On Repentance: Between Technique and Essence

With God's help

5757 (1996–97)

Introduction

In this article we will try to examine the psychological and philosophical meaning of the process of repentance. We will distinguish between repentance as a halakhic-technical process of erasing sins, and repentance as an inner psychological revolution, as a change that the person himself undergoes. Both of these processes are problematic for different reasons, and we will try to illuminate the differences between them, and in the end to propose a more complex and realistic model that incorporates both of these processes of repentance together.

We should preface this by noting that there is a certain tension between the way repentance is described in halakhic literature and the way it appears in philosophical literature. In halakhic literature it appears as a formal halakhic act (which admittedly includes psychological components), composed of several stages (Rav Saadia Gaon was apparently the first to formulate it this way): regret, abandonment of the sin, resolution for the future, and confession. There are discussions as to whether each stage is indispensable, what the proper order of the stages should be, whether this is effective for every sin or only for certain sins (others require suffering, death, and the like), and when and how one should do it (throughout the year, in Elul, during the Ten Days of Repentance, individually or communally). By contrast, in philosophical literature repentance appears as an inner psychological revolution, an extra-halakhic idea whose roots are in the highest heavens.

At first glance, this would seem to be just another example of the difference between Jewish law and thought, or aggadic literature. But that does not seem to be the issue. If that were the difference, then these would merely be two angles, or two planes of reference, regarding one and the same thing. We shall see that we are dealing here with two different processes of repentance.

To sharpen the point, we will present two different responses to the same difficulty that arises from Maimonides' words in the Laws of Repentance. One seems more technical, while the other answers that very same difficulty in a more essential and profound way. This will be a good expression of the distinction to which I have pointed here, and from there we can continue and try to understand the meaning of this dichotomy.

What Is the Intermediate Person to Do?

The point of departure for our discussion is Maimonides' words at the beginning of chapter 3 of the Laws of Repentance. In halakha 1 he defines three spiritual states of a person, or of a society: righteous, intermediate, and wicked:

Every human being has merits and sins. Whoever has more merits than sins is righteous, and whoever has more sins than merits is wicked; if they are exactly half and half, he is intermediate. So too with a country: if the merits of all its inhabitants exceed their sins, it is righteous; and if their sins are more numerous, it is wicked. And so too with the whole world.

In halakha 2 there he explains the status of the wicked and the righteous. He further adds that this spiritual standing is not determined merely by a simple counting of commandments or sins:

A person whose sins are more numerous than his merits dies immediately in his wickedness, as it says, 'because of the multitude of your iniquity.' So too a country whose sins are more numerous is immediately destroyed, as it says, 'The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great,' and so too the whole world: if their sins are more numerous than their merits, they are immediately ruined, as it says, 'And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great.' This weighing is not according to the number of merits and sins, but according to their magnitude. There is a merit that outweighs several sins, as it says, 'because some good thing was found in him'; and there is a sin that outweighs several merits, as it says, 'one sinner destroys much good.' They are weighed only according to the knowledge of the God who knows all, and He knows how merits are set against sins.

And in halakha 3 he writes:

Anyone who regrets the commandments he has performed and repudiates his merits, saying in his heart, 'What did I gain by doing them? If only I had not done them'—such a person has lost them all, and no merit of his is mentioned at all, as it says, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his wickedness.' This applies only to one who regrets his earlier deeds.

And just as a person's merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so every year the sins of each and every one of those who come into the world are weighed against his merits on the festival of Rosh Hashanah. Whoever is found righteous is sealed for life, and whoever is found wicked is sealed for death; and the intermediate person is left hanging until Yom Kippur. If he repents, he is sealed for life, and if not, he is sealed for death.

The first part of this halakha deals with the possibility of a person changing his path from good to evil. That is, one can perform a kind of repentance in both directions.

From Maimonides' words in the second half of this halakha it follows (as several of his commentators already noted) that one who is not sealed on Rosh Hashanah, neither for life nor for death, falls into the category of an intermediate person. The state of such a person hangs in the balance, and it will be determined by the repentance he will do during the Ten Days of Repentance, or fail to do. His language implies that only repentance can help that intermediate person, and no other good deed. This is also almost explicit in the Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 1:3, and elsewhere.[1]

However, in halakha 4 Maimonides writes:

Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a decree of Scripture, there is an allusion in it: Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep, and slumberers, arise from your slumber; examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator. These are the people who forget the truth in the vanities of time and go astray all their years in emptiness and futility that neither profits nor saves. Look to your souls and improve your ways and your actions, and let each of you abandon his evil path and his thought that is not good. Therefore every person should see himself throughout the entire year as though he were half meritorious and half liable, and so too the whole world as half meritorious and half liable. If he committed one sin, he has tipped himself and the whole world to the side of liability and caused destruction. If he performed one commandment, he has tipped himself and the whole world to the side of merit and caused salvation and deliverance for himself and for them, as it says, 'And the righteous is the foundation of the world'—that is, one whose righteousness tipped the whole world to merit and saved it. Because of this matter, all the house of Israel have the custom to increase charity and good deeds and to engage in commandments from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur more than during the rest of the year. And they all have the custom to rise at night during these ten days and pray in synagogues with words of supplication and moral exhortation until daybreak.

That is, the way to change our state is to repent and to increase commandments and good deeds. Throughout the year this is understandable, but during the Ten Days of Repentance we learned in the previous halakha that only repentance is effective, not other commandments. It seems that in this halakha he means charity and good deeds as a catalyst for repentance, and not as commandments that are themselves added to the person's balance.

Maimonides' words in halakha 3 are puzzling, and the later authorities asked many questions about them from several angles. First, as the Lechem Mishneh asks there, it is not clear why, if a person does not repent during the Ten Days of Repentance, he is sealed for death. We have a tradition that the Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward kindness, meaning that a person whose state is evenly balanced should apparently be judged for life. To this the Lechem Mishneh writes that if he did not repent, that itself is a sin that is counted against him, and therefore he ceases to be intermediate.[2]

The later authorities here ask why repentance specifically is what helps intermediate people. Why should he not perform one additional commandment or another and thereby move from being evenly balanced to being someone whose commandments are in the majority, that is, righteous? And indeed, the Rashbatz in Magen Avot wrote that performing commandments is enough to tip the scale.

