Matters of Repentance – Lesson 1
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
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Table of Contents
- Meshekh Chokhmah on the commandment of repentance and confession
- The four components of repentance and the relation to abandoning the sin
- Counting commandments and unique content as a criterion
- Maimonides and Sefer HaChinukh: confession as the commandment
- A conditional positive commandment, an existential commandment, and the difficulty regarding someone who repented but did not confess
- Defining commandments in Maimonides: annulment of vows and impurity
- The contradiction in Maimonides: Sefer HaMitzvot versus the opening of the Laws of Repentance
- Minchat Chinukh: an attempt to avoid the absurdity of neglecting a positive commandment
- Maimonides’ approach: explicit command, promise, and the obligation of repentance by reason
- Why the Torah does not command it: character refinement, “greater is one who is commanded and does,” and Rabbi Kook
- Repentance as an end and not just a means: the greatness of penitents
- Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh: perfection and perfecting, and “service as a divine need”
- “I will sin and repent” and the definition of deficiency and sin
Summary
General Overview
The lecture examines whether there is an independent commandment of repentance and what its content is. It presents the Meshekh Chokhmah, who holds that the main commandment is confession and not the very cessation of sin, because the prohibitions themselves already obligate a person not to sin. The lecture then clarifies a tension in Maimonides between Sefer HaMitzvot and Sefer HaChinukh, which count confession as the commandment, and the opening of the Laws of Repentance, which sounds like a commandment “to repent… and confess,” while Minchat Chinukh offers various distinctions to reconcile this. Finally, a direction is proposed according to which even if there is no explicit command in the Torah to repent, and therefore it is not counted, there is still an obligation to repent based on reason. A broader idea is then discussed: repentance as a process of self-perfection that has intrinsic value, to the point of the teaching that “in the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand,” drawing on Rabbi Kook’s sources about the value of progress and not only static perfection.
Meshekh Chokhmah on the commandment of repentance and confession
Meshekh Chokhmah asks how “repentance” can be considered a commandment if it means returning from one’s foolishness and no longer sinning, since even without a special commandment a person is already commanded not to violate the commandments of the blessed God, and there is no room to say, “Because he sinned and repeated it, has it become permitted to him?” Meshekh Chokhmah determines that the commandment of repentance that requires its own specific commandment is this: when a person sins and abandons his sin, there is a commandment to confess and say before the blessed God that he knows himself to have sinned and asks for atonement. He ties this to Maimonides’ wording at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance: “when he repents and returns from his sin… he is obligated to confess,” and explains that the resolve not to return to one’s foolishness and the regret are included within confession.
The four components of repentance and the relation to abandoning the sin
It is noted that Saadia Gaon and the halakhic decisors present four components in the commandment of repentance: abandoning the sin, regret, resolution for the future, and verbal confession. Abandoning the sin is presented as a direct derivative of the prohibition itself and therefore not a novelty of the commandment of repentance, whereas regret and resolution for the future are seen as unique content that does not derive directly from the prohibition itself. Meshekh Chokhmah merges these unique additions into confession and argues that in this way the position is preserved that the counted commandment is confession.
Counting commandments and unique content as a criterion
An assumption is presented that a commandment counted among the commandments must have unique content and not merely repeat another commandment. In the name of Maimonides’ ninth principle, it is said that when the Torah repeats the same matter, we do not count it as many commandments. An example is brought from Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner regarding the commandment to love the convert, which seems included within loving Israel, to illustrate the difficulty of a commandment that lacks independent content. From this it is argued that if repentance has no content beyond what is already included in the prohibitions and commandments, there is no place to count it—only confession.
Maimonides and Sefer HaChinukh: confession as the commandment
Formulations are brought from Sefer HaChinukh (commandment 364) and from Maimonides in Sefer HaMitzvot (commandment 73), which define the commandment as the directive to confess sins “and say them together with repentance.” From these sources it emerges that what is being counted is confession, not a separate command “to repent,” and repentance is understood as the context in which confession is said.
A conditional positive commandment, an existential commandment, and the difficulty regarding someone who repented but did not confess
A distinction is presented between an “existential positive commandment” and a “conditional obligatory positive commandment,” using the examples of tzitzit and Grace after Meals. It is said that with tzitzit there is a possibility of neglecting a positive commandment when the circumstances apply. The question is then raised: what is the status of someone who repented but did not confess? It is suggested that it sounds unreasonable for his state to be worse than that of someone who did not repent at all, if we define this as a conditional commandment whose non-fulfillment leads to neglect of a positive commandment. From this another possibility arises: to see confession not as an obligation whose neglect is punishable, but as the definition of the repentance process.
Defining commandments in Maimonides: annulment of vows and impurity
Maimonides’ positive commandments 95–96 are presented, where he defines commandments as establishing a rule of law: in annulment of vows there is no command to annul, but a commandment “that we judge according to this law,” and in impurity there is no obligation to become impure and no prohibition for an ordinary Jew to become impure; rather, the Torah defines that contact in a certain manner creates a status of impurity. It is argued that commandments of this type are “defining commandments” that establish the halakhic status of a situation or action, and it is said that their appearance in Sefer HaMitzvot is tied to Maimonides’ understanding that Sefer HaMitzvot is a “book of laws.” According to this direction, confession can be understood as a defining commandment of the procedure of repentance, not as an obligation one neglects if one fails to perform it.
The contradiction in Maimonides: Sefer HaMitzvot versus the opening of the Laws of Repentance
It is said that there is an explicit difficulty in Maimonides: in Sefer HaMitzvot the commandment appears to be confession alone, whereas in the introduction to the Laws of Repentance it says, “One positive commandment, namely that the sinner repent from his sin before God and confess.” A proposal to emend the wording to “when he repents… that he confess” is rejected, and it is said that the wording everywhere is “that he repent… and confess.” It is brought that Minchat Chinukh addresses this and proposes that the positive commandment is the verbal confession, but repentance in the heart is effective for atonement, bringing proof from Kiddushin 49 about “perhaps he contemplated repentance in his heart.” Still, it is said that Maimonides’ language in chapter 1, “atonement depends on verbal confession,” indicates that repentance and confession together are what condition atonement.
Minchat Chinukh: an attempt to avoid the absurdity of neglecting a positive commandment
Minchat Chinukh is presented as sensing the absurdity that if confession is a conditional obligation, then someone who repented without confession would come out worse than someone who did not repent at all. So he raises the possibility that the commandment of confession is not obligatory in a way that creates punishment, analogous to tzitzit when there is no four-cornered garment. It is said that he defines the commandment of confession as something like an existential commandment in order not to create a situation in which the very attempt to repent worsens one’s halakhic status. A rejection of the need for this solution is proposed, on the grounds that it is more precise to understand confession as a defining commandment of the repentance process rather than as an existential commandment.
Maimonides’ approach: explicit command, promise, and the obligation of repentance by reason
It is argued that Maimonides tends toward the rule that a commandment without an explicit command in the Torah is not counted, and that for him a Torah-level obligation means what is explicit in the Torah. Regarding the verse “And you shall return unto the Lord your God,” it is said that in Laws of Repentance chapter 7 Maimonides interprets it as a promise—“the Torah has already promised that in the end Israel will repent”—and not as a commandment, unlike Nachmanides and Meshekh Chokhmah, who see it as a command. From this a reconciliation is proposed: Maimonides does not count repentance in Sefer HaMitzvot because there is no commanding verse, but in the Mishneh Torah he includes repentance because there he gathers everything one must do even if it is not a counted commandment, and the obligation to repent derives from reason: “if you know that there is such a mechanism that can erase sins… reason dictates that you should do it.”
Why the Torah does not command it: character refinement, “greater is one who is commanded and does,” and Rabbi Kook
In the name of Rabbi Chaim Vital, the difficulty is raised as to why the Torah does not command character refinement, and a distinction is proposed between requiring behavior—“just as He is compassionate, so you too be compassionate”—and repairing the structure of the soul itself. Rabbi Chaim Vital is explained as claiming that character refinement is a precondition for your being subject to command in the first place, so there is no point in commanding it, while Rabbi Kook is presented as arguing that a command would actually be detrimental, because character refinement and repentance need to come from inner understanding and not merely in order to discharge an obligation. There is also a remark about the possibility that frameworks such as beautifying a commandment and a partial measure are meta-halakhic rules that are not counted as commandments despite being obligatory, as well as Nachmanides’ example of “You shall be holy” as going beyond the letter of the law, which cannot be counted as a positive commandment without destroying its essence.
