righteous person. And this is a true symmetry, because with the wicked person there is no such thing as lesser repentance. In the case of the righteous person who rebelled and regrets his earlier deeds, that is always—questioning, yes?—greater, not lesser. Only on the side of repentance do you have greater repentance and lesser repentance. On the side of abandoning, there is no such thing as lesser abandoning; it is always greater, okay? Therefore there it works according to strict law. In repentance, it depends what we are talking about: in lesser repentance it is beyond the letter of the law, it should not have worked; in greater repentance it is according to strict law. Right, I said…

[Speaker E] Right, but he does not deserve punishment for them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is another person; now he is righteous. What, will you punish a righteous person for something that someone else in another phase did? I will ask you a question: someone sinned against you, okay? As a human being, not the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker E] Legally, in reality?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly, certainly. Here, I will ask you…

[Speaker E] Certainly, certainly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I will ask you

[Speaker E] now

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a question—you, not a court, okay? Someone sinned against you, okay? And now suppose you know what is in his heart and everything is transparent—Elijah the Prophet came and told you: the fellow completely turned around, he regrets it, he is already a totally different person. I ask you now—you, as a person, not the Holy One, blessed be He, nothing of the sort—do you forgive him?

[Speaker E] You

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] as a person, not the Holy One, blessed be He, nothing. It seems obvious to me that yes.

[Speaker E] Fine, but just to be stubborn with him?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you want? What, punish him for things he did in a phase that is already… everything is irreversible. Again you are returning to murder. Everything a person does is irreversible. Everything a person does is irreversible. Murder is terrible, severe, it does not matter—but in essence it is the same thing; what is the difference? Obviously—what do you mean? The person is now another person; what do you want from him? He truly changed. What happens, by the way, in a lower court—I will not have time to get to this—but in a lower court too, in my opinion, it helps, as I told you before. The accepted view in my world is that it does not help, but the standard explanation for that view is that we cannot know what is in his heart, because we are human beings, not the Holy One, blessed be He.

[Speaker E] But

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if we could know—that is the assumption here—if we could know, it would help even in a lower court. The whole point is that it does not help. I claim that it helps in practice; in fact it helps—not only that we cannot know, but in fact it helps. And I have proofs for that, but that is a topic for classes in itself. Hm? You can say that this is beyond the letter of the law in principle, but you can say that beyond the letter of the law also—I do not know. But I am asking whether you would forgive according to the law, not beyond the letter of the law. Okay? The question is whether you did it beyond the letter of the law or according to the law. One can forgive also beyond the letter of the law. I am only claiming that if you really know with certainty that the person truly changed—Elijah the Prophet came and told you—after all, you cannot know, okay? He really is a different person. So why should I not forgive him? What do you mean? Why should I insist on things he did in a totally different phase? It is simply not him anymore. Hm? No, in my opinion, in my claim, that is the letter of the law. You want revenge? Get over it. Revenge is not a positive emotion; get over it. Overcoming revenge is not beyond the letter of the law; there is a prohibition: “You shall not take vengeance nor bear a grudge” (Leviticus 19:18). Therefore I claim that greater repentance and greater abandoning work by strict law. What works beyond the letter of the law is lesser repentance, because in lesser repentance you did not change; you are the same person. You went through some technical process. Fine, so the Holy One, blessed be He, is willing to accept that, and that is beyond the letter of the law. A human being, for example, certainly would not accept such a thing; most likely he would not. But even if he did accept it, we would say: fine, he really is an especially righteous person if he accepts that kind of repentance, because it is not something you expect every person to accept. Now, in the previous case, every normal person I would expect to accept it. Right? And if not, then it is just a psychological problem—meaning he cannot overcome it—but on the level of values, obviously yes, you ought to forgive. What do you want? It is already another person. What?

[Speaker D] I do not think so.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You have to be an angel because we do not really see that he changed. If you saw before your eyes how much he had changed, then listen—just now I remembered something. I once saw a film about a bereaved mother whose son was killed in some terror attack in French Hill, I think, there… at the hitchhiking stop. An officer I knew was also killed there, Hovav, something. And she was a peace activist, left-wing, and… in short, negotiations with Palestinians and so on. She made a film about the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in South Africa. Do you know that? An amazing phenomenon. In my opinion it is a must to see that film. Hm? It was Tutu—Desmond Tutu—more than Mandela. Desmond Tutu. Yes.

[Speaker B] What

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] happened there? After all, there had been apartheid for many years. They abused Black people in an absolutely insane way, okay? At a certain stage it turned around. Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa; it turned around. There was a very serious fear there of revenge, and revenge that one could very well understand, okay? Desmond Tutu, who was the chief bishop of South Africa, also a very important figure like Mandela, declared that there would be no revenge, and that they would establish local commissions that he called the Reconciliation and Truth Commission—the Reconciliation and Truth Commissions. And it worked like this: if the person—a white police officer or whatever, a white clerk, all kinds of people who did problematic things—came before the commission and expressed genuine regret before the commission, they walked out as they were. Maybe they got some community service or something, but that was it; nothing was done to them. And again, I have no proof that the regret was genuine; maybe they did it to escape punishment. It does not matter, but that was the policy. Now, it is unbelievable. They expected a bloodbath there. They really expected a massacre after what had happened there. By the way, on both sides, because the whites still had more power, even though control had passed to the Blacks. Meaning there really could have been a disaster there, and Desmond Tutu turned the whole thing into a procedure of forgiveness. That is a very Christian spirit. With us it cannot work. With us it is Jews and Muslims. No, seriously. In the culture of Jews and Muslims, this cannot work; in my opinion it can work only among Christians. And that is why it was her mistake in the film, because she wanted to import it here. Hm? Could be, I do not know. I think that among Christians in general it is more—it is part of the Christian ethos.

[Speaker B] No, they do not want to carry the burden of anger, they

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] shoot him in the head and unload the anger.

[Speaker B] No, he waits to shoot him in the head.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are not talking about some slight, where someone insulted you in the street. We are talking about persecutions over a lifetime; people were killed, abused for decades. This is not some minor injury like that… Okay, as a nation, wanting that is indeed a step that I think deserves a great, great deal of appreciation. Yes, okay. Okay, no—South Africa today does not look much better either.

[Speaker E] But I am saying, still… for what is he punished?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is he punished for, David? Hm? What is he punished for, David?

[Speaker E] Absalom, but what, so?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said it was punishment for what he did? Who told you? I do not know.

[Speaker E] I do not know

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] commentators—I do not see why you are forcing…

[Speaker E] It is not

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] punishment; it is what happened there.