Another difficulty is how a state of being intermediate can exist at all. The chance that the number of commandments and sins will be exactly equal is negligible, especially since in Jewish law we accept that exact precision is impossible. To be sure, some have cited here Maimonides' words in halakha 2, that the weight of each commandment or sin is unknown. But this does not solve the difficulty, for whatever the weights may be, the chance that the weighted sum of sins and commandments will come out exactly equal is just as negligible.

We should note that the language of the Talmud actually implies that those intermediate people whose fate hangs in the balance, if they improve their ways, are written and sealed for life. This implies that even the writing changes, meaning that they can perform additional commandments and good deeds during the Ten Days of Repentance. But Maimonides wrote that they have already been written, and on Yom Kippur they are only sealed. According to his approach, the difficulties become far sharper.

Two Explanations

With respect to the first difficulty, which is our point of departure, let us now bring two explanations. The first of them is a sharp answer by the author of Emek Berakhah. He explains that the judgment on Rosh Hashanah concerns only deeds from the previous year. On Rosh Hashanah a reckoning is made of each person's, or society's, commandments and sins, and their spiritual standing for that year is determined (righteous, intermediate, or wicked). From that point onward, every commandment or sin done during the Ten Days of Repentance joins the account of the coming year, but is irrelevant to the judgment of the present year. Repentance, by contrast, is effective mainly in that it miraculously works retroactively to erase a sin that was already committed, thereby retroactively changing the relative weight of the commandments and sins that are already lying on the scale on Rosh Hashanah itself. Repentance, then, acts backward in time, against ordinary causal logic. Therefore, during the Ten Days of Repentance, once Rosh Hashanah has already passed and we have entered the following year, only repentance can tilt the scale favorably with respect to the judgment of the previous year. This is how he explains Maimonides' words in halakha 3.

In contrast, the author of Siftei Chaim on the festivals resolved this in a different way. He explains that the classification into righteous, intermediate, or wicked does not depend on a simple reckoning of commandments and sins; rather, it is an overall assessment of the person's condition. If his soul inclines in the direction of the good, then he is righteous (and perhaps this is true even if his sins are more numerous, for his impulse is also greater). And if his soul inclines toward evil, he is wicked (even if his commandments are more numerous). According to this, the intermediate person is one who has not decided, and both forces operate within him in a mixed fashion.

Clearly, according to this view as well, every commandment and every sin is weighed, and reward and punishment are given for each commandment and sin. But the annual judgment for life or death depends only on the person's general state. Once the general state has been judged, one can then judge reward and punishment for each and every act.

We should note that we find a similar approach in the Tanya, which defines the distinction between righteous, intermediate, and wicked through the person's fundamental state. The details are somewhat different, but this is not the place to elaborate.[3]

In any event, according to this explanation the first difficulty above is also resolved, for it is now clear how a person can be intermediate. We are not speaking about exactly equal weight of commandments and sins, a state that is highly implausible, but about the fundamental condition of the soul's forces and the person's overall tendency. As stated, according to this approach the intermediate person is one in whose soul the two forces are mixed together.

It is clear that according to this approach the second difficulty also disappears of itself, for if a person performs one more commandment or one more sin, he does not thereby change his overall psychological tendency. Only if a person repents can one reach a state in which his overall condition changes, and therefore only repentance is effective in changing the intermediate person's verdict from death to life.

We should also note that according to this approach there is no need whatsoever to assume that repentance works backward in time and changes the past, against the principle of causality. We now understand that repentance changes the person's present condition, and he is judged according to what he is now, in the sense of being judged as he presently is.

 

Difficulties in the Approach of Emek Berakhah

The approach of Emek Berakhah is difficult. First, it offers no plausible explanation of how intermediate people can exist at all. More than that, according to his approach it really does seem that spiritual standing is determined by some technical tally of commandments and sins, so that the difference between an intermediate person and a wicked or righteous one may be a single commandment to one side or the other. That itself is strange and implausible. Can one commandment or one sin determine a person's fate for death or life?

But the more essential difficulty in his words is that, according to his approach, there can be a person who is completely righteous and overflowing with commandments like a pomegranate, and yet he will be sealed for death on Yom Kippur because he did not repent. Such a situation arises when an intermediate person did not repent during the Ten Days of Repentance, but increased his commandments and good deeds greatly. If such a person were being judged on Rosh Hashanah in his present state, he would certainly be sealed for good life, long life, and peace, for his commandments exceed his sins. But now, a day or two later, he is sealed for death. As though he simply missed the office hours.

This conception of the process of repentance sees it as a technical act whose role is to erase sins and remove them from the scale. By contrast, the conception of Siftei Chaim seems much more essential, touching what passes through the soul and not merely the penitent's technical actions.

Two Modes of Repentance: The Maharal's View

Usually, distinctions between Jewish law and aggadah are attributed to differences of genre. Jewish law is by nature more technical and formal, for it examines matters on the practical plane, as they appear in actuality. Thought and aggadic literature look at the depth, the reasons for things, and their spiritual and psychological roots. But as was explained in the introduction, my claim here is that with respect to repentance we are dealing with two different manifestations of the process of repentance itself, standing side by side. These are not law and its reasons, but two different halakhic and philosophical paths, each of which stands on its own.

The technical repentance, as it is presented in Emek Berakhah, is the small repentance. It is indeed a technical act whose purpose is to erase sins. In His kindness, the Holy One gave us the possibility of erasing sins from the past if we carry out several relatively simple psychological moves. This is the usual halakhic meaning of the concept repentance. This repentance succeeds in erasing sins we committed in the past, and thus upgrades our spiritual standing, from intermediate to righteous. The essential repentance, that of Siftei Chaim, is a psychological revolution. Here we are speaking of an essential transformation of the sinner into a righteous person. He truly is a different person, for his psychological and spiritual inclinations are now different.

