Studies on Repentance, Lecture 2

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are you saying—that’s Rabbi Elchanan’s question. You’re talking about the first layer, but the first layer is a different issue. Fine, so we have to distinguish. No, actually, by the way, that’s a very good layman’s question. What’s best about it is: why don’t the analytic scholars pay attention to this question? It’s obvious. But fine, you can answer it; that’s not the point. What’s the answer? No, I assume the intention is that this isn’t really a matter of bookkeeping, of giving up or not giving up. There’s some objective state here. Rights and obligations are apparently some kind of repair or cleansing in the soul—I don’t know what you want to call it—that really exists there. Now the question is whether it can be erased. Can you erase things that are already there, or can’t you erase them? That’s a metaphysical question; it’s not a question of managing accounts in a bank. You understand? If you grasp it that way, then it’s not similar to the bank question. Okay? Fine, you can answer this in all kinds of… all kinds of… Anyway, for our purposes, that’s what he asks. So he wants to draw a comparison between… make a distinction between repentance out of love and repentance out of fear. He says that with repentance out of love, strictly speaking, it is erased. With repentance out of fear, it’s an act of grace that it is erased. If so, think for a moment: the wicked person… or the righteous person who regrets his earlier deeds—does that come from questioning out of love or out of fear? What is it parallel to? Love, right? No one leaves religion out of fear. If you leave religion, that’s a sign that you think what you did until now was wrong. You don’t abandon a life of Torah and commandments out of fear—what are you afraid of? You simply regret it, you think the whole thing is wrong, you don’t want to do it. Okay? So that parallels acting out of love. Therefore, says the Talmud in Kiddushin, it gets erased strictly according to the law—strict justice—because when you make a move out of love, then truly, strictly speaking, you deserve that. If you do it out of fear, then in principle it shouldn’t have helped; there is a special act of grace beyond the letter of the law that it does help. That’s his claim. He also brings there an interesting responsum from the Chafetz Chaim. His claim… no, that was the Chafetz Chaim’s answer, that was the Chafetz Chaim’s answer. And he argues that it’s not plausible, because even repentance—I think that’s what he says—even repentance out of love implies that it’s an act of grace that it is accepted; it’s not true that it’s by strict justice. That is said about both things. And then he wants to make another distinction there. He wants to claim that in every commandment… he also brings the Ramchal in Derekh Hashem, that every commandment and every transgression has two aspects. One aspect is the repair or damage for the sake of which we were commanded. It is forbidden to eat pork because eating pork damages something. Fine? So if someone ate pork, first and foremost, what happened here? The very damage that this prohibition came to prevent. Second, he also rebelled against the command. He did not obey the command. The same with a commandment: when you perform a commandment, there are two things: first, the benefit for the sake of which we were commanded; second, the response to the command. Meaning, two… two things. By the way, the Ritva and Tosafot HaRosh write that this is why one who is commanded and performs is greater than one who is not commanded and performs. One who is commanded and performs is greater because in his act, beyond the benefit in the act, there is also responsiveness to the command. One who is not commanded and performs has the benefit, but he is not commanded, so there is no responsiveness to a command here. Therefore he is less great. He says that this… this is the simple plain meaning of “greater is one who is commanded and performs.” In any case, he says that when “uprooting the will is like uprooting the deed,” the meaning is the repair of the dimension of obedience or rebellion. Say when I sinned, there are two things here. There was damage—which is the transgression… that’s why there is a transgression here, because doing it damages something. And second, there was rebellion against the command or disobedience. Okay? Now if I regret it—when I regret it, I make an inner repair; I did not repair reality. So that repairs the inner dimension within the transgression, the lack of obedience, because now, look, I regret it, I am now someone who does obey. I do not want to be someone who disobeys. Okay? But as far as the result itself, strictly speaking it should not be repaired. It’s… what’s done is done. Here there is a certain act of grace that it is repaired. That is basically his claim. And therefore he says that the Talmud in Kiddushin, which says that it is according to strict justice, means that you lose the good intention. The repairs you made there remain to your credit, but the good intention—you lost that, and that is according to strict justice. And what Mesillat Yesharim talks about, the special grace, is that uprooting the will is like uprooting the deed—that is, that even the result is uprooted if you uprooted the will—and that really is beyond the letter of the law. So that is his claim.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, someone pointed this out in the previous lecture, and I said I would get to it. If you notice, the Talmud in Yoma says that in repentance out of love, intentional sins turn into merits. In repentance out of fear, intentional sins turn into unwitting sins. One thing does not happen: that the intentional sins are erased. That does not happen. Intentional sins become merits—if so it should be… no, it does not happen that they are erased. Why? Because in truth you cannot change something that was actually done. Something that happened in the world happened; you cannot change it. What you can… what you can change is your relation to it. So it may be that the Holy One, blessed be He, will view it as a merit because in the end it leveraged you to repent; maybe it improved you in some way. So what happened there, including the damage that was there, happened. But in terms of what it did to you, it has a different meaning. So you can color it differently. So if it is repentance out of love, then you color it with the color of merit. Merit. If it is repentance out of fear, then you color it with the color of error, not deliberate sin. But you can never remove it from the stage of history. What happened happened. You do not have Stalin’s excellent brain. Yes, he dreamed of rewriting history. There is no way to rewrite history. What happened happened. Okay, all you can do is try to color it differently.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore here, basically, this is what Rabbi Elchanan claims. You cannot change reality. What you can change is the person. And why? Because the person from then—back then—no longer exists. Today it is me as I am today. And if today I am repaired, why does it matter that back then I was damaged? But the deed that I did cannot be erased from history. I did a deed there. Of course, if you say that the practical results of the deed are on the person’s soul, then maybe there is room for hesitation. Because then maybe if I repaired it now, then I repaired my soul from now on, not retroactively. But practically speaking, right now there is no blemish in my soul, so it is repaired, so the result too was repaired, not only the evil intention. Maybe. But if we understand that there is some result in the world here, then the result in the world exists. All there is, is the question of how responsible I am for it. Or what its meaning is in relation to me. Yes, it’s like a transgression by indirect causation. In a transgression by indirect causation, what happened happened. The indirect causation exempts because my responsibility for what happened is not full, not because it didn’t happen. It happened. But what happened—my responsibility for it is not full. Okay. There are those who want to claim that the exemption of indirect causation applies only to transgressions of action and not to transgressions of result, because in indirect causation there is no action. I’m not at all sure that’s true. It may be that the exemption of indirect causation also applies to result-transgressions. Result-transgressions mean: fine, it happened and the result occurred, but as far as my responsibility for what happened, the indirect causation means that my responsibility is not full. Unless you say that that itself is what is called an action-transgression. An action-transgression means that clearly the result is problematic; even an action-transgression is forbidden because they don’t want something to happen. But the transgression is defined as the forbidden action. So if you did it by indirect causation, then what that means is that your responsibility for it is not full. Fine, in any case, for our purposes, that is what Rabbi Elchanan claims.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to take the same idea in a slightly different direction and apply it not to repentance out of love and fear, but to major and minor repentance, which I spoke about here. There is a connection between the two. You understand that repentance out of fear, in the simple sense, is the minor repentance, and repentance out of love, in the simple sense, is the major repentance. It doesn’t overlap completely. You could imagine a major repentance out of fear and a minor repentance out of love. But in the simple identification, it seems to me that it is a correct identification. And then the claim is basically the following. If you repent—now I’m going in the direction of the Chafetz Chaim—if you do major repentance, as I said before, then you have been transformed. If you have been transformed, then by justice you deserve acquittal. If the Holy One, blessed be He, does not acquit you, you sue Him in a religious court. What do You want—to punish me now? Whom are You punishing? You are not punishing the one who was here yesterday. You are punishing me today. But today I am righteous—what do You want from me? So I deserve to be acquitted; that is according to strict justice. But if I do minor repentance—minor repentance means I have not truly changed myself, and even today I am not truly repaired. I am basically still average in the essential sense, in the sense that the two inclinations are still at play in me, the two spiritual directions still exist in me. What I repaired is the balance of commandments and transgressions. It is an act of grace that I am forgiven on that basis. Strictly speaking, it should not have repaired the matter. It is grace. The grace in minor repentance, as I said last time—the grace in minor repentance is that it is accepted. Major repentance is accepted by justice. If I did major repentance, I am accepted. Like Elazar ben Dordaya, as we saw—yes, “there is none who is turned away from repentance,” and I brought quite a number of proofs for that. But as Rabbi Elchanan also notes in several places, it is quite clear that when people speak of the grace that exists in repentance, they mean all types of repentance; it is not only minor repentance. The whole concept of repentance is itself some kind of… yes, “the Name, the Name”—the Maharal ties major repentance to “the Name, the Name,” so everyone knows that “the Name, the Name” is the Name that preceded the world, and therefore it transcends the laws that govern the conduct of the world, and therefore repentance can work because it is not subject to the ordinary rules by which the world operates. There are very many places where it is quite clear that when they speak about the grace of repentance, they do not distinguish between the two kinds of repentance; in both there is some kind of grace. In principle, a person should have been hit for what he did.