[Speaker E] The question is, the question is, what, what, what is the meaning of that submission?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I do not know how much it was…

[Speaker E] I have no

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] idea. Look, I do not deal with the Hebrew Bible, and not by accident, because with the Hebrew Bible you can do almost whatever you want. So I do not think I can bring proofs from there for anything. But I am saying, in general, I think it is a simple intuition: someone who truly repents, and you know that he truly repented—according to the law he deserves forgiveness. It is not… And the Holy One, blessed be He, can know what is in a person’s heart. We cannot know, and therefore for us it is more problematic. In any case, that is basically my claim. But if that is so, then it comes out that the special kindness that the Holy One, blessed be He, did with repentance is with lesser repentance. In greater repentance there is no special kindness; it is accepted according to strict law. Okay? And now, first of all, Mesillat Yesharim itself is speaking about greater repentance, not lesser, when it speaks about this as kindness. Right? He says: “uprooting the will is like uprooting the deed”—that is someone who regretted, truly regretted. And he also says: after all, he did the deed, how can it be uprooted? After all, he…

He’s not saying that because you didn’t truly regret it—no. Even if you truly regretted it, the act was done! It was done. Meaning, it doesn’t sound like he’s talking about the lesser repentance. And in general, in many places we see that repentance is some special act of grace; in many places it says that repentance is a special grace, and it’s not reasonable to say they’re talking only about the lesser repentance. So apparently, even in the greater repentance there is something that goes beyond the letter of the law, and the question is: what is it? Here I want to argue as follows. This is indeed in Shaarei Teshuvah; someone mentioned it in the previous lecture. Huh?

[Speaker E] “He repented”—there’s a song like that by Arik Einstein.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, in any case, in Shaarei Teshuvah he writes as follows: “Know that when a sinner delays returning from his sin, his punishment grows much heavier each day, for he knows that wrath has gone forth against him, and he has a place of refuge to flee there, and that refuge is repentance; yet he remains in his rebellion and persists in his evil. Though it is in his power to escape from the upheaval, he does not fear the anger and fury; therefore his evil is great. And our rabbis of blessed memory said about this matter” — Kohelet Rabbah — “This may be compared to a band of robbers whom the king imprisoned. They dug a tunnel, broke through, and escaped, but one of them remained. The warden came, saw that the tunnel had been dug, and that this man was still imprisoned, and he struck him with his staff. He said to him: miserable fellow, the tunnel is open before you—how did you not hurry to save your own life?” Right? It reminds me: we were in the yeshiva high school about two and a half months ago—well, then all the guys ran off to the settlements, those merry 1970s, the mid-70s. All the guys ran off to the settlements, and there were one or two who stayed behind, who didn’t run away with their class, maybe a year or two above us. Rabbi Yogel came there to the dormitory and said to them: what, everyone is running away and you’re staying? What is this? You’re nobodies. Yes—even though supposedly he should have been chasing after us and not allowing it. Right. So here too, yes, the warden comes and says: the tunnel is open before you—how did you not flee? Right? Meaning, even though the warden is supposed to make sure they don’t escape. Fine, in any case—what is this? It’s some sort of parable for the concept of repentance. What is the basic idea of repentance? He says: you have a tunnel already dug—how are you not making use of it? What’s the lesson? You have this concept of repentance, right? The grace of it—how can you not use it? But the special grace of the Holy One, blessed be He, is that He dug this tunnel so that we can escape. Notice: this is a different conception from what I said earlier. The conception I mentioned before was: what is the special grace in the lesser repentance we spoke about? That it is accepted, right? That it is accepted. The great grace in the greater repentance is not that it is accepted. Its being accepted is according to justice. If you performed greater repentance, then by right you are accepted. The grace is that such a mechanism exists at all. Once such a mechanism exists, if you used it, then by right you deserve forgiveness. But the grace here is the very fact that there is a tunnel dug here. Why? What’s the idea here? So let me try to explain it a bit more.

Maimonides, at the beginning of chapter 2, writes as follows: “What is complete repentance? It is when the very matter in which one sinned comes to his hand again, and it is possible for him to do it, and yet he refrains and does not do it because of repentance.” Right? He basically committed some transgression, came to a new situation—the same situation itself—and did not fail, right? Because of repentance; not out of fear, not because of weakness, not for side reasons, but because he truly repented. “How so? For example, if he had illicit relations with a woman, and after some time he is alone with her again, and he still loves her, and his physical strength remains, and he is in the same place where he sinned,” right, all the circumstances are the same, “and yet he refrains and does not transgress—this is a complete penitent. And this is what Solomon said: ‘Remember your Creator in the days of your youth’ (Ecclesiastes 12:1). But if he repented only in his old age, at a time when he can no longer do what he used to do, then although this is not the finest repentance, it is still effective for him, and he is a penitent. Even if he sinned all his days and repented on one day, on the day of his death”—sorry—“and died in repentance, all his sins are forgiven, as it says: ‘Before the sun, the light, the moon… grow dark’” (Ecclesiastes 12:2). Do you notice that here it says, “this is a complete penitent,” see? And here it says, “he is a penitent.” What’s the difference? The first one has actually changed. Right? The first one is in the exact same situation, everything is the same, and he behaves differently. We’ve isolated the variable that differs between the two situations, because everything else is the same. What changed? There he was wicked, and now he has become righteous. If all the other circumstances are the same, that means he is a true penitent. So he is a complete penitent. All right? By right, his repentance is accepted. There is another person who repented, but now it’s no longer in his power, it’s no longer this, no longer that—it’s no great feat, okay, but that too is accepted. That is more parallel to the lesser repentance. Here you performed the procedure, but you didn’t truly change while you still could have changed, and therefore this is not complete repentance. You are a penitent, but not one of complete repentance.