Let us now look at these two moves in the Maharal's explanation of the passage about the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy. The Talmud, Rosh Hashanah 17b, explains the first two divine names in the verse of the Thirteen Attributes and writes as follows:

'The Lord, the Lord'—I am He before a person sins, and I am He after a person sins and repents.

It seems that there is here an attribute that is responsible for repentance in the world. That attribute is associated with God's own name. By contrast, in the passage in Shevuot 39a the Talmud explains the attribute ve-nakeh:

But is it not written, 'and He clears, but does not clear'? That phrase is needed for the teaching of Rabbi Elazar, as it was taught: Rabbi Elazar says, it is impossible to say 'He clears,' for it has already said 'does not clear'; and it is impossible to say 'does not clear,' for it has already said 'He clears.' How so? He clears those who repent, and He does not clear those who do not repent.

So the attribute ve-nakeh is also responsible for repentance.

The Maharal, in Netivot Olam, vol. II, Netiv HaTeshuvah, chapter 6, asks why two attributes are needed that are responsible for repentance. In his answer he explains that the attribute of the doubled divine name deals with a person who repented from all his sins, whereas the attribute ve-nakeh deals with one who repented only for some of his sins.

These words are very puzzling. It is not clear why different attributes of the Holy One are needed in order to activate partial repentance and full repentance. If, when I have sinned and I want to repent, I use the attribute ve-nakeh, then I can use it again and again, and thus cleanse all my sins. Why is the attribute of the doubled divine name needed?

This can be understood if we look more carefully at the process of repentance itself. Even at a superficial glance one can see that it is impossible to make full repentance for only one sin. Can there be a situation in which a person fully repents only for having performed the forbidden labor of sorting on the Sabbath, but he has not repented with respect to failures of honoring parents, trapping on the Sabbath, or slander? The thing is inconceivable. A person who truly regrets one sin does not regret only that particular sin, but regrets the very tendency in him to sin, and of course also its concrete realization. The substance of the sin itself is not what matters. What matters is the very fact that he sinned, and that he was capable of transgressing God's will. Regret over a specific sin is regret over the fact of the sin and not over the psychological tendency to sin, and therefore it cannot be full and complete repentance.

The conclusion is that deep and full repentance always concerns all the commandments. Repentance for one sin, or for only part of one's sins, is never full and genuine repentance. So why is it effective at all? That is precisely the novelty of the attribute ve-nakeh, which cleanses for what one repented of and does not cleanse for what one did not repent of (see the passage from Shevuot cited above). The attribute of the doubled divine name cleanses the person completely, since he repented from all his sins.

We can now understand that regret and repentance for only one sin is the small repentance defined above, and its corresponding attribute is ve-nakeh. The Torah introduced the novelty that if a person regretted, resolved for the future, and confessed, in accordance with all the laws of repentance and confession, then that sin for which he repented is forgiven. This is a halakhic procedure for erasing sins. God's kindness lies in the fact that even if a person has not repented completely on the psychological plane, performing this procedure is enough to erase sins that were committed. But it helps only for those sins with respect to which this procedure was carried out, and certainly not for other sins.

However, if a person returns in great repentance, meaning that he regrets the very fact that he could sin, and thereby turns his heart toward the service of the Creator, then he has completely changed his tendency toward sin, and therefore this repentance atones for all his sins together. This is repentance performed through the attribute of the doubled divine name, as above.

In practice, we can now see that there is an entire spectrum of processes of repentance. As we have seen, when a person reflects on and regrets one particular sin, he is dealing only with it, and therefore atonement applies only to it. This is technical work. The more deeply he probes his soul, the more deeply rooted the source of his tendency to sin that he reaches, and there he touches a broader complex of sins. At maximal depth, if there is such a thing, he touches the very tendency to sin, and therefore he acts upon all his sins together.

Does Great Repentance Require the Four Stages of Repentance?

We now see that great repentance does not require all of the above stages of repentance at all. Even without all those stages, a person who has fully repented has all his sins forgiven. Here there is no room for the discussion of whether the stages are indispensable, what their proper order is, and the like. All those halakhic discussions concern only the small, procedural repentance. The great repentance is exempt from all this. We can bring two clear proofs for this:

1. The Talmud in tractate Avodah Zarah 17 tells the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya:

It was said of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya that he did not leave a single prostitute in the world with whom he had not slept. Once he heard of one prostitute in the cities overseas who took a purse of dinars as her fee. He took a purse of dinars and went, crossing seven rivers to reach her. In the midst of the act she passed wind and said: Just as this breath will not return to its place, so Elazar ben Dordaya will not be accepted in repentance. He went and sat between two mountains and hills and said: Mountains and hills, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed.' He said: Heaven and earth, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'For the heavens shall vanish like smoke, and the earth shall wear out like a garment.' He said: Sun and moon, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed.' He said: Stars and constellations, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'And all the host of heaven shall rot away.' He said: The matter depends on no one but me. He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul departed. A heavenly voice came forth and said: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for the life of the world to come. [But here he died in the midst of sin!] There too, since he had become so deeply attached to it, it was like heresy. Rabbi wept and said: There are those who acquire their world in many years, and there are those who acquire their world in a single hour. And Rabbi said: Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called 'Rabbi.'

Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya violated every sin in the world. When he saw his situation, he repented fully and wept until his soul departed. Does anyone think that he went over the list of every sin he had committed, and for each and every one regretted it, abandoned it, resolved for the future, and confessed verbally? Certainly not. If so, how was everything atoned for him, if those stages are indispensable? The explanation is that when a person is inwardly transformed, when he performs full and complete repentance, that is, the great repentance, all those stages are unnecessary.

2. In tractate Kiddushin 49b we find:

'On condition that I am righteous'—even if he is completely wicked, she is betrothed, for perhaps he had a thought of repentance in his mind.