Repentance as an end and not just a means: the greatness of penitents
The saying is brought: “In the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand,” and the question is asked: how can a penitent be on a higher level than a completely righteous person if at most he has only arrived at complete righteousness? The view that this refers merely to greater difficulty and therefore more reward is rejected, and it is said that even a completely righteous person has an evil inclination and is constantly overcoming it. It is proposed that the novelty is to see repentance not as a means for erasing sin and reaching the goal of perfection, but as an end with intrinsic value, where the very path of change and self-perfection is an additional level beyond the result.
Rabbi Kook in Orot HaKodesh: perfection and perfecting, and “service as a divine need”
Passages are brought from Orot HaKodesh, part two, according to which the direction of existence is “a great display of elevation and eternal addition,” and that without smallness and deficiency there would be only “greatness and fullness” but not “growing greater.” Rabbi Kook describes self-perfection itself as perfection, but says that it cannot be in divinity, “for absolute infinite perfection leaves no room for addition,” and therefore an existence is created that begins from deficiency and keeps rising without end. The process is described as “this service is a divine need,” in which the self-perfection of created beings brings from potential to actuality the “power of perfecting” included in divine perfection through creation and becoming.
“I will sin and repent” and the definition of deficiency and sin
A Hasidic interpretation is brought for “one who says, ‘I will sin and repent’… they do not give him the opportunity to repent,” as referring to someone who seeks the level of a penitent and not merely to enjoy and then repair. It is said that this is not the plain meaning of the Talmudic text, but it expresses a correct point about the value of self-perfection. In conclusion, it is said that the use of the term “to sin” in this context can be understood as deficiency and not necessarily as formal sin, and that in Rabbi Kook’s context repentance is not only for transgressions but also for “the fact that he was not more than he was.” The lecture ends with the statement that spiritual progress also includes regret and acceptance for the future as progress, and that the clarification will continue in the next meeting.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, we’re dealing a bit with matters of repentance, and altogether we have three meetings, counting after the previous one that was canceled. I’ll start with a bit of a discussion about the commandment of repentance—what it means, what its content is, whether there is even such a commandment at all—and from there we’ll move on to various other issues. Let’s start, maybe, with Meshekh Chokhmah. Okay. So Meshekh Chokhmah on Parashat Vayelekh says—because there he has a difficulty there, not specifically connected to the verse, that’s less important for our purposes. I’ll start from here: “And let us reflect that the term repentance, according to what the term indicates”—meaning, according to the meaning of the expression repentance—“how can it be considered a commandment, that he return from his foolishness and not sin anymore? For even without the commandment he is already commanded not to transgress the commandments of the blessed God. And would you really think that because he sinned and repeated it, it has become permitted to him? For behold, the first warning that restrained him from his sin before he sinned restrains him from his sin even after he has sinned.” Meaning, he’s really asking: what does it mean to count a commandment, or define a commandment, of repentance? What does it mean to repent? To return from your foolishness, to stop sinning, to abandon the sin and stop sinning from now on. That is already included in the Torah’s very definition of this act as a sin. Say someone ate pork. Now he has to repent—what does that mean? To stop eating pork from now on, not to eat pork anymore. All of that is already included in the Torah’s defining the eating of pork as a prohibition. What is there in the commandment of repentance beyond what all the commandments and prohibitions themselves define? They too define for me to distance myself from these acts, not to do these acts, or to do other acts. What is there in the commandment of repentance beyond that? And just because he already ate pork, was there ever a thought that now he can go on eating pork, and therefore you need a commandment of repentance so that he won’t do it, so that he stops doing it? That makes no sense. So he says: “However, however, the commandment of repentance for which a specific commandment is needed is this: that if he sinned and abandons his sin, there is a commandment to confess and say before the blessed God that he knows within himself that he sinned and asks for atonement.” In other words, there is—so what is the content of the commandment of repentance beyond the halakhic definitions themselves of what is permitted and forbidden and what one must do? Only this matter of confession. There is a commandment to confess and say verbally before the blessed God that he knows he sinned and asks for atonement. Only that has some additional content beyond the commandments and prohibitions themselves. “And so is the language of our teacher in the Laws of Repentance: when he repents and returns from his sin”—meaning, not to sin because of the command by which he was commanded not to transgress the first time, before he sinned, whether positive commandments or prohibitions—“he is obligated to confess before the blessed God, as it says, ‘And they shall confess their sin.’” That is, Maimonides’ language at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance is that when a person repents and returns from his sin, he is obligated to confess before God. What is Maimonides saying? The definition is that he is obligated to confess—that is the commandment. Repenting is the practical circumstance, meaning: when he repents, which in itself is not a commandment, then when he repents, the commandment is that he is obligated to confess. That is basically the added value of the commandment of repentance beyond the ordinary commandments and prohibitions in Jewish law. “And what is needed, that at that time he think that he will not return to his foolishness and will no longer transgress the commandments of God’s mouth, that is included in confession, see there.” That he think in his heart that he will not return to this sin and will not commit transgressions anymore—that thought itself, that he will not return to the sin and will not commit transgressions anymore, derives from the prohibition itself. Say there is a prohibition against eating pork, and I ate pork. Meshekh Chokhmah says: there is now a commandment of repentance. What does the commandment of repentance include? Simply stopping eating pork, not eating pork from now on—that is included in the prohibition against eating pork; for that you don’t need a commandment of repentance. What remains? Confession. Meshekh Chokhmah says no—but there is something else too. He also has to regret and accept upon himself that he will not return to this sin again. That too cannot be derived from the prohibition against eating pork. The prohibition against eating pork only says not to eat. But that you need to regret and think and resolve for the future and things like that—those are added values of the commandment of repentance, not only confession. Meshekh Chokhmah says: that’s included in confession. So all those things are basically included in confession, and therefore the commandment that exists is only the commandment to confess, including those things, and not the commandment to abandon the sin. Right, as Saadia Gaon writes, and as became accepted afterward—all the halakhic decisors bring this—he writes that there are four components in the commandment of repentance: one must abandon the sin, regret, resolve for the future, and verbal confession. Okay, abandoning the sin—that is included in the very fact that it is defined as a sin, right? For that, you don’t need the commandment of repentance. Regret and resolve for the future—that already does not derive from the very definition of the thing as a sin. You only need not to do it. But to regret that you did it, or to accept upon yourself that in the future you won’t do it—those are things you can’t derive directly from there being a prohibition against eating pork. That too is unique content of the commandment of repentance. So in fact three of the four components are unique. Only abandoning the sin is something that is basically redundant; that’s not the novelty of the commandment of repentance. Meshekh Chokhmah says: correct, but that’s included in the commandment of confession. Meaning, all the unique things that the commandment of repentance adds beyond the halakhic definitions themselves of the forbidden and the permitted are included in the commandment of confession. I’ll go back—I stop sharing the sources from time to time because when I share the sources I can’t see you. Since there are few participants here, maybe I can still do it and somehow see you.
[Speaker C] Why does he require there to be additional content at all?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] The assumption is that if a person sinned in a certain matter, then apparently it’s harder for him to deal with it or something like that. You could say that the content is the ability to cope despite that difficulty, or something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand—what content?
[Speaker C] You could ask why we need to assume that there is some specific added content at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If there is a commandment of repentance, then it has to have some content. The commandment of repentance isn’t supposed just to repeat the other commandments, and that’s it.
[Speaker C] No, maybe it’s saying that when a person manages to take something he sinned in and return, and now no longer sin in it, then the virtue of not sinning in that same thing is more significant, or something like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so as far as reward goes, the Holy One, blessed be He, can take that into account. But that shouldn’t be defined as a commandment. Maimonides writes in the ninth principle that when the Torah repeats the same thing several times, we count it as one commandment. Meaning, even if something appears in the Torah, if it has no unique content of its own—if the content of the matter is already included in another commandment—then there is no point in counting it as an independent commandment. For example, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner asks about the commandment of loving the convert. There is a commandment, “And you shall love the convert.” So he asks: what kind of commandment is that? It’s already included in the commandment of loving Israel. There is a commandment to love every Jew, and the convert is also a Jew. So in effect the commandment of loving the convert has no unique content; it is included in the commandment of loving Israel. So why count it? Fine, he gives his answer, I’m only bringing this as an example that if there is no unique content, it shouldn’t be a commandment. You can say: okay, if it’s hard for someone and he fulfills the commandment, the Holy One, blessed be He, will give him more reward. Fine, that’s up to the Holy One, blessed be He, but it shouldn’t enter into my counting of the commandments.