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But on the other hand, there is some reasoning here—correct reasoning. If I have changed, there is no reason in the world to punish me. As I said last time, suppose someone sinned against me. And he truly repented, and suppose Elijah the Prophet came and told me what was going on in his heart. He told me: listen, this man has changed completely, he regrets it with deep and genuine regret, he will not do it again. He is simply a different person as far as the relationship between you and him is concerned. Then I would forgive him. Of course I would forgive him. The only reason we do not forgive is that we cannot truly be fully convinced that this is genuine regret, complete regret. But fine, there is some degree of regret, but on the other hand I do not know. There is a lot of sense in saying that if the person has truly changed, why should the sins of his previous phase be visited upon him? According to strict justice, that is what he deserves. So what is the grace in major repentance? The claim is that there is grace; the question is what the grace is. At the beginning of Shaarei Teshuvah by Rabbeinu Yonah, he brings a parable there: “Know that when the sinner delays repenting of his sin, his punishment becomes much heavier for him each day. For he knows that wrath has gone out against him, and he has a refuge to flee there, and that refuge is repentance, yet he remains in his rebellion and persists in his evil, though it is in his power to emerge from the overthrow, and he does not fear the anger and the fury; therefore his evil is great. And our rabbis of blessed memory said regarding this matter: a parable of a gang of robbers whom the king imprisoned in jail, and they dug a tunnel, broke through, and escaped, and one of them remained. The minister of the prison came and saw the tunnel cut through, and that man was still imprisoned”—yes, there is a tunnel out and this fellow is sitting there inside—“and he struck him with his staff and said to him: hard day! The tunnel is open before you, and how did you not hurry to save your own life?” Basically, what stands behind this is that apparently prison is not punishment for you, so why are you here? Meaning, if you do not go out when you have the chance, then your whole sitting here is worth nothing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It reminds me of once, Rabbi Yoel, of blessed memory, at Midrashiyat… the boys ran away to the settlements. So there were a few who stayed and did not run away; he got there and yelled at them, laughed at them, I don’t know what—what are you doing here? Everyone ran away and you’re here. This parable, it seems to me, refers to the grace of repentance on a slightly different plane. In minor repentance, the grace of repentance is that it is accepted. In major repentance, the grace of repentance is that it is possible at all to do such repentance. Technically, that it is possible to do it. If you did that repentance, the fact that it is accepted is according to strict justice, not grace. But when you think about it a bit, the very ability to do such repentance is grace. In principle, it should not have been possible. On the logical-psychological level—I’m not speaking halakhically, and not “they asked Wisdom, what is the punishment of the sinner and what is the line of justice,” I am speaking now logically. I am not speaking now in terms of justice. I mean simply the psychological process that I called earlier major repentance—spiritual, psychological—it is simply impossible. I will explain a bit why this thing is impossible.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maimonides, in chapter 2 of the Laws of Repentance, halakhah 1, writes as follows: “What is complete repentance? It is when a matter in which one sinned comes to his hand, and it is possible for him to do it, and he separates and does not do it because of repentance.” He reaches the same situation, he can sin, and he does not sin—a sign that he is a true penitent. “Not out of fear and not because of failure of strength,” meaning not because of side reasons, but because he truly repented, because he changed. “How so? If he had relations with a woman in transgression, and after some time he is alone with her, and he still loves her, and his physical strength remains, and in the same country where he sinned, all the circumstances are exactly the same as they were then, and he separates and does not transgress”—and nevertheless he did not sin, did not repeat the sin—“this is a complete penitent.” Then it is a sign that he is a complete penitent. If the situation is different, then maybe the reason he did not sin is that the situation is different; something else caused it. But if in exactly the same situation what happened the previous time does not happen, then the only thing that changed between the two situations is the person. Right? Meaning, if the person did not sin, that is a sign that he changed. The indication that the person changed is if we erase all the circumstantial changes and nevertheless the result is different; that means the person is different, otherwise exactly the same thing should have happened. “And this is what Solomon said: ‘Remember your Creator in the days of your youth.’ But if he repented only in his old age, at a time when he cannot do what he used to do, although this is not superior repentance, it is effective for him, and he is a penitent. Even if he transgressed all his days and repented on the day of his death and died in repentance, all his sins are forgiven,” as it says, etc. In short, the change the person undergoes is essentially the very essence of repentance. How do you know he changed? If we erase all the differences—circumstantial differences—and the same person, in the same situation, even the same country, even the remote circumstances not directly connected to the sin, are the same, so you cannot attribute it to anything else, and he did not transgress—that means he changed.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What does that mean? What? He really… he can’t know? No, it doesn’t matter. This is a hypothetical experiment. There is no claim that a person… the Sefat Emet raises this: is it really permissible for a person to put himself into a situation where he can sin just in order to verify that he is a penitent? Am I allowed here to cause myself to stumble or put myself into a test where it is uncertain whether I will withstand it, just as part of my repentance process? There are later authorities who want to claim yes. Yes. In Hasidic thought they want to claim yes. That as part of the repentance process, one really is allowed to place oneself into a test that in ordinary life one is forbidden to enter. But in the simple sense that is not true; that is not what Maimonides says. What is said in the Hasidic readings are nice sermonic insights. What Maimonides really says is an indication. The intention is not that you literally need to enter the same situation; that also won’t happen, as you said, it cannot happen. Rather, what? Maimonides says: what could be an indication? A hypothetical experiment. If I were in exactly the same situation and I would not sin, that could be an indication that I am a penitent. If I want to test myself in some hypothetical way as far as I can, to try to imagine a similar situation and convince myself that I am already in a state where I would not repeat the sin, that is a good indication that I am a penitent. Fine, that’s the point.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I said in one of the morning lectures last week—I brought Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, who cites the Mishnah in Yoma that the two goats must be equal in height, in weight, and in value. It is not indispensable, but ideally they must be equal. And he asks why they need to be equal. The same thing he asks about Purim: why is a person obligated to become intoxicated until he does not know the difference between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai”? As if the whole work of the Jew is to make the distinction between “cursed is Haman” and “blessed is Mordechai.” What is the idea of drinking until the distinction between them is blurred? So he says that in both of these cases the purpose of the blurring is to sharpen the relevant parameter in the distinction, because “the depth of comparison is the depth of distinction,” that’s what he says there. What does that mean? I want to distinguish between Mordechai and Haman. If it’s like in children’s books—you know, Haman or Esau or whatever appears as some disgusting wicked villain, born from the womb as some monstrously evil creature—then that is no big deal. Then that is not a difference between him and Jacob; this one was born that way and that one was born that way. It is not really a meaningful difference, a spiritual difference, one on the basis of which you can judge him. He is simply this, and the other is that. If you want to make a real distinction, you need to portray them as identical twins. They are identical twins, and nevertheless Esau chose to do this and Jacob chose to do that. You have to equalize all the… like in a laboratory experiment, we need to neutralize all the irrelevant parameters in order to test the parameter we are interested in. When we want to compare two people, we need to blur the sample group and the control group; in every such case we need to blur all the irrelevant parameters, make them equal, so that it is clear that the difference stems from the important parameter, the relevant parameter. That is what happens with the two goats: the difference is that this one is “for the Lord” and this one is “for Azazel,” because the lot determined it, not because one is fat and the other thin, not because one is beautiful and the other ugly, not any external parameter, but because the lot said this one is “for the Lord” and this one is “for Azazel”—and the lot is of course the expression of choice. And also with Mordechai and Haman; therefore the drinking is intended to blur the external differences in order to leave the spiritual distinction in a sharper form between Mordechai and Haman. So similarly here: if you want to sharpen the difference between the person who was before and the person he is now, to see that he truly changed, then you need to place him in a situation where all the other circumstantial differences have been erased. There are no circumstantial differences. If nevertheless the result is different, that means that the relevant parameter, the spiritual change he underwent, is truly different, truly happened. Okay?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also there, in halakhah 4, Maimonides writes: “Among the ways of repentance is for the penitent to cry out constantly before God with weeping and supplications, and to give charity according to his ability, and to distance himself greatly from the thing in which he sinned, and to change his name, meaning: ‘I am another, and I am not the same person who did those deeds,’ and to change all his deeds for the good and to the straight path, and to exile himself from his place, for exile atones for sin because it causes him to be subdued and humble and lowly of spirit.” And he says, yes: “I am another, and I am not the same person who did those deeds.” Again, the change here, in both of these halakhot and generally throughout this whole chapter, Maimonides is speaking about major repentance, not minor repentance. He is speaking about a person who changed, not a person who regretted, abandoned the sin, verbal confession, and acceptance for the future. He does not describe that. He says: I am not that same person, I am another person. Now you need to forgive me; according to strict justice, I am another person—what do you want from me? That is major repentance. This chapter deals with major repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that is exactly what raises the difficulty, because if major repentance means a change in the person himself, it is not clear how such a thing can be done. Logically, let us now say—not that psychologically I don’t know how to do it, but logically we need to understand how this business works. On the logical level it is impossible. I’ll explain this through an example. Suppose that I—yes, you know, when physicists want to think about a donkey, they begin with a point-donkey. First they open the toy model, the simple problem, try to understand what can be understood about it, and then slowly move to the more realistic problem. Okay, so let’s take a toy model of a person. A person who has one value in his life, and that’s it. His entire spiritual and moral doctrine is summed up in one principle: maximum reward, minimum punishment. Fine? That’s his whole business. From here on, he is a perfectly righteous man, meaning he is careful with every minor and major commandment, he avoids every slightest trace of sin, a Brisker-type who is stringent for every one of the views of the medieval authorities and later authorities, everything. Why? To earn maximum reward, receive minimum punishment. That is the only principle in his life. Now I want to convince him—you know, I’m like that, okay? Now try to think how you would convince me to begin serving for its own sake. So at the moment this is serving not for its own sake, right? For reward and punishment. Now try to think how you would convince me to serve for its own sake. Maybe it is possible