And so too this is ruled by Maimonides in chapter 8 of the Laws of Marriage, halakha 5.

At first glance it is difficult to understand how he becomes completely righteous. Even if he had a thought of repentance in his heart, and even if he fully repented, it is still clear that he did not carry out the whole procedure for each and every sin he committed, and we are speaking of someone completely wicked. Once again we see that one who fully repents truly does not need all those stages.

The explanation of all this is that in great repentance, the state of repentance is a reality and not a legal determination. Here there is no need for the Torah's novelty that sins are erased, nor for a special kindness whereby repentance acts backward in time and changes the past. The reality is that his heart has been transformed, and therefore there is no reason at all to make this depend on confession or other legal details. Everything is forgiven to him even without the formal halakhic conditions of repentance.

This is apparently what the Maharal meant in his words. The repentance of ve-nakeh is the small repentance, which erases the particular sin for which he repented, provided that he fulfilled all the procedures required from the halakhic standpoint. And the repentance of the doubled divine name is the great repentance, which erases in an instant all the sins he bears. This is not an accumulation of many acts of repentance of ve-nakeh, but repentance of an altogether new kind, and therefore a new power and a different attribute among the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy are required for it.

Solving the Earlier Difficulties

We asked above how it is possible that the Holy One closes the gates of repentance. How can it be that according to Emek Berakhah a person who is completely righteous is judged for death, merely because he was late by a day or two? The answer is that if a person truly performs full and complete repentance, which is the repentance described by Siftei Chaim, then a genuine and complete psychological reversal has taken place. In such a case there is no closing of any gate, and this certainly helps always and at every time. Nor does this require any action against the principle of causality, that is, backward in time. But if a person does not perform full repentance, if he does not succeed, or does not wish, to be inwardly transformed, then the Torah opens for him a special possibility of doing small repentance and nevertheless gaining atonement.

But if he proceeds formally, then the requirements are formal as well, and therefore he needs all the details of Jewish law. Here the four halakhic stages are required, and here he must perform his commandments on time, before Rosh Hashanah and not afterward. As stated, all the halakhic and technical discussions concern the repentance of Emek Berakhah, the small repentance. The great repentance of Siftei Chaim is not subject to those formal halakhic rules.

Therefore the arithmetic measurement of a person as intermediate, righteous, or wicked is carried out only if he chooses the formalistic-technical path. In that case the Holy One measures him according to numbers of commandments and sins, and even one sin can turn him into wicked or righteous. But if he chooses the essential path of repentance, there is no such measurement there. There Siftei Chaim is correct that everything is measured according to the totality of the person's soul and spirit.

The conclusion is that the relation between the halakhic discussions on repentance and the contents described regarding it in books of thought is not like the usual relation between Jewish law and aggadah, nor like the relation between Jewish law and its reasons. Here we are dealing with two different paths, not with two levels of the same matter. Jewish law itself recognizes two alternative paths of repentance: a person chooses whether to be on the formalistic-technical path or on the essential path, and God's conduct toward him is in accordance with the path he chooses in his conduct toward God.

The Kindness of God in Repentance

The author of Mesillat Yesharim, at the end of chapter 4, writes:

And if you ask: if so, what place does the attribute of mercy have, if in any case one must scrutinize every matter exactly according to justice? The answer is: certainly the attribute of mercy is the very basis of the world's existence, for without it the world could not stand at all. And nevertheless the attribute of justice is not impaired. For according to the strict line of justice, it would be fitting that the sinner be punished immediately, as soon as he sins, with no delay whatever, and that the punishment itself be in burning wrath, 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 in truth, how can a person repair what he has already distorted, once the sin has already been done? If a man murdered his fellow, or committed adultery, how can he correct such a thing? Can he remove the deed that has already been done from reality?

However, the attribute of mercy grants the opposite of the three things we have mentioned: namely, that time be given to the sinner and that he not be wiped from the earth immediately when he sins; that the punishment itself not continue until utter destruction; and that repentance be granted to sinners in complete kindness, so that the uprooting of the will be considered like the uprooting of the deed. That is, when the penitent recognizes his sin and admits it, reflects on its evil, returns and regrets it with complete remorse, like the regret over a vow—so that he is entirely changed and would desire and yearn that the deed had never been done, and suffers intense pain in his heart that it was done, and abandons it for the future and flees from it—then the uprooting of the thing from his will is regarded for him like the uprooting of a vow, and he gains atonement. This is what Scripture says (Isaiah 6): 'Your iniquity has departed and your sin is atoned for,' meaning that the sin actually departs from reality and is uprooted by the fact that he now grieves and regrets what occurred retroactively. And this is certainly a kindness not required by the strict line of justice…

He explains that retroactively uprooting the deed is a special kindness that goes against the strict line of justice. By strict justice, a deed that has already been done should not be uprooted, and the sinner should be punished for it. The special kindness is that punishment is not immediate, that the Holy One waits for repentance, and that once a person repents of his sin he gains atonement without punishment, at least with respect to punishments from Heaven.

Now in the book Kovetz Ma'amarim, by Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman, in the essay called 'Repentance,' he raises a difficulty against these words of the author of Mesillat Yesharim, from the Talmud in Kiddushin 40b:

Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai says: Even if a person was completely righteous all his days and rebelled at the end, he has lost his former deeds, as it says, 'The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his transgression.' And even if a person was completely wicked all his days and repented at the end, his wickedness is no longer mentioned to him, as it says, 'The wickedness of the wicked shall not cause him to stumble on the day he turns from his wickedness.' But let him be regarded as half sins and half merits! Reish Lakish said: This refers to one who regrets his earlier deeds.

