Aspects of Repentance – Lesson 3
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The framework of the series and the definition of the commandment of repentance
- Perfection and self-perfection in Rav Kook
- Two types of repentance: the “penitent” and the “newly religious”
- Weakness of will, coercion, and responsibility
- The paradox of self-change and the intentional character of repentance
- Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya: helplessness, “the matter depends on no one but me,” and repentance that is not described as an action
- The way out: a point of connection between the human being and the Holy One, blessed be He
- Avinu Malkeinu: “Bring us back in complete repentance before You”
- The Talmud in Berakhot 9b and the illustration of coercion on the level of will
- A solution to the problem of weakness of will: two levels of choice
- Elijah at Mount Carmel: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?”
- Maimonides: free choice in the Laws of Repentance and the essence of repentance
- The act of the commandment and the fulfillment of the commandment, and Kiddushin: “he contemplated repentance”
- Recurring themes in the Laws of Repentance: serving out of love and learning Torah for its own sake
- Educational implication: autonomy, price, and types of failure and success
- Tanya chapter 9: the animal soul and the divine soul instead of the “good inclination and evil inclination”
Summary
General Overview
The discussion presents repentance as something that is not limited to erasing sins and improving one’s spiritual condition, but as an intrinsic value of movement and self-perfection, in the spirit of Rav Kook’s distinction between perfection and self-perfection, to the point of claiming that the main value of repentance is the very progress itself. He defines the logical difficulty in repentance as the paradox of self-change, and illustrates it through the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya and the wording of Avinu Malkeinu, bring us back in complete repentance before You, in order to show that repentance cannot be only “from outside” and also cannot be only “from within.” From this he proposes describing the starting point as a point of connection between the human being and the Holy One, blessed be He, where the potential for change is realized through us, and he develops a solution to the problem of weakness of will by means of a two-tier model of choice: the main thing is not only to choose the good, but first of all to choose to be a chooser—to take the “reins back into our hands.”
The framework of the series and the definition of the commandment of repentance
The discussion opens with the question of how the commandment of repentance is defined and why it is not redundant, as asked by Meshekh Chokhmah. Repentance is defined as having two aspects: a result-oriented aspect, in which a person’s spiritual condition improves after repentance, and an essential aspect, in which the very act of repenting has value even independently of the result. Repentance functions as erasure of sins and purification from the “stains” of transgressions, but also as a movement that itself has intrinsic value.
Perfection and self-perfection in Rav Kook
The discussion presents self-perfection as a movement that is sometimes more essential than reaching the perfect state, because absolute perfection exists with the Holy One, blessed be He, even without us. Rav Kook is presented as seeing creation as the realization of the potential for self-perfection, something that requires a deficient being striving to perfect itself. From here it is argued that the main value of repentance is the self-perfection itself.
Two types of repentance: the “penitent” and the “newly religious”
In rabbinic literature, a ba’al teshuvah, a penitent, is someone who behaved contrary to values he recognized as correct and is required to repair his behavior. In contemporary terminology, a “newly religious” person is someone who corrects worldviews, faith, and ideology, and therefore did not previously see himself as sinning; the behavioral change comes in the wake of a change in outlook. The discussion argues that even “classic” behavioral correction cannot be merely behavioral, but must have a root in values and outlook.
Weakness of will, coercion, and responsibility
The argument against describing things as “weak will” says that if a person really wanted to do X and is free, he will do X; and if he did not do it, then either he was coerced, in which case there is no sin, or in practice that is what he wanted after weighing complex desires. The desire to keep commandments can compete with the desire for pleasure, and when pleasure prevails, that is the person’s decision and not some “fall” that is not his—unless it is a case of coercion, such as an irresistible impulse or an overpowering urge. From this it follows that when behavior is corrected, outlooks are corrected as well, because the action reveals what was truly preferred in desire and judgment.
The paradox of self-change and the intentional character of repentance
Repentance is defined as an intentional act of changing one’s ways, not as a process that simply “happened to me” following the discovery of truth. The paradox of self-change is formulated as follows: if “the self that changes” wants to move from value system X to Y, then it already believes in Y and therefore, ostensibly, there is no one left to change; and if it is still in X, it has no basis for wanting Y. The difficulty is presented as a logical contradiction and not a psychological difficulty, because the concept “I change myself” seems impossible to describe systematically.
Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya: helplessness, “the matter depends on no one but me,” and repentance that is not described as an action
The story in tractate Avodah Zarah about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is brought in full in order to illustrate a feeling of helplessness in the face of the demand for repentance. His appeal to mountains and hills, heaven and earth, sun and moon, stars and constellations is interpreted as a request for change “from outside,” and the response, “the matter depends on no one but me,” is interpreted as recognition that the change cannot be done by an external factor without losing its value. The crying until his soul departs is described as a situation in which he “did not do anything” in the sense of taking an active, structured step, but the very internalization and crying bring it about that “it happens,” and he is invited to the life of the World to Come. Rabbi then cries and emphasizes that “there are those who acquire their world in one moment,” and that penitents are called “Rabbi” because he taught a principle.
The way out: a point of connection between the human being and the Holy One, blessed be He
The discussion proposes that the dilemma—“either I do it and that is impossible, or He does it and that lacks value”—assumes too sharp a dichotomy between “inside” and “outside.” It argues that there is a point at which the human being and the Holy One, blessed be He, are not two completely separate entities, without adopting a pantheistic identity, and that at this point a way out of the logical tangle may be found. The claim returns to the framework of self-perfection, in which “ascribe strength to God” and “service for a higher need” are interpreted to mean that our self-perfection brings into actuality a potential that exists with Him, and in that sense also “completes” Him. Therefore He must be involved in the process without it becoming an external action devoid of value.
Avinu Malkeinu: “Bring us back in complete repentance before You”
The wording Avinu Malkeinu, bring us back in complete repentance before You is presented not merely as “accept us as penitents,” but as a request for divine participation in the act of repentance. The request is phrased this way because repentance cannot occur without this involvement, and yet it also cannot be an act that the Holy One, blessed be He, does “instead of us.” The proposed meaning is the granting of the connection that allows the potential for change to enter, so that we can bring it from potential to actuality and change.
The Talmud in Berakhot 9b and the illustration of coercion on the level of will
The passage “and they let them borrow… this teaches that they made them borrow against their will… against the will of the Egyptians” is explained as a situation in which the Egyptians gave “willingly” after God “gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians,” meaning He turned their heads around, something like hypnosis. From this it is argued that coercion is possible even on the level of will, and that an action that appears voluntary can be “against their will” because the will was implanted from outside. The context is used to sharpen the point that where the will or choice is not really the person’s own, he is not bound by responsibility.
A solution to the problem of weakness of will: two levels of choice
The discussion proposes that weakness of will is possible because choice is made up of two stages: the decision to be a chooser, and the decision what to choose. A person can “choose not to choose,” meaning to drop the reins, switch off his alertness, and be dragged along by the horses; then the inclinations pull him leftward, while he himself did not directly “choose” evil. Responsibility rests on the initial choice to fall asleep and avoid the struggle, not on the act later done while being dragged along. The examples are dieting in the face of a cream cake, and the comparison to a drunk driver who puts himself in a dangerous situation while saying, “it won’t happen to me.”
Elijah at Mount Carmel: “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?”
The discussion reads Elijah’s words, “If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him,” literally, as preferring decisive choice—even of evil—over a life of drifting and indecision. The claim is that the main problem is not that they are doing evil, but that they are “not doing” at all, meaning they are not acting out of their own decision but are being swept along by spirit, society, and fashion. From here follows the claim that the focus is level one: taking back the reins, because when a person truly becomes a “chooser,” he will generally also choose the good.
Maimonides: free choice in the Laws of Repentance and the essence of repentance
The placement of the discussion of choice in chapters 5–6 of the Laws of Repentance is explained by saying that repentance is not “to begin doing the good,” but to attend to the process that leads to doing the good—in other words, to become a chooser. Repentance is presented as dealing with level one, while the other commandments deal with level two and already assume the capacity for choice in order to instruct what to do and where to drive with the reins. It is said that “repentance means returning to being a chooser,” and it is even claimed that this is not just an analogy but an identity between repentance and choice in that sense.
The act of the commandment and the fulfillment of the commandment, and Kiddushin: “he contemplated repentance”
The distinction between the act of the commandment and the fulfillment of the commandment is used to say that the practical stages of repentance are an expression and a path, but the essential fulfillment is the reversal into being a chooser. The Talmud in Kiddushin, about “on condition that I am completely righteous… perhaps he contemplated repentance,” is interpreted as a case in which an inner reversal alone is enough for someone to be considered completely righteous, without going through “the four stages” for every transgression in detail. Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya too is presented as someone who did not actually go over the list of his sins one by one, but in the moment of his reversal the main thing was fulfilled.
