The Dependence of Spiritual Judgment on Time (Column 187)
With God's help
On one of the recent Sabbaths we studied a passage from Ein Ayah that prompted several reflections in me. I present them here, and leave it to you to decide whether this is merely pilpul, or whether there is nevertheless something to it.
The Meaning of Spiritual Decline
The Talmud in Berakhot 6b states:
Whoever regularly comes to the synagogue, and one day does not come, the Holy One, blessed be He, inquires about him..
That is: the Holy One, blessed be He, asks about him—where is he?
On this, Rabbi Kook writes in Ein Ayah there (sec. 53):
The comment encompasses all the paths of perfection that a person—whether the community or the individual—upholds. Once they have risen to the level of moral perfection, they must strive greatly not to fall from their level and not to lose their cherished acquisition. For anything that has already been actualized into its perfected state, when it falls back, becomes more deficient than one who never acquired that thing at all. This is the basis of good customs that require annulment. And with regard to the community, a good custom is very weighty, because when a moral acquisition declines, it causes a greater deficiency than if it had been absent from the outset; and one must reflect even more on the principle that in matters of holiness we ascend and do not descend. Therefore, a person who has already stood at a higher level in the service of God should never descend from it. And if he slackens, the hand of providence is extended to awaken him, by sending him discipline, for "whom the Lord loves He rebukes," until he returns once again to his former strength. For providence is exceedingly concerned with a person's acquisition of perfection, since he is the center of all creation. And as we explained in the previous essay, therefore one who regularly comes to the synagogue and on one day does not come—the Holy One, blessed be He, inquires about him. He brings about circumstances that will cause him to be questioned himself, because he ought to have trusted in the name of God. And the foundation of the name of God is the confidence that providential governance helps one acquire true perfection, which is to resemble His ways, may He be blessed, for His mode of governance is the secret of His great name, exalted be He..
He seems to assume here that coming to the synagogue is not obligatory (and that is also what seems to emerge from the Talmud and the halakhic decisors). Nevertheless, if someone had been accustomed to coming and on one day did not come, the Holy One, blessed be He, sees this as a descent from a level he had attained. In the background lies the difficulty: if there is no obligation, and therefore there is no claim against one who never comes to synagogue at all, why is it that when someone misses a single day the Holy One, blessed be He, asks after him? Seemingly his condition is better than that of one who never comes at all. He therefore explains that a person who attained some level and then fell from it is worse off than one who never attained it in the first place—one who is not at all accustomed to coming to the synagogue.
By means of this reasoning he also explains the rule that a good custom requires release, like a vow. As is well known, some halakhic decisors[1] write that when a person has adopted a good custom it is regarded as a vow and requires release. Rabbi Kook apparently sees here a difficulty similar to the one we saw above: how can we come with a complaint against someone who had practiced a good custom and stopped, more than against someone who never practiced it at all? Seemingly the second is certainly worse. He therefore explains that a person who reached the level of observing those good customs and then descends from it is in a worse state than someone else who never reached it at all, and therefore it is specifically from him that we demand that he continue his custom, unless he has been granted release from it.
A Note on the Explanation of Release from a Good Custom
However, this explanation itself is open to discussion. As a matter of law, release is required for a vow that was articulated verbally; explicit verbal formulation is required. We must therefore ask whether a person who practices a good custom is regarded as though he had vowed it verbally or not. If so, then it requires release independently of the rationale that descending from a level is more serious than remaining at a lower level. But if it is not like a verbal vow, then it is not clear how the reasoning that descent from a level is more serious than remaining at the lower level turns this into a vow that requires release. Even if we wish to say that descending from a level is more serious, how does it follow that release is required for that, and that the category of release applies there at all?
It therefore seems that his intention is to say that release from a good custom is not governed by the law of release of vows. Rather, this is merely a rabbinic rule meant to make it difficult for a person to descend from a level he has attained. In essence, we do not require release from him; rather, we require him to continue holding fast to that level (to keep the vow). But because this is a non-obligatory level, we also want to give him some possibility of stopping if need be—even if only so as not to deter people from trying to attain higher levels that would 'trap' them—and therefore we allow him to stop if they grant him release from the matter. According to this, that release is not release of vows proper, but merely a condition meant to ease matters for a person who has nevertheless decided to descend from a level that is not obligatory. This is a novelty in the laws governing the binding force of a good custom (which, on our approach, is not based on the law of vows at all). But this still requires further reflection.
The Importance of Process[2]
The Talmud in Berakhot 34b brings a dispute:
Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yoḥanan: All the prophets prophesied only regarding penitents, but as for the completely righteous—"No eye has seen, O God, but You." And this disagrees with Rabbi Abbahu, for Rabbi Abbahu said: In the place where penitents stand, the completely righteous do not stand, as it is said: "Peace, peace, to the far and to the near"—to the far first, and only afterward to the near. And Rabbi Yoḥanan could say to you: What is "far"? One who was far from transgression from the outset. And what is "near"? One who was near to transgression and then distanced himself from it.
Rabbi Yohanan holds that a perfectly righteous person is preferable to a penitent, and that is indeed the intuitive position. But Rabbi Abbahu holds that a penitent is preferable to a perfectly righteous person. In Column 170 I discussed the fact that Rabbi Abbahu's words are, seemingly, puzzling. Even if the penitent undergoes a perfect process of repentance and is completely purified, at most he becomes a perfectly righteous person. How then can a penitent be superior to a perfectly righteous person? How can there even be a level above the perfectly righteous? Is not the perfectly righteous person the highest level there is?