His difficulty is that if indeed the fact that uprooting the will is regarded as uprooting the deed is a special kindness, then how does this also work in the opposite direction? How can it be that the Holy One performs a special act of kindness and turns someone who by strict justice should be intermediate, evenly balanced, into a wicked person beyond the strict line of justice? See also the words of Maimonides cited above, in the beginning of chapter 3, halakha 3, of the Laws of Repentance. We are therefore forced to conclude that uprooting the will is itself regarded by strict justice as uprooting the deed. This is difficult against the above words of Mesillat Yesharim, who wrote that uprooting the will operates as a special kindness beyond the strict line of justice. See there the two answers he proposes, one of them from his teacher the Chafetz Chaim, and both are difficult.[4]

However, according to our approach the explanation seems simple. The small repentance of ve-nakeh erases the sin from the world retroactively. This is the special kindness in repentance that changes and rewrites history. But the great repentance operates as a matter of strict justice, and one who performed it has his sins forgiven and atoned for, without any special kindness at all. This is done by strict justice, because he is now in a sense a new person, and why should we punish him for the sins of his past?

To which of these two kinds of repentance is the return of the righteous person who regrets his earlier deeds and becomes wicked comparable? Clearly it is comparable to the great repentance, for he is not carrying out a formal procedure of regret, but truly regrets his commandments. If so, it is now clear why his good deeds are erased. A genuine psychological reversal turns him into another person, and consequently, by strict justice, the acts of the previous person are not counted against him or for him. This is not kindness toward evil, as Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman asked above. He himself erased them and severed them from himself. This is also the meaning of the contradiction between the words of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto and the Talmud in Kiddushin.

Yet there are many statements of the Sages about the kindness found in repentance, and it is not reasonable to interpret them all as referring only to the small repentance. The words of Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto also do not seem to speak only of the small repentance. The conclusion is that there is special kindness even in the great repentance, and it too operates against the rules. Indeed, in the name of Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner it is brought in Pachad Yitzhak on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that the attribute of God's name is the only one among the Thirteen Attributes that has no other meaning or use in ordinary human conduct. Every attribute, such as merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and so on, also appears in human behavior and in human relationships. We are even commanded to cleave to God's ways and attributes. But the attribute of God's name is a word whose only use is this one. It has no other meaning. Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner explains that this is because repentance is above nature and against the rules. It has no realization or possibility within ordinary rules, only beyond them. This is also proven by the Talmud in Pesachim 54, which counts repentance among the things that preceded the creation of the world. The intention there is apparently to say that repentance is not under the dominion of the laws of this world, and therefore it had to be created before the creation of the world, before the fixed laws began to govern it.

Was all this not said about the great repentance? As we have seen, the repentance associated with God's name, that is, the doubled divine name, is the great repentance. Is that performed entirely in accordance with strict justice? That does not seem reasonable. What, then, is the kindness that exists in the great repentance?

The Kindness in Great Repentance

At the beginning of the book Sha'arei Teshuvah, by Rabbenu Yonah, a parable is brought:

And know that when the sinner delays returning from his sin, his punishment becomes much heavier every day, for he knows that wrath has gone forth against him and that he has a place of refuge to which he can flee, and that refuge is repentance; yet he remains in his rebellion and persists in his evil. It is in his power to escape the overthrow, yet he does not fear the anger and wrath; therefore his evil is great. And our Rabbis of blessed memory said about this matter (Kohelet Rabbah 7:32): This may be compared to a band of robbers whom the king imprisoned in a jail. They dug a tunnel, broke through, and escaped, but one of them remained behind. The chief jailer came and saw the tunnel dug out while that man was still imprisoned, and he struck him with his staff. He said to him: Miserable man! The tunnel is dug open before you—how did you not hurry to save yourself?

From the parable of the tunnel brought here it emerges that the kindness the Holy One did with us lies in giving us the mechanism of repentance, the tunnel. Let us stress that according to the Mesillat Yesharim we saw above, the special kindness is that repentance is accepted, meaning that the sin is forgiven and the act uprooted. By contrast, according to Rabbenu Yonah the special kindness is that it is possible at all to repent. It seems that this is exactly the special kindness that was done with us in the process of the great repentance.

To explain this, let us first cite Maimonides, chapter 2, halakha 1, of the Laws of Repentance, where he writes:

What is complete repentance? It is when the opportunity to commit the same sin comes to him, and he has the ability to do it, yet he separates and does not do it because of repentance—not out of fear, and not because his strength has failed. How so? If a man had illicit relations with a woman, and after some time he is secluded with her, while he still loves her, still has physical strength, and is in the same place where he sinned, yet he refrains and does not transgress—this is complete repentance. This is what Solomon said: 'Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.' But if he repented only in old age, at a time when it is impossible for him to do what he once did, although this is not the finest repentance, it is nevertheless effective for him and he is considered a penitent. Even if he transgressed all his days and repented on the day of his death and died in his repentance, all his sins are forgiven, as it says, 'Before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain'—that is the day of death. From this it follows that if he remembered his Creator and repented before he died, he is forgiven.

Complete repentance is repentance in which the very same person who sinned finds himself in that same situation, and nevertheless does not sin. Why is this the indication of repentance? Because if we truly stand in the same situation and the sin is not committed, this proves that the offender is already a different person.

This is similar to what Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner writes in Pachad Yitzhak on Purim, in explaining why the two goats on Yom Kippur must be alike in height, weight, and value. The reason is that if they were different, we would attribute the difference between the one that goes into the innermost sanctuary and the one that goes to Azazel to differences in the goats' external form. But the Torah wants us to attribute this only to the outcome of the lot, which symbolizes our choice, and not to external characteristics, that is, to our inborn traits. For the same reason, Rabbi Hutner explains, on Purim one must drink until one does not know between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai, so that through the similarity that appears before us we will be able to understand that the difference between them is due to their different choices, and not due to one external sign or another. In Rabbi Yitzhak Hutner's own formulation: the deeper the equivalence, the deeper the distinction. For this reason Maimonides writes here that the penitent must come to the same situation and not sin, for only then is it clear that we are dealing with a new person and not merely with changed circumstances.