Recurring themes in the Laws of Repentance: serving out of love and learning Torah for its own sake
Love of God and fear of God, learning Torah for its own sake, and similar topics appear both in other sections of Jewish law and in the Laws of Repentance, and the discussion explains that in the Laws of Repentance the essential dimension appears, one that is not reduced to the formal command. The example given is the distinction between the commandment to love God and “to serve out of love,” and likewise between minimally fulfilling the commandment of Torah study and acting more broadly because “that is what is fitting.” The Laws of Repentance are described as the place of “doing because it is right” out of renewed choice, and not only as obedience to a commandment.
Educational implication: autonomy, price, and types of failure and success
The discussion argues that education is not only about getting a child to do what is right, but first and foremost about educating him to be someone who decides what he does. Full religious observance done out of inertia is presented as a failure in the sense of level one, even if level two is in order; while autonomous choice of another path may in a certain sense be a success despite failure in the content of the choice. Education toward autonomy is presented as carrying dangers and a price, because it allows choices the educator does not want, but it aims at having the person become autonomous in adulthood “for the right reasons.”
Tanya chapter 9: the animal soul and the divine soul instead of the “good inclination and evil inclination”
The discussion proposes that the model of “good inclination versus evil inclination” leaves the person outside the picture and therefore cannot be a full description of moral responsibility. Both the good inclination and the evil inclination are presented as inclinations belonging to the “kelipat nogah,” a shell of evil mixed with good, and the truly good person is not someone born with a strong good inclination but someone who decides. The struggle is described as a struggle between the animal soul that goes with the inclinations and the divine soul, represented as the superiority of the intellect over the heart; and the ascent is “from below upward,” not a move “from right to left.” The conclusion is that the heart of repentance is to hold the reins in one’s hands and be a chooser, because when a person truly chooses, he does not “choose evil”; evil happens mainly when he drops the choice and lets the horses lead.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, just to sum up a bit where we are in the overall discussion—in fact today is the last meeting. Time constraints turned this into a series of only three sessions. I started with the question of how the commandment of repentance is defined, and why it isn’t redundant, as Meshekh Chokhmah asked. And then I said that repentance has two aspects. One aspect is the result-oriented aspect: after you repent, your spiritual state is better. Repentance is a means to reach a better spiritual condition, to erase sins, to purify yourself from the stains you accumulated through the transgressions you committed, and so on. And the second aspect is the aspect of the very performance of repentance itself. The very act of repenting has value in its own right, regardless of whether that progress brings me to a higher spiritual state; rather, the progress itself is one of the benefits, or one of the added values, of repentance. We talked about Rav Kook’s distinction between perfection and self-perfection, and through that I tried to show that, in a certain sense, the self-perfection or progress within repentance may actually be even more essential than reaching the perfect state. The movement toward the perfect state itself is no less—and maybe even more—important than arriving there, because in the end, the Holy One, blessed be He, already had perfect things before He created us and the world. What He needed us for was to bring into actuality His potential for self-perfection, as we saw there. And in order to actualize a potential for self-perfection, you have to be a deficient being that advances—that is, that strives to become more perfected. And therefore the value of repentance is essentially—the main value of repentance is essentially—the self-perfection. After that we spoke about two types of repentance, both in today’s terminology and in the terminology common in rabbinic literature. In rabbinic literature, a penitent is someone who behaved not in accordance with the values he understood to be correct, and what he is supposed to do is correct his behavior. By contrast, what today is called a newly religious person is someone who thought one way and corrects what he thought—not only on the behavioral plane. He didn’t even see himself as a sinner until now, because he thought what he was doing was fine. And now he is basically adopting a different worldview or a different ideology or a different faith, and that is a change in outlook, not just in behavior. The behavioral change comes in its wake, but becoming newly religious is really a change in outlook no less than a change in behavior. And I said that the classic penitent, the one who corrects his behavior—that can’t be a correction solely on the behavioral plane. Every such correction has to have some root also on the plane of values, outlook, theory—whatever you want to call it. And in order to sharpen or clarify this point, I got into the question of weakness of will. And I said that in fact—I won’t go back over the details of the argument, but briefly—I said that if a person behaves in a certain way, that means that apparently that is what he wants to do. Statements like, I wanted to do X but in the end I did Y, as if I had a weak will, I wanted X but it was weak—those aren’t precise. They aren’t precise because if you really wanted to do X, then you would do X. And if you really wanted X and didn’t do X, then one of two things is true: either you were coerced, something overpowered what you wanted and forced you to do something else—but then you were coerced; that’s not a sin, and for that you don’t need to repent. An irresistible impulse, or an overpowering urge, or all kinds of things of that sort. Or if not, then there’s no escaping the conclusion that in fact that’s what you wanted. If that’s what you did, that’s what you wanted. Except that desires are a complex thing. Sometimes. Sometimes I very much want to keep commandments, but I also want to enjoy myself. And when the enjoyment causes me to override the desire to keep commandments, then since the enjoyment was more important in my eyes, I went with the enjoyment at the expense of keeping the commandments. So the feeling I always have after I give myself an accounting after the fact is: no, no, I really wanted to keep commandments—I just fell. I had a weak will. But that’s not true. I didn’t really want to keep commandments, in the bottom-line sense. I wanted to keep commandments, but I also wanted to enjoy myself, and the desire for enjoyment overpowered the desire to keep the commandments. In the end that was my decision. If it wasn’t my decision, then I was coerced. If I was compelled to it, even by internal psychological factors or external ones, then I was coerced. And if I wasn’t compelled to it, that means this is what I decided to do. Only for things like that do I bear responsibility. And since that is what I decided to do, that is probably also what I wanted to do, as we discussed last week regarding the feeling of desire. And therefore, in practice, when I want to correct behavior, there always has to be some dimension of correcting outlooks. It can’t be a correction focused solely on behavior. To sharpen this further, I brought up this paradox of self-change. When a person, basically—when a person is required or expected to repent—we discussed whether this is a commandment or not a commandment, but at least he is expected, maybe required, to repent—that means a person approaches, intentionally, to change his ways. Not that it just happens to me. If I suddenly discovered the truth, that happened to me. That is not called repenting. It’s not called repenting not only because it’s a change in outlook and not in behavior. I said even a change in behavior has some dimension of change in outlook. Rather, it’s simply something that happened to me. It’s not something I decided on. Repentance, in the accepted sense in rabbinic literature, means approaching intentionally to correct my behavior. What does that actually mean? And here I said—I brought the example, yes, of someone who serves not for its own sake: how do you persuade him to serve for its own sake? We won’t go back through all that; I’m just summarizing so we can see where we are. What I basically wanted to show is that if I come to change myself, that is actually a paradoxical description. There’s no such thing as I change myself, and yet that is basically what I am required to do when I am required to repent. Why? Because let’s say that I, the one doing the changing—yes, the changing self—hold a value system X. Now I want to change myself to value system Y. And again, even a behavioral change requires some change at the level of values, ideology, outlook. Okay? So there is always some dimension of outlook in this change. So now let’s focus for a moment on the change in outlook. So I, the one doing the changing, want to change the self being changed from X to Y. But here’s the problem: if I, the one doing the changing, want to change to Y, that means I already believe in Y. Otherwise I wouldn’t want to change to Y. But if I already believe in Y, then whom exactly am I changing? The self being changed is supposed to believe in X, and then I will change him to believe in Y. But if I already believe in Y, and therefore I want to change in that direction, then that is already exactly what I want. So what exactly—so how exactly can I change myself, or how can anyone even demand of me an intentional activity of self-change? This is paradoxical. There is no systematic way to describe it. This paradox basically leads us—I don’t remember whether I mentioned this last time, so I’ll say it here. You can formulate this logical difficulty—and notice, this isn’t a psychological difficulty. It’s not that it is psychologically hard for me to change myself. It is simply not logically defined; it is something self-contradictory. If I want to change myself, then I am already changed. And if I am not changed, why would I want to change myself? I still believe in X. Why would I want to change myself to Y? And with purely behavioral change, we said there is no such thing. Meaning, there is a dimension of outlook in that change. It isn’t only a change of behavior; there is also a change in outlook here. So there is something here that is impossible. One way to describe this is basically—I’m going to formulate it now in a way that… this paradox, or this difficulty, this contradiction. Let’s put it this way: suppose I am basically—or before that formulation. In the story of Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya—yes, the one who didn’t leave a single prostitute in the world that he had not been with—there are several parallel stories there; in the Talmud in Avodah Zarah it’s about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. So he, yes, he didn’t leave a single transgression he didn’t commit, and in the end he came to some prostitute in a distant seaport.