I explained there that Rabbi Abbahu apparently assumes that measuring a person's level is not based only on his present state but also on the processes he has undergone. The fully perfected penitent is now in the state of a perfectly righteous person (for in truth there is no higher state). But when he is judged, the path he traversed is also taken into account; the very fact that he improved is itself an additional virtue, and in this respect he is superior to the righteous person. That means that improvement, or self-perfection, is a virtue in itself, and not merely a means of arriving at a more complete state. Once self-perfection is viewed that way, one can understand why a penitent is preferable to a perfectly righteous person, because he also possesses the virtue of improvement.
Back to Rabbi Kook
In light of that conclusion, one can understand Rabbi Kook's words cited above in that very context. His claim is that this is the case not only in ascent to a higher level, but also when a person descends from his level. Just as being in a high state after having been in a low state is a greater virtue than constant residence in the high state, so too being in a low state is less bad than being in that same state after having been in a higher one and having deteriorated. Here too the assumption is that deterioration is a deficiency in and of itself (and not only because it brings us to a lower state). The process takes part in the judgment of the person, whether upward or downward.
A Note from Another Midrash
Interestingly, in Otzar HaMidrashim (Eisenstein), Pesikta, p. 497, they bring that same dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Rabbi Abbahu regarding the penitent, and immediately afterward add:
Rabbi Shimon bar Yoḥai says: Even if one 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" (Ezekiel 33). And even if one was completely wicked all his life and repented at the end, his former wickedness is not mentioned against him, as it is said: "And the wickedness of the wicked shall not cause him to stumble on the day he turns from his wickedness" (ibid.).
The midrash broadens the picture and points to a symmetry between ascent and descent. After we saw that the process a person undergoes upgrades his final state, we are now told that it also erases his past. That is, a person does not carry on his back his static history—that is, the states in which he was—but only the processes he underwent.
Interim Summary
In my article on Zeno's Arrow and in Column 170, I discussed the importance and intrinsic significance of process beyond the states between which it passes. I defined the process of repentance in this way, and there too we saw Rav Kook's question of perfection and self-perfection, and the significance of the answer he offers regarding the idea that divine service serves a higher need (see also the note here). I will not go back into all of that here.
If we apply this here, we describe a person's static spiritual state at time t by means of a function X(t). This function describes all his virtues and deficiencies at that moment. Our usual tendency is to base the judgment of a person at time t on his present state, that is, to see the function X as his spiritual state. The meaning of this assumption is that the system has no 'memory'; in other words, the judgment depends only on the values of the variables at time t, and not on any earlier time. The novelty here is that spiritual judgment is not like that, that is, it contains a memory component. If we denote his full spiritual state by Y(t), then Y depends not only on X at that time, but on the whole function X. In the simplest form one might perhaps write something like: Yn+1=Xn+1+a(xn+1-xn) (where a is of course a positive constant). X is determined on the basis of a person's choices and spiritual labor, but once it is determined, X determines Y uniquely.
In mathematics one speaks of Markovian processes (named after Andrey Markov), in which each decision is made on the basis of the present state and the immediately preceding step, whereas non-Markovian decisions also take earlier stages into account. In this language one can say that the judgment of a person's spiritual condition is not necessarily Markovian. The past too plays a role in it.[3]
where he is
Thus far we have dealt with the past. What about spiritual states in the future? When Abraham sends Ishmael into the wilderness, Hagar sets him down and weeps, and then:
And God heard the voice of the lad, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her: What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.
The Talmud in Rosh Hashanah 16b establishes, in light of those verses, the rule:
Rabbi Yitzḥak said: A person is judged only according to his deeds at that moment, as it is said: "For God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.".
The background to these words is a midrash in Bereishit Rabbah 53:14 (cited here by Rashi):
Rabbi Simon said: The ministering angels leapt forward to accuse him. They said before Him: Master of the universe, for a person whose descendants are destined to kill Your children by thirst, You bring up a well? He said to them: What is he now—righteous or wicked? They said to Him: Righteous. He said to them: I judge a person only according to his present hour..
That is, although it was known that Ishmael would cause Israel trouble in the future, the Holy One, blessed be He, hears his prayer when it is uttered and takes account not of the future but only of the present.
Does this principle contradict the character of spiritual judgment as described above? It seems to me not. First, we should note that what is at issue here is the future, not the past. Second, the claim is that the past changes a person's condition in the present, since that condition is also determined by the path he has taken. Hence in the end the person is judged according to what he is now, except that what he is now is also determined by the path he took. But what he will do in the future certainly does not determine what he is now (at most it is inferred from what he is now). And third, a person has free choice, and therefore one cannot predict with certainty what will happen to him in the future. Hence there is no justification whatever for taking the future into account when judging him.
More on Judgments Based on the Future
The Talmud in Berakhot 10a relates:
Rav Hamnuna said: What is the meaning of that which is written, "Who is like the wise man, and who knows the interpretation of a thing"? Who is like the Holy One, blessed be He, who knows how to make peace between two righteous men, between Hezekiah and Isaiah. Hezekiah said: Let Isaiah come to me, for so we find with Elijah, who went to Ahab, as it is said: "And Elijah went to appear before Ahab." Isaiah said: Let Hezekiah come to me, for so we find with Jehoram son of Ahab, who went to Elisha. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do? He brought suffering upon Hezekiah and said to Isaiah: Go visit the sick man, as it is said: "In those days Hezekiah became mortally ill, and Isaiah son of Amoz the prophet came to him and said to him: Thus said the Lord: Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live," etc. What is the meaning of "you shall die and not live"? You shall die in this world and not live in the World to Come. He said to him: Why all this? He said to him: Because you did not engage in procreation. He said to him: Because I saw through the holy spirit that children unworthy would come from me. He said to him: What have you to do with the hidden matters of the Merciful One? What you were commanded, you should have done, and what is pleasing before the Holy One, blessed be He, let Him do..
Hezekiah wanted to refrain from procreation because he saw through divine inspiration that an evil son would come from him. Isaiah tells him that he should not enter into the hidden calculations of the Holy One, blessed be He, and that he must do what is incumbent upon him. Decisions should be made in light of the data of the present, not in light of the future.
