With God’s help

From the Gift of the Desert – 2002

It is common to say that God, the Holy One, does us a special favor by, following repentance, supposedly erasing from history acts of transgression committed against nature and against the rules of accepted halakhic law. For example, this is the language of the Ramchal in Mesilat Yesharim (Chapter 4: On the Path of Acquiring Prudence):

For truly, how can a person correct what he has done wrong and the sin has already been committed? If a person has murdered his friend, if he has committed adultery, how can he correct this matter? Can the deed that has been committed be removed from reality?… And it is the one who said in the Scripture (Isaiah 6): “And take away your iniquity, and your sin shall be atoned for,” that the iniquity is truly removed from reality, and uprooted in that which now regrets and consoles itself for what happened in retrospect. And this is certainly a kindness that is not from the letter of the law…

And many others wrote the same, and their conclusions are rooted in the words of the Sages themselves and in the Achma.

On the other hand, Ita in the Gamma (Yoma 46b):

Reish Lakish said: Great is the repentance that transgressions are made to him as mistakes, as it is said: “Return, Israel, to the Lord your God, for you have failed in your iniquity.” Is it a deliberate sin, and is it called an obstacle to it? No, and Reish Lakish said: Great is the repentance that transgressions are made to him as rights, as it is said: “And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does justice and righteousness in them, he shall live.” No question: here out of love, here out of fear.

From the words of the G-d, it follows that if one repents out of love, the sins become rights for him, and if he does so out of fear, they become mistakes for him. The common side of all this is that the sins never disappear from the world. The actions are not erased from history but rather take on a different value: instead of sins, they are considered rights or mistakes. It is possible to generalize and say more than this: the complete line of the law is never deficient. A person's actions can never be literally erased from history, and they are not even considered as if they had not been done. What can change is only their spiritual-moral evaluation, and consequently their consequences (spiritual in the world, and on the plane of reward and punishment).

As stated, the principle that an act cannot be removed from reality is a natural and halakhic principle. One of its halakhic expressions is: "I do not speak and undo an act." A person who has committed an act cannot erase it from reality, nor its consequences (legal and spiritual).[1] On the other hand, KJV: "I speak and I nullify speech," meaning that speech can indeed be removed from reality.

It should also be noted that actions can cancel previous actions. The limitation is only on speech that cancels an action. In other words, it seems that it is possible to cancel actions that have been done, but that requires an action and not a word of speech. In general, influencing reality (creating a new reality) is done only by action and not by speech (such as property expirations, etc.).

However, there are also exceptional cases in halakha. In the issue of Shavuot 21 (and in parallel), which we have just studied, the Rishonim state that speech that results in an act is as important as an act. On the one hand: it cannot be erased by speech, like an actual act (see Shtamk Nazir 11, and in Kush Ketubot Aut 28). And on the other hand: it itself can create practical consequences, although actual acts are usually required for this (these are the things acquired in a statement. Its statement to a high priest as well as its delivery to a layman. vows, vows in the haftza, and more).

Apparently, changing the act through speech, and even through actions, as described by the halakha, is also not a literal erasure of part of history. The intention is only to change the consequences of the actions, not to change history itself.

A response is also a speech. Sometimes it can be a speech followed by an action (a complete response: 'Until he who knows mysteries bears witness to it…'). As we have seen, even if we make this type of response, the actions we have committed will never be erased. They can become rights or mistakes, but they cannot be completely erased from history.

The question is whether it is indeed necessary to erase an act from history at all. The fact that a certain act is in history is not necessarily problematic. What is problematic is that it has implications for the world in the present. We must try to erase these implications. As we have seen, the existence of the act in history cannot be changed, but its implications for the present, whether it has a good spiritual effect (rights) or bad (vices), and to what extent (mistakes), depend only on us. Here, words are required, followed by action, so that they can change at least the spiritual implications of the actions.

A person who has repented is better than a complete righteous person. Someone who has sinned and whose sins have become rights (it turns out that this is a repentance out of love) is better than a complete righteous person, one who has no sins at all. Sins that become rights have a unique positive spiritual weight. Repentance can elevate the world to levels it could not have reached without it. A world of complete righteous people is like a world without choice. The reality of choice allows, on the one hand, for sins, but, on the other hand, it also allows for them to be raised to a height that simple righteousness does not reach. This is a bill with its own break on the side.

It seems that this is the deeper hawa amina of the one who says, "I will sin and return." His intention is to reach higher peaks through sin and repentance. As mentioned, these peaks cannot be conquered by simple righteousness, and therefore that person wants to sin from the beginning and return, in order to reach them in this way.

It is possible that many sins contain the idea of "I will sin and return." Usually, a person does not sin as an open rebellion. Implicitly, a person always convinces himself to sin, in one way or another: either by claiming that it is not a sin at all, or by claiming that "I will sin and return."

The Torah commands us not to take this path from the beginning, that is, not to say, "I will sin and return," because then we will not be able to make atonement. It turns out that someone who does this from the beginning, their atonement will not have the weight and impact they expect it to have. Part of the lever for aliyah is the feeling of failure following the sin, a feeling that cannot exist in someone who does this from the beginning in the manner of "I will sin and return." A sin is not a specific act, but rather the act of doing this out of coping with and failure. Only atonement for such a sin has the power to become a lever for aliyah.

If so, we must 'trust' our free choice that will lead us to sin, even without doing so ideologically (usually 'we have someone to trust'. Is it to our regret?!). Then, these moments must be used as leverage for a higher ascent.

As stated, this can only be done through a complete response, a response that is in the form of speech followed by action: "Until he testifies about him, he knows mysteries and will never return to this sin again."

"Our father, our king, we have returned with complete repentance before you."

[1] This is probably also the meaning of the verse Nedarim 29, which the Amoraim disagreed on, and the law is: The sanctity of the body does not expire for no reason (by speech without action). And the former expand on this, for example, to the matter of monetary property in the body (property of the body) and more.