[Speaker B] Okay, so that’s what he says, and after him came Sefer HaChinukh and explained his words.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “But repentance itself should not be considered a new commandment, apart from the directives that we have already been commanded.” And that’s clear. So basically it comes out that there is no unique commandment to repent; there is a commandment of confession. In fact, you also see this in Maimonides, not only in the Laws of Repentance, in what he himself quoted, but look at Sefer HaChinukh, for example, commandment 364: “We were commanded to confess before God for all the sins we committed at the time when we regret them. And this is the matter of confession—that a person should say at the time of repentance, ‘Please, God, I have sinned, I have acted perversely, I have transgressed,’ and so on and so forth.” Same with Maimonides in commandment 73—one second. Do you see? Commandment 73 is “that we were commanded to confess the sins and transgressions that we have committed before God, exalted be He, and to state them together with repentance, and this is confession.” Fine. So Maimonides basically defines the commandment as the commandment to confess, not as a commandment of repentance. Now here this needs to be sharpened a bit more. So what is the status of repenting itself beyond confession? Seemingly it’s like, say, the commandment of tzitzit. Whoever puts on a four-cornered garment has to put tzitzit on it. Whoever repents has to make verbal confession. What is the meaning of this? There are people who mistakenly relate to this as an existential positive commandment—that you can choose not to do it and you can choose to do it—but that’s not correct. It’s a conditional obligatory positive commandment. What does that mean? An existential positive commandment is a commandment such that if you fulfill it, great, and if you don’t fulfill it, nothing happened. With an existential positive commandment you can’t neglect it; there is no neglect of a positive commandment in an existential positive commandment. With tzitzit there is neglect of a positive commandment. If you put on a four-cornered garment and do not put tzitzit on it, then you have neglected a positive commandment. So what, true, you can choose not to wear a four-cornered garment and then you won’t be obligated in tzitzit—but that’s not because the commandment is voluntary. If it were voluntary, then there would be no possibility whatsoever of being considered to have neglected a positive commandment. But here there is a possibility of neglecting a positive commandment if you wore a four-cornered garment and didn’t put tzitzit on it. Therefore I think it’s more correct to define this as a conditional positive commandment. What does that mean? It’s an obligatory positive commandment. Whoever doesn’t do it has neglected a positive commandment—except that the commandment is conditional on certain circumstances existing. Only then are you obligated to do it. Grace after Meals is also a conditional obligatory positive commandment. Only if I ate to the point of satisfaction do I have an obligation to recite Grace after Meals. No one would think of saying that Grace after Meals is an existential commandment because I can always choose not to eat to the point of satisfaction. That’s irrelevant. An existential positive commandment is one that you can’t neglect. Here we’re dealing with a commandment that can be neglected, it’s just that you can avoid entering the circumstances in which you’re obligated to fulfill it in the first place.
[Speaker B] But according to that definition, according to that definition, basically it comes out—wait, okay.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So basically the definition that seems to come out here is that there is no issue of repenting at all—except that if you repent, if you decide to repent, then you have to make verbal confession. If you didn’t repent, nothing happened, just as if you didn’t wear a four-cornered garment, you don’t need to put on tzitzit and of course you haven’t neglected a positive commandment. That’s a bit strange, but not terrible, because in principle, as I said before, there are conditional positive commandments. But let me ask you another question: what happens with someone who repented but did not confess? Is that like someone who wore a four-cornered garment and didn’t attach tzitzit to it? Seemingly not. Why?
[Speaker C] I don’t know, but it sounds different.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It sounds strange to compare them. But why? What’s the point? The point is that if you don’t wear a four-cornered garment, you were never obligated. If you do wear a four-cornered garment, you become obligated in tzitzit, and therefore if you don’t put on tzitzit, you’ve neglected a positive commandment. And with the commandment of repentance it sounds completely unreasonable that someone who repents but doesn’t confess has neglected a positive commandment, while someone who didn’t repent at all is in a better state. In other words, the state of someone who didn’t repent cannot be better than the state of someone who repented but didn’t confess. At most you can say that if he repented but didn’t confess, the repentance doesn’t count. You can’t say that his state is worse than someone who didn’t repent at all. So it seems to me that if anything, then the definition is that the commandment of confession is not an existential positive commandment but a conditional obligatory one, as I said earlier, because then if the circumstances exist, it could be that I have neglected a positive commandment if I didn’t do it. But maybe what we’re dealing with here is a definitional commandment. What does that mean? There are various commandments whose whole point is definition alone. I’ll give an example. Maimonides in positive commandments 95 and 96—by chance they’re one after the other, even though there’s no connection between them. You have it there, right? Do you see commandment 95? Do you see it? Yes. Commandment 95: “That we were commanded to judge according to the laws of annulment of vows”—meaning, the Torah instructed us to judge according to these laws, right? How is annulment of vows done? A husband annuls his wife’s vows. “And the meaning is not that we are obligated to annul in every case. And understand from me this matter itself every time you hear me count one of the laws as a commandment—for there is no command regarding one of the actions necessarily. Rather, the commandment is that we are commanded to judge according to this law in this matter.” Maimonides says there are certain commandments that he defines as laws. They’re not commandments in the regular sense. What does that mean? It means a commandment whose whole point is not to command me to do something and not to forbid me from doing something, but rather to define that this is the law. If you annulled the vow in such-and-such a way, the vow is annulled. If you didn’t annul the vow, you haven’t neglected a positive commandment—the vow is just not annulled. That’s all. There is a definition of how vows are annulled; if you did it according to the definition, the vow is annulled. If you didn’t do it according to the definition, then it’s not annulled. That’s all. There is neither obligation nor prohibition here. Why is this a commandment? Because a law is also included in the system of commandments. Look, for example, at commandment 96, right after it. Commandment 96 is “That we were commanded that whoever touches a carcass becomes impure.” “And I will remind you of the introduction, and it is fitting that you remember it in everything we mention of the types of impurity: namely, that when we count each and every kind of impurity as a positive commandment, the meaning is not that we are obligated to become impure with that impurity, nor are we warned against becoming impure with it so that it would be a prohibition. Rather, the Torah’s saying that whoever touches this type becomes impure, or that this thing imparts impurity in such-and-such a way to whoever touches it, is a positive commandment—that is, this law that we were commanded with is a positive commandment, and it tells us that whoever touches this in such-and-such a manner becomes impure, and whoever is in such-and-such a condition does not become impure. And impurity itself is optional: if he wishes he may become impure, and if he wishes he may refrain from becoming impure.” Okay, so what is Maimonides actually saying?
[Speaker E] That we have commandments in Sefer HaMitzvot—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But with impurity too, do you hear?
[Speaker E] Yes, yes. With both impurity and annulment of vows, there is some kind of negative feel to this definition. Meaning, both the word impurity and the term annulment of vows at least give the impression of something one shouldn’t really do, even if there isn’t an explicit prohibition against doing it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, not necessarily. Annulment of vows, for example. With impurity, let’s say there’s a Rashi from which it seems that there is some kind of—
[Speaker E] some kind of prohibition against becoming impure.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Are you with me? You’re coming through a bit choppy. There is a Rashi from which it emerges that there is some kind of prohibition against becoming impure, even for an ordinary Jew, not just a priest. But the straightforward view is not like that. And likewise annulment of vows is no problem at all. In annulment of vows there is nothing wrong with the woman making a vow. If the husband hears it on the day he hears it, he can annul it. That’s all. There is no negative connotation here, in my opinion, not at all. “Better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.” What?