[Speaker B] Here, that’s the story. There are of course parallel midrashim; these things are well known.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And it was taught: They said about Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya that he did not leave a single prostitute in the world that he had not come to. Once he heard that there was a certain prostitute in a distant seaport who took a purse of dinars as her payment. He took a purse of dinars and went, crossing seven rivers to reach her. At the moment of the act, she passed wind and said: Just as this breath will not return to its place, so too Elazar ben Dordaya will not be accepted in repentance. He went and sat between two mountains and hills and said: Mountains and hills, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, we must ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said, “For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed.” He said: Heaven and earth, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, we must 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, we must ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said, “Then the moon shall be confounded and the sun ashamed.” He said: Stars and constellations, ask for mercy for me. They said to him: Before we ask for mercy for you, we must ask for mercy for ourselves, as it is said, “And all the host of heaven shall rot away.” He said: The matter depends on no one but me. He placed his head between his knees and cried bitterly until his soul departed. A heavenly voice came forth and said: Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for the life of the World to Come. Rabbi cried and said: There are those who acquire their world over many years, and there are those who acquire their world in one moment. And Rabbi said: Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called Rabbi. After all, the heavenly voice that came forth said, Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya is destined for the life of the World to Come. Meaning that basically not only is his repentance accepted, but he is called Rabbi. Now what exactly happened here? There’s a very strange description here. He turns to the heavenly bodies, to the hills, to the mountains, asking them to pray for mercy on his behalf, and none of them really answers. And then in the end, at the very end, he says: Fine, the matter depends on no one but me. What did he think originally? That it didn’t depend on him? That the mountains should ask for mercy for him in his place? What is the meaning of this story? It’s very stirring, very moving—but practically speaking, what is this thing actually saying? What is it trying to teach us? It seems to me that what it is trying to teach us is that same feeling of helplessness I described before. A person feels that he has to change himself, but either way, it’s impossible. Meaning, if I already believe in Y, then I have nothing to change—but I know I do have something to change, because after all I sinned, I want to improve. But if I don’t believe in Y, then why should I change my outlook from X to Y? There is some essential inability here to take the step required of me, to repent. And in another formulation I would say—and this is the formulation I was about to tell you—I think you can formulate it this way. I am standing before the Holy One, blessed be He; He expects me to repent. I say to Him: Look, I myself cannot change myself. One of two things is true: either You do it for me, or it cannot be done. Now if I myself do it, that is impossible. If You do it, that is valueless, because the Holy One, blessed be He, did the repentance, not me. So what value does it have? I am the one who is required, on my own initiative, to repent, to change myself, as I said before. So there is basically this either-or here. Repentance cannot be done from within, because that is impossible. It cannot be done from without—well, maybe it can, but then it lacks value. It isn’t really a process of repentance; someone else did it to me. If you imagine that I go to a psychologist and he reprograms me, that isn’t called repenting. By the way, an interesting question: is there any point in going to a hypnotist who will hypnotize me so that from now on I won’t sin anymore? I’ll do commandments, minor and major alike, and commit no sins at all. In principle I think such a thing is possible—again, I’m not an expert in hypnosis—but clearly things of that sort… because as I said earlier, the problem is that we are supposed to perfect ourselves. If someone fixes us from the outside, that isn’t called self-perfection. Self-perfection means intentionally doing an action that I myself do in order to correct myself, complete myself, make myself more whole, more perfected. If I want someone else to do the work for me, that is worth nothing. Then he did something to me—what does that mean? I am required to perform an act of correction, of improvement, not for someone else to correct me. An axe in the hand of the woodcutter, yes? That is not something of value. This difficulty—that basically there seems to be no way out. If it’s someone from outside, it lacks value; if it’s me myself, it’s impossible. So how does one repent anyway? It seems to me that this is what Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya felt here. A kind of helplessness. He turns to external factors—what is it? The mountains, the hills, the stars, the constellations, the moon, and who knows what else, all heaven and earth and whoever he sees around him. Why? Because he understands that he himself is incapable of taking himself and turning himself into something else. It has to be someone from outside who changes me. But if someone from outside changes me, that lacks value. So in the end he says: the matter depends on no one but me. Now—but what do you do? The matter depends on no one but me, okay, and now what? What am I supposed to do? How do you do it? So he doesn’t—he really doesn’t exactly know how to do it. He placed his head between his knees and cried bitterly until his soul departed. As if, basically, he did nothing. He simply understood the situation, was totally despairing over this helplessness, this futility, cried and cried and cried, and his soul departed. And in the end, that repentance was accepted. That repentance was accepted. And not only was it accepted, but they called him Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, as Rabbi says here, yes? Not only that, but they even call them Rabbi. Why? Because he taught us this principle. A rabbi is someone who taught us something—our rabbi. He taught us something. What did he teach us? He taught us that even though, on the face of it, according to the logical analysis, this thing cannot be done, in the end, if you deeply internalize the situation and this inability, in the end it happens. I don’t know how it happens. It doesn’t happen from me, but it also doesn’t really come from outside, because I understand the situation very well, I can’t take any active step to change it, but I understand well the situation and the depth of the mess, and I cry and cry and cry, and suddenly—it changes. It happens. He becomes Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, destined for the life of the World to Come, and has finished his role here in this world. So that means that on the one hand the problem seems to have no way out, but on the other hand it doesn’t have to be Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya—it’s just a story that comes to illustrate something we know from ourselves. Everyone knows from his own experience that there is such a thing as repenting. Now I don’t know how many of us have been true penitents, fully and completely—it doesn’t matter, each person in his own measure and extent. But yes, there is such a thing as repenting, there is such a thing as improving myself. So how does that fit with all the descriptions I gave before, according to which on the logical level this is impossible? Not that it’s hard—again, it’s simply not defined, it’s a logical contradiction. How does such a thing happen? It could be that in another formulation—again, I’m not sure whether I said this last time or not—you can formulate it like this. I stand before the Holy One, blessed be He: either He does the repentance upon me, changes me, or I change myself. What He does lacks value; what I do is impossible. I can’t do it. But the assumption behind this helplessness is that I stand opposite Him and we are two separate entities, and then either He does it or I do it. It could be that the root of the matter—and again, I’m saying this very broadly, I don’t know how to define it fully—but I have a feeling that here maybe some kind of way out of the logical tangle can be found. That this dichotomy between us and Him is not as sharp as I described. There is something in the transition between us and Him—there is some point at which we are not really two completely separate entities. Like people always say in mystical statements that I don’t like all that much, the divine point within each of us. In the transition between us and Him there is some point where it is both of us together. It’s not really—again, I’m not talking about pantheistic identity, that there is nothing but Him and all of us are really just divinity—that is a very problematic statement. But in a certain sense I do accept this point. Because it cannot be done from outside, and if it is done from outside it lacks value, and it cannot be done from within. This either-or assumes that the inside and the outside are distinct from one another in a dichotomous way. If there is some problem in that description—and I can only say this negatively, I can’t say positively what exactly is happening there—then perhaps there is nevertheless some kind of way out here, and the fact is that there is. Meaning, people do undergo this process; they are required to undergo this process. That means that something in this description is happening in the connection between us and Him. Now understand that this brings us back to—we spoke about the problem of perfection and self-perfection, and I said that repentance is such an essential business because this improvement, which is expressed in the process of repentance, actually completes the Holy One, blessed be He. “Ascribe strength to God,” yes, or service for a higher need. Meaning, the self-perfection that we do is that wholeness which, from His own side, He cannot have—that wholeness. Because He is already perfect, so how can He perfect Himself? Therefore He creates us so that we will do the work of self-perfection and thereby give Him the wholeness that He lacks. Okay? And I said there: in what sense does our self-perfection complete Him? We perfect ourselves, but why does that make Him whole? In order for Him to become perfected, He Himself would have to be deficient and then become more whole Himself. What does it help that He creates other beings who are deficient and they complete themselves? So I said that the potential—I spoke about motion and change of place with Zeno’s paradoxes—the potential for change is found in Him. It goes from potential to actuality through us. That is basically the claim. That is also what Rav Kook writes there, it seems to me, if I understand him correctly. And notice: that is actually very similar to the conclusion I reached now from the other angle I spoke about today. And what I said here, basically, is that there is some connection between us and the Holy One, blessed be He, and this process of self-perfection, which we call repentance, cannot really be done by us alone. There is something at the root point that is driven by Him. Meaning, in some way He Himself has to be involved in it, because otherwise it cannot happen. But it also cannot be just Him, because then it lacks value. He somehow constitutes the potential that goes from potential to actuality through us. You see that this is basically, one way or another, some kind of description of that same connection I was talking