There is a Pachad Yitzchak—on Purim—where he talks there, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, yes? He talks there about “until one does not know the difference between ‘cursed is Haman’ and ‘blessed is Mordecai.’” What is the idea of getting drunk so as not to distinguish between Haman and Mordecai? The whole work of the day is precisely to make the distinction between Haman and Mordecai. So what is the meaning of this? He says: it can be compared to the Mishnah in Yoma speaking about the two goats. It says they need to be equal in height, in weight, in value, in everything. It’s not indispensable, but ideally they should be entirely equal. Why do they have to be entirely equal? The deeper the equality, the deeper the distinction. Meaning: if the two goats are completely equal, and one goes into the Holy of Holies while the other is sent away to Azazel, then you cannot attribute it to any external parameter—that one is better, finer, taller, shorter, fatter, anything. They are exactly the same, cost the same, look the same, everything is exactly the same. So what’s the difference? The difference is that by lot one came up “for the Lord” and the other came up “for Azazel.” That’s all. And you need to make a full comparison of all the other parameters—yes?—to isolate variables, like in a scientific experiment. You need to make a full comparison of the other parameters in order to sharpen, by contrast, the one remaining difference. And the lottery there is of course a parable for their choice. One chooses good and one chooses evil. Right? Therefore the two goats have to be equal. And the same is true of “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordecai.” In children’s books they always draw Haman as something disgusting, repulsive, with an evil face, right? And Mordecai is an angel. That is an educational mistake! It’s an educational mistake because people think the difference between Mordecai and Esau lies in their innate characteristics—that they’re simply like that. Jacob was born an angel and he was born a beast, okay? No! They were born the same; they chose differently. Therefore you need to draw them exactly the same. Equal in height, in weight, in value—but this one chose this way and that one chose that way; that is the difference between them. Jacob and Esau, by the way—there’s a whole line of thought about Jacob and Esau—that they were born and switched, and so on, and in the womb, according to the midrash of the sages, which Rashi brings, in the womb they did not know who would be the righteous one and who would be the wicked one; it was not predetermined. It wasn’t that Esau was wicked from the womb and Jacob righteous from the womb. There are other midrashim saying he wanted to go out toward houses of idolatry and so on, but it doesn’t say who wanted to go out where, who wanted this and who wanted that. In any case, there is a midrash saying they didn’t know who was who. Stronger, prettier—that’s already a question of how you draw him, but he is red-haired. So in any case—but in the end, the difference between Jacob and Esau is not in their inborn traits, but in the question of what they chose. Therefore the principle says: draw them the same in children’s books, and show that this one chose evil and that one chose good. That is the difference between them—not that one was ugly and disgusting and repulsive while the other had a radiant angelic face, okay? It’s just… So he says: the deeper the equality, the deeper the distinction. You need to equate two things in order to make the distinction. Here too, Maimonides says the same thing: how do you know a person is a penitent? If he is in exactly the same situation, all the circumstances are the same as the earlier circumstances, what remains? There he was bad, and here he chose to be good—that’s all. His choice is the difference. But if the circumstances are different, then it may be that the difference is because the circumstances changed, not because he repented. And so it is merely an indication that the person really has become something else, that he is a true penitent. So the circumstances are the way to identify that, to create that contrast.

And that’s what Maimonides writes in law 4, three laws later: “Among the ways of repentance is for the penitent to cry out constantly before the Lord with tears and supplications, to give charity according to his ability, to distance himself greatly from the matter in which he sinned, to change his name—as if to say: I am someone else and not the same person who committed those deeds—to change all his actions for the better and into the straight path, and to go into exile from his place, for exile atones for sin because it causes him to be humbled and to become meek and lowly of spirit.” Meaning: I am not the same person; I am a different person.

[Speaker B] Wait, Rabbi, regarding the woman—just to take that as an example—if he now decides that he’s separating from this woman, I don’t know, moving to another country, has he repented?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, he has repented. And repentance—but why repentance?

[Speaker B] Because he didn’t put himself again into the… he ran away from the experiment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly—wait—that’s an interesting question in itself. Maybe I’ll say something about it since you asked. In principle, he is a penitent the moment he has become a different person. Now, Maimonides in law 1 proposes an experiment. How do you know you’re a different person? In law 4 he describes how one becomes a different person. Not how I determine whether you did or did not become a different person, but how you do that work. All right? That’s not the same thing.

[Speaker B] No, for myself—do I need to test myself?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying: no, that’s another question. That’s why I say no, it’s another question. In law 1 he is speaking about an experiment for how I test my being—wait—my being a different person. In law 4 he is speaking about the question of how you are supposed to become a different person. Now, regarding the experiment itself, the commentaries on Maimonides—there is the Sefat Emet, for example, and others—ask: isn’t a person not supposed to put himself into temptation? What, you’re supposed to go into some place and provoke things and see whether you…? That can involve prohibitions, the very provocation itself, and maybe it will result in prohibitions. So there are those who want to claim that yes, as part of the repentance process it is permitted, and even appropriate, to put yourself into temptation so that… that this is part of the repentance process. But the accepted view in Maimonides is that no, that’s not how it is. It’s a hypothetical experiment; it’s not that you actually have to do it. You have to reach a state such that even if you were in the same circumstances and faced the same temptations, you would not sin. It’s not that now you have to perform this experiment in practice. Okay? Therefore law 4 is the practical one; law 1 is only an indication of how we can define that he changed in such a way that even if theoretically he came to the same place—or practically, against his will, no matter what—he still doesn’t need to place himself intentionally in that situation. But if he does enter the same situation, yes? That’s what is meant by “until He who knows hidden things testifies about him that he will never return to this sin.” Right? That—“what is complete repentance?” That’s what Maimonides says—again, complete repentance, notice—“until He who knows hidden things testifies about him that he will never return to this sin.” So what—after a year we all go back to that sin. After a year we’re all in the same state again. So what? Therefore all the commentators jump on Maimonides. They say: “until He who knows hidden things testifies” means at that moment. At that moment I am in a state such that, in that state, I would not return to sin. It doesn’t always hold up; I don’t always remain in that state, and afterward I may fall. But that isn’t important; that’s future. When someone asks me: but what is your condition right now? My condition right now is such that right now I would not sin. That is called “that he will never return to this sin.” It is not a prophecy about the future, about what will actually happen; it is a thought experiment. In your current state, you would not come to sin, and that is complete repentance. That is what Maimonides says: he is a complete penitent, remember? This is the greater repentance. In principle in Maimonides, and I think quite consistently, when he speaks about the greater repentance he speaks of a complete penitent. When he speaks about lesser repentance, he says, “this is a penitent,” “who is a penitent.” So there are different chapters devoted to the greater repentance and the lesser repentance. Where he defines the actions required—that is the lesser repentance. Where he speaks about repentance in the deeper sense—yes? Here, you see, he is not speaking in legal terms. What, going into exile, changing your name and so on—it’s not that there is a legal obligation to change your name. He is telling you how to succeed in doing greater repentance, not the technical legal details.