[Speaker B] maybe tell him that if you serve for its own sake, you’ll get more reward.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, you understand that that’s worthless. You remind me of the story about Adam HaKohen, yes, from a street in Tel Aviv, one of the maskilim who thought he would repent on his deathbed in order to refute the rabbinic saying that even at the entrance of Gehinnom the wicked do not repent. It’s roughly the same thing. Meaning, the moment you convince me to serve for its own sake because you get more reward, I have remained someone who serves not for its own sake. I also won’t get more reward. So what do you do?

[Speaker C] Maybe you can tell him to read the books of the medieval and later authorities and the Talmud better.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what will come out of that? Read them and then what?

[Speaker C] And there too you’ll find different approaches; you can’t say that the whole aim of the Torah is reward and punishment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And what is the aim of the Torah? I was talking about what my aim is, not the Torah’s. I’m maximum reward, minimum punishment. The Torah says this way you get reward, this way you get punishment, so I obey. No problem. Anything beyond that doesn’t interest me at all. Now convince me to get out of that bubble.

[Speaker C] You can say to him that the Torah itself wants you to get out of the bubble.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It wants? Fine, it wants. What does that have to do with me? I want maximum reward, minimum punishment. What it wants you to do—it wants.

[Speaker D] Maybe you won’t get reward if you go with such an approach?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so that’s what was suggested before, but—

[Speaker D] then you have no reason at all to serve?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? I do have one. I get reward, certainly. On the contrary, one who serves for its own sake is greater, fine, but certainly one who serves not for its own sake also gets reward. Where does the issue of others come in here? I’m very interested in others because that’s how I get reward. Meaning, if I help another… to be interested in others for the sake of others—how? Go ahead, try. Show him all kinds of miserable people. Okay, very miserable, but the miserable people don’t interest me unless for me they are an object of effort, yes? Meaning, I give them charity in order to get reward in the world to come. That is my interest in people. I’m autistic.

[Speaker B] You can’t convince him. If the lens through which you see every situation is only reward, you can’t convince him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. Do we agree that you can’t convince me? Wait, you’re already jumping ahead; I’ll get to that in a moment. Do we agree that you can’t convince me? What is the problem? Why can’t you convince me? Not because of this one thing or that one thing, but because when you address me with an argument, your argument has to assume my premises, right? You can’t convince me on the basis of your premises. We have a debate whether one should serve for its own sake. I say one should serve not for its own sake, and you say one should serve for its own sake. Now convince me on the basis of your premises—you’ve done nothing. You need to show me, on the basis of my premises, that the conclusion I arrived at is wrong. Or in other words, that there is a contradiction in my doctrine. Right? But if there is no contradiction in my doctrine and I am consistent with my premises, you will never convince me. Never. An argument that assumes your premises when you come to change me, to convince me, is what in informal logic is called begging the question. It doesn’t work. Right? You are basically assuming the conclusion with which you want to convince me. So that does not help. Begging the question does not help because when you beg the question you are starting from a point that I am not at. So what good does it do that from that starting point one can prove the conclusion you desire? I’m not there. You need to bring me there in order then to take me to the conclusion. If I were already there, you wouldn’t have to do any work; I would already arrive at that conclusion on my own.