And on this Maimonides writes there in halakha 4:

Among the ways of repentance is that the penitent constantly cry out before God with weeping and supplication, give charity according to his ability, greatly distance himself from the matter in which he sinned, change his name—as if to say, 'I am someone else, and not the same person who did those deeds'—change all his actions for the good and onto the straight path, and go into exile from his place, for exile atones for sin because it causes him to be submissive, humble, and lowly of spirit.

Maimonides describes that the penitent must be another person, and not the same person who sinned. This is not a metaphor but a description of a state. Maimonides is not speaking here about ordinary repentance, but about that complete repentance presented in halakha 1. In such repentance the person becomes other, like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who was overturned and became another person, and was immediately atoned for.

And indeed, later in halakha 1 Maimonides speaks about a person who did not manage to repent in his youth and does so in his old age. This is no longer complete repentance, for part of the repentance is not due to the change in the person, but partly also to changed circumstances. But even so, there is a special kindness in that even such repentance, the small repentance, is accepted.

If so, the special kindness that exists in the small repentance is that it is accepted. It is not difficult to perform, and there is a special kindness that sins are forgiven through an almost technical procedure. By contrast, the great repentance is very difficult to perform, as we shall see below. But its acceptance follows from strict justice, not from kindness. The kindness in such repentance is that it can be done at all, that one can carry out such a revolution and become a new person. This is what we do through the attribute represented by God's name, which is an attribute above the rules and laws.

To clarify the difficulty and problematic nature of performing great repentance, we will try to enter somewhat more deeply into the question of psychological reversal and choice.

'Weakness of Will': Is One Really a New Person?

In the natural world every phenomenon has a cause. Every human action also has some cause. An action that has a value-laden dimension is an expression of a person's will and values. A person decides to do it because he believes that this is the right and proper thing to do. If so, a person's action is a result of his choices and values. What happens when a person sins? Seemingly, his values are defective, for otherwise that act too would not have been done. If so, how is it possible at all to repair the situation and repent? Can a person with a given set of values change his values? On the face of it, this seems impossible.

Let us take, as an example, a person who serves God not for its own sake. He performs commandments and refrains from sins in order to receive maximal reward and minimal punishment. This is the principle that guides him in life, and this is his entire scale of values. Now we want to persuade him to serve for its own sake. How can we do that? It seems that there is no way in the world to do such a thing. If we explain to him that one who serves for its own sake is greater, he will reply that he has no desire to be great, but only to receive maximum reward and minimum punishment. Even if we explain to him that this is God's will, he will say that God's will interests him only insofar as it leads him to greater reward and less punishment. The only path left to us is to tell him that one receives more reward by serving for its own sake, and thus cause him to serve for its own sake through his present values. But then there has been no correction at all, since he is still doing so for the sake of reward.[5]

We may now continue and ask: how can he himself persuade himself? Either he really thinks he ought to serve for its own sake, in which case he is already persuaded; or he does not think so, and then why should he begin persuading himself to serve for its own sake? If so, it is not clear how such a psychological and value-laden reversal nevertheless occurs. The Sages tell us that from acting not for its own sake one comes to acting for its own sake. As though it happens by itself.

The only way such a person can correct his ways is if he had always understood that one should serve for its own sake. But then the question is: if he really believed that, why until now did he not act that way? Why until now did he not behave in accordance with his values?[6]

Can we explain that previously he did not believe this and now he does? Even if so, it is not clear how this reversal occurred. Did it happen by itself? If so, then this is not repentance but a random process influenced by blind forces. If not, then apparently he himself did it, but as we have seen that too is impossible. This is a problem similar to what is called in analytic philosophy weakness of will.[7] The problem of weakness of will deals with the question whether it is possible for a person to commit a transgression.

The analytic philosopher Donald Davidson, who dealt with this subject, defined an uncontrolled action as follows: if there are before an agent two possibilities, A and B, both open to him. He also thinks that, as a result of the whole set of his considerations, including inclinations and desires, it is preferable to do B rather than A. If in the end he nevertheless does A, and does it consciously, that is an uncontrolled action.

Now let us add two further assumptions, and we will see that any reasonable person accepts them: a. If a person thinks that it is preferable to do one action rather than another, then he wants to do that action more than the other. b. If a person wants to do action A more than action B, and he also knows that both possibilities are open to him, then if he acts consciously he will do action A.

Davidson's conclusion is that one who accepts these two assumptions must say that there is no possibility at all of performing an uncontrolled action, in the sense defined above. In other words, a person always acts in accordance with his desires and values, unless he is compelled to do otherwise.

By way of illustration, if a person decided to eat something harmful to his health, or something fattening, this would be an uncontrolled action if he could have eaten something healthier, if he thinks that it is preferable to eat healthier foods than unhealthy ones, and if he nevertheless ate it consciously. According to the above assumptions, such an action cannot exist. By the same token, a person who believes in Torah values cannot commit transgressions except perhaps under coercion.

The initial inclination is to describe sin by saying that the sinner yielded to his impulse. This is what is called weakness of will. His will was too weak, and therefore he did not act in accordance with his values and desires. But this explains nothing. What he calls impulse is apparently his real desire. As said, a person always acts on the basis of his desires and values. Therefore that person probably prefers the immediate gratification of desire over long-term slimness. That is his system of values, and he acted accordingly. If so, there is no escaping the conclusion that a person acts in accordance with his value system, and uncontrolled actions do not exist.

The unavoidable conclusion from this is that if we believe in free choice and in the possibility of changing our values, we must accept the possibility that a person can change his values. As we saw above, the small repentance is not bound up with introspection into the soul, but with a series of technical acts. But the deeper a person enters into his soul, toward more and more foundational values, and perhaps when he addresses his very tendency to act not in accordance with his values, his weakness of will, which is on a plane even prior to values, he touches a more fundamental root of the sin and thus comes closer to great repentance.

At the deepest root lies the very fact of being a choosing human being. Usually sin does not stem from the fact that a person chooses incorrect values, but from the fact that he chooses not to choose. This is not necessarily a flaw in the value system; in a certain sense it is a flaw that lies even deeper, beneath our most basic value system. It is the very will to be a person who chooses. A sinner is someone who is dragged along and does not choose.