One could understand the significance of Isaiah's words in two ways: 1. He disagrees with Hezekiah's determinism. Every person has free choice, and therefore Hezekiah cannot already now despair of the spiritual state of his future son and refrain from procreation. 2. He gives Hezekiah a different directive for conduct. A person is not supposed to make metaphysical calculations; he must observe Jewish law as he has been commanded. That is, Hezekiah's forecast was correct, and nonetheless he ought to have engaged in procreation.
The continuation of the story reveals a surprising turn:
He said to him: Then now, give me your daughter; perhaps my merit and your merit together will cause worthy children to come forth from me. He said to him: The decree has already been decreed against you. He said to him: Son of Amoz, finish your prophecy and leave. Thus have I received from my father's father's house: Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person's neck, he should not withhold himself from mercy. It was also stated: Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Elazar both said: Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person's neck, he should not withhold himself from mercy, as it is said: "Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him."…
Here Hezekiah actually expresses an outlook willing to accept the possibility that the future may not be as he foresaw it (option 1 above). Isaiah apparently does not accept that outlook, since he argues that the decree has already been issued. But the commentators explain that he is speaking not about Manasseh, Hezekiah's son, but about the decree that Hezekiah will die. The continuation of the Talmud deals with the principle that a person must not despair of mercy, and perhaps this refers to both aspects: not only was Manasseh's fate not fixed in advance, but even Hezekiah's death was subject to change.
At any rate, what emerges from here is that a person ought not make decisions and judgments on the basis of the future, but that is probably because the future is not fixed. A person has free choice and his fate can change. Therefore it seems that all this does not touch our discussion, since the past is not like the future.
However, we do find a rabbinic midrash that points the other way, regarding Moses our teacher. When he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, he killed him and hid him in the sand. Rashi there cites the midrash (Exodus 2:12):
And he saw that there was no man—that no descendant would come from him who would convert.
Here it would seem that he judges the Egyptian in light of his future.
Several commentators raised a difficulty from the case of the rebellious son, for the Mishnah in Sanhedrin says that he is judged on account of his end. The Tosafists on the Torah there, and Maharsha on Rosh Hashanah there, wrote that the rebellious son is judged on account of his own future deeds, whereas with Ishmael (and likewise Hezekiah) the discussion concerned the deeds of their descendants. A person's later deeds are an expression of something that already exists within him now. One can say that he is judged on account of the present, while the future is only an indication of his present state. In that sense there is here a kind of non-Markovian judgment, as we saw above.
And there is a clear proof of this from the case of Moses our teacher. The midrash states that he saw that no son who would convert was destined to come from him. This is, at first glance, very puzzling, for obviously no son who would convert would come from him, since Moses is about to kill him in another moment. I too could have predicted that future. Necessarily, Moses was not really looking into the future; rather, he was probing his present more deeply. He saw that even if he were to remain alive, nothing good would come from him, and therefore he killed him. If so, it is clear that the future here served only as a tool for examining the present, and not as an independent criterion of judgment.
Another possible explanation is that both the rebellious son and the striking Egyptian were already wicked now, and they were judged for their present state. The future could at most serve as a consideration for remitting their sentence. Thus Moses judged the Egyptian liable to death because of his deed, but the future could have led him to spare the Egyptian and not kill him. When Moses saw that the Egyptian's future held no good things, he decided to carry out his death sentence.
The Meaning of This Picture
Even if we accept that judgments are not made on the basis of the future, there is no asymmetry here with respect to the past. One should note that even with respect to the past, what affects the current evaluation is not the previous states themselves but the change—the current derivative. The values of X at previous times do not participate in the current determination. But this is true of the future as well. What we dealt with here was not the current change, but the future state itself, and that apparently does not affect the present.
We have seen that what determines the relation to a person at a given moment is only his current state and the change. Earlier and later moments as such play no role in this. This means that there is something to the intuition that the past is gone and the future not yet, and only the present determines. Except that here the novelty is that what determines in the present is the state and its derivative. But the state at earlier and later moments does not participate in the matter. This is not really a process with memory.
Another Look at the Value of Self-Perfection
One may wonder why the judgment of a person in the present depends on the processes he has undergone and not only on his current state. Why is a penitent preferable to a perfectly righteous person? Why does the path he has traversed matter as well? There is a tendency to think that this is because of the effort required of him in order to improve.
This itself can be understood in two ways: 1. This consideration says nothing about his spiritual state, but entitles him to greater reward for that same spiritual state—a recompense for the effort. 2. The process of change itself reflects being in a higher spiritual state. Change has spiritual value, and that is expressed in the evaluation of the spiritual state itself.
Option 1 does not sound plausible to me, because there are certainly cases in which a perfectly righteous person invests no less effort in remaining constantly at his level and not descending. The fact that, unlike the penitent who sinned, he succeeded in that should not diminish the recompense due him. All the more so, that effort should not gain the penitent greater esteem from us, for such effort exists in the perfectly righteous person as well.
The conclusion, then, is that change is not an indication of something outside itself. It has value in its own right. On the site I was asked here where Rav Kook gets the assumption that a complete being that cannot perfect itself is deficient. The inability to perfect itself follows from its perfection, and therefore it is not clear why Rav Kook assumes that there is a deficiency here. My claim is that even in the theological context, if self-perfection as such is not a virtue with respect to God, there must still be found in Him the quality of self-perfection in order to enable us to perfect ourselves (assuming that everything that exists and occurs in our world is rooted in something within the divine). Now I am making the opposite claim: the fact that a person perfects himself does not necessarily make him more complete in himself. But that self-perfection is the fulfillment of his role in the world—to bring the divine potential for self-perfection from potency to actuality—and therefore it has value in its own right, even if it does not express a spiritual virtue in the person.