Now I want to understand—use this to understand something more fundamental. We said earlier that there is grace in the very existence of the tunnel, in the very possibility of repentance. In the lesser repentance, the grace is that the repentance is accepted, because after all you did not truly change. The Holy One, blessed be He, beyond the letter of the law, accepts your repentance. In the greater repentance, if you did it, then by right the repentance is accepted. So what is the grace? That you can do it at all. Why? What is the problem here? So let’s look for a moment at the problem here. We said that greater repentance means overturning yourself and basically changing spiritual direction, becoming another person: I am not the same person. Now, you need to understand, this thing is paradoxical on the logical level. Not that it’s psychologically difficult—obviously it’s psychologically difficult. This is not a psychological difficulty; it is logically impossible. Why is it logically impossible? Suppose that you—yes, let’s take a point-donkey, as the physicists say. When they want to understand how a donkey works, they begin with a point-donkey, okay? So let’s begin with a toy model, as they call it. Let’s say there is a person who has one principle in his world that guides his behavior, and that principle is: maximum reward, minimum punishment. An eye for an eye? Minimum punishment. Fine? That’s the criterion, that’s it. He has no other value in his world besides that, okay? He wants the world to come with minimum punishment, maximum reward—truly a righteous pillar of the world. There isn’t a single clause in the Mishnah Berurah where he doesn’t take the strictest view according to every opinion—the man is hysterical, okay? OCD. But all of it is for maximum reward, minimum punishment. Okay? Now, you want to convince him to begin serving for its own sake. Maimonides in chapter 10 of the Laws of Repentance says that one should not do it out of hope for reward and fear of punishment, but should do the truth because it is truth. Okay? Let’s try to persuade him to serve for its own sake. How do we do it? Higher reward. Right. Tell him that if he serves for its own sake he’ll get a greater reward, right? What can you possibly say to him? After all, you have to speak to him in his own terms, right? If we come to persuade him, I can’t tell him my own view; that doesn’t help. I need to explain to him why, according to his own view, he should conduct himself differently, right? But according to his own view, he shouldn’t conduct himself differently. That is his view! What do you want me to do with him?

Now understand—this reminds me, yes, there’s a story about Adam HaKohen, who wanted to repent on his deathbed in order to refute the saying of the sages that “the wicked, even at the entrance to Gehinnom, do not repent.” And now you understand: it’s impossible to do repentance like that. Meaning, because that isn’t repentance. That is exactly the problem. There is some kind of tangle here. Don’t think now about me persuading him—let him persuade himself. How is he supposed now to change himself and go from serving not for its own sake—for reward and punishment—to serving for its own sake? How is that possible? Whichever way you look at it—and I’ll put it more sharply, whichever way you look at it—if he reached the conclusion that one should serve for its own sake, then he doesn’t need to change himself; he already changed, he’s already there. Right? But if he is still in the situation where his ideology is maximum reward, minimum punishment, then what does it mean that he will change—who changes whom? After all, he believes in that. Why should he now adopt some other value if he does not think it is true? And if he does think it is true, then he has already adopted it. He does not need to change anything; he is already there. If

[Speaker B] If suddenly his rabbi comes and says to him, “What? You need to improve this, to do things for their own sake.” So what does he think?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That it’s an improvement or not an improvement?

[Speaker B] No, he thinks it’s not true. So wait—but suppose because he respects his rabbi, the rabbi tells him, “Now do all the commandments whose reward is the lowest.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “Don’t do commandments”—it makes no difference. As long as he doesn’t—then no, he hasn’t repented.

[Speaker B] So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like Adam HaKohen. Then he hasn’t repented, because he doesn’t believe in it.

[Speaker B] But slowly, gradually, he trained himself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “gradually”? That’s not training—that’s exactly the point. I’m not talking about psychological difficulty. I’m talking about a logical problem here. Think: when I make a change—when I make a change in my very self—the repentance process isn’t—

[Speaker B] But if someone tells him—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Someone tells him—so what? In the end he has to decide to accept it. Now, if he accepts it, then he has already changed. So he doesn’t need to change; he has already changed.

[Speaker B] How—I’m saying, what’s the connection? I’ll explain.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When you—when you want to do—when you demand that a person repent, you demand two things of him: A. to move to a different state, yes? And B. to do it deliberately, in order to improve. Right? It’s not that something happened to me and suddenly I became different—that’s not repentance. Repentance—wait, wait, wait—repentance means that I undergo a deliberate process, right? whose purpose is to reach a better state. Now I ask: that same person who undergoes the deliberate process—he already thinks that that state is better, right? Because otherwise he wouldn’t be undergoing the process. But if he thinks that that state is better, then he is already there; he doesn’t need to undergo the process. And the question is how it happened in the first place—how did it happen that suddenly he thinks that that state is better? That probably happened on its own, not deliberately. So that’s not—leave the rabbi aside now; I’m talking about how this happened to him. If this happened to him because he truly did it deliberately, that cannot be. Why would he do it deliberately? If he believes in this, then deliberately he will replace his values with other values? He will replace them if he thinks the other values are more correct. But if he thinks they are more correct, then he is already there; he doesn’t need to do anything. So he already thinks it’s more correct—that’s it, he has already repented. So there is no way to describe a deliberate process of repentance. A person apparently—

[Speaker D] No, it’s not only logic. What? It’s words.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? People always tell me that. When I raise theology: “No, well, life isn’t only logic.” It’s words. Life is only logic. Fair enough?

[Speaker E] Maybe he misunderstood himself. What?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s something else, but that isn’t repentance; that’s just discovering an error. That’s not repentance. Repentance means to improve, you understand? And I’m saying: there is no such thing as improving in this sense—you cannot turn yourself into someone else. What, I’ll be like Baron Munchausen, yes? I’ll grab myself by the hair and pull myself out of the pit? There is no such thing. If I’m in the pit, I’m in the pit. So there’s some kind of whichever-way-you-look-at-it problem here. If I already think that that state is better, then I already repented. So it wasn’t deliberate; it just happened to me. And if I don’t think that that state is better, then why would I strive to reach that state? After all, I don’t think it’s better. There is no—I’m talking about the question of… suddenly I think it’s better.

[Speaker E] And what happened? How did you flip over?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s—ah, exactly! That’s what I call not deliberate. I don’t know, it happened to me. No! That’s not repentance. Repentance is a process you are supposed to do deliberately, not something that happens to you. If it happens to you, you don’t deserve credit for it; it happened to you. So what? Someone hit me on the head with a hammer and suddenly changed various things in there… Right. So I am claiming now that it is impossible. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. This process that I called greater repentance is impossible on the logical level, not the psychological one. It is impossible because repentance is a process I am required to do, not a process that happens to me. If it happens to me, I don’t deserve credit for it. I repent—the regret, meaning I enter into it, I regret, and I understand, until I become a better person, a different person. But then that means I am actually striving toward that state. But if I’m striving toward that state, then I already think that that state is better, don’t I? So I’m already there! What does it mean to give it up? Why would he give it up? If those are his convictions, why would he give them up? He doesn’t need to give up anything, because that is what he truly thinks. What does it mean to give it up? You’re presenting it as though it were an impulse.

[Speaker G] He knew, but he didn’t believe it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “knew”? It doesn’t matter. You’re presenting it as if working for reward and punishment was an impulse for him. Then you say: you really understood that serving for its own sake is the truest thing, but you had an impulse, and therefore you worked for the sake of reward and against punishment. And to that I say: that I can understand. That a person returns, gives up his impulses, and goes back to doing what he truly believes in. Okay? No, no, what difference does it make what he recognized? It’s irrelevant what he recognized.