How does one repent from such a state? How does one begin to choose, and how does one change one's values to the correct values so that one will not sin again? As we have seen, this process is not intelligible. Let us now formulate the difficulty in a different way: if he himself does it, then it is paradoxical, because he changes himself. If he already believes in the new values, then he has nothing to change; and if he does not believe in them, why should he change his beliefs? The other possibility is that it is done from outside, meaning that someone outside does it for him, namely the Holy One. But then this is not an act of repentance. If something or someone else changes me, this is not an action of repentance, which is supposed to be an action of the penitent himself.

On the one hand, great repentance requires a fundamental change in the value system, or in the willingness to act in accordance with it. On the other hand, the conclusion is that such processes, unlike procedural-technical repentance, are paradoxical and impossible. A person cannot change himself and become another person by his own power.

On the other hand, the fact is that people do repent. They do become different people, that is, people with a different scale of values. This is what Maimonides meant in the passage cited above, when he describes what complete repentance is, and expresses it by saying that the person becomes other. He changed something very fundamental in his soul, in his values, or in his very being as one who chooses.

It seems that this is what is described in the Avodah Zarah passage concerning Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. He wanted to perform an act of essential repentance, that is, a full psychological reversal. He wanted to become another person, but the matter seemed impossible to him. The Sages' description sharpens this point with very great literary power:

He went and sat between two mountains and hills and said: Mountains and hills, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed.' He said: Heaven and earth, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'For the heavens shall vanish like smoke, and the earth shall wear out like a garment.' He said: Sun and moon, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed.' He said: Stars and constellations, ask for mercy on my behalf. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy on your behalf, let us ask for mercy on our own behalf, as it is said, 'And all the host of heaven shall rot away.' He said: The matter depends on no one but me. He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul departed.

What is the meaning of the appeal to the mountains and hills, and to the heavenly bodies? There is here a description of helplessness. A person tries to transform himself by himself and does not succeed. In despair he seeks some external factor, even an inanimate one, to do it for him, but he is answered in the negative. In the end he concludes that the matter depends only on him, and then an immediate reversal occurs. He becomes another person, and his soul departs. Therefore Rabbi determines that he acquired his world in a single hour. It is an immediate reversal from black to white, a kind of impossible repentance, but as a result of it he is another person. All his sins were atoned for, because in great repentance this happens immediately, with no need at all for a halakhic procedure. As we have seen, this is another person, and therefore there is no reason to punish him for his previous sins.

Returning to the Kindness in Great Repentance

This is the essential problem bound up with the great repentance, that is, with a psychological reversal. To change a pattern of behavior one must change the values that guide and determine that behavior. One must turn him into another person, and without that there is no great repentance. Yet apparently, according to the ordinary rules, there is no way to do this. A person cannot change his own system of rules by himself, exactly as in the example above of one who serves for its own sake. The great repentance cannot be done by us, nor by the Holy One, and therefore it seemingly is impossible altogether. It may perhaps happen by itself, but then it has no value. This is the rabbinic description that from acting not for its own sake one comes to acting for its own sake. As though one came to it by oneself.

And yet, such repentance can indeed be done. Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya taught us that this is possible. That is why he is called Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, for he was our teacher in this matter. He taught us that such an act is possible.

How, then, can one truly circumvent the essential difficulty involved in such a psychological process? As we have seen, the focal point of the problem is that this change cannot be made from within, that is, by oneself, for that is paradoxical; nor from without, that is, by the Holy One, for then it lacks value. The only way to describe such a process is to give up the assumption that the Holy One and we are two wholly separate entities. Those two possibilities are not really two separate and opposing poles. An act of essential repentance is performed by some kind of combination of Him with us. If so, in order to accept the possibility of such a reversal, we must relinquish the sharp distinction between the Holy One and ourselves, or at least blur the boundary line between us and Him. Something of Him, a kind of divine spark, is present within us, and that is what enables us to reverse ourselves, and in fact to choose.

It seems that this is what the author of Leshem means in his book Hakdamot u-She'arim, gate 3, at the end of chapter 2, where he writes:

However, know that although we said that the parts of the soul-form clothed in the body are three, and that three vessels were established for them in the body—the brain, the heart, and the liver—which are the dwelling place and abode of those levels, as stated above, the truth is that the principal levels actually clothed in the body are only two: the lower soul and the spirit. These are the levels clothed in the brain, heart, and liver. But the all-encompassing higher soul is not clothed in the brain except only at its very lowest extremity, for man's essential level is only the lower soul and spirit, etc. But the higher soul has no correspondence with the body at all except only at its lowest point, and only through that does it become clothed in it, etc., in order to elevate and enlarge him through it and beyond his own level; and through that all-encompassing higher soul a person is bound upward to the highest heights, etc. And at the beginning of chapter 3 there he continues and writes as follows: behold, the all-encompassing spirit and lower soul are created, formed, and made, and are not divine at all; but the all-encompassing higher soul, the living essence, and the singular essence—these three are entirely divine, even in the worlds of creation, formation, and action; for even in the world of action, from the all-encompassing higher soul and upward, all is complete divinity, etc. See there where he elaborates at length.

This is the special kindness the Holy One did with us in great repentance: He gave us the very possibility of performing it, through some divine spark from Himself that was placed within us.

In this way we were given the ability to change our value-system, and in fact also to choose it. The choice of primary values is itself exposed to the very same philosophical problem we described above, for here too one can ask how we choose such a system. According to what principles? And if there are such principles, how do we choose those principles themselves? If so, in fact this kindness is the granting of the ability to make free choice at all.

With this we can understand what we find in the petitions of Avinu Malkeinu, one request that stands out from all the others:

Our Father, our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You.