Therefore the perfectly righteous person who does not perfect himself is lacking. Not because his level is flawed, and not because no effort is required of him, but simply because something is missing in him that belongs to our primary role in the world—to actualize the divine potential for self-perfection. The Torah was not given to the ministering angels, and it does not want us to be ministering angels either. It wants us to be walking among those who stand—those who walk among 'those who stand' (=the angels).
From this it again follows that the path a person has gone through and will go through is not important in itself. What matters here is not that he was in this or that state in the past (the values of the function X). What matters is that he changed (the derivative of X). Being in other states in the past or future is only an indication that change occurred. In my aforementioned article on Zeno's Arrow I distinguished between these two more precisely, and showed that changing states is not a synonymous expression for processes of change (for example, speed is not change of place).
I will sin and repent
This picture casts an interesting light on the Mishnah in Yoma 85b:
If one says: I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent—they do not enable him to repent..
And in the Talmud there, 87a:
If one says: I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent—why does it say, "I will sin and repent" twice? This is in accordance with Rav Huna, who said in the name of Rav, for Rav Huna said in the name of Rav: once a person has committed a transgression and repeated it, it becomes permitted to him. Could it really enter your mind that it becomes permitted to him? Rather, it becomes to him as though permitted..
One could read this point in the Talmud as a further nuance. In the Mishnah we found that from Heaven he is not given the opportunity to repent. The Talmud's elaboration says that if he repeats his sin again and again, then by the natural course of things he will not repent, because it will come to seem permitted to him.
But Rashi there writes:
In accordance with Rav Huna—that once he has sinned twice, they no longer enable him to repent, because the transgression appears to him as something permitted..
He seems to mean that this itself is the Mishnah's intention in saying that he is not given the opportunity to repent. The meaning is not that Heaven will hinder him, but that in the natural course of things, if he repeats the sin, it will come to seem permitted to him.
Two things emerge from this:
- In fact, if he were to sin and then repent, that would be effective. The whole problem is that it will come to seem permitted to him, and then there is reason to fear that in practice he will not repent.
- If he sins once in order to repent, and does not keep repeating the sin, then perhaps there really is value in doing so. In such a case it will not seem permitted to him, and then there is no reason that he should not repent.
Why should Heaven not hinder a person who sins intentionally? Perhaps because I will sin and repent is in fact perfect service of God, for this is a person who is in a process of spiritual movement. Only if he repeats and reiterates until it becomes like something permitted to him is there danger, and that is forbidden. I will sin and repent is not merely a permission. It is a thought driven by a desire to serve God in a more complete way, to be a penitent who is preferable to a perfectly righteous person.[4] There is here an aspect of a transgression for the sake of Heaven.
Beyond the pilpul itself, perhaps this can also help us understand what Maimonides wrote in the Laws of Repentance 2:1:
What is complete repentance? It is when a person is confronted with the very matter in which he sinned, and it is within his power to do it, yet he refrains and does not do it because of repentance—not out of fear, nor because his strength has failed. How so? For example, if he had illicit relations with a woman, and after some time he is secluded with her again, while he still loves her, still possesses physical vigor, and is in the same place where he sinned, yet he withdraws and does not transgress—this is a complete penitent. This is what Solomon said: "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." And if he repented only in his old age, at a time when he can no longer do what he once did, although this is not the highest form of repentance, it still benefits him, and he is a penitent. Even if he sinned all his days, and repented on the day of his death and died in repentance, all his sins are forgiven, as it is said: "Before the sun, the light, the moon, and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain"—that is the day of death. This implies that if he remembered his Creator and repented before he died, he is forgiven..
The Sefat Emet on the Talmud there wondered that Maimonides' formulation apparently implies that a person is supposed to place himself in such a situation from the outset as part of the process of repentance. Perhaps Maimonides really means that if a person has stumbled in some sin and repented, he may—and perhaps it is even desirable that he—place himself in a similar situation in order to verify that his repentance is indeed complete.[5] This itself is a kind of I will sin and repent (although it is not entirely clear whether there is an actual sin here)[6], and in essence it is a transgression for the sake of Heaven.
It is interesting to consider the source of these words in the Talmud, Yoma 86b, where we find a slightly different version:
What is the case of a true penitent? Rav Yehuda said: For example, when an opportunity for the same transgression comes to his hand a first and a second time, and he is saved from it. Rav Yehuda indicated: with the same woman, at the same stage of life, in the same place..
The Kesef Mishneh, the Lehem Mishneh and other commentaries note that Maimonides did not have the reading 'the first and second time.' In light of what we have said here, the explanation of his view is that indeed one may place oneself in the path of sin once in order to repent, but not repeat the sin. See also Ma'aseh Rokeach on Maimonides there.
In light of what we have said here, one can say that what permits a person to place himself in such a situation is not only that it helps him repent and verifies that the repentance is complete, but because here a person may say I will sin and repent. We have seen that being in motion is an end in itself, and here one may do so in practice. But in fact these matters still require careful study.
[1] These matters are disputed. See the Shulhan Arukh Yoreh De'ah, at the beginning of sec. 214, and the commentaries there, and at length in Hevel Nahalato, vol. 8, sec. 28. The common assumption that this concerns a custom practiced specifically three times has no source there.
[2] See on this Column 170, which will be mentioned again below.
[3] I wrote 'not necessarily,' because perhaps it is Markovian after all, if the judgment depends only on the previous step and not on those before it. In the terminology of continuous time, we would say that the person's state at moment t depends on the values of X and its first derivative at that moment, and not on the values of X at earlier times (or on higher derivatives).