[Speaker G] The question is what he thought. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why would he switch? What do you mean, in order to switch? No! He can’t do anything. After all, he believes in it, so why would he turn himself into something else? No, it cannot happen! It won’t happen.

[Speaker G] It simply won’t happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No! It cannot happen—that’s what I’m saying. No, it cannot happen. An impossible process. A traumatic event happened to him—again, that’s not deliberate; that’s exactly the point. If someone smacked me on the head with a hammer and changed various things in me and suddenly I became a towering righteous person, am I a penitent? Do I deserve credit for having repented? No. Repentance is a process in which you recognize that you are sinning, you recognize your problematic state, and you strive to reach a better state.

[Speaker B] So he—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Was already from the outset in a state where keeping the Sabbath was his value. So he doesn’t need to repent; he’s already there. Now I want to sharpen this a bit more.

Look, for this I need the problem that in philosophy is called weakness of the will. There is—let’s formulate it the way Donald Davidson, an American analytic philosopher, formulates it. There’s a huge literature on this; it’s a problem that fills shelves in philosophy libraries. But he puts it like this. He says: basically we have three assumptions, each of which seems very reasonable.

One assumption is: what a person thinks is the right thing, that is what he wants to do. By “right” I mean in every sense—not only morally right, but after weighing all his… all his commitments, okay? Morality, interests, desire, everything. Meaning: after he weighs everything, that’s what he thinks is right to do. If that’s what he thinks, then presumably that’s what he wants to do, right?

A second assumption is that if he wants to do something, then presumably that’s what he will do—unless something else prevents him, say stops him, doesn’t let him, impulses, I don’t know, all kinds of things like that. But in principle, as long as it’s in his hands, if that’s what he wants, that’s what he’ll do, right? That’s the second assumption, and it too sounds reasonable.

There’s a third thing, and this is what he calls uncontrolled actions. What are uncontrolled actions? When we talk about sin, usually we—when we think to ourselves, or in general, about the concept of sin, sin means doing an action that I myself understand is not okay. Right? That’s called sin. Because if I don’t understand that it’s not okay, then I’m simply coerced, and then it’s not a sin. A sin for which I need to repent is a sin of the sort where I understand that it’s not okay and I did it anyway.

Now, to distance my own testimony a bit: dieting, okay? If someone decided to go on a diet for his own reasons—medical, aesthetic, whatever it may be, fine? Now he sees a cream cake sparkling at him from the table, okay? And he doesn’t hold out, he eats it, he eats that cream cake. Now I ask him: which way is it? Fine? What does he say to himself? “I was weak,” right? “My will wasn’t strong enough.” In other words he says: basically I understood that I shouldn’t eat it, but I didn’t do what I understood; that is, I was weak. That’s called an uncontrolled action in Donald Davidson’s definition, okay?

Now Donald Davidson’s claim, in addition to the first two assumptions, is a third assumption or claim: a person sometimes has uncontrolled actions. Sometimes a person sins. By “sins” I mean in the broadest sense, not necessarily sinning in a halakhic or moral sense. “Sins” means misses the mark, yes? Goes not in the direction that he himself believes he should go.

Now notice: “should go” after he sums up the whole range of his considerations, not necessarily morally. Fine? Let’s say a hired murderer—that’s not an uncontrolled action. He understands that murder is bad, fine? But he wants to make money. So the value of money, or the interest in money, overrides the moral value, and in fact he does exactly what he decided. That’s not an uncontrolled action. It definitely fits the first two assumptions.

Now he says that these three assumptions, each of which on its own sounds very, very reasonable and logical, do not fit together. Because if everything you think is right is what you want, and what you want is what you do, then how can there be situations in which you do things that you do not think are the right things to do?

Now let’s go back to the cream cake to sharpen this a bit more, because it’s a little hard to grasp at first. By the way, this is a huge problem in philosophy. It really is a genuine problem. I don’t know if there’s any answer to it at all. It sounds like some kind of little game—it’s not a game, it’s a problem, a real problem.

Think about the cream cake. The person tells me: look, I myself knew it wasn’t right for me to eat cream cake, but I did it anyway. I ate it anyway, I fell, I had a weak will. I ask him: tell me, were you coerced? Meaning, you couldn’t overcome it, it was an irresistible impulse? Fine, then it’s not a sin. You don’t owe repentance for that, right? It’s not a sin; you were coerced. Right? Even in criminal liability, if it’s an irresistible impulse, then you bear no criminal responsibility, okay?

You weren’t coerced, right? You weren’t coerced. So what happened? The desire for pleasure overcame the desire to diet, okay? Then why are you telling me that you did not do what you wanted? That is exactly what you wanted. You wanted pleasure more than you wanted the diet, that’s all. You’re telling yourself stories. But that isn’t so. You made your calculation, and this outweighed that, and therefore you did it.

So I say: the claim basically—what is he really saying? Look, “forgive me, my impulse overcame me.” Fine, your impulse overcame you—were you coerced? No problem. But if you were coerced, you don’t need forgiveness; it’s not a sin at all, you were coerced. If you weren’t coerced, then why did you do it? Because the consideration of pleasure outweighed the consideration of dieting. Meaning, in your scale of values, pleasure stood above the diet, that’s all. So if that’s the case, you did exactly what you thought it was right to do. “Right,” again, not necessarily morally, medically, aesthetically. “Right” taking all considerations into account, okay?

Therefore, says Donald Davidson, there can never be a state of sin. There can’t be a state of sin. A state of sin is always a state in which I do something I did not think it was right to do. I don’t know what sins are, I don’t know what small and great sins are. Explain to me, in the case of the person who ate that cake. Are you now asking about great repentance? In a moment, I’m in the middle.

[Speaker B] But he also wants to enjoy it!

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just as he wants to diet, and in his case the desire to enjoy is stronger than the desire to diet. Therefore he ate it, that’s all! So why are you telling me stories about weak will? You don’t have any weak will! That desire of yours was stronger than this one, that’s all. Right, let’s get to the point, let’s talk about this point, not any other point.

[Speaker E] That’s exactly what Donald Davidson claims.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the problem of weakness of the will. It’s not intuitive, because we always experience ourselves so that when we fail, we say: that’s not really what we wanted to do, we fell, we didn’t hold out. But Donald Davidson tells you: think carefully—what do you mean, we fell? Were you coerced? That’s something else, but then you don’t need repentance. If you weren’t coerced, then why did you do it? Because that desire was stronger than the other desire, so that is what you wanted. What you did is what you wanted—no stories. Conscience, conscience—that’s psychology.