[Speaker F] Also with other kinds of impurity, like corpse impurity or leprosy, for example?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Any impurity. There’s no issue. There is no prohibition against becoming impure—no—in any impurity. Leprosy impurity comes upon you; you didn’t even do anything, so what prohibition is there? A prohibition makes no sense there. In impurity where you touch something—a corpse or a carcass or something else—you can say, okay, I did something, but even there there is no prohibition. For a priest there is a prohibition, not for an ordinary Jew. As I said, from Rashi it sounds like there may be some prohibition even for an ordinary Jew, not a formal prohibition maybe, or not a fully halakhic prohibition—I don’t know exactly how to define it. But straightforwardly there is no prohibition. And certainly with making vows or annulling vows, there is no prohibition to annul and no prohibition not to annul. It is completely neutral. If you want to annul, you need to do it by this or that procedure, and that’s all. Nothing beyond that. So in Maimonides it seems there is another type of commandment. And these commandments are defining commandments. What does that mean? These are commandments that determine the halakhic status of a certain situation or of a certain act. And that definition, in Maimonides’ view, enters into the count of the commandments. Why is it there? I assume because for Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot means the book of laws. The commandments are the laws. Now, in a lawbook—look at a country’s statute book—there are laws whose whole point is definition. Whoever relates to subsection whatever regarding this issue is anyone who has reached such-and-such an age, or such-and-such conditions. Right? That’s not commanding me to do anything and not forbidding me from doing anything; it just defines the term minor. Or some kind of acquisition. A lawbook says that if you performed such-and-such an action, then the house becomes yours. You registered it in the land registry, you signed a contract, I don’t know exactly what. If you didn’t do that action, then the house isn’t yours. That’s a defining law. It doesn’t prohibit, it doesn’t permit—there’s no prohibition and no permission here. Most civil law is like that. Criminal law deals with prohibition and permission. So in a lawbook, of course such laws appear. For Maimonides, Sefer HaMitzvot is apparently the lawbook of Jewish law. And if defining laws appear in a lawbook, then defining commandments will be considered commandments. The term commandment, for Maimonides, is simply the halakhic name for a law. And therefore these laws also appear in Sefer HaMitzvot. What this actually seems to mean is that repentance and confession—basically even the commandment of confession—isn’t really a commandment in the ordinary sense. It doesn’t obligate me to do something, and I haven’t neglected a positive commandment if I didn’t do it. So what does it do? It defines. If I did repentance this way—if I verbalized confession—then my repentance counts. Then I did repentance properly. If I didn’t do it that way, it’s not neglect of a positive commandment, as I said earlier; I just didn’t repent. That’s all. Or I repented less well, whatever—but full repentance I didn’t do. In that sense it’s a defining commandment. Confession is a defining commandment. And repentance? Repentance is not a commandment at all. Repentance is parallel to annulment of a vow, okay? They tell me how to do annulment of a vow. To annul a vow, you have to do such-and-such. The annulment of the vow itself is not a commandment. The definition of how one annuls a vow is the commandment. Same thing here. Same thing here: repentance is not the commandment. The definition of how one repents—namely, with verbal confession—that is the commandment. But again, the commandment is a defining commandment. Not that you’re obligated to do it, and not that if you didn’t do it you have neglected a positive commandment. You haven’t. But your repentance didn’t count, that’s all. It defines the process, the procedure of repentance, the repentance process. That’s what it seems, at least, from what Meshekh Chokhmah writes and from what emerges from the language of Maimonides and Sefer HaChinukh, that the commandment is only confession and not repentance. But one second—
[Speaker B] one second. In Maimonides—I’m opening Maimonides at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance, the introduction to the Laws of Repentance. Laws of Repentance: “One positive commandment, and that is that the sinner should repent from his sin before God and confess.” How do you understand that? Is there a commandment to repent or not?
[Speaker D] It seems there is, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It says there is one positive commandment with two details in it: to repent and to confess. That doesn’t fit Maimonides’ definition in Sefer HaMitzvot and Sefer HaChinukh, where it seems that repentance is not a commandment and confession is a defining commandment. Here it seems there really is a commandment—not a definition—to repent and confess. The fact that there are two details in this commandment, of course, shouldn’t bother us. There are other commandments made up of several details, for example the commandment of the four species. The commandment of the four species includes the lulav, hadas, etrog, and aravah, and still it’s one commandment. Why? Because the whole thing creates one unit, and that’s one commandment. But clearly each of the details is obligatory; each is part of the commandment; there is a commandment to do it. In terms of counting commandments, it’s not four commandments but one, but clearly each of those is itself a commanded element. Same thing when Maimonides tells me there is a commandment to repent and confess—he means that there is a commandment of repentance that includes two things within it: repentance and confession. Both have to be done; it’s just that in terms of counting commandments it combines into one commandment. That seemingly contradicts what we saw in commandment 73, where Maimonides says there is a commandment to confess but not a commandment to repent. We might perhaps have wanted to add some kind of “when” here, right? “One positive commandment, namely that when the sinner repents from his sin before God, he should confess.” But that’s not the version, nowhere is that the version. “That he repent and confess.” And that seemingly contradicts what Maimonides writes in Sefer HaMitzvot. The one who addressed this is Minchat Chinukh. He says as follows. Minchat Chinukh 364: “That we were commanded to confess”—right, on that same commandment in Sefer HaChinukh that I quoted before. “See Maimonides, Laws of Repentance from chapter 1 until the end of the law, and seemingly it appears, in my humble opinion, from the words of the author that the positive commandment here is not repentance but only verbal confession, for it is a scriptural decree, and if one regrets the sin he must confess verbally, like all positive commandments that depend on speech, such as the recitation of Shema and the like. And so too it appears from the language of the Mekhilta,” and so on. “And indeed, repentance is explicitly stated in the Torah in the section of repentance in Parashat Nitzavim: ‘And you shall take it to heart among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you,’ and ‘you shall return,’ and so on, ‘and you shall return unto the Lord your God,’ and ‘the Lord your God will return your captivity and have mercy on you.’” Fine? “And what is it speaking about outside the Land,” and so on—it doesn’t matter, he’s discussing outside the Land and the Land because of the midrash that Sefer HaChinukh brings. “Rather, certainly,” says Minchat Chinukh, “repentance is one thing by itself, and it is even in the heart; if one regrets with a full heart, the Holy One, blessed be He, accepts his repentance. Only here there is a positive commandment, like the positive commandments of the Torah, to verbalize confession. And if he did not say it verbally, he neglected a positive commandment. But nevertheless, regarding atonement for the sin he committed, he is atoned for through repentance in the heart.” Do you hear his definition? If he repented, but did not confess, then he neglected a positive commandment. But as far as atonement is concerned, he is atoned for. And then he senses the difficulty that I pointed out earlier. I asked earlier: how can it be that someone who repented but didn’t confess is in a worse position than someone who didn’t repent at all? Because he has neglected a positive commandment. In both cases the repentance didn’t count, but the first one also has neglect of a positive commandment. That doesn’t make sense—at least he repented. So he says: no, there is an advantage here, because he gets atonement. In the formal halakhic sense, he neglected the positive commandment because he didn’t confess. He now starts bringing proofs, several proofs, that repentance done in the heart even without confession is effective, meaning it provides atonement. One proof, for example, is the Talmud in Kiddushin 49, that if a person betrothed a woman on condition that he is righteous, even if he is completely wicked in his present status, if he betroths a woman on condition that he is completely righteous, she is betrothed—or at least doubtfully betrothed—lest he contemplated repentance in his heart. And if he contemplated repentance in his heart, then what? He certainly didn’t confess. So you see that repentance in the heart too turns him from wicked to righteous, even if he didn’t confess. So he may have neglected the positive commandment of confession, but the repentance still atoned for him. And he brings more proofs for this, and discusses whether there is a dispute here or not. “However, in Maimonides here it is explicit that atonement depends on verbal confession.” And this is his language—the quote that Meshekh Chokhmah also brought: “A commandment, etc.—when he repents, etc., he is obligated to confess, etc.—this is verbal confession. Confession is a positive commandment. And similarly, those who are obligated in sin-offerings and guilt-offerings do not receive atonement until they repent and confess verbal confession.” He explicitly wrote: repentance and verbal confession. In Maimonides’ view, repentance and confession together condition atonement. Repentance alone without confession does not atone—not what Minchat Chinukh said earlier. Therefore he wrote in chapter 2, law 2—
[Speaker B] Here, look.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] “And in truth this is not so, for if he transgressed a positive commandment”—say he failed to put on tefillin; he violated that positive commandment—“and then repents, the punishment for tefillin is indeed atoned for. And it is not relevant to say that he still has punishment for the positive commandment of confession.” Meaning, he gets atonement for tefillin, but he still has punishment for neglecting the positive commandment of confession because he did not confess. He says: “For this is not an obligatory commandment. One is not obligated to confess; rather, he just does not fulfill a positive commandment, like tzitzit when he has no four-cornered garment. So too, if he did not repent at all for the positive commandment of tefillin, there is no issue of punishment for confession; there is only the punishment of tefillin and not of repentance. If so, he is no worse if he repented without confession than if he did not repent at all.” Okay? He senses this absurdity—that if someone repents without confession he comes out worse than someone who didn’t repent at all. That can’t be. Only, he says this specifically regarding atonement for the sin. But what about the neglect of the positive commandment of confession? Here he argues, in order to solve the problem of how it can be that the condition of someone who repented and did not confess is worse than someone who didn’t repent at all, that maybe the commandment of confession is an existential commandment. If you didn’t do it, there is no neglect; if you did do it, then you have a commandment. But that’s very strange. I mean, if it conditions atonement, then it’s not just an existential commandment—so what is an existential commandment doing here? It conditions atonement. Why should it be an existential commandment? Define it, as I said before, as a defining commandment. An existential commandment—a defining commandment. That’s how the repentance process is defined. If you didn’t do it, you don’t have repentance.