about here—a kind of metamorphosis, yes, like Asher’s fish and birds. At a certain stage there is a creature that is mixed between fish and bird. Well, not a creature—a picture, an environment, mixed of fish and birds. And this connection is another way of looking at the relation between the potential and the realization of that potential through us. And therefore our self-perfection really does also complete Him, not only us. Meaning, in this matter we are in a sense working for Him. This self-perfection makes Him more whole; without it He would be lacking. And therefore He also has to be involved here, beyond the considerations of Zeno, yes, with the potential for motion and so on. He has to be involved here, first, because technically we cannot carry it out. On the other hand, if He alone does it, it lacks value. Therefore there must be some connection with us, and that connection somehow produces this self-change. But that also answers exactly the need that this whole creation is meant to repair itself and thereby complete the Holy One, blessed be He—yes, service for a higher need. It is precisely this self-perfection and this wholeness that are created through that very connection I’m talking about here. And what I did mention last time, yes, with Avinu Malkeinu—all the Avinu Malkeinu prayers we say are all requests from the Holy One, blessed be He. And there is one Avinu Malkeinu that seems very strange at first glance, and that is: Avinu Malkeinu, bring us back in complete repentance before You. One could interpret it as: Avinu Malkeinu, accept us as penitents—that is, accept our repentance. But “bring us back in complete repentance before You” is not the literal meaning. Not “accept our repentance,” but rather: help us repent, or in some sense do the repentance for us. But that can’t be, because if He does the repentance for us it lacks value. On the other hand, we alone cannot do it. So “bring us back in complete repentance before You” means: give us the connection; through that connection, insert into us this potential for change so that we can bring it from potential to actuality and change. And that is “bring us back in complete repentance before You,” yes—take part in the act of repentance. Not only accept us as penitents, but take part in the act of repentance, because without that it cannot happen. It cannot take place. I want to touch on this issue from yet another angle. And that is simply to increase the resolution more and more around that point of connection that I keep circling around; I don’t know what to say about it directly. These are negative attributes. I circle around it, I look at it from here and from there, I see what it is not, and again what it is not and what it is not, and in the end the hope is that some understanding or conception will be formed of what it is, as Maimonides describes regarding negative attributes. So I’ll present it from another angle. If you remember, I spoke about this problematic notion of weakness of will. Weakness of will, as I described before, basically means the following: if X is what I think is right—and again, X is the bottom line after all the calculations and all the values and desires and interests and everything I want—in the end, there is a bottom line that tells me: I think X is what should be done. And if I am free to do what I think, then I also want to do it. If that is what seems proper to me, then that is what I want. If that is what I want and I am free, then that is also what I do. Any point along the way at which the assumption I described here does not hold turns me into someone coerced. Meaning, if that is what I think is proper but I don’t want it, then it is not what I think is proper—something interfered there with my desires—but then I am coerced. It reminds me of a Talmudic passage in Berakhot. There is an interesting passage—
[Speaker B] In Berakhot, Berakhot 9b
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] B. “And they had them lend,” Rabbi Ami said: this teaches that they had them lend against their will. Some say against the will of the Egyptians, and some say against the will of Israel. The one who says against the will of the Egyptians, as it is written, “and she that is lame shall divide the spoil.” The one who says against the will of Israel, because of the burden—they didn’t want to carry it, it was heavy for them. Now what does “against the will of the Egyptians” mean? After all, it says that God gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, and they had them lend, and they gave them silver vessels and gold vessels. This was done out of the good will of the Egyptians. So what does it mean, against the will of the Egyptians? How does that fit with the description in the Bible itself? So once I thought that “against the will of the Egyptians” means: why did the Egyptians really give it to them? They didn’t exactly love Israel, right? They had no real interest in giving Israel this grant that one gives to a slave—it’s like a severance grant given to a slave—so they didn’t suddenly turn into such righteous people. What happened there? It says, “And God gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians.” The Holy One, blessed be He, messed with their heads, hypnotized them. Right? Now their feeling was that they really wanted to give the people of Israel all this spoil. “And she that is lame shall divide the spoil.” Okay? They’re giving it to them of their own free will, but of course all that is after the hypnosis. So is that called willingly or unwillingly? Obviously unwillingly. Since God gave the people favor in the eyes of the Egyptians, that means the giving of the Egyptians was because of the Holy One, blessed be He—He did it, not them. So that is called against the will of the Egyptians. And maybe that itself was the dispute here, how to relate to a situation like this, or to what extent a situation like this—you can formulate it in a few ways. But at the principled level, at least according to one opinion here in the Talmudic text, such a thing—even though it’s what I want—it’s similar to, yes, coercion that results in a valid sale, the whole topic of coercion and sale. Never mind, we won’t get into that now, but once the Holy One, blessed be He, turns their heads around, that’s called against their will, even though right now nobody is forcing them and they’re doing it gladly and they really enjoy it and they love the people of Israel—but that’s not their real will. Someone hypnotized them. Why did I remember this? Because of what I said earlier: that if someone basically causes me not to really want something that I do want, that doesn’t really mean I don’t want it. I do want it. I’m just coerced. So coercion can also exist on the level of will. But if there’s no coercion on the level of will, then I want what I think is proper to do. And now then why don’t I do it? So apparently there was coercion—if not on the level of will, then on the level of action. Something interfered there, some strong impulse I couldn’t withstand or something like that. So if that’s so, that means that the moment I did something—even though I think it’s improper—I was coerced. Or alternatively, I did think it was proper. That’s the argument of weakness of will; I mentioned it earlier too at the beginning of the lecture. So that’s what weakness of will is. How can there really be such a thing as weak will? How can it be that a person does something that he himself understands is improper? Yes, how can there be a penitent, in the terminology of the Sages—not in today’s terminology of someone who became religious—who never did anything he didn’t think was proper; that’s what he thought then, and today he thinks differently. I’m talking about someone in the sense of the penitent of the Sages: he always knew what was proper and improper to do, but he didn’t do it, and he wants to correct his behavior. How can such a state exist? Here I want to suggest, once again, a solution that one can argue with, but it seems to me that this is where the sting lies. And again, I’m saying this simply because de facto, at the bottom line, it’s clear to all of us that this does happen. With all due respect to all the calculations of logic, we know this happens in practice. Fine, so now I’m trying to explain something that is obvious to me happens. Where could the flaw be in the description I gave earlier that led me to the conclusion that it can’t happen? It seems to me that when we enter into a person’s choosing, this act of choosing consists of two levels. Like, say, the example regarding Elijah the prophet at Mount Carmel, who says to the people, “How long will you keep hopping between two branches? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him.” Now usually when we read these verses, as far as we’re concerned it’s some kind of rhetorical move, trying to push them into a corner—not that he really means for them to go after Baal, but rather a kind of, come on guys, you’re not serious, go on, be men, do what you really think—when obviously in the end they’ll go after the Holy One, blessed be He. He’s not really trying to encourage them to go worship Baal. But I read it literally. He’s saying to them: friends, do you really believe in Baal? Fine, do it. You’re hopping between two branches, sometimes going there, sometimes going here, like the old comedy sketch, right? I’m going with the crowd, not with Dad, not with Mom, I’m going with the crowd, and sitting on the fence like in Arik Einstein’s song. Meaning: I don’t really decide on a path, I go wherever the wind takes me. Elijah says to them: that is the worst thing. I’d rather you worship Baal—really, not as a rhetorical trick. I’d rather you worship Baal. If that’s what you believe in, go for it. Why? What is his claim against them? Notice: the claim he presents against them is basically a claim saying not that you aren’t doing the right thing, but that you are not doing. It’s not your act. What you’re doing, beyond the fact that it’s also not the right thing, is simply not your act. You’re going after the crowd, after the wind, after fashion—you’re not really deciding what you do. You know what he’s saying to them? I prefer that you choose evil rather than not choose at all. At least be choosers. Yes, like the joke about the Religious Zionist guy—you know that Bnei Brak joke about
[Speaker B] Someone once told me