[Speaker G] Maybe we should stop and say that there’s some… he understands—what does that mean? Stop, pause, and say that you have two desires, and you have to choose between them.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, and he chose between them, and he chose to eat.

[Speaker G] No, he didn’t choose, he was swept along. Why is he…?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Oh, he didn’t choose?

[Speaker G] Then he’s coerced. He simply served his desires. So he’s coerced.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not coerced, but then why—then why did he do it?

[Speaker G] He didn’t do it, but—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He failed to choose. So why did he do it? Force, force. Because he, he didn’t—

[Speaker G] He failed to make the… ah, the reflection, so—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Decide whether this is coercion or not. I’ll get to a similar formulation in a moment—to that—I understand, and I’m also going to say something similar in a moment.

[Speaker D] It—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] doesn’t necessarily solve the problem, but we’ll see that shortly.

[Speaker D] In a person’s life, in a person’s life it’s not black—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and white, yes and no—well no, that doesn’t help. All the “yes and no” is just words. In the end, in the end, what he did is what he wanted to do.

[Speaker E] What—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not yes and no and— that’s it. What he wanted is what he did. The problem is that there is no such thing as sin.

[Speaker E] The sin was when he preferred that consideration over—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] over the other consideration. Fine, but that’s what he really prefers. What do you mean, sin? No, that is his scale of values. Now what do you want from him? Here, I’m returning to the problem of great repentance: now you want him never to return to this sin. What does that mean? To change his scale of values. But I said, that is his scale of values—so what does it mean to change his scale of values? Does he already now understand that it’s the wrong scale? Then it’s not really what he wants. If that really is what he wants, then that is his scale of values. So what do you want—that he himself should change his scale of values? Do you understand?

Because if he doesn’t change his scale of values, nothing will change. Because what he wants is what he does. Now, to tell him to change his scale of values—that is the logical problem I mentioned earlier. You go to a person who has a given scale of values, and you tell him: change your scale of values. He says: why should I do that? This is my scale of values. Explain to me, from within this scale of values, why that other scale is better. Of course you won’t succeed, because this is his scale of values, not that one. Okay? So it can’t work. Do you understand?

In other words, I’m using the problem of weakness of the will here to explain the problem involved in great repentance. The problem in great repentance is not whether it’s accepted. If you did it, you’re a different person, the Holy One, blessed be He, will accept it. The problem is: how can such a thing even be done? How is it even defined at the conceptual level? How can there be such a process called great repentance? That basically reflects the problem of weakness of the will.

[Speaker C] Now a question about the guy with the cake who took upon himself to go on a diet. The moment he took it upon himself to go on a diet, he knew he would come into a trial, right? He knew that his scale of values would get overturned, or something like that. But the mistake applies to that moment when he took it upon himself—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but afterward, when he got to the cake, suddenly his scale of values changed.

[Speaker C] Even though he knew that would happen.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Which is what usually happens, no? Usually, if you ask a person what happened to him, that will be the description. When I took upon myself a diet, obviously I knew there would be temptations, but I decided to stand like a fortified wall. Until the wall was a little less fortified, and in the end I fell. Yes?

[Speaker G] Why do you call it a value? Maybe it’s his desire to eat the cake.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s the collection of considerations. I don’t care—call it a value, call it whatever you want, his set of desires, I don’t care what you call it. Values are only part of desire.

So the point is this: there is a certain logical problem in the demand, or the assumption, that one can intentionally carry out great repentance. It’s simply not defined at the conceptual level. Because the one doing the repentance is situated in a given set of values, so why should he aspire, by force of that set, to move to another set of values? And if he aspires to the other set of values, then the other set is his set, not this one. So he’s already there; he doesn’t need to make the journey, he’s already there. How can there be an intentional process in which I move out of value set A into value set B, if at the stage when I was in A I did not believe that B was in fact the right set? But if I did believe that, then I’m already there. So what’s the problem? No step is needed. But how did that itself happen to me? If it just happened to me, not intentionally, then it’s not repentance.

There’s some kind of tangle here that needs to be understood. This is not hair-splitting; there is something here that is a real problem, a problem. Maybe I’ll formulate it—well, before that.

[Speaker E] Maybe what matters is the result? No, no. How he got there—the result is what matters.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s not interesting. Excuse me—if the result just happened to him, then he deserves no credit for the result. Credit goes to you for what you did—what do you mean? It’s when you are an agent, when you act as an agent, that you deserve credit. If something happens to you, then it happens to you. There’s something I’ve been wondering about for many years—whether it counts as repentance or not—in the spirit of what you said earlier. I’ll get to it in a moment. But I want to clarify something first.

The problem is basically: how can I take myself out of one system and pull myself out of the pit, yes, rise to another value system, or move to another value system? How does he put it? Let’s return to Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. Remember the story of Elazar ben Dordaya? We talked about it last time. He says: heavens, ask mercy for me; mountains, ask mercy for me; moon, stars, I don’t know what, all sorts of things. What is this? What does he want? Right? There’s a certain helplessness here, and I think it’s a wonderful literary description of what I’ve described here.

Fine—but Elazar ben Dordaya is the one who taught us about great repentance. There we saw that within an hour you can turn yourself around, leaving aside all the technical details. That is great repentance. And what the story tells you is that same feeling of helplessness that says: wait, I want to turn myself around. What does “want” mean? So how do you do that? What—I’m going to turn myself around? Then I’m already there, basically. He’s looking for some Archimedean point, yes, a point of support outside himself that will somehow help him turn himself around.

Meaning, there is some tangle here that you can’t understand: am I already there? Or am I doing it intentionally? But how can I turn myself around? I change myself—who is the changer and who is the changed? If I, the changer, already believe in that system, then whom am I changing? I’m already there. If the one being changed is here, then who is the changer? The changer is also me—I am changing myself. This is something that is not defined at the conceptual level.

I think the way to look at this is maybe really the following question: if someone from outside does it to me—say the Holy One, blessed be He, does it to me—then it has no value, because He did it, not me. If I do it, then it has value, but how does it happen? Meaning, I can’t simply turn myself around. So there is some kind of “which way is it” here: it can’t come from outside and it can’t be done from within, so how does this thing happen?

Now, there is one line in “Our Father, Our King” that is exceptional in the whole list: “Our Father, Our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You.” What is that? You are basically saying: look, the only way to get rid of this tangle is to say that in some sense I am not… that this dichotomy—that if the Holy One, blessed be He, does it then it is valueless, and if I do it then it is impossible—the only way somehow to bypass that is to say that there isn’t such a sharp dichotomy between His doing it and my doing it.