One may now ask whether it is possible to write a difference equation (or a differential equation in continuous time) that describes the change of X, such that its solution, which gives us X(t), completely determines Y; or whether Y also depends on its own change (that is, improvement in Y, which apparently reflects higher derivatives of X, also affects Y), in which case one must formulate an additional equation for Y as well. In other words, the question is whether Y depends explicitly on time or only through X(t). To express this simply, one can expand what we wrote above: Yn+1=Xn+1+a(xn+1-xn)+b(Yn+1-Yn) (a,b are positive constants).
[4] Admittedly, one who sins in order to repent rises higher at the stage of repentance, but at the stage of descent he deteriorates to a worse state (because of Rabbi Kook's point that descending from a level is worse than never reaching it). But perhaps here the descent itself is undertaken for the sake of ascent, in the sense of divine service for the sake of a higher need.
This reminds me of the well-known story about Adam ha-Kohen, who thought of repenting on his deathbed in order to refute the rabbinic saying that the wicked do not repent even at the entrance to Gehinnom. Presumably such repentance would not be called repentance at all. By the same token, descent in order to repent and to actualize the divine potential for change is not really descent.
[5] See the book Li-Teshuvat Ha-Shanah on this law, which inferred this from Maimonides' own wording, though it recoiled from that conclusion.
[6] See Hokhmat Shlomo sec. 607, para. 2, which raises the difficulty because there is here a prohibition of seclusion.
Discussion
In paragraph 7, line 1:
… just as the Torah commanded to save…
Regarding “I will sin and repent” — I remember discovering very late in life that the source says twice, “I will sin and repent.” That raises some unpleasant thoughts about the Oral Torah in our time. After all, anyone with any sort of religious consciousness always sins with the thought “I will sin and repent,” and that’s perfectly fine. The problem is with someone planning a scheme…
Nice!
With God’s help, 13 Kislev 5779 (the day of Ravina’s death, according to the Epistle of Rav Sherira Gaon)
In the Mishnah (Yoma 85b): ‘One who says, “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent” — he is not given the opportunity to repent.’ And in the Gemara (ibid. 87a) they inferred: ‘Why do I need it to say “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent” twice? This is in accordance with what Rav Huna said in the name of Rav… once a person has committed a transgression and repeated it, it becomes permitted to him. Permitted to him, could that enter your mind? Rather, it becomes to him as if permitted.’
It follows that only when one says “I will sin and repent” twice is he not given the opportunity to repent, as Rashi explained: ‘Since he sinned twice, he is no longer given the opportunity to repent, because the transgression appears to him as if permitted.’
A more lenient view is that of Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Yose: ‘And one who says, “I will sin and repent” is forgiven up to three times, but no more’ (Avot de-Rabbi Natan, ch. 40:5). Likewise in Yoma 86b: ‘It was taught: Rabbi Yose bar Yehuda says: if a person commits a transgression the first time, he is forgiven; the second time, he is forgiven; the third time, he is forgiven; the fourth time—he is not forgiven’ (according to the Gemara’s text, the law is the same for an individual and for the community; according to the Rif’s text, only the community gets a third opportunity).
However, in Avot de-Rabbi Natan, ch. 39:1, ‘one who sins in order to repent’ is counted among the five who ‘have no forgiveness,’ and it is not said there that this applies specifically to a repeatedly committed sin. And likewise in the list of ‘twenty-four things that impede repentance’ (brought in the Rif, Yoma 6a, and in Rambam, Laws of Repentance, ch. 4), there appears: ‘one who says, “I will sin and repent,”’ implying that even once makes repentance more difficult.
In any case, Rabbi Yaakov Ibn Ḥabib (‘the Writer’ in Ein Yaakov) already inferred from the phrase ‘he is not given the opportunity to repent’ that the gates of repentance are not locked before him; rather, Heaven does not assist or arouse him. By contrast, R. Y. Ibn Ḥabib inferred from the wording regarding one who says, ‘I will sin and Yom Kippur will atone,’ that the law there is more severe: not only does he lack assistance, but he lacks atonement.
But R. Y. Ibn Ḥabib noted that Rambam (in ch. 4 of Hilkhot Teshuvah) wrote that one who says ‘I will sin and Yom Kippur [will atone]’ is like one who says ‘I will sin and repent’—that he is not given the opportunity to repent—implying that atonement too is not denied him, and only heavenly assistance is withheld from him. I was referred to these words of Rabbi Yaakov Ibn Ḥabib in an article by Rabbanit Dr. Penina Neuwirth, ‘I Will Sin and Repent,’ on the Mikveh.net website.
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger :
“I will sin and repent” three times means doing repentance three times for one sin. That is not necessarily the same as “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,” where one plans the whole chain in advance. As Ploni noted below, in such a case we are dealing with a premeditated scheme.
With God’s help, 14 Kislev 5779
To Ramda — greetings,
From the Gemara’s words, which connected the repetition ‘I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent’ to the statement of Rav Huna in the name of Rav that ‘once he transgressed and repeated it—it becomes to him as if permitted,’ which certainly also applies to one who fell twice even though he did not plan in advance to repeat the sin—it would appear, then, that according to the Gemara’s understanding, the stringency of ‘I will sin and repent’ also applies to repetition that was not planned in advance, because habit too creates a situation in which ‘it becomes to him as if permitted.’
And if from logic: after all, even a single instance in which one says ‘I will sin and repent’ is a ‘scheme,’ turning the possibility of repentance into an aid to sin. It is just that regarding a one-time ‘scheme’ of ‘I will sin and repent,’ the Tanna of our Mishnah holds that it is not decreed upon him that ‘he is not given the opportunity to repent’ until he ‘repeats his scheme,’ at which point it becomes to him as if permitted.
(And as you mentioned, from Avot de-Rabbi Natan ch. 39:1 it appears that it disagrees and holds that even once ‘he has no forgiveness,’ whereas Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Yose (ibid. ch. 40:5) is more lenient and maintains that only on the third time ‘he is not forgiven.’)