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that the building cleaner was an Arab cleaner, and once he came to clean in Bnei Brak during Ramadan. So they said to him, what are you doing, isn’t this your fast now, Ramadan? You’re coming to clean? He said to them, no, no, I’m a Religious Zionist. But the joke about the Religious Zionist guy—it’s about Rebecca, right? “And she went to inquire of the Lord.” So what Rashi brings there is that when she passed houses of idol worship, she felt that the fetus in her womb wanted to come out; when she passed study houses, there too she saw that he wanted to come out. She didn’t understand what was going on, so “she went to inquire of the Lord”—she went to the study hall of Shem and Ever. So what did they say to her? “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall separate from your innards.” You have twins, it’s not one. And then she calmed down. Right? So people ask: why should that calm her down? She has one righteous child and one wicked child—is that better than someone who still hasn’t decided where he’s going, to study houses or to houses of idol worship? The answer is yes: one righteous one and one wicked one is better than a Religious Zionist guy. Meaning, a person—a person who decides on his own path, even if in the end he makes bad decisions, at least has this virtue: he decided, he chose. That’s what Elijah at Mount Carmel says to the people. My problem with you isn’t that you do evil; it’s that you don’t do anything, that you don’t decide at all what you are doing. Be men, as he says to them—decide what you’re doing and go with it all the way. But—but—but go after what you decide. I’ll say in parentheses—maybe I’ll return to this in a moment—if they really did decide, they would also do the good. He wasn’t taking a real risk. But in the end, in the end, a person who does evil—there is some dimension here of being dragged along. The impulse took him, and once again, you see, we’re back to weakness of will. I did not do what I wanted, I was dragged. Right? That’s always a person’s feeling after he sins: this isn’t really what I wanted to do, I fell, I was dragged, the evil impulse overcame me. Everyone gives himself literary descriptions according to his own imagination, but the common denominator is that my will was weak. I didn’t withstand the test. But not that I didn’t know what was right to do. I knew what was right to do, but I fell. What does “I fell” mean? This is the problem of weakness of will, because what does “I fell” mean? I wouldn’t choose that. But as I asked regarding weakness of will, if I wouldn’t choose it, then I’m coerced. So something forced me, so it isn’t my choice—then why am I guilty? Here is the answer I now want to give: I’m guilty not because I chose evil, but because I wasn’t a chooser. And my claim is the following, and this is the solution I propose to the problem of weakness of will. When a person approaches doing something, it’s a process that happens in two stages. In the first stage he has to decide that he will be the one to decide what will happen here. He takes the reins into his own hands; he will decide. Stage two: to decide on the right step and not the wrong step. But first of all he has to decide to decide. First of all he has to be a chooser. After that he also has to choose the good. But first of all he has to be a chooser. Now what happens—what I want to claim about weakness of will—is this: weakness of will is usually an action done on automatic pilot. Meaning, when a person sins—and I’m talking about a sinner of the kind the Sages speak of, not about today’s “returning to religion,” someone who once believed one way and changed his beliefs—I’m talking about someone who knew what was right and what was wrong, and nevertheless fell. Impulse, weakness, whatever you want—but he fell. Why did he fall? I said this should be impossible. If he fell, that means that’s what he chose to do; and if he didn’t choose, then he was coerced. So what’s the issue? Where is the sin? What does he need repentance for? I want to claim that the way he fell—the way a person usually falls—is that he basically closes his eyes. “He shuts his eyes from seeing evil,” and he shuts his eyes as if he doesn’t notice; he lets—let’s compare him to a coachman. This is a coachman sitting there who lets the reins slip from his hands. He won’t drive the horses. Now the horses take him left, when the right way is to go right. But he basically puts himself into the situation. He didn’t choose to go left. There is no situation in which a person prefers something he thinks is not right or doesn’t want to do. Because then he’s coerced. That I accept. The argument of weakness of will is correct in that sense. But I’m claiming that a person can choose not to choose. Once he doesn’t choose, the impulses or the horses take him down a path that he himself thinks is wrong—only he didn’t decide to do it. If he were to decide to do it, that would basically mean he thinks this is the right path. So how does he do it?
[Speaker C] Forget it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I close my eyes, I let go of the reins, and now the horses take me. The horses decided to go left, not me.
[Speaker C] But he chose not to choose.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So you’ll ask: then why am I responsible for that? After all, I didn’t choose it. The answer: I’m responsible for the fact that I went to sleep. I’m responsible for deciding not to be a chooser. After I don’t choose, the human being is a complex creature, so I kind of live with some feeling that okay, whatever happens happens, I’m not really looking at what’s happening—and suddenly I find myself, I don’t know, eating pork, desecrating the Sabbath, whatever. But this process is a process that I begin with a choice not to choose, and from the moment I chose not to choose, the horses take me in the direction the impulse pulls me. So why am I guilty? Because it’s not that the impulse overcame me—I didn’t confront it. I decided not to choose. Here perhaps there can be some way out of this tangle of weakness of will. Ariel.
[Speaker C] But in the end that’s exactly the same thing. Because according to this approach, you’re basically just saying: in practice I wanted not to choose at this point and this point and this point, and that’s the same goal, the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. That’s why I said that even this solution I don’t know how to define all the way through. But I’ll explain why what you’re saying isn’t so simple. And again, I myself am a little undecided. But I’m saying: on the one hand the logical paradox is absolute. On the other hand it is completely clear that this does happen. Somewhere here there has to be some bug. I identify it only here. And I’ll explain why. What Ariel basically wants to claim here is that the junction where I stand when I decide whether to choose or not choose is also a kind of junction between two roads. And there too I chose. I chose not to choose. So then there too I still decided to do what I wanted to do. I wanted not to choose. Okay, so what did I gain from this whole story? In the end, either I did something I don’t want, which is impossible, or I really wanted it, and then once again this is not weakness of will. So what did I gain by this whole division between the choice to choose and the choice itself? I’m claiming something different. Say I’m—let’s leave aside religious sins, okay? Let’s say I’m on a diet and there’s a cream cake in front of me. Okay, a dietary sin, not a religious sin. Fine. Now I really want to diet, I truly want to diet. I have an urge, I want pleasure, but I can stand against the urge. If I couldn’t stand against it, then it’s an irresistible compulsion and I’m not responsible for my actions. But what do I do? Sometimes what I do is switch off the guards on my eyes. I somehow let myself be carried off by the horses, let the horses take me. Now beneath consciousness I understand that in the end I’m going to find myself eating cream cake. But I hide that from myself, because if I didn’t hide it from myself I wouldn’t do it, because I don’t really want to. It’s a psychological process that lets me enter a situation in which the horses will do for me what I myself would never do.
[Speaker C] So why isn’t that coercion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? It’s not coercion because beneath consciousness I understand that in the end, when I switched off the guards on my eyes, when I let go of the reins, after all I knew, in one way or another, where this would take me. Only through a complex psychological process I concealed it from myself.
[Speaker C] If that knowledge is knowledge, then you chose to do it. And if that knowledge is not knowledge, no—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn’t choose to do it. This is where the psychological complexity comes in. The person manages to put himself into a situation in which he doesn’t choose to do it—I would never choose to eat cream cake, never in my life. But I did know that the horses would take me to eat cream cake. I did the transgression indirectly, let’s put it that way, or I let my impulses—the horses are the impulses, yes—take me there, do it in partial awareness, blurred awareness, I don’t even know what to call it. A person deceives himself in some sense. It’s this kind of psychological complexity. Now I understand the definition: if you go with the sharp definition as I described it in weakness of will, you can continue with it here too.
[Speaker D] I just want to make a comment that I also made in the previous lecture when this solution was proposed: I compared it to a drunk driver. The driver himself would never choose to run over another person. But why do we still blame him, even though at that very moment he wasn’t in control of himself?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And more than that, more than that—when he drinks and gets drunk, he also says to himself, this won’t happen to me. I’m not going to run anyone over. If he knew he was definitely going to run someone over, then Ariel would be right—it would be the same thing. But when he decided to get drunk, did he really decide to run someone over? A person always says to himself, wait a second, who says this will happen? Let’s see where the horses go. Right—it’s not in my hands, maybe the horses won’t go there. Now you know where the horses are going to go, but you sell yourself the story that no, no, maybe not; it’s in the horses’ hands, I don’t know, maybe they won’t go. A very complex psychological process. And I’m saying the same thing happens here. I know where the horses will really take me. If you asked me in a clear state of mind and without impulses and without anything, I’d tell you where the horses are going. But I manage to fool myself and say: wait, wait, maybe I won’t eat the cream cake. I’ll let this business happen, and whatever happens, happens. Now of course I’m doing all this, I’m fooling myself, basically so that in the end I can eat the cream cake. But during this whole process of fooling myself, I manage to make myself think that actually I didn’t decide to eat the cream cake; maybe it won’t even happen. And this psychological twist—maybe, again I say, I don’t know how to define it all the way through—but maybe that’s where the punch line lies, why an action of weakness of will really is possible. That’s basically my claim. And now what this really means is that the point where I would say the main point is—actually, you know what, let’s stop for a few minutes for a break. No eating or drinking today, but at least go splash your face or something. We’ll come back, okay? We’ll come back after the second half. The Torah further says in our portion: “Then the land shall rest, a Sabbath to the Lord. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather in its produce. But in the seventh year there shall be a complete rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. Your field you shall not sow and your vineyard you shall not prune.” Here the Torah teaches us the matter of trust and faith in the Holy One, blessed be He. A person works hard for six years, builds, plants, invests, and suddenly the seventh year arrives and he has to stop everything. Seemingly this runs against economic logic—how can a person survive without working the land? But the Torah promises us: “And I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year, and it shall yield produce for three years.” God’s blessing comes to one who trusts in Him. This commandment of the Sabbatical year reminds us that the land is not ours, for “the whole land is Mine,” says the Lord, “for you are strangers and residents with Me.” We are only guests in this world, and the Holy One, blessed be He, is the Master of the house. This is not only an agricultural matter; it is a deep spiritual matter of self-nullification before the Creator. And later in the portion the Torah speaks about the Jubilee year: “And you shall sanctify the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land to all its inhabitants; it shall be a Jubilee for you.” The Jubilee restores everything to its original place: lands return to their original owners, slaves go free. Everything returns to its root, to the understanding that everything comes from the blessed God. And this is the secret of redemption: when a person understands that everything belongs to God, he merits true freedom, liberty in the land. May we truly merit to internalize these messages of the portion of Behar, to live out of faith and trust, and to see God’s personal providence in every step and movement of our lives.