Meaning, there is something—the mystics call it, I don’t know, a divine point within the person. I don’t like those terms. But in any case, I’m saying at the logical level there is no other way to relate to such a situation unless you give up that dichotomy. Meaning, if you understand that there is some kind of action that is not done from outside, but also not from inside, some kind of thing that happens together—I don’t know exactly—something like that.

Now, those are just words. I don’t know how to pour more concrete content into them. But it is at least a direction that says that if I give up this dichotomy of outside and inside, then maybe the problem disappears, or fades, or I don’t know exactly what. But now I’ll formulate it in a more philosophical and less mystical way.

Basically, I want to make the following claim: when a person sins—and in a moment I’ll get to a formulation similar to what you said earlier—the problem for me is this: if the person sins because that is really what he believes in, then he has no responsibility for it; that really is what he believed, what do you want? If the person sins even though that is not what he believed in, then why did he do it? Meaning, if he did it, then apparently that is what he believed in, okay? Otherwise why did he do it? That’s the “which way is it.”

The only way out of this tangle—and leave mysticism aside for the moment; I’m now speaking really at the psychological level, our level, leave the Holy One, blessed be He, aside—is that the person is actually not acting out of choice. What do I mean? I want to claim that the issue of choice comes in two levels. The first level is deciding to be a chooser, meaning to keep the reins in your hands and not let the horses determine the route for you. I determine the route, okay? The second level is that after I choose, I choose the good, okay?

Now, is it possible that a person chooses, but chooses evil? It’s very hard to imagine such a case. Theoretically it’s possible, conceptually it’s possible; it’s very hard to imagine such a case. Because if he really understands that it is bad, why does he do it? Meaning, why does he choose it? I’m not talking about a case where impulses overpowered him and he has no choice. I mean that he chooses lucidly, everything is in his hands, and he chooses to do evil—what is evil in his own eyes. Not objective evil; what is evil in his eyes. Everything according to his own view—that’s all I’m talking about. Okay? If it’s not according to his own view, then he’s coerced.

So my claim is that what is required of a person first and foremost is simply to be a chooser. If he is a chooser, he will choose the good; he won’t choose evil. When a person does something bad, it is simply because he let go of the reins. He let the horses take him, and the horses took him to a place he himself would not really want to be, a place he does not believe is the right path. But he got there not through lucid choice. Because if it were through lucid choice, then Donald Davidson is right: he would not get there. What do you mean—if that’s what… if you don’t think that’s what should be done, you wouldn’t do it!

So how does it happen? The human being is a complicated creature. The person says: I let go of the reins, and the horses take me already—the impulses are the horses, yes? They take me. Okay? So it’s not that I decided to perform an action that I myself think is not okay. No, that does not happen. But what does happen? I let go of the reins for a moment, as if I fell asleep. I fell asleep in such a way that I understand this can also lead to sin, yes? Otherwise I bear no responsibility.

After all, I want to gain two things here: on the one hand, how this sin happened; and on the other hand, that responsibility can still be assigned to me for the fact that it happened. Because if it’s coercion, then I bear no responsibility, right? So I want to claim that letting go of the reins is your fault. But there was no situation in which you chose to do something that you yourself think is wrong. That doesn’t happen. What does happen is that you deceive yourself, deceive the environment, I don’t know, but you fall asleep.

Yes? Someone who boards a ship—the Talmud says in tractate Shabbat, yes?—boards a ship three days before the Sabbath and falls asleep. And now the ship sails and suddenly he finds himself on a ship and it’s sailing on the Sabbath. What can he do? When he fell asleep, he knew this is what would happen, okay? With human beings it happens in a slightly more complex way. But many times we recognize such a phenomenon, where a person deceives himself. You basically say: fine, I’ll do it, what could happen, it probably won’t happen—and of course it does happen to you.

I’ll go there; there are cream cakes there, right? Fine, but I’m strong, after all, I took upon myself to go on a diet, no problem. And he goes there anyway because behind the level of consciousness, I really want to eat. But no, no—I’m going there because I’m very strong. And I am actually putting myself to sleep, letting go of the reins, and in the end I eat.

Now this is a situation in which I can do something that is not in my control, and yet I still bear responsibility for it, because I let go of the reins. Not because I decided to eat—I did not decide to eat. My impulses took me there, but it was not coercion. It was coercion after I put myself into a situation of coercion, after I let go of the reins. So my responsibility is for letting go of the reins, not for the act itself.

Now, why am I very unsure whether this is a solution? What? Okay, the question is whether such a thing is called coercion—bringing oneself into coercion. If it were coercion, then I wouldn’t be—

[Speaker G] responsible for it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly! Which means it’s not really coercion. So the one who brings himself into coercion—that raises interesting questions in Jewish law, in various places. A responsum of the Rivash and… in any case. But what I want to say is this: why do I think—I’m very unsure whether this is a solution—because I ask: why did he let go of the reins? That too is a decision. Did he want to make that decision? Then why are you telling me stories? So he chose to let go of the reins. He chose not to be a chooser! That too is a decision, that too is a choice that he chose.

So now I return the whole weakness-of-the-will move onto that decision—not onto the decision to eat the cream cake, but onto the decision to let go of the reins. And now there too I can say the same thing: if you let go of the reins, then apparently that’s what you wanted to do. If you didn’t want to, why did you do it? Oh, were you coerced? If you were coerced, then you’re not responsible for it. The entire process can now be repeated with regard to letting go of the reins. Therefore it is actually not at all clear to me how much this really solves the problem.

But if you say, yes, you should have been a bit stronger—

[Speaker G] stronger, to hold on through that pain—again, if he what?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I know, he should have—but why indeed wasn’t he stronger? Because—

[Speaker G] he chose not to be strong.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly! So he chose that. So what does it mean that he let go of the reins? He chose not to choose! That is an active choice not to choose, even though he thought that was not the right thing to do. So what did you gain? You are still in the same tangle! The person lucidly chose something that he thinks is not right to do. What is that something? Not eating the cream cake—no, that something is simply letting go of the reins.

So the problem of weakness of the will remains in place. What we do gain—why do I maybe still think this is a solution? Because the person did not decide to do an action that in itself is bad in his eyes. He decided to let go of the reins. Letting go of the reins is not an action; it is only being in a state of not choosing, that’s all. So he didn’t do something whose content is bad in his eyes. I’m not entirely sure; I’ve been wrestling with this for years. Because what do you mean—you can… that too is a decision, that too is—if you think you ought to be a chooser, why did you decide not to be a chooser? The same dilemma of weakness of the will can be applied there as well.

Only here I somehow feel it is easier to think about someone who really decides to let go of the reins. Decides—despite thinking it is not right—decides to let go of the reins. Because it is not eating the cream cake; it is only causing the eating of the cream cake indirectly. He only lets go of the reins, and afterward the horses already…

They take him to eat the cake.