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Ploni already wrote, in the best possible way, that usually a sinner says to himself, “I will sin and repent.” That is not a scheme.
Even from Meiri’s words it appears that one who says ‘I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent’ is not someone who says it all at once, for this is his language:
‘One who says “I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent,” that is, one who keeps repeating this thought aloud—this becomes to him as if permitted, and he is not given help from Heaven to repent, unless some merit supports him in this.’
Regarding one who says ‘I will sin and Yom Kippur atones,’ where the Mishnah did not condition this on repeating the statement, Meiri explains:
‘Since his evil inclination is not overpowering him in the sin, and he appeases himself on the basis of Yom Kippur—even he stumbles in his thought’ (Beit Ha-Beḥirah to Yoma, ch. 8, mishnah 6).
Ben Sira warns against planning in advance to repeat a sin: ‘Do not be bound to repeat a sin, for even for one you will not go unpunished’ (7:8; cited by Prof. Ḥanokh Albeck in the ‘Completions and Additions’ to his commentary on the Mishnah, Yoma 8:9, p. 472).
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
What R. Y. Ḥabib inferred from Rambam’s words in ch. 4 of Hilkhot Teshuvah—that even what is said in the Mishnah, ‘One who says: “I will sin and Yom Kippur atones”—Yom Kippur does not atone,’ means that he is not assisted—is explained in Rambam’s Commentary on the Mishnah: ‘His statement, “I will sin and Yom Kippur atones—Yom Kippur does not atone,” is like their statement: “he is not given the opportunity to repent”; therefore God will not help him on the Day of Atonement to do what is fitting for him to do so that his sins may be atoned for.’ Divine help is withheld from him, but not the possibility of choice!
Still, it becomes to him as if permitted
Hi,
Something isn’t clear to me.
What does it mean, in your view, that in God there is a potential for change (= perfection)?
When we speak about a material body that is at rest and/or in a “frozen” state, it is clear to me that one can logically describe a change that might occur in it.
But God is not material, so to say that there is in Him even merely a potential for change seems strange to me. It is like saying something along the lines of: my concept of God refers to something that can also be something other than itself. If God can change—even if He will not actually change—it seems that we are denying Him the required unity, and thus opening the door to a logical undermining of the concept that denotes Him.
From Meiri’s wording, ‘one who keeps repeating this thought aloud,’ it can be understood that twice is not enough for him not to be given the opportunity to repent; rather, he must be accustomed to saying ‘I will sin and repent.’ Perhaps on that basis the Mishnah can also be interpreted in accordance with the statement of Rabbi Elazar son of Rabbi Yose in Avot de-Rabbi Natan ch. 40:5, that only the fourth time one says ‘I will sin and repent’ he is not forgiven, since only after three times does he become ‘established’ in saying ‘I will sin and repent.’
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
I didn’t understand the problem. First, I was speaking about potential in Him when the change can be actualized only in His creatures. Second, where did you get the assumption about His unity being incapable of change? (And even as an essential condition that constitutes the very concept itself?)
And another strange assumption: that a spiritual entity cannot change. Our soul is spiritual and can change.
I find in your words the same naturalistic fallacy that you constantly warn against.
One must not mix the metaphysical discourse (about God and spiritual entities such as the soul) with the everyday or scientific discourse about those same entities. Following Plato, I think an essential component of the metaphysical realm is its being beyond all change. The moment you permit change in the metaphysical realm, you logically undermine it (you remove its necessity), and in fact you also undermine scientific and everyday discourse.
In short: in order to preserve dualism, which alone in my view (and yours) is rational, we are obligated to open a gap in our thinking between being and becoming.
With God’s help, 14 Kislev 5779
It is obvious that there is no deficiency in the Creator, blessed be He, that requires ‘perfection.’ The perfection is in His revelation to His creatures and in His bestowal of goodness and blessing upon them. In this, the Creator established that it would depend on the preparedness of the recipients; and the more their readiness to receive increases, the more God’s revelation and goodness in His world will increase.
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Hello Doron.
As I’ve seen with you in the past as well, you have all kinds of assumptions that in my view are entirely unfounded, and then you raise difficulties and struggle because of them, while refusing to accept the suggestion that perhaps your assumptions are incorrect and therefore the difficulties dissolve on their own. In effect, you insist on remaining stuck in a rigid worldview.
As for your actual points, I do not agree with a single word:
1. What does any of this have to do with the naturalistic fallacy? That fallacy deals with the gap between facts and norms/judgments, whereas here we are talking about the gap between the material and the spiritual.
2. I have no problem at all applying everyday discourse to spiritual entities at the principled level (aside from nonessential differences, such as lack of mass and not being subject to the laws of physics, though yes to the laws of logic).
3. Here you are identifying the spiritual with the necessary, and I see no reasonable justification for that.
4. And even if the spiritual were necessary (which it is not), I do not see why it could not change. Its necessity applies along its entire “world line” (in Einstein’s terminology).
5. If you think the spiritual cannot change, then ask yourself these questions. I do not assume that, and therefore I am not bothered by these difficulties.
The Creator testifies to His eternity in His words through the prophets, for example: ‘I the Lord have not changed; and you, O sons of Jacob, have not ceased to be’ (Malachi 3:6); and likewise Samuel says: ‘And also the Glory of Israel does not lie or change His mind, for He is not a man that He should change His mind’ (I Samuel 15:29).
Regards, Sh. Tz. Levinger
Now you’ve confused me even more. First of all, please explain to me, I beg you, how this miracle occurs in which your God need not be necessary. In your eyes, is the logical and ontological status of God comparable to that of a cloud or a koala bear?