[Speaker D] Now the question in general is interesting. I think that in the end, in every person’s head, you can’t ignore the fact that reward matters to him. Without that, almost nobody would have…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be true for all of us, maybe not. But right now I’m talking about it as a kind of toy model. I want to think about it without, for the moment, connecting it to the question of how much of this is us. We can talk about that later. You understand the problem here is not—even if I had ten principles, or a hundred million principles, it doesn’t matter how complex the system is. As long as there is no contradiction among my principles and I follow them consistently, there is no way to convince me. Because you need to start from my point of departure and reach a conclusion, even though the conclusion I am at does not logically contradict my premises. If you show me there is a logical contradiction in my doctrine, then of course you will succeed in convincing me. But then even if you convinced me, that is not repentance. It is simply logical sobering up. Repentance is not that. Repentance is to do what you truly already believe in—to begin doing what you truly already believed before. To begin believing in something new is not repentance; it is logical awakening. Again, not in everyday language. Today, in everyday language, people relate to someone who came to a religious worldview from a secular worldview as a “returnee in repentance.” That is not the simple meaning of repentance. The simple meaning of repentance is a person who sinned while he was inside the religious world and returns in repentance—he returns to do what he himself believes in. Before, he did what he did not believe in, or he did not do what he did believe in, whichever way, and now he corrected it. But if someone does not believe in it, then first, that is not repentance, and second, how does this change happen? When you raise an argument, you cannot raise an argument except on the basis of the premises that that person assumes. But if you start from those premises, you will also arrive at his conclusions. Again—unless there is a logical contradiction there, but then it is not repentance, only awakening. Okay? So what is happening here?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now let’s go one step further. That was the toy model; now we start advancing. What happens now when it’s not someone else trying to convince me—I am trying to convince myself. That’s what is called repenting, no? I rebuke myself, I say: listen, you know perfectly well that this and this should be done and this and this is forbidden. How can it be that you are doing such things? Wake up, change. Right? Now I ask: what does “wake up and change” mean? Do I really think that this is what should be done? If so, then indeed, if I didn’t do it, that is called repentance. But if I do not really think that this is what should be done, then this process has no meaning. So in the name of what value system am I rebuking myself? After all, the value system I hold includes Sabbath desecration. Okay, so now Sabbath desecration. Now what does it mean that I suddenly wake up and repent? Maybe I’m changing my mind and I think one should keep the Sabbath? No problem—but that is not repentance, that is awakening. Awakening or change of position, whatever you want to call it. Repentance means someone who believes that one should keep the Sabbath, failed, did not keep the Sabbath, and now wakes up and says: wait, such a thing is impossible, I want to get to a state where this won’t happen. That I will indeed do what I believe in. Right? That is what is called repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now let’s continue with this. In other words, in short, the point is this. If deep inside I really do not believe in the principles of Jewish law, that is not what a penitent is about. The concept of a penitent in its original meaning does not speak about what today is called a penitent. A penitent in its original meaning speaks about someone who believes in the system. And his inclination overcame him and he sinned, it doesn’t matter—soon we’ll discuss—and now he is called to return to the strength of Torah, yes? To return to doing what he truly believes in. That is called a penitent. But now I want to go deeper into this, and that brings me to the problem known in analytic philosophy as weakness of will. It fills shelves in analytic philosophy, this thing. There is an attempt—I’ll take a formulation of Donald Davidson. He’s an American analytic philosopher, in my opinion very impressive. He says this. Let’s try to think about a person—what is weak will? Weak will means what we usually call sin. What does that mean? A person believes that he should do X, but he did not do X. He sinned against the values he currently believes in, leaving aside for now the religious-halakhic context. Sin, or weak will, or action from weak will, means action not in accordance with the principles I believe in. This can be in a religious, legal, moral context, or just dieting. That too. I want to lose weight, I don’t want to eat fattening things, and I failed, I ate something fattening. That too is a sin in this logical sense, okay? It is an act of weakness of will. I am not acting according to my will, or my will was too weak and I failed to realize the values I believe in. And I remind you that the conclusion of the previous stage was that a penitent is only someone in such a situation. Because someone who did something because that is truly what he believed—retracting from that is not repenting, it is changing one’s outlook or waking up. When I speak about repenting, I am basically speaking to a person with weak will. A person who committed a transgression out of weak will—out of weak will, right? And now let us try to analyze this state of weak will.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So Donald Davidson says this. Under the assumption that I think that X is the right thing to do, then obviously that is also what I will want to do. And therefore what I will do is what I will want to do. If that is what is right in my eyes, then that is what I want to do. That is the first assumption. Second assumption: if I want to do X and there is no external impediment, then I will also do X. Why not? That is what I want and nothing is preventing me, so I will also do X.

[Speaker C] What does “external impediment” mean?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a moment we’ll see, I’ll sharpen more; I just want to put the scheme on the table first. That’s the second assumption. Third assumption: there are acts of weak will, in which a person did something that in his own eyes was not right. You understand that these three assumptions do not fit together? These three claims—not three assumptions, these three claims—do not fit together.

[Speaker C] It depends what “external impediment” means. Why? In principle, if “external impediment” means something that is not, say, will—if I control my actions, then right—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not—everything that it—

[Speaker C] whatever is not me is an external impediment. There could be an inner impulse in me not to do that thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a moment I’ll sharpen more what I mean by “external impediment.” Look, let’s take an example—let’s go specifically with dieting, because dieting is neutral. No transgressions, no morality, no Jewish law, nothing. So, someone decided to go on a diet. And he decided not to eat fattening things. And he failed and ate something fattening. So why did you do that? My will was weak. I was too weak, I didn’t stand up to the task. Now, if he says, “I don’t believe in diets at all, I don’t want to lose weight,” then no problem, right? That is not the kind of person we are talking about. We are talking about someone who wants to diet and failed. Meaning, he performed an act of weak will. What does it mean that your will was weak? Let’s ask ourselves why you ate the fattening thing. Let’s dig a little deeper. The will was weak and the desire was strong. The desire was strong? It overcame you? Then you are coerced.

[Speaker B] There are two desires.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You are coerced. Ah, you have two desires. Which one is stronger?

[Speaker B] Apparently that desire—right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what you wanted was to eat the fattening thing, so don’t confuse me. You want to eat the fattening thing more than you want to diet. Obviously, there are two desires, but in the bottom line, in the hierarchy of your desires, what is the net desire? What is the net? Clearly, you want to eat something tasty more than you want to lose weight. So what are you telling me, that you did something you didn’t want? You wanted it. That’s what you wanted. True, you want to lose weight, but you want to lose weight for free. You want free lunches. Free calories, I mean. Yes, without a caloric price. Meaning, you want to eat and lose weight. It doesn’t work. Now decide. Do you want to lose weight? Yes, I believe you. But you also don’t want to pay a price. Now I ask: what prevails? Forget failures and inclinations. What do you really want? You understand? Because if you are talking about inclinations that forced me to do it even though I didn’t want to, then I am coerced. Under coercion one does not need to repent. I am coerced. And if I wanted it, then repentance is irrelevant, because that is what I wanted. You can wake up, you can change your outlook—your worldview—but not repent. Repentance is always when I act from weak will. But Donald Davidson says there is no action from weak will. It does not fit with the first two assumptions. There is no action of weak will. If you did it, then that is what you wanted.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And if so, when I translate repentance into this language, repentance is nothing but logical awakening, or change of position. Doesn’t matter. “Awakening” sounds like arousing something that was already present in me. Forget it—change of position. I now change my outlook and become religious. Previously I was secular and now I am religious. That is not a penitent. A penitent is someone who fell into sin, right? The penitent of the Sages, not the penitent of today. Again, the penitent of the Sages is someone who fell, and now needs to raise himself from the sin, right? Wake up, make sure it does not happen again, accept for the future that it will not happen, abandon the sin. Right? Someone who truly believed in it, by the way, is not a sinner at all—he is coerced. Coerced in his understanding; he is not a sinner. Someone who desecrated the Sabbath because he thinks there is no prohibition against desecrating the Sabbath is coerced. There is no sin in that. I don’t think he needs to repent for that, by the way. Such a person doesn’t need to repent at all.

[Speaker D] In Tosafot, there is a ruling that a person who was like a child captured among the nations has to bring an offering.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The question is what exactly a child captured among the nations is. The case before us is even worse than that. What?

[Speaker D] He’s not a child captured among the nations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m talking about someone—forget the child captured among the nations—someone who doesn’t believe in any of this whole business. As far as he’s concerned it’s some kind of Indian doctrine.