[Speaker G] I’d be glad if the Rabbi could go back over his definition of an existential commandment.
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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An existential commandment is a commandment such that if you did it, you have fulfilled a positive commandment, and if you didn’t do it, nothing happened. Isn’t that neglecting a positive commandment? Yes. What would be an example? So Rabbi Moshe Feinstein writes that the commandment of settling the Land of Israel is like that. If you do it, you have a commandment; if you don’t do it, nothing happened. Rabbi Avrum Shapira argues with him. He says there’s no such thing; there are no such commandments in Jewish law. There is no commandment where there’s no problem if you didn’t do it. But the concept of an existential commandment exists even according to Rabbi Avrum Shapira. What, then? He argues that all existential commandments are commandments that have a minimum threshold. For example, the commandment of Torah study: reciting the Shema morning and evening fulfills your obligation, and that is mandatory. Everything beyond that is existential. If you did it, you have a commandment; if you didn’t do it, nothing happened. If you didn’t recite the Shema morning and evening, that is an actual neglect of a positive commandment. Okay? Or charity. There is a minimum amount—you should not give less than a third of a shekel per year. So up to a third of a shekel per year, if you didn’t give, then you have neglected the positive commandment of charity. Beyond a third of a shekel per year, if you gave, you have a commandment; if you didn’t give, nothing happened. So there are existential positive commandments, but according to Rabbi Avrum Shapira they are existential only from a certain threshold and up. There is no commandment that is entirely existential. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein argues that there is. The commandment of settling the Land of Israel is entirely existential. All right? Now here, what the Minchat Chinukh is basically claiming is that the commandment of confession is entirely existential. Meaning, if you performed the commandment, then you have a commandment; if you didn’t, nothing happened. It can’t be that if you repented but didn’t confess, then you violated a neglect of a positive commandment, so your condition is worse than someone who didn’t repent at all. That isn’t reasonable. Therefore he defines it as an existential commandment, and as I said earlier, I don’t think there’s any need to go that far. It’s very unlikely that this is an existential commandment. It’s a defining commandment. If you did repentance together with confession, then the repentance is effective. That is the proper procedure for doing repentance. If you didn’t confess, then the repentance is ineffective. You did not carry out the procedure as required. So confession is simply a defining commandment. It defines the process of repentance, and we saw in Maimonides that commandments of this type also exist in the Book of Commandments.
[Speaker B] Wait. Later on here he asks about a contradiction in Maimonides.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] One second. I can’t find it right now, but basically, as we saw earlier, there is a contradiction in Maimonides. Because on the one hand it seems that the commandment is only confession, and maybe it is even a definitional commandment. But at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance, Maimonides writes that there is a commandment for the sinner to return from his sin and confess. So that contradicts what we see in the Book of Commandments and in the Chinukh, where the commandment is only confession. And here we see that there is a commandment to repent. I don’t know a good explanation for this contradiction. I think the most natural explanation is what I’m going to tell you now. Maimonides’ rule is that a commandment for which there is no explicit command in the Torah is not included in the enumeration of the commandments. You see this in many places in his writings. For Maimonides, the term Torah-level is interpreted literally. Torah-level means from the Torah. What appears in the Torah is Torah-level. What does not appear in the Torah is not Torah-level, and it is not included in the enumeration of the commandments. This includes even laws derived through exegesis, because they are not explicit in the Torah; they are only derived from it by interpretive tools. So for Maimonides that is not Torah-level, and it is not counted among the commandments.
[Speaker B] Now that’s with regard to the enumeration of the commandments. What about with regard to the Mishneh Torah? Are there laws in the Mishneh Torah that do not appear in the Torah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you say? Of course. Certainly, yes, right? For example, the laws of Hanukkah and Purim are entirely rabbinic laws, and there is a section of laws in the Mishneh Torah that deals with Hanukkah and Purim. Laws derived from exegesis, of course, also appear in the Mishneh Torah. Laws derived from reason, laws for which there is no command in the Torah, certainly appear in the Mishneh Torah. Why? Because the Mishneh Torah gathers everything we need to do, whether it is Torah-level or not Torah-level, whether it appears in the Torah or not in the Torah—everything we need to do appears in the Mishneh Torah.
[Speaker C] So if that’s the case, then the question of what should be counted and what should not be counted is not a question parallel to the question… I mean, obviously a thing has to be Torah-level in order to be counted, but the other direction is not obvious.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That what is counted is Torah-level. In Maimonides it sounds like it’s the same question, and in several places he…
[Speaker C] So I’m saying that one direction is obvious, meaning everything that is counted has to be Torah-level, but not everything that is Torah-level must be counted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying that in Maimonides the other direction also seems to be true. That’s why Maimonides, in the second principle, says that something learned by exegesis is of rabbinic force, because it is not explicitly written in the Torah—where all the other medieval authorities disagree with him and claim that it is fully Torah-level. Maimonides says no: if it doesn’t appear in the Torah, then it’s not Torah-level. Now you see that Maimonides doesn’t just say that it isn’t counted; Maimonides says it also isn’t Torah-level. It’s true that the Tashbetz and most of Maimonides’ commentators strain his words and say that he only means that it is not counted, not that its force is not Torah-level, but I have quite a few proofs that they are mistaken. Maimonides means that it truly does not have Torah-level force, not merely that it isn’t counted. Maimonides identifies these two questions. Fine, but that’s another discussion. In any case, if so, then perhaps we can understand the contradiction in Maimonides’ words. In the Book of Commandments—is there a verse commanding us to repent? So we saw that Meshekh Chokhmah writes, “And you shall return to the Lord your God,” right? And Nachmanides also indeed writes on that verse that there is a commandment to repent. But take a look at Maimonides’ wording in the Laws of Repentance, chapter 7, law 5. You see? “All the prophets commanded concerning repentance, and the Jewish people are redeemed only through repentance. And the Torah already promised that in the end the Jewish people will repent at the end of their exile, and immediately they will be redeemed, as it is said: ‘And it shall be when all these things come upon you… and you shall return to the Lord your God… then the Lord your God will restore your captivity and have compassion on you.’” What do we see here? How does he interpret the verse “and you shall return to the Lord your God”? As a promise about the future—
[Speaker D] to come, not as a command, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He does not see it as a command. He says the Torah promised that in the future the Jewish people will repent. That means that according to Maimonides there is no verse commanding repentance. Unlike Nachmanides and Meshekh Chokhmah and others, who see in the verse “and you shall return to the Lord your God” a command, Maimonides sees in it a promise. So that means that according to Maimonides there is no verse commanding us to repent. If so, then it is impossible that the Book of Commandments would include a commandment to repent, because if there is no verse, then it cannot be counted in the enumeration of the commandments. But does one have to repent? There’s no commandment—do you still have to repent? Reason says yes, certainly yes. There’s no verse, but you have to. So in the Mishneh Torah it will appear, because the Mishneh Torah includes everything that needs to be done. In the Book of Commandments he includes only the Torah-level commandments, and according to Maimonides Torah-level commandments are only commandments for which there is an explicit command. Repentance is not such a commandment; there is no command for it. So it cannot appear in the Book of Commandments. But in the Mishneh Torah everything we need to do appears, and we need to repent even though there is no commandment. Therefore in the Mishneh Torah it appears as a commandment: one must repent and confess. True, he inserts it into the definition “one positive commandment, to return and confess,” but there is a commandment to confess, and one of the details within it, which emerges from reason, is repentance. Reason adds repentance into the commandment of confession as well. So in the Book of Commandments it will not appear as a commandment, but in the Mishneh Torah it will appear, because there appears everything that needs to be done. And certainly one needs to repent. I think that is the most reasonable explanation for this contradiction in Maimonides. We’re going to take a short break now, and I’ll continue. I’ll explain why one has to do it and what the significance of this matter is. So let’s take five minutes to refresh ourselves and come back. Okay, let’s continue. So I said that the resolution according to Maimonides is that in principle there is no commandment in the Torah to repent, and therefore it is not counted in the Book of Commandments, but there is an obligation to repent and therefore it does appear in the Mishneh Torah. Where does that obligation come from? The simple explanation is reason. If you know that there is such a mechanism that can erase the transgressions you committed and improve your spiritual state, then reason dictates that you should do it; you are expected to do it even if you have no command to do it. Once you understand that there is some way to remove your sins, atone for them, get rid of them, then reason says you should repent. And therefore, even though there is no command in the Torah for this, there is still reason saying that one must, or that there is an obligation to do this, yes? Why? Let’s call it ‘reason itself.’ You can ask why the Torah itself does not command repentance. That is a good question in itself. It may simply be that those are the facts, that it did not command it, but we can ask ourselves why. Why does the Torah not command it? Here it may be possible to explain that there are certain things that the Torah actually prefers to leave outside Jewish law with its formal commands. There are obligations that do not enter formal Jewish law because they are not important enough—going beyond the letter of the law, pious conduct, all kinds of things like that which are not fundamental enough to come as an obligation, a command, a demand, and so they remain beyond the letter of the law, outside the line of law. But it may be that there are certain obligations that precisely because they are too fundamental are not put into the enumeration of the commandments. And maybe the commandment of repentance is like that—so fundamental that the Torah does not want to put it into the enumeration of the commandments. Maybe we should give a few examples to put some flesh on these ideas. For example, the obligation to refine one’s character traits. Rabbi Chaim Vital asks why the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits. In parentheses I’ll add that for a long time I didn’t understand this question, because on the face of it the Torah does command the refinement of character traits. There is a positive commandment to walk in His ways, to cleave to His traits: just as He is compassionate, so should you be compassionate; just as He is gracious, so should you be gracious. That commandment is a counted positive commandment in Maimonides and in the other enumerators of the commandments as well. So what does Rabbi Chaim Vital mean when he asks why we are not commanded concerning the refinement of character traits? It seems to me that the explanation here is that there is a difference between refining character traits and the obligation to walk in the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He. To walk in the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, means a practical demand: to behave as He behaves. We know how He behaves—He is compassionate, gracious, and so on. All these are not descriptions of God’s character, but rather what we can know is how He appears in the world, how He behaves in the world. That is also the way we are supposed to behave in the world, as He behaves. But Rabbi Chaim Vital is asking not about how we are supposed to behave, but about how the traits of our soul are supposed to be structured—our inner character traits. Those traits are a psychological structure regardless of the question of what I do. In principle, a person could have corrupt character traits but succeed in overcoming them perfectly, and his behavior would be exemplary, but his traits would be corrupt. Therefore, refinement of character traits and proper behavior are not the same thing. The commandment deals with our behavior—we are supposed to walk in the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He. The refinement of character traits is the question of how my inner traits are structured, and on that Rabbi Chaim Vital apparently understands that there is no command, and he asks why. He answers that having refined traits is a condition for your being commandable. If your traits are not refined, there is nothing to talk about with you. Therefore, he says, there is no point in commanding you to refine your traits. Refinement of character traits is a condition for there being commands addressed to you at all, for your being a commandable being. Rav Kook goes one step further and wants to claim more than that. He says that if there had been a command, not only would it have been unnecessary, as Rabbi Chaim Vital said, but it would have been harmful. Why? Because the Torah expects you to repent out of understanding—the reasoning we spoke about earlier. That reasoning, that if there is a channel through which you can erase your sins and improve your spiritual condition, that understanding itself should move you to repent. If there were a commandment to repent, then you would repent because there is commandment number 615 to repent, and then in order to fulfill your obligation you would repent. That is not ideal repentance; that is not full repentance. Perfect repentance is repentance that comes out of your understanding of how vital it is to repair your spiritual condition. Therefore, if the Torah had commanded repentance, it would have ruined things; that is why it did not command it. According to Rabbi Chaim Vital, it is unnecessary to command the refinement of character traits. According to Rav Kook, it is harmful to command repentance—I’m sorry, not the refinement of character traits, repentance. A joke that always comes to mind in this context, and there’s a yeshiva joke about this: a young man reached marriageable age. He’s going out on various dates with various young women, and he rejects them one after another. So the mashgiach comes to him and says, listen, you’re not the greatest sage of the generation, right? It can’t be that there isn’t a single woman who suits you. Sit down and work on your character traits with fervor, study ethics, study ethics with fervor, work on your traits, and after that go back to meeting candidates. Fine. For a whole year he sits and works on his traits, studies ethics with fervor, fixes all his traits to no end. Then he goes back to meeting more young women, and again he rejects them one after another. So the mashgiach comes to him and says, tell me, you spent a whole year working on your character traits—didn’t you do anything? What came out of it? So he says, I don’t understand, Rabbi. A year ago, when my character traits were corrupt, no one suited me. Now that my character traits are refined, then certainly no one suits me—how much more so. That, it seems to me, is what someone looks like when he works on his character traits because there’s a clause obligating him to work on them. I’ve fulfilled my obligation, now I’m more righteous, so no one suits me. Character work has to come from understanding that corrupt traits mean a flawed personality, not because there’s a commandment to work on your traits. If you work on your traits in order to fulfill the obligation of the commandment of character work, you haven’t really refined your traits. You refine your traits only if you do it in order to become a more complete person, not in order to fulfill an obligation. Rav Kook says there that usually we have a tradition from the Sages that greater is one who is commanded and acts than one who is not commanded and acts. Now on the face of it, simple reasoning says the opposite—that greater is one who is not commanded and acts, because he does it on his own initiative, voluntarily; and one who is commanded and acts is on a lower level. So he says, true, the Sages innovated that greater is one who is commanded and acts—but there are certain things in which the original reasoning remains, that greater is one who is not commanded and acts. Among them, the refinement of character traits. With regard to refining character traits, indeed greater is one who is not commanded and acts, and therefore the Torah does not command it so as not to ruin it for you. If it had commanded it, you would do it as one who is commanded and acts, and that would be a less good repentance, a less good refinement of character traits. Since here greater is one who is not commanded and acts, therefore here the Torah decides not to command, in order not to ruin things. In a similar vein, I want to say the same about the commandment of repentance. Someone who repents because there is a commandment to repent, in order to fulfill his obligation, is not a true penitent. A true penitent, a full penitent, is someone who repents because he understands that his condition is flawed and needs repair—not because there is a commandment to repent and he wants to fulfill his obligation. Like refinement of character traits. And therefore it may be that the Torah did not command it not because it is unnecessary; the Torah did not command it because the command would have been harmful. It would have turned my repentance into something done to fulfill an obligation and not something coming out of understanding what it means to have corrupt traits and why it is important to fix them, yes, to become a person of a higher spiritual level. So that may also be the reason why the Torah does not command the refinement of character traits. By the way, parenthetically, I’ll say what I said in the classes on the Talmudic text in Yoma. There’s another possibility for explaining why the commandment of repentance is not counted by Maimonides even though there is an obligation to do it. For example, beautifying a commandment is not counted by Maimonides even though there is an obligation to beautify a commandment—“This is my God and I will glorify Him”—but it is not counted by Maimonides. A partial measure is not counted by Maimonides even though it is Torah-level according to the law, according to Rabbi Yohanan; a partial measure is forbidden by Torah law, and yet it is not counted by Maimonides. Why? It may be because it is a detail.