[Speaker B] Okay, let’s continue. Let’s continue. Join in, friends.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All right? Okay. If we look at a person’s acts of choice in this sort of two-story model, where is the sting? Is the sting on the first floor, the decision to be a chooser, or on the second floor, after you’re already choosing, to choose correctly? Obviously you need both. But it seems to me, certainly in light of the argument about weakness of will, that it’s very hard to imagine a person who is really choosing and choosing evil. That’s exactly the argument of weakness of will. Meaning, even the most evil Nazi you can imagine—when he stands before the atrocity he’s about to commit, he will always sell it to himself as actually the right act, the good act. Or he’ll drink a lot of wine, like in those stories, right, before they go murder the Jews—they get drunk so they can manage to hold up. That’s exactly an expression of the fact that he’s basically putting himself in a state where either he’s not really choosing, or he’s persuading himself that this really is what’s right. But I almost can’t imagine, in my wildest imagination, a person who stands in a situation where he really and sincerely chooses, freely chooses, everything is fine, completely in his hands, with the reins in his hands—and turns left, and takes the path that he knows and thinks is not right and does not want to take. It just won’t happen. That’s exactly the argument of weakness of will. Such a thing truly cannot happen. All he can do, as I said before, is switch off his being a chooser and not choose. What this basically means is that assuming a person manages to get into a state in which he is the chooser, in which the reins are in his hands, he will usually also choose the good. And therefore the focus of the struggle is on floor A, not floor B. That’s what I said about Elijah at Mount Carmel: when he says to them, “How long will you keep hopping between two branches? If Baal is God, follow him, and if the Lord is God, follow Him,” he’s not really taking a risk. It’s true, he says to them, yes, yes, be men—if you believe in Baal, go for it. Worship Baal. But he also knows that if he really succeeds in bringing them to be choosers, they also won’t go after Baal. Because they know it isn’t right; it’s their impulse taking them. So when you go after your impulse, you must be in a state where your power to choose is switched off, where you have let the reins slip from your hands. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it. All Elijah wants is to put the reins back in their hands. Once he puts the reins back in their hands, they won’t go after Baal anymore. The problem is always on floor A. It’s rare—if it’s even possible, I’m not sure it’s possible at all—that there’s a problem on floor B: that I choose freely and I do what is evil in my eyes. I can’t even imagine such a person. I simply can’t imagine such a thing. Usually—or maybe always—the problem is on floor A, where you decide not to be a chooser. Now there, the decision whether to be a chooser or not to be a chooser is basically the point where you’re supposed to repent. The whole process of improvement, everything we talked about earlier, all of it converges on this point. I said that I’m basically presenting the same point I attacked from various angles before, and now from one more angle—and this time it’s the angle of choosing to choose. That is the point where our ability to choose—that is the point where the Holy One, blessed be He, is involved, where this probably cannot happen on its own, but it also has no value if He does it. We need to choose, but we need to choose to choose. Meaning, He gives us the ability to choose, and we have to decide to make use of it. That is, to decide to be such people—to be choosers. So once again, this is another look at the same point where there is some connection, where the dichotomy between us and Him breaks down in a certain sense. And therefore this description is just another look at that very point. The connection between us and the Holy One, blessed be He, which the improvement we make basically brings from potential to actuality. The moment we become choosers, we will also do the good. We will really do what we are supposed to do. Therefore our problem is always on floor A, not floor B. Our problem is that sometimes we let the reins slip from our hands, and to repent means to take the reins back in hand. Or even more—to take, it’s not all or nothing—but to make sure that more and more moments, more and more parts of our lives are under control, with the reins in hand, and not that we let the horses take us. And this process of becoming a chooser, even before the question—and again, this is another perspective on everything I said, it’s all just repeating what I said from one angle—because what I do when I take the reins in hand is not yet moving in the positive direction. That is not yet the point where there is a result to my act of repentance, to my act of self-perfection, where I repent and now become righteous, where I do the good thing. No, I’m talking about the process of improvement itself, not its results, but the process of improvement itself. And now here I exhaust the process of improvement in becoming more of a chooser. In that very moment when I choose, I always do the good. The whole question is how much of my life I am really choosing. And here, basically, lies this struggle: to become a chooser, to deviate from nature, to connect more to the Holy One, blessed be He, to make more use of the link between us and Him—however you want to phrase it; these are formulations I usually don’t like. But I think here there’s no escape; it has to come in from every angle you look at it. And I think that may be the reason why the discussion of free choice is located in Maimonides in the laws of repentance. Why isn’t it located in the laws of grace after meals? I have a choice whether to recite grace after meals or not. Why go after my impulse rather than bless? So what—in every commandment or prohibition there is the dimension of choice. Why does Maimonides place his discussion—chapters 5 and 6 in the laws of repentance, which deal with the issue of choice—why does he place it specifically in the laws of repentance? I think the reason is what I said earlier. To return, to repent, does not mean to start doing good. Because if that were the case, it would be redundant, exactly as Wisdom says: I have to do good because the commandment tells me to do good, and the prohibition tells me not to do evil. Repentance means to make sure that I will do the good—not to do the good, but the process that will ultimately lead me to doing good, that process itself is repentance, the process. So what does that really mean? This process means to be a chooser, as I said earlier. So say, in contrast to the commandment of grace after meals, which is a commandment to bless, not to choose to bless. Of course, if I didn’t choose, then maybe that commandment has less value, but I am required to bless—that’s what I’m required to do. The commandment to repent is—the essence of the commandment is to be a chooser. It’s not a condition within the commandment; it’s not like every other commandment where you need to choose to do the commandment, but the commandment doesn’t tell you to choose. The commandment tells you what to do or what not to do, positive commandment or prohibition. Therefore the concept of choice is external to all the other commandments; it’s a basic condition before you even reach the discussion of the commandment or the prohibition. In repentance, choice is the essence of the commandment. The commandment is to do—the commandment is to be a chooser. A commandment or the matter—we discussed whether it’s a commandment or not—but the commandment is to return to being a chooser; that is the essence of the commandment. It’s not that I have to repent and there is also a value that I repent out of choice. To repent is to be a chooser. Repentance deals with floor A; all the other commandments deal with floor B. Repentance tells me: return to being a chooser. All the other commandments tell me: you are already a chooser, do this and don’t do that. They tell me now what to do with the reins, where to drive. Repentance tells me: take the reins in hand. And therefore the discussion of choice is located in the laws of repentance, because the commandment of repentance is the commandment to be a chooser. A commandment or the matter—again I say, commandment or not commandment—but then is that only part of repentance?