All the other petitions are requests concerning material and spiritual needs, or requests for pardon and forgiveness. In such requests there is no difficulty in asking that the Holy One do them for us. But here there is a request that the Holy One, as it were, perform repentance in our place, and the question is what value such repentance could have, for we are the ones required to repent. The same is true in the weekday Amidah, in the blessing Return Us, where again we ask the Holy One to bring us back in repentance before Him. The basis of the matter is that one cannot perform great repentance without help from the Holy One, as we have seen. He too participates in the making of repentance itself. What we ask of Him is that He help us transform ourselves.

It seems that for this reason Maimonides discusses matters of free choice specifically in the Laws of Repentance, see chapters 5 and 6. On the simple level, every commandment involves choice. Grace after Meals, or the putting on of phylacteries, also involves an element of choice. If so, why did Maimonides decide to place the discussion of free choice specifically in the Laws of Repentance?

According to what we have said here, it is clear that the foundation of repentance is choice itself. In every commandment or sin there is a choice whether to do or not to do some act. In the act of repentance, and especially in the great repentance of the doubled divine name, there is a choice of the choosing mechanism itself, not a choice to perform some act. This is a choice to be one who chooses and a choice of what to choose. Therefore the proper place for the discussion of matters of choice is specifically in the Laws of Repentance. Repentance is our restoration as a choosing entity.

 

The Commandment of Repentance

The apparent contradiction in Maimonides' words concerning the commandment of repentance is well known. In the enumeration of the commandments before the Laws of Repentance he writes:

There is one positive commandment: that the sinner return from his sin before the Lord and confess.

This implies that there is a commandment to repent and a commandment to confess, these being two details within one counted commandment. But in halakha 1 there he writes:

When he repents and turns from his sin, he is obligated to confess.

So too is his language in Sefer HaMitzvot, positive commandment 73. From here it appears that the commandment is that when he repents of his sin he should confess, that is, there is no commandment to repent, but rather that if he repents he must confess. Confession is a conditional commandment, not an absolute one. Repentance itself is not a commandment at all. This was already noted by the Minchat Chinukh, commandment 364.

According to our way here, it seems that one cannot command the doing of repentance. The commandment is to return to being a person who chooses, and therefore one cannot command such a thing. In the other commandments we are commanded to do this or that. But in the commandment of great repentance we are commanded to be choosing beings. Can one command someone to be a choosing being? If he is not choosing, this commandment is irrelevant to him. He is supposed to choose to be one who chooses, and not to do so merely as one who carries out a command.

Between the Two Paths of Repentance

How, then, can one nevertheless perform the great repentance? How can one choose values? How can one decide to be one who chooses? How, in practice, is this reversal carried out, and what part of it lies upon us?

To understand this, let us preface by saying that the dichotomous description of the two paths of repentance does not provide the full picture. Each of us uses both paths together. We saw that Maimonides in chapter 2 speaks about complete repentance, even though in chapter 3 his words seem to deal with the technical-halakhic process that we have here called the small repentance. In chapter 3 he describes the righteous, the intermediate, and the wicked in technical terms, and refers to a technical repentance that turns the intermediate person into a righteous one in a technical sense. But in chapter 2 he hints to us about the great repentance, which turns the person into someone else. These are two different paths, both of which appear in Maimonides' Laws of Repentance. But not only do these two paths not contradict one another; they actually combine with one another.

If so, every person stands somewhere in the middle of the road between these two processes of repentance. In order to become a penitent, we must begin with the procedural-technical repentance, that is, according to the four stages, and apply them to one specific sin. One must choose a particular sin, confess it verbally, resolve concerning the future, and within the framework of regret one must reflect on that sin and on the psychological causes that led one to fail in it. In this way we can see why we fail more generally with respect to sins. From there we can try to deepen our repentance, and to reach deeper into our soul, until we arrive at the great repentance, which by its very nature touches all sins together.

The process, then, is a progression from the small repentance to the great one. If we try to arrive directly at the great repentance, we will feel that same helplessness described in the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. The psychological revolution itself probably has to occur by itself, as though without us, like the dictum that from acting not for its own sake one comes to acting for its own sake. We are only meant to prepare the ground and to desire it, and the Holy One, who is our partner in this matter, promises to take part and complete the performance.

Our Father, our King, return us to complete repentance before You.

[1] See the book Le-Teshuvat HaShanah on Maimonides' Laws of Repentance, here.

[2] These remarks are puzzling in light of Maimonides' position in Sefer HaMitzvot, where it is clear that there is no commandment at all to repent. See on this at the end of the article.

[3] From his words it emerges that the intermediate person is someone without sins, but who still possesses an evil inclination that he overcomes. By contrast, the righteous person is one who has already completely slaughtered his evil inclination. This extreme approach does not concern us here.

[4] One of my students noted here that the two cases are not similar. In the case of liability, a person has no ability to erase his debts, whereas he certainly can erase his merits. By way of example, someone who comes to the bank and asks to erase the entire positive balance accumulated there in his favor can obviously do so. This is not a kindness the bank does for him; as a matter of strict right, it is so. But erasing a debit balance in the bank is not in his power as a matter of strict right. A person cannot come to the bank and propose that he waive the overdraft in his account. Therefore waiver regarding sins is an act of kindness, but waiver regarding commandments follows strict right. In this way Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman's difficulty is nicely resolved.

Even so, the matter still requires discussion. If we were speaking about the reward or punishment due to a person, there would indeed be room to compare it to a bank balance. But erasing the sin itself or the commandment itself is a rewriting of history, and that cannot be done as a matter of strict right. In other words, when a positive balance is removed, this is not erasure but the transfer of the balance as a gift to the bank. But to erase the money in the account from the world altogether is certainly impossible, and this is not the place to elaborate.

[5] This is the turkey-prince story, the hindik, of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. See my book Enosh KeChatzir, in the second Hasidic intermezzo. Another example is the story of Adam HaKohen, one of the maskilim of Eastern Europe, who planned to repent on his deathbed only in order to refute the rabbinic saying that even the wicked at the entrance to Gehinnom do not repent. Can such an act at all be considered an act of repentance?

[6] See my above-mentioned book, there and around it, for a broad explanation of this matter.

[7] See my above-mentioned book.