[Speaker C] Do you hear? It’s like a detail within a commandment.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, so one could say it’s a detail within a commandment—that’s one formulation. Another formulation is similar, but not exactly the same. It may be that meta-halakhic rules cannot themselves be counted as commandments. Rules that tell me how to perform commandments, what to do, what to do when I didn’t perform a commandment—these are rules that speak about Jewish law as a whole. They cannot themselves be considered one of the commandments. I want to say, think for example about beautifying a commandment. People think beautifying a commandment is something voluntary. If you want to, do it; if you didn’t, nothing happened, it’s not a transgression. I want to argue that beautifying a commandment is a full obligation. Only what? It does not invalidate the commandment. If you took an etrog that was not beautiful, you fulfilled the commandment of etrog, but you neglected the commandment of beautifying a commandment. You did not do it in a beautiful way. The fact that it is not counted is not because it is not obligatory. It is obligatory. It is not counted because it is a meta-halakhic rule. And what belongs to meta-Jewish law does not appear in the enumeration of the commandments. The enumeration of the commandments deals with Jewish law, not meta-Jewish law. And again, meta-Jewish law not in the sense that it has no halakhic significance. It has halakhic significance; it is a halakhic obligation, just as a partial measure is a halakhic prohibition. By meta-Jewish law I mean only in the sense that these are rules that pertain to all the commandments. Such rules remain outside the Book of Commandments, even if they have some significance of Torah-level fulfillment or Torah-level prohibition or something like that. It may be that repentance also falls into this category. It is not counted because it belongs to all the commandments—that one who did not perform a commandment, or one who transgressed, needs to repent. You can define it as a detail within the other commandments or transgressions; you can define it as a meta-halakhic rule, and therefore it has no place in the Book of Commandments. There is also, by the way—for example, take beautifying a commandment or pious conduct or things of that sort. For example, in the commandment “you shall be holy,” Nachmanides says that this means to go beyond the letter of the law, not to be a degenerate with the permission of the Torah. But if you look in Nachmanides’ additions to Maimonides’ Book of Commandments, you will not find there the commandment “you shall be holy.” There is even an explicit discussion by Nachmanides in his glosses to the fourth principle, and there too he speaks about “you shall be holy,” and you will not find there that he counts this as a positive commandment. According to his view there, that it means beyond the letter of the law—and why? Because if he were to count it as a positive commandment, then that behavior would no longer be beyond the letter of the law; it would be the letter of the law. You would be obligated to do it because there is a positive commandment. The Torah wants to leave it as an obligation to go beyond the letter of the law, and therefore it cannot define that thing as a positive commandment. Again, this is something one is obligated to do, but there is a principled barrier to commanding it. In that sense it is also similar to what I said earlier regarding repentance. There is a barrier to commanding repentance, because if you command it, then you do not allow a person to do real repentance; he will do it in order to fulfill his obligation. There is a barrier to commanding it, but on the basic level it is clear that there is an obligation to repent. Okay, so basically if I am right, then Maimonides’ view is that there is an obligation to repent, but it is not a counted commandment because there is no command for it in the Torah, for the different reasons I explained, or invented, earlier, why the Torah does not command it. But for our purposes, the Torah does not command it, and therefore there is no counted positive commandment, but there is an obligation to do it. Let me go back for a moment to Meshekh Chokhmah, with which I began. Meshekh Chokhmah said that the commandment of repentance cannot have independent content apart from confession. Because how can there be a commandment to repent when all that this includes is simply to fulfill the commandments and not to violate the transgressions? There is no independent content here. The very fact that these are defined as commandments and transgressions means that one should perform the commandments and not violate the transgressions. What does the commandment of repentance add? Therefore Meshekh Chokhmah said that the commandment of repentance includes only confession. Because only confession is additional content beyond the commandments and transgressions themselves. But according to what I’m saying now, that isn’t right. Because according to what I’m saying now, it turns out that there is an obligation to repent. It is not counted because there is no verse commanding it, for all kinds of reasons. But there is such a halakhic obligation. That is what Maimonides writes at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance, that there is a commandment to return and confess. If so, then Meshekh Chokhmah’s question returns. If there really is an obligation, what difference does it make whether it is a commandment or not? There is an obligation. What is this obligation? After all, the obligation not to transgress and to perform commandments already exists in the commandments and transgressions themselves. The fact that it is not a commandment but only an obligation does not change anything in this respect. Explain to me what the content of this obligation is, this obligation that is not a commandment. Fine. You still need to explain the content of that obligation. After all, apparently it has no content beyond confession. But confession is a counted commandment. Only repentance is an obligation that is not a commandment. What is there in repentance? What content is there in this thing beyond performing the commandments and not violating the transgressions?
[Speaker B] Here I want to make the following claim. There is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Talmudic text says that in the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand. And not as people say, that it is because of the crowding. What does that really mean? It means that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person. A penitent is greater than a completely righteous person. The question is: how can that be? After all, the penitent, at most, if he does full repentance for all his sins, has now turned into a completely righteous person. What can be more than a completely righteous person? How can there be a level that is higher than complete righteousness? A completely righteous person is the highest level possible—completely, literally. What can there be in a penitent that is more than that? He is in the ultimate spiritual state, the highest one. What can be more than that? Sometimes people have a tendency to think that the advantage of the penitent is because he has an evil inclination. It is harder for him to be completely righteous, so maybe he deserves greater reward. But that does not mean he is on a higher level; it means he worked harder to reach the same level, so he deserves greater reward. Here it implies that a penitent is preferable to a completely righteous person; his level is higher. By the way, there is a nice Hasidic interpretation of the statement, “One who says: I will sin and repent, I will sin and repent—they do not give him the opportunity to repent.” What was the initial thought of someone who says, “I will sin and repent”? We usually think that someone wants to enjoy life and then not pay the price, so he’ll repent later. The Hasidim explain: “One who says: I will sin and repent” is someone who wants to reach the level of a penitent. If he had not sinned, he would only have been completely righteous. He wants to reach the level of a penitent, so he wants to sin in order to return. In order to attain that higher level. What is higher about that level? As I said earlier, if the issue is the inclination—if the penitent overcomes the inclination—then I’d say that’s a consideration concerning reward. Give him higher reward, but that doesn’t mean his spiritual level is higher. I’ll say more than that: does a completely righteous person have no inclination? Of course he has an inclination. He just never fell. He always managed to overcome it. Does that mean it was easier for him? Of course not. It means he managed to overcome and did not fall. The penitent fell and afterward managed to overcome. A completely righteous person also has an inclination. Leave aside the author of the Tanya, who says that a completely righteous person is someone who slaughtered his inclination. The simple meaning is that a completely righteous person has an inclination, just like the penitent. The difference is that unlike the penitent, he never fell. The penitent fell and returned. So if that’s the case, how can the penitent be on a higher level than the completely righteous person? Even on the level of reward it is not correct to say that he deserves more reward. The completely righteous person works no less hard. So why is the penitent preferable to the completely righteous person? It seems to me that the simple way to understand this is to look at the concept of repentance in a different way. We are used to seeing repentance as something whose purpose is to reach the state of complete righteousness. It is a means to become completely righteous. I sinned; in order to erase the sin I need to repent. I repented, the sin was erased, and now I am completely righteous. But according to that view, repentance is a means, not an end. The goal is to be completely righteous; repentance is the means for the sinner, the means through which someone who sinned can nevertheless become completely righteous. If I see repentance as an end, not as a means—and to count repentance as a commandment or to relate to it as an obligation simply means that it is an end, not a means—then that means repentance has value in itself. Not only that it leads me to the result that I am in a spiritually perfect state, but the very fact that I am a penitent, beyond the result I arrive at, has value in itself. The meaning of repentance is the path I travel, not the destination I reach. That is what I want to argue. And therefore the penitent is preferable to the completely righteous person, even though the state he reaches in the end is at most complete righteousness. But the path he traveled on the way there has value in itself—not only because it led me to the perfect place, but because I traveled that path. That itself is something of value. So true, if you look at me now, I am in the spiritual state of a completely righteous person, no more than that. But the fact that I traveled that path and he did not—that itself gives me some sort of bonus, some sort of advantage. That is the advantage of a penitent over a completely righteous person. It means that repentance is not a means but an end. Progress is not just a transit channel of value through which at the end I reach the goal; rather, the very fact that I am progressing has value in itself, not only as an instrument for reaching the goal. Let me share something with you. There are interesting passages in Rav Kook, in Orot HaKodesh, part 2, where he speaks about the problem of perfection and perfecting, yes, famous passages of Rav Kook. Let’s read a bit. “The tendency of all existence, from the side of the hidden infinite will, as it is revealed to us, is a great presentation of elevation and eternal addition.” What does that mean? The tendency of existence is elevation and eternal addition. The intention is not to reach the perfect state, but to be on the path of advancing toward the perfect state. Not to be exalted, but to be in a process of elevation. Then he continues: “If there were no reality of smallness and deficiency, there could only be greatness and fullness, but not growth and constant stepping toward added blessing.” He says that if there were no deficiency, then there would be in the world a reality of perfection. Greatness and fullness, yes—being completely full, being whole, being as great as possible—but not growth. Growth cannot exist unless there is a deficiency that I now fill. That is what he says: “and constant stepping toward added blessing,” yes, ongoing walking in which you add spiritual level all the time, where the goal is not the addition but the walking itself. The derivative, not the function. “And even though there is