[Speaker E] There’s confession over specific sins and not, as you said, over taking the reins?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the expression, those are the expressions in the end, but once you choose, you already understand that what you did was wrong, and you need to express that in the form of confession, resolve for the future, and all the practical stages of repentance. But it’s like Rabbi Soloveitchik’s distinction—they say it’s Rabbi Chaim, but in my opinion Rabbi Soloveitchik invented this distinction—between the act of the commandment and the fulfillment of the commandment. There is the act you are required to do, but the fulfillment is something else; it does not always overlap with the act of the commandment. The act of the commandment in repentance is the four stages, but the fulfillment of the commandment is when you have become a chooser. You do it in these practical ways, in the four stages: abandoning the sin, resolving for the future, confession, regret, and so on. But in the end, when can one say that you are a penitent? When you returned to being a chooser. Therefore—it’s not, I didn’t speak about this here, but in previous years I spoke about it at length—that Talmudic text in Kiddushin, right, that someone who betroths a woman—even if he is wicked—if he betroths a woman on condition that I am completely righteous, we are concerned about the validity of the betrothal. Why? Perhaps he repented, had a thought of repentance. So what if he had a thought of repentance? What about the four stages? Regret, abandoning the sin, resolve for the future, verbal confession? Did he do all of that for all the sins he committed, this consummate wicked man? It happened pretty fast overall, in a moment, right? He gives her the ring and says, “Behold, you are betrothed to me,” and in the course of that he became completely righteous. “On condition that I am completely righteous”—not righteous, completely righteous. Rather, I think the point is that if he truly turns around and becomes a chooser, then he really is completely righteous. Rather, I think the point is that if he truly turns around and becomes a chooser, then he really is completely righteous. The actions are required perhaps as requirements of Jewish law, formal requirements, and maybe not even that—maybe they’re only aids in creating this inner reversal. But if you truly reversed yourself inwardly, like Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya. Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya too—after all, all his life he “left no sin uncommitted.” You want to say that at that hour—yes, “he acquired his world in one hour”—at that hour he went through all the sins on an orderly list, and for each one he abandoned it, resolved not to do it again, regretted it, and confessed it verbally? For every one of the sins he committed, while sobbing bitterly and hastily as described there in the Talmudic text? He didn’t do that. Because if you truly turn around, then you have fulfilled the matter. You don’t need the practical things. The practical things are the means to enter into the matter. Maybe they’re substitutes; I discussed this in previous years. But that is not the fulfillment of the commandment—the fulfillment is when you turn around. When you become, when you return to being a chooser, then you are truly a penitent in essence, not in the technique of repentance. So therefore I think the discussion of the matters of repentance is located in Maimonides—the discussion of the matters of choice is located in Maimonides specifically in the laws of repentance. By the way, there are several more things—I won’t go into it here—but there are several details in the laws of repentance that apparently recur elsewhere in the Mishneh Torah. Love of God and fear of God recur in the laws of the foundations of the Torah; studying Torah for its own sake recurs in the laws of Torah study; all kinds of things of that sort. Why? Why do they recur again in the laws of repentance? It seems to me that what all these things share is that in the laws of repentance there appears the aspect for which you are not commanded, the essential aspect. There is a difference between love of God as a commandment and serving out of love. The commandment to love God does not appear in the laws of repentance; serving out of love appears in the laws of repentance. The commandment to love God is one of the commandments, like all the 613 commandments; there is another commandment, namely to love God. To serve out of love, which appears in Maimonides, is something that does not enter into the command itself of loving God. Loving God is “And you shall love the Lord.” Why do I do the commandments? I can do them for all sorts of reasons. That is not part of the commandment of loving God. Of course, one who loves God there also fulfills the commandment of loving God, but it is not part of the obligatory conditions from the standpoint of the commandment of loving God. There is some element here that is outside Jewish law. Something that you are called to do because you understand that this is proper, not because you are commanded. Exactly like the matter of repentance itself. And the same is true of Torah study—I elaborated on this in several places. Torah study is also like that. With the morning and evening recitation of Shema, one fulfills one’s obligation. Everything else you do because you understand that this is proper. All these things that you do because you understand, because you understand that this is proper, appear in the laws of repentance. And they themselves appear in other sections of the Mishneh Torah, where they are dealt with in their regular halakhic dimension—what one needs to do according to the parameters of the commandment in each place. Here they are dealt with in their essential dimension, in the dimension of returning to do what you truly think is right to do. Not because there is a commandment, or because you choose the good—you simply choose. Once you choose, then you already do what is proper. In that sense, I think the laws of repentance are not the laws of repentance; they are the laws of choice. Simply to return to being a person who truly decides what he does, and does it because that is right. Afterward, of course, you then need to do all the commandments because that is what is right, and that is already the outgrowth—that is the whole rest of the Mishneh Torah. But the laws of repentance deal with the first floor, not the second. Maybe one more point, and this is the practical point. Meaning, when we judge people, or even say when we look at students, at young people, our children, or something like that, and we ask ourselves where we succeeded and where we failed. Very often a person feels that he failed when the child chooses to go not in the way he thinks, not in the right way the father thinks is right—goes off the religious path, whatever. And then there is a feeling of failure; every parent to whom this happens, I think, experiences it in one way or another, some feeling of failure. And that’s true perhaps in a certain sense, but it seems to me that this is not the whole picture; it’s only part of the picture. Because no less important than that the child, the student, or whoever should do what is right, no less important than that is that he do what he thinks. That he be a chooser—floor A, not just floor B. Now here there are many people—people or students, yes, or young people—who can ostensibly be seen as a success if they follow their parents’ path and do what is expected of them, but they do it out of inertia. They never really decided on it. They’re simply there because that’s their comfort zone. So that’s what they do. In my eyes that too is a failure, even if they do everything, from the lightest to the gravest, from inertia, that’s just what they do. That too is a kind of failure. Meaning, both of these things are partial failure and partial success. Again, you need to be a chooser, and you also need to choose the good. There is a failure where you don’t choose, and there is a failure where you choose but don’t choose the good—to the extent there is even such a thing, since earlier I said I’m not convinced there is something completely like that. Therefore, in a place where you need to educate a child or a young person or a student or whoever it may be, it seems to me that it is not right to educate him only in this sense—yes, the commandment of education, what we’re talking about in the lectures these days. The commandment of education is not only to educate him to do what is right, but first of all to educate him to be a doer, to be someone who is the one deciding what he does, even though this sometimes has a heavy price. Sometimes the price is that if you educate him to do what he thinks and don’t push him to do what is expected of him, sometimes it will blow up in your face. He will decide to do something that in your eyes is not the right thing, maybe even very wrong. That is the price involved in putting before him a model of doing what is right in his eyes, and not only doing what is right. There is a value of autonomy, not only the value of doing what is right, but also a value of autonomy. And educating toward autonomy is an education that has many dangers alongside it. Because when you educate a person to be autonomous, then he is autonomous—he will now do what he thinks. And if he doesn’t think like you, then he’ll do other things. So in a certain sense, if he does other things and he really thinks them, that’s a kind of success. A certain failure, a success from another angle. Because he really does what he thinks; he stands on his own feet.
[Speaker C] And also, if he didn’t choose autonomy, and another person just told him be autonomous and so on, then it’s the same thing.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Educating toward autonomy does not mean programming him to be autonomous. You can’t. We talked about Adam HaKohen, who wanted to repent on his deathbed in order to refute the saying of the Sages that even at the entrance to Gehenna the wicked do not repent. There are things that simply cannot be done. You cannot program a person to be autonomous. What you can do is speak to him in praise of autonomy, explain to him that it’s very important to be autonomous, that he should always pay attention to whether he’s doing what he thinks and not what is expected of him. Those are things you can help him with.
[Speaker C] But whichever way you look at it, no matter at what level you promote him toward being autonomous—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re returning to the same question as in weakness of will, basically. And I’ll return to the same answer I gave you there: there’s no end to it. At some point it’s clear that there is some place for education, and in every education there is some degree of taking away autonomy. Ostensibly you would have to leave him on a desert island to decide everything on his own. No, I am trying to guide him.