[Speaker D] But Maimonides says that a person who, say, doesn’t believe in the Thirteen Principles—even if he believes in this, then he has no share in the world to come. How can that be explained?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a question on Maimonides; I don’t know.

[Speaker C] But maybe from the perspective of analytic philosophy the person is reduced to his intellect and his will, but maybe from the Torah’s perspective there are other layers to a person that relate to repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. Is that what I wanted to do? Is that what I thought was right to do at the moment of the sin? Let’s talk about dieting, forget the Torah, okay? Let’s talk about dieting. Did I think it was right not to eat that thing? In the final analysis—after the inclinations and desires and pleasures and everything—what did I think was right in the final analysis? Not to eat. What I thought was right—if there is no external impediment, only my own considerations—that is also what I wanted to do, right? No, but there is a contradiction here. No—do you accept that second assumption? I’m asking—

[Speaker C] how—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] how can there be weak will? If you accept those two assumptions, there cannot be an act of weak will. Unless that assumption—

[Speaker C] that compels your root to keep going, so if you want now to jump over some story, you need to invest energy in it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So that’s a formulation I’m getting close to. In the session on weakness of will I spoke about this a bit. I’ll come back to it in a moment. Okay? It’s probably something in that direction, but it needs to be formulated a little more carefully. On the face of it, there’s something very problematic here. Meaning, repentance cannot exist—major repentance cannot exist. A psychological reversal, right? Major repentance is a psychological reversal. Because what does a psychological reversal mean? Either way, what can it mean? Either it means changing my most basic values, or my most basic values are fine and I just need to change the fact that I don’t act in accordance with them. But changing the fact that I don’t act in accordance with them—there’s no such thing. What does it mean not to act in accordance with them? If I acted, then that was in accordance with them. And if what I need is to change my basic values, then first of all that’s not what’s usually called a penitent. But second, I’ll tell you more than that. What does it mean to change my basic values? It’s nonsense. After all, if I believe in this set of values, then how can there now be a situation where, deliberately, I decide: no, now I need to change my values? Who is this “I” that decides it needs to change those values? After all, the “I” is the same one who believes in this set of values. Unless I already believe in the next set of values—but then I don’t need to change, I’m already there. How can there be a situation where, deliberately, a person arrives and he believes in a set of a hundred basic values, with some ranking among them, whatever, however complex it may be, doesn’t matter. A given system. That person—right now that’s his value set. How can such a person arrive at the conclusion: I need to change my value system? Who is this “I”? After all, I am the one who believes in this set of values. On what basis can I reach the conclusion that I need to change my value system? Based on what other value system? If so, then I already believe in that other system, so there’s nothing to change—I’m already there.

[Speaker B] Based on what you feel.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, feel? Feeling is nothing. What is “feel”? Feeling is just emotions. I’m talking about the question of what I believe in.

[Speaker C] It could be that part of your values…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then that’s just emotions. Whatever a person feels—that’s not interesting.

[Speaker C] It could be that part of your values is to change and keep advancing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No problem—then go ahead and advance. What’s the issue?

[Speaker C] If so—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re not changing anything, you’re just continuing to advance. You’re not changing anything, just continuing to advance. On the contrary, that’s the sin—and again, there’s this notion of sinning in order to be able to advance afterward, as they say in Hasidic thought. I don’t think that solves the problem. Why not? Because if that’s why you do it, then you don’t need to repent. What’s the problem?

[Speaker D] It’s that in the past you didn’t make enough effort to investigate it properly, and now you’ve finally gotten there. Why only now did you reach the conclusion? Apparently you didn’t make enough effort before. But what—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t know what I believed at the stage of the sin?

[Speaker D] You didn’t make enough effort to discover the truth, yes.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? But I knew the truth. We’re talking about a person who knows the truth. A person who sins and didn’t know the truth—that too is a kind of coercion.

[Speaker D] Okay, so try to investigate what the truth is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But he knows that this is the truth, otherwise it isn’t a sin. Sin means that I know it’s forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath and yet I still fall. He knows it’s forbidden to eat something non-kosher and yet he eats it. At what level of consciousness can we discuss this? I’ll come back to this a bit using Oren’s formulation too, I’ll return to it in a slightly different wording. On the face of it, this is problematic, because we’re talking about a situation where a person knows what is right. He falls. We all know that experience, and after the sin you look back and say: how? What happened here? And I knew at the time of the sin that this wasn’t right. Maybe I sold myself a few stories, but I knew. So if I knew, then why did I do it? Apparently I didn’t really know correctly, because it wasn’t really what I wanted. What I wanted is what I did. Otherwise why did I do it? What will you say—that something external caused me to? Then I’m coerced. So what’s the problem? What do I need to repent for? Some external force overcame me, like an irresistible impulse. An irresistible impulse is coercion. What do you want from me? Was it in my hands? If I decided to give in—then that’s what I wanted. I wanted pleasure more than I wanted to serve God, or more than I wanted to keep the diet. So what’s the issue? That’s what I wanted. So I’m saying: the only way for us to change is to change the basic value system—not to remain with the same basic value system and align our behavior with that value system. But to change the basic value system is something undefined. Maybe it can somehow change on its own, with some magic wand, I don’t know—but repentance is a deliberate process required of us. During the Ten Days of Repentance I’m supposed to approach myself, analyze myself, conclude what’s wrong with my value system, and change it. But how can I conclude that something is wrong with my value system? What is the standard by which I determine that my value system is wrong? I’m going back to the person who serves not for its own sake, whom you’re trying to persuade to serve for its own sake. You obviously have to do that on the basis of his own standard; you can’t assume some other standard, otherwise you’re not talking to him. So how can it be that a person approaches himself and changes his own value system because it seems wrong to him? If it seems wrong to him, then that isn’t his value system. So apparently he already has another value system; he doesn’t need to change anything, he’s already there. In short: who is the one changing, and who is the one being changed? In other words, there’s some “someone” here who changes someone else, in the value system of someone else—and in this case that someone else is the very same person doing the changing. But that can’t be, because the changer has to have a different value system from the one being changed. The changer has the corrected one, and the one being changed has the defective one. But if it’s the same person, then something here makes no sense. Understand: this cannot be logically possible. There’s a logical problem here. It’s not just some issue… Major repentance is a psychological reversal. A psychological reversal means changing a value system. But if it means changing a value system, then it’s impossible to achieve. How did I decide to change? Who? What is that? Just like that? You yourself chose it. I decided—well, okay, fine.

[Speaker B] So what is this—

[Speaker C] Different conduct?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is a decision? Why did I decide differently?

[Speaker B] Why did you decide that way?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I felt like it. I don’t know why. Because that’s what I think is right.

[Speaker B] Fine, so if you think it’s right, we’re talking here about arriving at something, your own internal decision, that caused you to change the old value system.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it’s right. So that means I chose it. Of course I chose it. Now, how can you demand that I choose otherwise? After all, I already chose this. By what authority do you demand that I choose otherwise? This is the system I chose.

[Speaker B] No, I split it into two desires: one is the desire for pleasure and one is the desire for a commandment, and you gave them some ranking.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So you came to the conclusion that what you chose in real time—you chose pleasure. But by what authority are you demanding…? I could choose a different ranking, but you want me deliberately to choose that. How? How will that happen? After all, I need to take myself from the standpoint that this isn’t right and needs to be changed. But how will I arrive at the insight that it isn’t right if these are my standards?

[Speaker B] But if you said you arrived at it because it’s true, then there’s some basis for the fact that you arrived at it because it’s true—you got there by some logical process. Okay. So like that fellow over there said, more information can be added that causes you to change your basic values.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] How? How? I think it’s true. What? That you arrived at it being true on—

[Speaker B] The basis of A, B, C.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it wasn’t on the basis of A, B, C. That’s a mistake, but never mind, because it’s true. There are no earlier principles, because otherwise you’re in an infinite chain, an infinite regress.