To embarrass me even further, you emphasize that there are “nonessential differences” between spiritual entities and material entities, for example lack of mass. It is truly a mystery to me how you want to preserve the dualism you advocate in light of this loose distinction between discourse about the metaphysical-spiritual and discourse about the material. On your view, God could also be made of stone or Styrofoam (both of which, as is well known, have mass).
Finally, in order to completely deprive me of the tranquility of the approaching Sabbath, you also claim that even if God were necessary, this would not contradict His ability to change. In my opinion, here again you are unnecessarily mixing everyday or scientific discourse with metaphysical philosophical discourse. The status of necessity in the world of phenomena is not like its status in the metaphysical realm. Einstein’s concept of the “world line” is meant to provide a conceptual framework (not a metaphysical one) for the career of material objects, and perhaps also of events. There is no Einsteinian “world line” for aesthetic, ethical, or metaphysical objects. Therefore the career of a material object within its world line can be necessary and subject to change at the same time. Not so regarding the “world line” of God.
I wish you a more peaceful Sabbath than the one awaiting me.
Hello Doron.
Unfortunately I only saw this now, and I hope that nevertheless you made it safely through the past Sabbath and had proper rest.
I’m beginning to think that we are getting stuck again, as on previous occasions. Either you didn’t read what I wrote or you didn’t understand it. You keep entrenching yourself in strange assumptions and insist on raising difficulties on their basis.
A. Where did I say that God is not necessary? I said that the spiritual is not identical with the necessary. For example, if I have a trait of stubbornness, and that is part of my spiritual dimension (my soul), and now I have worked on my character and changed it—do you think that is not conceptually possible? Is that not a change in something spiritual?
B. Indeed, the differences between the spiritual and the material are not essential for our issue. In the sense that change can occur in both, there is no difference. In the sense that neither has built-in necessity, there is no difference. Dualism only says that there is the spiritual and there is the material, and they are not identical; but it is not committed to adopting every fantasy about some difference or other between them.
C. Indeed, even if God is necessary, that does not mean He cannot change. There can be a property whose values are like a sine, an exponential, or any other function, all of which is necessary. Thus, for example, it necessarily begins at value 2 and necessarily continues at value 17.4. And all of this is necessity.
Everything else you wrote does not relate to our discussion in any way.
A. The question about the soul takes us somewhat away from the discussion (I asked about God), but one word on that too. As a dualist, I distinguish between the soul as a substance and its psychological expressions. When a person like you improves his character traits (a process that probably does not exist in people like me), no metaphysical (spiritual) change takes place in him, but rather a psychological and perhaps also an “ethical” one (the ethical is apparently an intermediate domain between the metaphysical and the psychological). I admit that my answer on this point is not necessarily based on solid ground, but as stated it is not the focus of the discussion.
B. In your words, “Dualism only says that there is the spiritual and there is the material, and they are not identical.”
I see no content in that claim. You have to give it content and provide reasons; otherwise the claim hangs in the air, and the duality you are trying to produce between matter and spirit collapses. In the modern philosophical tradition, for example, people try to attribute extension, mass, impenetrability, etc. to the material, in contrast to the spiritual. That does not mean such attribution is justified, but it is an example of an attempt to give content to the claim.
I would also add that, for example, the property of lacking mass, which is necessary for spiritual beings (at least for God), is precisely what enables us to describe Him as eternal and unchanging. In other words, from the fact that God has no mass (let us assume for the sake of argument that this is true), one can derive a conclusion about the nature that distinguishes Him from material beings.
C. The examples you bring from mathematics do not strike me as fitting this discussion. The necessity you identify within a mathematical series is closer to that necessity I was talking about as found in phenomena. According to your concept, God cannot be quantified, and therefore one cannot identify a pattern of quantification (some mathematical template).
Again: my claim is about mixing categories that should not be mixed.
Have a blessed week.
As expected, we are stuck again.
You identified the spiritual (not God) with the necessary.
I did give entirely clear content to the difference between the spiritual and the physical. The gist of the claim is that the laws of physics do not apply to the spiritual. Your definitions, in my opinion, are precisely the incorrect ones (think about an electromagnetic field. Is it spiritual or material according to your definition? Both in terms of lack of mass and in terms of extension.)
It seems to me that I have explained what I had to explain.
It is interesting to compare Rav Kook’s words with the theory of Kahneman and Tversky regarding “value theory.” In abstraction, one can say that every human evaluation of situations depends on a reference point, and that from a human point of view there is no independent value to states of affairs in the world. Are twenty million dollars in a bank account, a wife, and three healthy children a good situation? It depends whether a year ago there were two children and ten million dollars, or whether over the past year the person lost half his fortune and two of his children died of illness, God forbid. The situation, in itself, has no meaning from the human point of view, at least in situations that are not extreme ones (and perhaps even in such cases—perhaps that is what one can learn from the comparison to the “completely” righteous person, who would seem to be in an extreme state where the evaluation is “objective.” The novelty is that even such situations are relative from a human point of view).
If this is indeed a possible meaning of the matter, and the situation in the spiritual world resembles this psychological phenomenon, one may ask whether from God’s point of view one cannot assign absolute value to situations (the completely righteous person, the penitent). And one may answer that the question is not relevant, since God too, so to speak, examines things from the human point of view. The emphasis is on the person who does or does not come to synagogue, who does or does not repent, and not on some objective “price list” displayed at the gates of paradise. And perhaps this is the novelty—the subjective element in reward and punishment (or in other words, in the way human conduct is evaluated), which is measured not from God’s point of view (who knows well how to price states in themselves) but from the human point of view.