[Speaker B] But after the fact, sometimes people go this way, so…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There’s no reward, but I’ll tell you: we weren’t talking about reward and punishment. We were talking now about the question: what do I need to repent for?

[Speaker B] No, why do you want to—why does a person…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. I want to repent because there is a commandment to repent, okay? There is a commandment to repent, and I want to repent. No, not because of reward and punishment! I want to repent in order to be a better person.

[Speaker G] Meaning, isn’t it ultimately on the level of repentance, arriving at correct understanding? Correcting one’s outlook? So I’m saying, but this is…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When I let go of the reins, I’m basically… arriving at correct understanding—that assumes you understand that your current understanding is not correct. How do you…

[Speaker G] know that? When I let go of the reins, I let go of them in the right way. Why?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I don’t have the will—but letting go of the reins itself is not right, so the same problem exists there too. Not the eating of the cake in the end; the very decision to let go of the reins—I can formulate everything I said about that too.

[Speaker G] Why did you let go?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because you thought that was the right thing to do; otherwise why did you do it?

[Speaker G] So why did you do it?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because I was—because I didn’t want to fight at that moment. Ah, you didn’t want to fight at that moment—but what? You knew it wasn’t okay? But you knew it wasn’t okay…

[Speaker G] If I’m holding a rope and there’s a ten-year-old child hanging from the rope, okay?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If I let go of the rope, he’ll die, right. But it’s very hard for me right now to hold the rope. No, again, if you are under compulsion, then you are under compulsion; no problem. No, if you are not under compulsion, then why did you do it? Because you preferred the comfort of your hand over the life of the child—so we’re back to the cake. That’s all! So we’re back again to the fact that that’s what you wanted, so don’t tell me you didn’t want it. That’s not weakness of will; you did what you wanted. That’s it, same thing. What I said about the act itself, I can also say about letting go of the reins.

[Speaker G] It could be that the claim against me at that moment would be: why didn’t I bring in—why didn’t I sharpen and strengthen—I don’t know what it means, “sharpen.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If, if, if…

[Speaker G] If I didn’t sharpen it, then was I under compulsion?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Since it wasn’t sharp for me, then was I under compulsion? The decision not to sharpen it—that same thing, I’ll attack with the very same argument. It’s just that you retreat one step backward each time.

[Speaker F] So this is determinism throughout the whole process of choice.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right! Exactly the claim! Right!

[Speaker F] And what I want…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to argue is: it’s not just determinism; you have no answer to this. It’s not just determinism; there is no answer to this! What you wanted—that’s what you did; what you did—that’s what you wanted. It’s not determinism. You could have chosen this, but you chose it—that’s the claim. This is not a deterministic claim in the usual sense. I’m not denying your ability to choose; I’m only claiming that what you did is what you chose to do.

[Speaker G] And don’t tell me you didn’t choose and that you really thought something else. No, this is what you decided you wanted, this is what was right in your eyes, and this is what you did. Out of choice! Not because of determinism. I think you don’t understand that there are several levels of understanding at that moment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I’m saying: those several levels—those words won’t help. At whatever level you want, at that level you’re talking about, I’ll ask everything I’ve asked up to now. At that level, what you decided to do—is that what you thought was right to do, or not? If yes, then what do you want? You are under compulsion. If not, then why did you do it? All these contortions won’t help. In the end, in the end, there is some decision that you made and for which you are responsible. About that decision I’m asking the question. Therefore there is something here that is a tangle, and I don’t know whether it has any answer at all. What is this… I don’t know whether there is an answer, yes—not only whether it has an answer.

[Speaker B] Maybe reward and punishment are counted as an integral, meaning, if you ate lots of whipped-cream cakes and you have a belly, if not, then you go…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t matter. I’m talking about the sin of the single whipped-cream cake, not the belly.

[Speaker B] But in the end they measure how much…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m asking about this whipped-cream cake, I’m not measuring anything. Right now I’m asking: how did this sin happen? This sin is impossible. How did this sin happen? That’s what I’m asking. Leave me alone about the belly. But still…

[Speaker D] No, the rope still—I was controlled…

[Speaker B] by the impulse, like, if the impulse said… that’s something else if it’s…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the impulse—then you are under compulsion, that’s exactly the point! Whichever way you look at it: either you decided to do it, or you didn’t decide. If you didn’t decide, then you are under compulsion; if you decided, then that’s what you wanted, so what do you want? What, what, what do they want from you? But…

[Speaker G] Why hold him accountable? Why—what’s the problem here? Is he judged for the fact that I chose at that…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but if you really think that this is the right thing to do, then what do they want, what do you want, what do you want them to judge you for? Because that’s what… because that’s what you—that’s what you thought. No—why would you think? You did it, so apparently that’s what you thought was right.

[Speaker G] It could be that a choice is not…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] moral, not moral—I don’t care. But all in all your considerations say that the pleasure outweighs the morality, okay? Fine, that’s your scale of values. What, what, what do they want from you? Fine, that’s what you thought was right. Right with all the considerations, not just morality.

[Speaker G] I didn’t strengthen the, the…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean, you didn’t strengthen it? But that’s what you really thought, so that’s what you thought.

[Speaker G] I thought it wasn’t okay; if I had thought more, then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I would have strengthened the first value. So again, why didn’t you think? Why didn’t I think? Yes. Because at that moment I wanted more to… meaning, because you wanted to. That’s it—so you wanted it. I was lazy.

[Speaker G] You were…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] lazy, so you wanted to be lazy—that too is what you wanted, it doesn’t matter. You won’t manage to escape from this. In the end, what you did is what you wanted to do. That’s it, that’s all. Doesn’t matter—the question is what the bottom line was, who prevailed. There are always two desires, that’s no problem, but in the end, in the end, the question is who, who, who prevails. Obviously that is your point of choice, but if you chose this, then apparently this is what you thought one should do, right? So what do they want from you? This really is what you wanted. I’m not talking about determinism; I’m talking about the fact that if you chose, then apparently this is really what you thought it was right to choose. You thought, and you chose—not deterministic. But what do they want from you? If this is what you thought, then that is your position. Now what—you, from within that position, are supposed to reach the conclusion that there is another position that is more correct? Why? If you reached that conclusion, fine—but it happened to you, you didn’t initiate it. You can’t deliberately try to arrive at a different position. That’s the problem here. Okay.

[Speaker D] No, no, that’s it, we’re done for today.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s the problem of weakness of will. Meaning that repentance itself is such a great thing—it is a special act of grace that it is even possible to do it, not that it is accepted; I mean, how is there even such a mechanism? Yes.