[Speaker B] Okay. So then the change that can be made can also be made in a way that isn’t explained at all.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly—but that’s not repentance. To repent is a demand for deliberate action. If there is a change in my worldview, fine—if it happened, it happened. It can happen. Just as I adopted my initial worldview, I can also adopt a different worldview. But when you demand that I repent through self-examination and so on—for what? You want me deliberately to take myself and turn myself upside down. On what basis? There has to be some Archimedean point that I use in order to reverse myself. But my Archimedean point is my current value system. Such a deliberate action is impossible. It’s very hard to understand how it happens even non-deliberately, but repentance in any case is a deliberate process, and deliberately such a thing cannot happen.

[Speaker B] Non-deliberately, that’s not a problem.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that non-deliberately it just happens. It happens. But then, if it just happens, that means values are something arbitrary. If you judge on the basis of values and say right and wrong, then it isn’t something arbitrary. It’s not based on something prior, but it’s also not random. There’s something here dancing at two weddings; it’s not simple at all.

[Speaker B] That throws the whole system into trouble.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, exactly. So that’s why I’m saying—even that isn’t simple. But let’s leave it aside; say I accept that. Still, a deliberate process of reversal, which is what a person is required to do in repentance—deliberately to examine himself and repent—there is no such thing as deliberately repenting. If it happens, it happens. I came to a conclusion. By the way, even if it happens, as I said earlier, it’s sobering up or a change of position—that’s not repentance. Hm? Yes, but it’s not repentance. Something that isn’t deliberate happens unintentionally; it happens on its own. And when something happens unintentionally, that’s not fulfillment of a commandment; fulfilling a commandment unintentionally is not a commandment. When you perform an act of repentance because you know there is an obligation to repent, then you’re supposed to do it out of a decision. And in all of our experience, we all understand that this does happen. We come to the conclusion that we were not okay by standards we already had; we were not okay, and we’ll correct it. Not that we always succeed in correcting it—maybe usually we don’t—but we do understand that such a process can happen, that it isn’t impossible. What I’m describing here now is a paradox—you have to understand, what I’m claiming now is not an argument; what I’m presenting before you is a paradox. It’s like Achilles and the tortoise, say—the famous paradox that Achilles will never catch up with the tortoise. So someone can come and say, what do you mean? Do the calculation and you’ll see that after a few seconds he’ll catch him. His speed is ten times greater, so after a few seconds he’ll catch him. That’s not a solution to the paradox, because the paradox says: you’re right, of course he’ll catch him, but on the other hand I have a properly constructed argument showing that he won’t catch him. Until you put your finger on what is flawed in the argument, you haven’t solved the problem. You can’t just point out that the conclusion is wrong—that’s precisely why it’s a paradox. Weakness of will is not a positive claim. Some people do claim that it’s a positive claim, and usually that leads to determinism. I’m not presenting it as a positive claim; I’m presenting it as a paradox, because it’s obvious to me that it can be done. In our immediate experience we know and understand and feel and experience that it can be done, but when we try to define it, it sounds stuck—it’s impossible to understand how this business works. Who said it can be defined? Hm? Who said repentance—

[Speaker C] Fits into logical categories and can be defined?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m not talking about whether it can be defined. You know, there’s a difference. There are things I don’t know how to define, but there are things I can prove are contradictory. Do you understand? That’s not the same thing. If I prove that something is contradictory, then it can’t be true. If there’s something I don’t know how to define, it may be my weakness that I don’t know how to define it—or maybe it can’t be defined. There’s a book by Pirsig—you know Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? It was a cult book when I was in the army. So there, Phaedrus—it doesn’t matter—he’s a rhetoric lecturer, takes journeys across America on a motorcycle, these voyages of discovery, existential journeys. And in the course of that he suddenly realizes—he’s a rhetoric lecturer, he grades his students’ essays—he suddenly asks himself, wait a second, what are my criteria for good rhetoric and bad rhetoric, for a good essay and a bad essay? It’s an impression, but there are no criteria for it; there’s no definition that defines what a good essay is and what a bad essay is. And in fact there is no definition, by the way. Essay teachers can try to give definitions, but it’s obvious that someone creative enough can write an excellent essay against all their rules. Those rules don’t really capture the quality of an essay. And then he suddenly arrives at some kind of illumination—insight, illumination with an “i”—that the Greeks messed up our minds. Because the Greeks, or some of them, Aristotle mainly probably, claim that anything that cannot be defined does not exist. And the concept of quality cannot be defined. Therefore, there is no such thing really. It somewhat reminds me of intellectual currents—I don’t like to call them intellectual—that are common today: things that can’t be defined don’t exist, and since in fact you can’t define anything, nothing exists. A kind of nihilistic skepticism like that. But his insight says there are things I cannot define, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It’s my lack of ability. That I fully accept. What I don’t accept is when I find a contradiction within something and someone says to me, well, there are things that can’t be defined. My problem isn’t that I failed to define it. I succeeded in defining that it can’t be—or in proving that it can’t be. That’s not the same thing. Otherwise every proof by contradiction can be thrown in the trash; it proves nothing, because maybe I missed something, maybe I didn’t know well enough. Then you can’t prove anything by contradiction. I found a contradiction in a certain assumption. So what? Maybe I’m not smart enough. You hear the logical definitions.

[Speaker C] Okay, and therefore I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Am saying that if I find a contradiction within something—and that is what I’ve done here, apparently—not that I failed to define the concept of repentance, but that I proved it cannot exist, I proved it is contradictory. That’s something else; it’s a more serious problem.