And if this comparison is correct, or at least interesting, it might also have an interesting application. For according to value theory, the utility function of situations is asymmetrical between what is perceived in our eyes as the possibility of loss or of non-gain, and likewise gain or non-loss (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4e/Valuefun.jpg). And if spiritual situations too are evaluated by God according to value theory (since God applies a human standard), it may be that there is no symmetry between past and present, and between a trend of improvement and a trend of deterioration. An even more interesting question is whether Judaism has an opposite “value theory,” in which “gains” weigh more than “losses,” unlike the value theory of K. and T. For example, a good intention is combined with an act, but a bad intention is not. Perhaps Judaism, uniquely, gives much greater weight to the positive and constructive, and precisely minimizes the weight of losses and sins (even though they too of course have value, just as gains have value in value theory).
Just a few points for thought.
Have a good week,
Mishpatai
As far as I know, they actually pointed to a difference in human thinking between gain and prevention of loss (and likewise in halakhah: “warding off a lion”). In the fifth book of the Talmudic Logic series and in the article on the sixth root (also here on the site), we discussed the difference between a prohibition and a positive commandment in light of Nozick’s distinction between temptation and blackmail, which parallels the distinction between an offer of gain and an offer to prevent loss. To violate a prohibition is to be wicked. To neglect a positive commandment is simply not to rise to the level of a righteous person.
1. My question/claim from the outset was directed to the distinction between the spiritual and the material in general, and more specifically focused on the distinction between the clearest spiritual being (God) and other beings. Naturally, the discussion became tied to relevant background questions. After all, there is a common denominator between metaphysical entities such as the soul and its Creator (and I even gave a concrete example of this). In any case, in my view the more abstract and “spiritual” (metaphysical) a being is, the more alien the concept of change is to it.
2. It seems that you too, following Rav Kook, agree with me that the highest spiritual being, God, is not compatible with the principle of change (perfection). Ask yourself: why do you yourself insist on claiming that God does not actually change? Perhaps because, despite yourself, you too think that an absolutely necessary being “has difficulty” with change.
Even the qualification you place on your assertion (that this is only a potential for change) is not sufficient to stop the logical and philosophical deterioration of the concept. One who goes to sleep at night with a God who is “merely” changeable will wake up in the morning with a God of multiple states—in effect, with a plurality of gods.
The argument: a God who can change (be perfected) necessarily—that is, a God upon whom the potential for change is imposed—will ultimately have to fulfill His destiny in order to be truly complete.
Note that He will not be able to fulfill His destiny only through His creatures (who will change and supposedly “project” onto Him too the dimension of perfection); rather, He Himself, independently of the creatures, will be forced to realize the potential for perfection that the Kookian conception has planted in Him.
Only when this process is completed will the concept of God be finished and exhaustive (logically valid).
And since this stage in the divine career is still delayed in coming, it follows that the Kookian God is not truly perfect.
With God’s help, 12 Kislev 5779
A bit of order in the discussion:
Divine judgment concerns the past, and the whole past. A person is responsible for everything he has done, for better and for worse: for his deeds in the recent past and in the distant past, for his falls and for his ascents.
However, a person has been given the possibility of repairing his past through repentance that includes complete remorse over the past and a firm resolve for the future; then the sin is uprooted retroactively, like a vow that is annulled from its very root.
If this is ‘repentance out of fear,’ then intentional sins become unwitting sins, since the remorse clarifies that the sin was a mistake. And if this is ‘repentance out of love,’ then intentional sins are transformed into merits, because a person’s anguish over the sins of the past becomes a constant incentive to rise higher and strengthen himself on the path of corrective goodness. (And perhaps Rabbi Yoḥanan, who said that a completely righteous person is preferable, is speaking of one who repents out of fear; while Rabbi Abbahu, who says that a penitent is preferable, is speaking of one who repents out of love.)
So that the attribute of justice should not be impaired, a person is also given the possibility of erasing, God forbid, his good past by ‘regretting the former deeds’; regarding this the words of Ezekiel were said: ‘When a righteous man turns away from his righteousness … none of his righteous deeds shall be remembered’—but when he does not ‘regret the former deeds,’ the past is not erased.
Beyond judgment, which deals with the past, there is the attribute of mercy, which leads God to prolong His anger, whether in order to give a person an opportunity for repentance that will bring repair, or because of ‘good fragments’ that may grow from him in future generations. Therefore Moses examined the Egyptian and would have refrained from killing him had he foreseen worthy offspring emerging from him (just as the Sages said that God permitted the Moabite woman and the Ammonite woman because of Ruth and Naamah, who were destined to come from them).
The attribute of mercy, which looks toward a person’s elevation and repair, sometimes also brings about the situation described by Rav Kook: when someone begins to descend and fall from his spiritual level, God ‘duns him’ and arouses him through mishaps and obstacles that prompt him ‘to recalculate the route.’ These sufferings are not punishment, but rather a ‘red warning light’ that goes on in order to warn a person of the danger of possible deterioration.
And sometimes mercy toward a person leads דווקא to not granting ‘forbearance.’ As the Torah commanded that a pursuer be saved at the cost of his life, for here there is not only rescue for the pursued but also for the pursuer, who by dying is saved from the grave transgression of murder and forbidden sexual relations, on account of which he would lose not only his life in this world but also the life of the World to Come. And perhaps this is also the rationale behind the law of the stubborn and rebellious son: better that he die innocent, and though he lose his life in this world, he will arrive clean to eternal life in the World to Come.
In short:
Judgment considers the past in terms of reward and punishment, whereas mercy also takes into account the future and the chances of repentance and repair latent within it.
Regards,
Sh. Tz. Levinger
Regarding the discussion between Rabbi Yoḥanan and Rabbi Abbahu, whether a completely righteous person is preferable or a penitent—one may say that from the standpoint of the person himself, the life of the penitent is worse, because he lives under the constant shadow of the sins of the past, which bring him feelings of sorrow and lowliness of spirit; yet precisely those feelings of lowliness and sorrow over what was, together with the constant fear of falling again, are what elevate the value of the penitent, whose aspiration for the good is far stronger than that of one who has never tasted the experience of falling.