[Speaker C] If we look only at the plane of the things he actually does, then clearly education contributes. But if we look at the plane of autonomy, then ostensibly it has no meaning at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, in my view this is important. Yes, it does have significance. Again, it’s the same vague answer I gave you about the previous question, because it’s exactly the same point in the analogy. What I really want to argue is that it’s possible to guide a child to become autonomous. In the end, my goal is that when he becomes autonomous as an older child, then he really will be autonomous. The fact that on the way there I also helped him, that he didn’t make that journey alone—that may be true. But in the end, when he becomes an adult, he’ll be completely autonomous. He’ll do things because he thinks so, not because I expected it of him. And even the fact that he’s autonomous—he won’t do that because I expect him to be autonomous, but because he truly is autonomous. But when he’s ten, or twelve, or fifteen—each according to his stage of development—then yes, I help him a bit to become autonomous, so that when he grows up he’ll already be autonomous for the right reasons. So there’s a price I pay along the way, but I think that without that, the chance that he’ll be autonomous as an adult is smaller. You need to help him at the beginning, at the expense of the autonomy along the way. Okay, so that’s an almost practical implication of what I said earlier: that it’s no less important that a person be a chooser than that he choose correctly. We’re not used to thinking that way. Now, many times our way of judging people, or children, or students, is that people say: look, see what came out of him—so he failed. But that’s my failure, not his. I’m not worried because of him; I’m worried because of myself. What will people say about me, that my son or my student turned out this way or that way? So what will they say about me? Then I have a feeling of failure, and I’m really loading it onto him. I’m supposedly judging him, but really it’s my feeling of failure about myself. So the fact that this feeling is my failure—that really is justified—but on the other hand, if he became autonomous, then I think that in that sense there’s also success. And you shouldn’t load all your feelings and frustrations onto him. That’s certainly not the right thing to do, but that’s not our issue here. And the truth is, I planned to do one more thing, but the time we have left here doesn’t allow it. I’ll do it orally, not read it from the text. There’s also—again, I’ve done this before more than once—a chapter in the book Tanya, chapter 9. And there it’s really a summary of an entire line of thought in Tanya, but in that chapter it really is the distilled essence of his whole move. And I think that if you examine carefully what he means, it seems to me that he’s talking about what I spoke about here: returning to being a chooser. Usually, when we think about the struggles we conduct between good and evil, it’s pictured—you know, this is from kindergarten. The kindergarten teacher taught us that there’s a good inclination and an evil inclination, and the question in our struggle is which one overcomes the other. A good person is someone whose good inclination overcomes, a bad person is someone whose evil inclination overcomes. But that picture can’t be correct. It can’t be correct because the moment I speak about a good inclination versus an evil inclination, then it’s really some kind of struggle happening around me, not a struggle that I myself am carrying out. Where am I in this whole story? After all, the good or the evil—that’s me. Inclinations pull me here, pull me there, but those are things trying to take me—they’re not me myself. And the demand made of me is to be good, not that my good inclination should be good. No demands are made of my good inclination; it is what it is, the way it was created. The demands are made of me. So where am I inside this struggle between good and evil? If you picture this struggle as a struggle between the good inclination and the evil inclination, then that leaves me outside. And therefore that can’t be the true picture. And indeed, the author of Tanya describes this picture of the struggle between good and evil—really, he describes it, again, I’m mixing in my own interpretation too, because I don’t have time to go into the text itself and explain what I think and what my interpretation is. I’m saying it briefly, including my interpretation, without guaranteeing that this is exactly what he meant. What I want to say is that both the good inclination and the evil inclination are inclinations. Therefore, a person who goes after his good inclination and is completely righteous—he goes after his good inclination because his good inclination is very strong. He was born with a very, very strong good inclination. He’s not a righteous person. He’s simply a person who was born with a strong good inclination. That’s all. In what way is he superior to a person who was born with a strong evil inclination? That’s the handiwork of the Holy One, blessed be He, not the handiwork of the person himself. Therefore, a person’s struggle cannot be exhausted by the struggle between the two inclinations. Whichever one wins, it’s just the stronger one, the more forceful one, that wins. That’s not what determines whether I’m good or bad. Both inclinations really belong to what the author of Tanya calls there—and indeed the Ari expands on this in an entire section in Etz Chaim called the Gate of Kelipat Nogah. Kelipat Nogah—there are four shells in Kabbalah. Three shells are absolute evil, and Kelipat Nogah is evil mixed with good. By the way, Kelipat Nogah is the skin of the serpent, yes, the serpent’s skin. So this is literally what the serpent cast into man after the sin. What does that mean? It means that our instinctual dimension is what’s called Kelipat Nogah. But our instinctual dimension includes both the good inclination and the evil inclination. And therefore indeed, “and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil,” there in the sin of the first man—“and you shall be like God, knowing good and evil”—knowing, as in “and Adam knew Eve his wife,” meaning connected to good and evil. Nefesh HaChaim speaks about this, and Maimonides in a somewhat different way at the beginning of the Guide speaks about it. Good and evil entered into us. This is the serpent’s skin, the contamination of the serpent that he cast into us. What is this contamination? The fourth shell, Kelipat Nogah, is a shell mixed of evil and good. What entered into us is the instinctual dimension, which includes both the evil inclination and the good inclination. And both of them are the serpent’s contamination. Because we have some kind of feeling that what our inclinations say—the good inclination or the evil inclination—that’s what we ourselves want. I want to do good or do evil, but really these are my inclinations. Only after the sin did they enter into me, and I have some kind of illusion as though that’s me myself. But it isn’t. It’s the serpent standing outside with its contamination, trying to seduce me. The inclinations are not me. The inclinations are something outside me. The struggle, as the author of Tanya describes it, is not a struggle between good and evil. It’s a struggle between the animal soul and the divine soul. The animal soul is in the heart, and the divine soul is in the intellectual faculties of the head. So it’s not a struggle between right and left, like in the metaphors of good and evil. It’s a struggle between above and below. What’s the meaning of this? The struggle is not about what I will do—whether I’ll go with my good inclination or with my evil inclination. The struggle is about whether I will go with my inclinations, whether for good or for evil, or whether I will decide—I will take the reins into my own hands—that is the divine soul. The animal soul is like an animal, like horses. What does that mean? The animal soul—just as an animal does what its natural instincts pull it to do, so a person, when he acts from the animal soul, functions like an animal. Sometimes he does—perhaps in most cases he even does—the good things, because his natural inclination takes him to do good. It feels good to him to do good, it gives him a warm feeling inside, so he does good. That’s not called a good person. That’s a pleasant person, a nice person, a person who is pleasant to be with, but not a good person. A good person is a person who decides to do good—first of all decides—and then decides to do good. Therefore the struggle is not between the right side and the left side, between the evil inclination and the good inclination, but between the divine soul and the animal soul. The animal soul is conduct like an animal, going with one’s inclinations. Doing good, doing evil, even doing only good—but doing it because that’s where my inclination takes me. That is animal conduct, that is the animal soul. The animal soul is also called by him the vital soul, because it gives us a very powerful feeling. What comes from the heart is very strong. What comes from the head feels alienated somehow, like something rather detached. The heart pushes us much more strongly to do things, and therefore it’s hard to go with the head; it’s much easier to go with the heart. But the great struggle is to go with the head and not with the heart. And the head—after you go with the head—of course also means doing what is right, but first of all being a chooser, not going with the inclinations, not letting the horses pull you but taking the reins into your own hands. After that, you also direct the reins in the right direction. But as I said before, if the reins are in my hands, I will generally do the right thing. When I don’t do the right thing, it’s because I was dragged along, because I let the reins slip from my hands. Therefore in the end, if I go with the divine soul, then I will also do good. If I go with the animal soul, then I can do either good or evil, depending on which inclination overpowers me at that moment. And that is exactly, “How long will you keep hopping between two opinions?” You go with Baal, you go with the Holy One, blessed be He, you go with the crowd. Because you go with every passing wind; you don’t decide for yourselves. That is the animal soul, not the divine soul. Therefore the author of Tanya is really sharpening here the point that repentance—or the fundamental struggle facing a person—is not a struggle between good and evil. It’s a mistake to think that it’s a struggle between good and evil. It’s a struggle between being a chooser and letting the reins slip from your hands. If I am a chooser, I will generally do good. If I let the reins slip from my hands, then it may be that I’ll also do good—and by the way, that’s what allows me to let the reins slip from my hands. It’s very easy for me to fall asleep, to let the reins slip from my hands, because my inclinations often also lead me to do good. So let’s let them lead—who knows, maybe I’ll do good, with my hope of eating the whipped-cream cake at the end. So it’s all the same twist I described earlier. But the fact that I sometimes do good because of the good inclination, my instinctual dimension—that is what allows me to hand myself over to my inclinations and not go with the divine soul but specifically with the animal soul. Precisely the fact that I sometimes do good. Therefore a person needs to be as careful as possible to return to being a chooser, to hold the reins in his hands and go with—to be a person of the divine soul and not a person of the animal soul. That is the essence of repentance: to rise from below to above, and not to go from left to right. To go from left to right is to remain below. You need to rise upward. And above there is no right and left; below there is a good inclination and an evil inclination, in the realm of the animal soul. The divine soul—there’s no such thing as a good divine soul and a bad divine soul. Why not? Because there is no such thing as a person who truly chooses, whose hands are on the reins, and who chooses evil. It simply doesn’t happen. A person who chooses evil is usually a person who lets go of the reins and the horses carry him off to do evil. Therefore the main goal is to keep the reins in your hands. After that you’ll already do the right thing. Floor one is the main goal, not floor two. Okay, I did that really briefly, but that is the essence of the matter. That’s it, that’s all I have to say. Anyone who wants to comment or ask, or about any topic at all.
[Speaker B] Well, may you be sealed for good, and have a good year.
[Speaker C] May you be sealed for good.
[Speaker B] By the way, I—
[Speaker C] think that the fundamental question regarding repentance is actually, surely if it’s the same repentance, the same fundamental question that exists regarding free choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I completely agree. Completely agree. That’s exactly the analogy I drew between the two levels of choice and the two levels of repentance. The process of repentance and the result-oriented side of repentance. Essentially, deciding to be a chooser and choosing the good.
[Speaker C] After all, the solution you’re proposing for repentance, I assume you’re not proposing it for free choice.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean?
[Speaker C] To say that free choice means that I choose to choose, or things like that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. That’s called—that’s the concept of repentance. What do you mean? That’s the concept of choice and that’s the concept of repentance. The same thing. To return to being a chooser. Okay.
[Speaker B] Okay. Good year, may you be sealed for good, goodbye. May you be sealed for good.