[Speaker C] Did you bring your own definition of repentance? Yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you adopt a different definition of repentance, then absolutely, maybe. I don’t see the possibility of adopting a different definition, but all right, obviously this is only according to my definition. Look, the only way—and I’m saying again, this is very tricky. I’ve thought about this many times, and it’s this kind of loop that I’m not sure I fully get out of, but it seems to me that it can offer an answer—and here I’m connecting two things that were said. My claim basically is that when a person makes a decision, he does so on two levels. One level is the decision to make the decision himself at all—to be a decider. And after he decides, he makes a decision in light of his values about what the correct decision is. The practical difference is that when someone sins, it can be one of two things. Seemingly one of two things—we’ll soon see that not exactly. One of two things: either he really chooses, but chooses what he does not believe in, or chooses evil, if you like—evil in his own eyes. That’s on the second layer. Meaning, he chose badly, chose evil, but he chose. Or he didn’t choose; he was dragged along. And I think that many times the feeling people have after they sin is that they didn’t really choose. They were dragged along. They let the circumstances somehow bring them into that situation, and they didn’t fight against it. Now, our feeling that the will is weak is not that the will told us to do this and not that. A weak will means letting go of the reins. Letting circumstances somehow take me, on one level or another—not keeping the reins in my own hands and deciding. Because when the reins are in my hands, I really do decide correctly, usually. When I sin—I don’t know if always, but usually when I sin, I sin by simply not holding the reins. I let the horses run on their own. You acted? What? You acted, but you could say… No, I acted in that the horses pulled me. But how did I let them pull me? Because I let go of the reins. What am I being accused of? I’m not being accused of the act I did, because the horses did that. You said it was an external force, so what do you want? I’m coerced, right? It’s an external force, the horses pulled me or the inclination pulled me. But they say yes—but you gave the inclination the lead, you let go of the reins. So what happens now—notice this—what was my difficulty? My difficulty was: how can it be that by my own initiative I do something that I myself think is wrong to do and don’t want to do? The answer is: that never happens. I don’t do something I don’t want to do. Rather, I close my eyes and let the horses go. Suddenly I find myself in a place I don’t want to be. Now obviously I was conscious of this possibility—that if the horses go, they’ll take me there—and maybe I even intentionally closed my eyes. A human being is a terribly complicated creature, and those are the loops I can’t get out of. But it’s not an absurd action like I described earlier, where a person willingly decides to do something he doesn’t want to do. There’s no such thing. Rather, there can be a state where a person lets go of the reins, and then he in effect allows his drives, or his environment, or various external circumstances—and “external” for me includes the drives too, they’re also external—to take him to places that he already believes are wrong. He doesn’t need to change his worldview; he needs not to let go of the reins. His sin is not that he desecrated the Sabbath. The horses desecrated the Sabbath. That’s like your animal resting. His sin is that he let go of the reins and let the horses go. Because that’s not what he did. But you know, this brings in “bringing oneself into coercion,” an interesting topic in the medieval authorities (Rishonim): someone who brought himself into coercion—does he count as coerced or not? You might hold him accountable for bringing himself into coercion. The question is whether you can also hold him accountable for the result that occurred. Right? Someone who sails on a ship less than three days before the Sabbath, or on some ferry there—if he’s a Torah scholar, then he goes to sleep. He uses a legal maneuver; he sleeps on the ship. And then in the middle of the sea, what can he do? He can’t stop the ship, and so on the Sabbath he’s riding on the ship too. He fell asleep on Friday, got on the ship and fell asleep. Fine—but he knew that once he fell asleep, the others would take the ship. That’s called bringing oneself into coercion. There’s a responsum of the Rivash on this. There are all sorts of amusing cases, or “he is a child of last year and his mouth is hot,” in the Talmud in tractate Pesachim on the eve of Passover. In the period before the wedding? Yes. “I will read and not tilt”—that’s an interesting question, because he thought he wasn’t bringing himself into coercion. In the end he understood that he was bringing himself into coercion. I’m talking about someone who from the outset brings himself into coercion; he knows in advance that he’s going to be coerced.

[Speaker B] What, a flight to Greece? What, a return flight to Israel from the U.S. that went through Greece on the Sabbath last year?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t hear, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[Speaker B] People who came back before the Sabbath, entering Israel on an El Al flight last year through Greece. No, I don’t remember, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Okay. Right. Letting go of the reins and closing your eyes—isn’t that also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Also an action that reveals a desire? Ah, that’s the problematic loop that I’m not completely sure I got out of, to be honest. Because in the end, the decision to let go of the reins is also a decision. The decision whether to choose is my own determination, because otherwise I go back through this entire lecture again on that point. If I decided to let go of the reins because I believed one should let go of the reins, then what’s the problem? If I didn’t believe one should let go of the reins, then why did I let go? Okay, but the point is that letting go of the reins is not the forbidden act itself. The forbidden act is desecrating the Sabbath, or eating something non-kosher, or eating something fattening in the context of a diet. Letting go of the reins is of course some kind of indirect cause on the way to the forbidden act. So among my values there isn’t this issue of not letting go of the reins; among my values there is the issue of keeping the Sabbath—at least in the religious context—or not eating fattening food in the context of dieting. And therefore here my feeling is that there really is some kind of breach. Meaning, this is no longer a logical contradiction—connecting to your earlier remark. Meaning, I’ll say again, it’s tricky. I’m not completely sure I’ve really solved the problem, but if there is a solution, it should be there. Meaning, the point is that ultimately a person has to choose to be a chooser. And the conclusion that comes out of this—and this is already an opening to the next part of the next lecture, probably—is that basically repenting means returning to being a chooser. That is the essence of repentance. Major repentance. The psychological reversal is not a reversal of values. It’s not believing that these values are good and not those. I knew in advance which values were good and which weren’t; even when I sinned I knew. That’s not the point. The point is to return to being a chooser. That is, to decide that from now on I’m holding the reins and not letting them go. By the way, that’s the reason—again, I’ll get into this—but that’s why Maimonides places his discussion of free choice in the laws of repentance. Why not in the laws of Grace after Meals? In Grace after Meals I have a choice too—whether to recite Grace after Meals or not. Honoring parents, in every law I have a choice whether to do it or not. What is different about repentance from the rest of Jewish law? In repentance, the sin is not the desecration of the Sabbath; it’s that I didn’t choose. So to repent means to return to being a chooser. Reciting Grace after Meals does indeed involve my being a chooser, obviously, but that is not the essence of the commandment of Grace after Meals. The essence of that commandment is to recite Grace after Meals. But to repent—the essence of the matter is to return to being a chooser. Therefore the concept of choice is tied by its navel, at its very navel, to the concept of repentance. It’s not merely a condition as it is in Grace after Meals or honoring parents; rather, it is the repentance. Repentance means returning to being a chooser. That is why Maimonides devotes two chapters dealing with choice in the laws of repentance, and nowhere else. We’ll talk about the essence of the laws of repentance in general in this context, but that’s just a remark.

[Speaker E] What I wanted to define is the issue that when a person commits a sin, the definition given by the Sages is that he is in a state of a spirit of folly, and that is exactly what causes what he does.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “A spirit of folly enters him” means letting go of the reins. He loses self-control, he goes crazy. What is crazy? Crazy is someone who doesn’t control his actions, who lets the horses take him. That’s called a spirit of folly. I’m claiming that this is the spirit of folly—letting go of the reins. Because what is a madman? A madman is someone who has no control over his actions; he isn’t the one deciding. Right? He lets demons take him to do all sorts of things that he didn’t decide on. That’s called letting go of the reins; that’s the spirit of folly.