no end to the elevation of full perfection, in which there is no elevation on account of its infinity, nevertheless this exalted power of constant elevation is also included in it. And this is considered as though absolute perfection is perfected through the perfecting that comes through the appearance of smallness coming to greatness. And this work is a high need.” What is he saying? He is saying that if so, then full perfection—if there is a being that is completely perfect, of course he means the Holy One, blessed be He, who is completely perfect—then that being itself cannot be elevated, right? “There is no elevation in it on account of its infinity.” It is already perfect. One who is perfect cannot perfect himself, cannot rise to be more perfect. “Nevertheless this exalted power of constant elevation is also included in it.” What does that mean? That perfect being, the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot itself be perfected, but the power to be perfected exists within Him. The potential to be perfected exists within Him. How does it emerge from potential to actual? “Through the appearance of smallness”—one must create a deficient reality, our world or human beings, “coming to greatness,” and place upon them the task of repairing the corrupted state. “And this work is a high need.” Even the expression “this work is a high need” means that the activity we do actually completes the Holy One, blessed be He. He needs us. There is something He cannot do, and we do it for Him. What is that thing? He Himself is perfect, so He cannot perfect Himself, become more perfect. And ostensibly He doesn’t need to perfect Himself, because He is already perfect. The answer is no, because if the purpose of perfecting were only the result, then you’d be right. But if perfecting has value in itself, not because it leads to perfection, then I would expect even the Holy One, blessed be He, to perfect Himself, because all perfections should appear in Him. But that cannot appear in Him, so what does He do? He creates a world with deficient, flawed creatures, with smallness like us, and imposes on us the obligation to elevate ourselves or perfect ourselves. Why? Because through that He Himself is perfected. And therefore this is called work for a high need. Our work is for the need of the Holy One, blessed be He. There are things only we can do and He cannot; we were created to do them for Him. What is that thing? The ability to perfect oneself. Because that ability He does not have. He cannot perfect Himself. But still, says Rav Kook, within Him there is that perfection of perfecting. It exists in Him in some sense. I’ll define that further on, but it exists in Him in some sense. And what brings it from potential to actual is us. We were created deficient, and the task imposed on us is to perfect ourselves. Let’s continue reading for a moment. “What do we think regarding the divine purpose in bringing existence into being? We say that absolute perfection is a necessary existent, and there is nothing in it in potential, but rather everything is actual.” Yes, everything that is only potential is deficient and needs to emerge into actuality. “But there is a perfection of adding perfection, for perfecting itself is one of the perfections, and this cannot be in divinity. For absolute infinite perfection leaves no room for addition. And for this purpose—that the addition of perfection also not be lacking in existence—the worldly existence had to come into being and therefore to begin from the lowest depth, that is, from the state of absolute deficiency, and to go always onward and upward to absolute elevation.” And existence was created with such a property that forever it will not cease from rising, because this is an infinite process. And in order to secure the elevation within the very essence of existence, everything was created in supreme elevation. And the elevation was greater than the measure that limited content could be in actuality. It was created perfect, and then there was the shattering of the vessels, so that there would be somewhere for us to strive toward and return to absolute perfection. But from a deficient state to arrive at absolute perfection is an infinite path. And that tension is what guarantees the fact that we can perfect ourselves all the time, and that this task will never end. Because we are always on the way toward perfection, but we cannot reach it. The distance is infinite. “And therefore, when existence appeared in actuality, things became corrupted, and the forces became entangled with one another, and they are engaged in a fierce struggle, until the absolute infinite thought of the good will triumph and everything will be repaired, with the added elevation of giving room for the completion of unceasing ascent, which is a special matter through which creation completes the honor of its Creator.” That is really the elaboration of what he said in the previous paragraph. Now just in—here too he continues: “We understand in the absolute divine perfection two values of completion. One value of completion is that from the side of its greatness and finality, no addition of excellence applies to it. But if there were no possibility of addition, that itself would be a deficiency. For perfection that continually increases has an advantage and delight, and a kind of uplift that we long for so much, going from strength to strength. Therefore divine perfection cannot lack this advantage of added power. And therefore, for this, there is in divinity the capacity for creation, for unlimited worldly becoming, which in all its values goes on rising.” And so on. He goes on, in short. Let me summarize for a moment, and with this we’ll end the class and continue next time. What he is basically saying is that perfecting oneself—becoming more complete, moving from a deficient state to a complete state—is not intended only so that in the end I reach the complete state. Rather, perfecting itself has value. The very fact that I am progressing. Progress is not only a means to be further ahead; progress is a value in itself. That value cannot exist in the Holy One, blessed be He, because He is already perfect; He has nowhere to progress. But then He would be lacking—it would be a lack if that value were absent. So what does He do in order to complete that? He creates us deficient, demands of us that we perfect ourselves, and our self-perfecting brings from potential to actual the potential for self-perfecting that exists in Him too. Only in Him it is potential; it cannot emerge from potential to actual, because an actual act of self-perfecting cannot occur in Him—He is always perfect. And for that purpose we were created. And that is what he calls work for a high need: the action we do for the Holy One, blessed be He—something He Himself cannot do. And therefore our work is for His need; He needs us. Without us He could not have brought His potential for self-perfecting into actuality. Okay? And you understand that this whole discussion I’m really doing here in our context in order to come back to the commandment of repentance. Meshekh Chokhmah assumes that repentance aims to make one completely righteous, to erase the sin. And therefore he says: so what is there in repentance beyond not sinning? I say no. There is value in repentance not only in terms of the state we arrive at, that we become complete from being deficient, but the very transformation from deficient to complete, the very progress, the perfecting, is itself the value of repentance. Therefore this saying, “I will sin and repent,” is not just a Hasidic quip; it is completely true. A person who wants to be whole must sin and return. And if he doesn’t sin against his will, then there arises here some initial thought that he ought to sin deliberately just so that he can be a being who perfects himself, a being who improves himself. But they tell him: don’t do that, don’t worry, you’ll sin even without that, don’t do it. Okay, but on the principled level that is a serious initial thought. A serious initial thought, because that is our whole purpose here in the world: to bring into actuality the ability to perfect oneself, because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not have the ability to bring that into actuality. He has that potential, but He cannot bring it into actuality because He is already perfect. So we have to undergo self-perfecting, because in that we are actually completing the only thing lacking in Him. That is called work for a high need. In several books this is written as the secret of work for a high need. Because there is a certain reluctance to say that the Holy One, blessed be He, is lacking, that He needs us, that we do something that completes Him, that without us He would not be complete. So they call it the secret of work for a high need, something that is supposed to be kept secret. But that is basically, yes, that is basically what Rav Kook reveals here, and I’ll continue from here in the next meeting. Does anyone want to comment or ask?
[Speaker H] Sorry—why does that require sinning? Because I understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, cannot advance because He is perfect, but a human being—even if he has not sinned, as I understand it—still has room to move forward. He doesn’t have to sin for that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker H] There’s an assumption here that someone who does not sin is perfect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, I think that in the broader sense, to sin means to be lacking, not to sin in the formal halakhic sense. And therefore even the concept of repentance in Rav Kook is not repentance for sins you committed.
[Speaker H] It’s like Rabbenu Saadia Gaon’s repentance, for not being more than what he was. Okay, that’s it. No, but that’s not repentance in the simple sense; you don’t need to sin for that kind of repentance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct, and therefore Rav Kook basically argues, it’s not—he’s not talking about sinning in the sense of a formal sin, he’s talking about being lacking. Let’s say I was perfect, uh, I would still need to look for some deficiency, and if not then ostensibly create it, just so that I would be able to improve. That doesn’t happen with such a person.
[Speaker H] No, no—there is no such person, right, but not just incidentally there is no such person. It’s not because that’s what happened, but because it’s part of the definition of being a human being, simply, that you are not perfect.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And for that very reason you really don’t need to say, “I will sin and repent”; the Talmudic text rejects that. But the initial thought behind “I will sin and repent” comes to teach me this idea, that self-perfecting has value not only because it makes me more complete, but the process of self-perfecting is itself of value.
[Speaker H] It sounds a bit—okay—a bit of a far-reaching simple reading for such a simple statement. “I will sin and repent” really is a thought that passed through every sinner’s mind, yes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An innocent thought. The simple meaning of “I will sin and repent” is to enjoy life and not pay the price. Of course that is true, certainly. But I’m saying that this Hasidic explanation is a Hasidic explanation; it is not the plain meaning of the Talmudic text. But it seems to me that it captures a correct point, even if it is not the explanation of the Talmudic text. The correct point is that there is something in repentance that is not just a means to erase sins; it is not just a means to reach some more complete state. Progress itself contains some value. And that is the value repentance has in itself—that is the novelty in the concept of repentance itself.
[Speaker H] I’m asking myself whether, okay, one could repent without progressing, and vice versa. I’m not sure it’s completely—okay—maybe you could separate them and say that repentance has the novelty of erasing the sin, and there is also moving forward. Moving forward is something…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think the connection he makes is that moving forward is the merit because of which your sins are forgiven.
[Speaker H] So okay, that’s a major stringency. If someone didn’t move forward, he just truly regretted it and accepted upon himself not to—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is called moving forward.
[Speaker H] That’s called moving forward?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Regretting is called moving forward, yes. Spiritual progress—again—is not formally doing more commandments.
[Speaker H] No, right, I agree, that is called moving forward, definitely.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, okay. All right then, goodbye, Sabbath peace.