[Speaker F] But he knows—he knows he’s transgressing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And he’s responsible for it because he’s not insane, because he let go of the reins. The insane person did not decide to let go of the reins; the reins are simply lying there dropped. You are held accountable for it because you let go of the reins. In that sense, it is a conscious act—and seemingly one could run through everything I’ve said till now with respect to that too, and that’s why I said this already starts becoming a kind of infinite regression. Why did you let go of that? The one who has to let go or not let go—I already said earlier. I just want to finish, yes. It’s the same thing. It’s the same thing. Meaning, basically what’s the point? What does it mean to let go of the reins? It’s obvious that this isn’t—I’m not leaving it at that—there is some struggle, only I wasn’t strong enough, right? That’s my feeling. There is some kind of struggle before a sin, but because I wasn’t strong enough, in the end I fell. What does that mean? The decision whether to choose is not a decision of one or zero. The question is what intensity, or what energy, you decide to invest in holding the reins. The horses are galloping, right? The inclinations are pulling, or the circumstances are pulling and pushing you in various directions. The question is how tightly you hold the reins. The decision of how tightly to hold the reins is really the decision whether to choose. The decision whether to choose is not binary. The decision on the second level is binary: whether the correct values are these or those. If I think they are these, then I’ll do that too, assuming I choose. But the decision whether to be a chooser is a decision that lies on a continuum of levels. Because you can be a chooser at level X, at level 2X, at level 3X. And then at level X you’ll withstand trials for which energy of intensity X is enough to cope—the horses aren’t pulling that hard, or they aren’t yanking the reins out of your hands, so it’s enough for you to apply energy of intensity X. But in stronger trials you’ll fall, because you only applied intensity X. Therefore repentance is a continuous process—meaning, increasing the intensity of choice. If you like, Rabbi Dessler’s “window of choice” is exactly the same idea, more and more. And that is precisely the point. I just want to finish; from here I’ll continue in the next lecture. I just want to finish with a certain point. Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya—I read his story from tractate Avodah Zarah 17. There’s a passage there that is very surprising. They said about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, right, that he did not leave a single prostitute in the world he had not slept with, and so on. Then he came to her, and at the moment of passion she passed gas, and she said: just as this gas does not return to its place, so too Elazar ben Dordaya is not accepted in repentance. He went and sat between two mountains and hills, and said: mountains and hills, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said, “For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed.” He said: heavens and earth, ask for mercy for me. They said: before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves, 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 for me. They said to him: before we ask for mercy for you, let us ask for mercy for ourselves. And so on—stars and constellations, ask for mercy for me, all the host of heaven. In the end he said: the matter depends on me alone. He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul departed. A heavenly voice went out and said: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for the life of the world to come. So what is this story with the heavens and the clouds and the stars? What does he want? I’ll take you back to the point with which I opened, about serving for its own sake. A person cannot change himself; it is logically impossible. Because if I am the changer, how will I change myself? After all, these are my values, so by what value system am I going to change this one? Am I the one who already upholds the correct value system by which I change this one? Then no change is needed. I already hold that system. So who is this one that comes and changes me? He must already hold the corrected system. Right? There is some problem when a person comes to change himself. If I come and change him, then maybe a psychologist can do it—from a deterministic psychological perspective—where a psychologist can, with hammer and chisel, alter the patient’s psyche. So maybe someone from outside can change someone else. But I cannot change myself. Who is the “I” and who is the “self”? If I hold the new value system already beforehand, there’s nothing to change. If I don’t hold it, then from what standpoint would I change toward it? I don’t think it’s the right one at all. Right? That was the difficulty I began with. One of the problems—I think one of the channels through which one can perhaps understand how this thing opens up, how after all it happens at all—how do we choose? How do we change? How do we repent? I said that repentance means choosing, returning to being a chooser. It could be that here—and again, today I’m borrowing a little from Hasidic thought, to my shame, I beg your forgiveness—there is, I think, a certain dilemma in the background that goes like this: if something external changes me, then it’s worthless; I didn’t do it, I don’t deserve credit for it. I myself cannot change myself. Right? This dichotomy between the outside and me is what creates the dilemma argument. In other words, the change can come neither from here nor from there. The question is whether it’s really impossible to blur the dichotomy a bit. We speak of a divine point, a divine spark, I don’t know what to call it, that exists within every person. What does that really mean? It means that in the usual view, in the Mitnagdic, Lithuanian view, the Holy One, blessed be He, is there and we stand opposite Him. In the Hasidic view, we don’t really exist at all; we are essentially part of Him. I think there is some kind of metamorphic conception here; some would call it pantheism perhaps, I don’t know—I never think these concepts were properly defined. The claim is that it’s true that I am me and He is He—if I am not myself, then who am I at all, as was said. But I stand opposite Him; still, it’s not true that there is a sharp dichotomy between us. Something of Him is within me, because otherwise I wouldn’t be here. Meaning, if something doesn’t come by His power—He animates everything here—if it doesn’t come by His power, then it isn’t here. So on the one hand I am responsible for my actions and my decisions are my decisions and not His, but my ability to decide stems from some point that comes from Him. The ability to choose, to deviate from the laws of nature, and so on. So that means that the transition between me and Him is not identity—it’s not that I am part of Him or I am Him. But it’s also not me opposite Him, as though we were two completely separate entities. There is something of Him within me, and that is what enables me to choose. Choice is the image of God within us—that is, the capacity, the image of God within us, is what enables us to choose. But this time on the logical plane, not the metaphysical plane—simply logically—because otherwise it can’t be done from within, and it can’t be done from without. If it is done, it can only be on the assumption that outside and inside are not separated from each other in a dichotomous way. And therefore, in order to understand that choice or repentance are possible, we apparently need to give up the sharp dichotomy between us and the Holy One, blessed be He. And there is a very interesting point here, because in the series of “Our Father, Our King” prayers that we say, I can understand all of them except one. What does “Our Father, our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You” mean? If He brings us back in repentance, then He did the repentance, not me. What is that worth? It’s like someone outside changing me. That’s not repentance. So in the smaller repentance, “Our Father, our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You” means: accept the repentance that we are doing, right? The kindness is that the repentance we do can be accepted. In major repentance it means: enable us to do it. If we do it, then we are different people; He will accept it as a matter of law, because we have changed, we are different. There is no point in punishing the previous phase of ourselves. But how can this even be done at all? Only if He does it to us—not if we do it. Now, it’s not Him alone, but rather the combination, the point at which He and we are not separate—that is apparently what enables the process of repentance to happen. And therefore, when we say “Our Father, our King, bring us back in complete repentance before You,” here it doesn’t mean “accept our repentance,” but rather “help us carry out the repentance.” Wait—and now Rabbi, one second—Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. I return to Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. What was Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya’s problem? I said earlier that Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya taught us major repentance, right? Within an hour, without regret, acceptance for the future, all the details—he is destined for the world to come, Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. This great sinner is called “Rabbi.” Along the way he prays to all the heavenly bodies and mountains and hills and the sun and the moon and the stars and all the clouds, I don’t know who, everybody. What is that supposed to say? Did he really think mountains and hills would ask for mercy for him? It’s a literary expression to say that he was torn apart. Because he understood that he wanted to do major repentance, but a person cannot do major repentance upon himself. Something from outside has to reverse him. I cannot reverse myself. So the literary expression for that—this is of course a story that probably did not happen—but the literary expression with which the Sages describe it is: heavens, mountains, hills—someone, something external has to do it; a person cannot change himself. In major repentance, where we’re talking about change, change has to be done from the outside, not from the inside. But who will do it from the outside? If it’s someone from the outside, then it’s valueless. So the dilemma is described here exactly, in literary form of course, as follows: first heavens, mountains, hills, everyone. What happens in the end? Everyone worries about himself. What does that mean? It won’t help you at all if we do it for you—you have to repent. Then he arrives at the conclusion: the matter depends on me alone. And then, when he says the matter depends on me alone, his soul departs, right? He wept until his soul departed. What does that mean? Because when he discovered that the matter depended on him alone, he did not then go and do repentance—he was already a penitent. Because he was already in the new value system. Meaning, the moment you understand that you are not okay, you are never not okay—you are always okay. The “you” of a moment ago was not okay, according to the current “you.” Right? So the moment you understand that, you are already a penitent. That is what he understood. The moment he understood this—“the matter depends on me alone,” and not on anything outside—his soul departed. He was done. Meaning, he was already a penitent. He didn’t need now to understand and then go repent. No. Once he understood, it became clear to him that he was already a penitent. Because there’s nothing to do here. You only need to understand where you are. I don’t know, it’s some kind of thing that happens all at once like that. Meaning, it happens and you understand that it happens, and that’s it—it happened. What? Where did anything change here? No, it’s obvious that all the inner work he did with the heavens and the mountains and the hills until he understood—obviously that was work that gradually drew the Holy One, blessed be He, into the picture, and the reversal itself was apparently done through some combination, as I said earlier.

[Speaker F] Every morning we pray and ask the Holy One, blessed be He, don’t bring us into a trial, let this day be one where the trial is easy and we can get through it. Okay.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An easy trial means that at my level X of choice, I don’t need His help. I can manage. He just needs to lower the hills I have to climb. Fine. But if that doesn’t happen, there are trials I can’t withstand. So what does that mean? It means I need to increase X to 2X. Now the question is what about that. Certainly there too, somehow, the Holy One, blessed be He, helps me do it. I spoke about this. When you lower the level of the trials—that I’ll talk about in the next lecture, or the one after.

[Speaker B] Then part of it will be because he isn’t a partner to the whole picture, to everything that happened.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Fine. After it’s turned over, we already said—we are different already. What? What? Okay, good afternoon.