Teshuva: Its Meaning and Laws – Rabbi Michael Avraham – Lesson 3, Part A

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thursday as usual, right? But this is now instead of last Thursday. Okay, we spoke about two channels or two mechanisms of repentance, small repentance and great repentance, and I made a kind of dichotomous distinction between them. I said there is the repentance whose purpose is basically to erase sins, a four-stage procedure: abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession. You go through each and every sin and it gets erased. And then there is substantive repentance, which is basically some kind of inner reversal or fundamental change in the soul that works on all the sins. And Maharal ties this to two of the Thirteen Attributes, that “The Lord, the Lord” is responsible for the great repentance, the substantive one, and “and cleanses” is responsible for the small repentance, the accounting-like, technical one. And therefore, “and cleanses, but does not cleanse” — so the Talmud says there that He cleanses those who repent and does not cleanse those who do not repent. And I said, what’s the novelty in that? That unlike the great repentance, this repentance cleanses only those sins on which I worked. Because this is a technical matter: what I did is what happened. In the great repentance, they cleanse everything, because here there is no distinction at all between sins I repented for and sins I didn’t repent for, because that kind of repentance is by definition done for everything. I said that substantive repentance is not bound by all the formal laws of repentance. Meaning, you don’t need the four stages, you don’t need verbal confession. Regret and acceptance for the future are of course a natural part of it — not as some formal stage, but because that is clearly the essence of this repentance. But for example, verbal confession is not required, and you also don’t have to deal with each and every sin separately even in the stages of regret and acceptance for the future. Rather, this is something done globally, on all the sins together. I brought two proofs for this. One proof is the Talmud in Kiddushin about someone who betrothed a woman, a wicked man who betrothed a woman; we take the betrothal seriously lest he may have contemplated repentance in his heart. And I said, if he contemplated repentance in his heart, so what? There are all the stages, and you have to go through each and every sin.

[Speaker B] He is completely righteous. What? When he betrothed a woman on condition that I am righteous.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, on condition that I am completely righteous. And you see that we take seriously the possibility that he became completely righteous without really having done all the required stages. And the second proof was Rabbi Elazar ben Dordaya, who after his long career in the criminal sphere, it’s not reasonable that within a single hour he acquired his world. So if within one hour he acquired his world, again, the meaning is that he apparently underwent some kind of reversal and didn’t go sin by sin applying all four stages to each one of them. Those are two indications that there is apparently some sort of fundamental repentance, substantive repentance, that is not subject to these rules of the laws of repentance.

[Speaker C] That’s basically the intuition. I heard an interesting anecdote connected to this: in Christianity this whole area of repentance is very developed — confessions, going to the priest. And then in the Middle Ages there was something called indulgences, which was apparently because they needed money, so they sold atonement in advance. Ah. And the Protestants came out very strongly against this. They said it can’t be that you sell atonement in advance, because if you commit the sin then the whole thing is already flawed — it can’t be repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So your regret no longer exists.

[Speaker C] It’s an inherent problem in the act itself.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] True, I heard about that issue. Part of the whole Protestant rebellion, by the way, in many ways — there’s a very interesting analogy between Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. By the way, we’re always sure that we’re terribly unique, but the truth is I’ve heard already from various people — there’s Ephraim, what’s his name, Ephraim Barak, who is an expert on Islam. I once sat with him — I think we talked about this once — I sat with him at some wedding and he told me about the Shiites and the Sunnis. It’s very, very similar. It’s amazing how similar it is. And also the Protestants and the Catholics. The Protestants rebel against the formalism, the technicality of the Catholic religion. In a certain sense they want to go back to the sources, be more connected to the heart, to the meaning of things, and less with techniques of confession and these kind of checkboxes. And the same with the Protestants. Also the Sunnah against the Shi’a, same thing. The Shi’a is parallel to the Catholics, let’s say, and the Sunnis are parallel to the Protestants. By the way, people usually think that the Catholics are…

[Speaker D] The Sunnis came before the Shi’a? What? The Sunnis came before the Shi’a. No, no, no.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sunnis came before the Shi’a. נכון, but the struggle between them is basically parallel to the Catholics and Protestants in these senses. Meaning, the Shiites are more — let’s say in our language — the Shiites are the Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy from their standpoint, let’s say… Yes, exactly. The Sunnis are the fundamentalists, like the Protestants, for example, among Christians it’s much more obvious. Among Christians people usually think that the Catholics are more fundamentalist. The Protestants are more open, more liberal — that’s a mistake. The Protestants are more fundamentalist than the Catholics. It’s like with us, a bit like the Hilltop Youth. The Hilltop Youth is a return to the sources. It’s a rebellion against the religious establishment in a certain sense, but it’s a rebellion in order to go backward, not in order to go forward. It’s a rebellion against the falseness in the religious establishment, against the feeling that people don’t really do what needs to be done and are too committed to the rules and not willing to dare and break through and rebel and things of that sort. In many ways…

[Speaker B] And there’s also the Taliban?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? And there’s the Taliban, yes exactly. The Taliban is also some kind of rebellion, but it’s a rebellion in the name of what was, not in the name of what will be. There is a rebellion that wants to throw everything out and move ahead, and there is a rebellion that says: you’ve strayed from the path, let’s go back — back to the period of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), we’ll herd goats and play the flute. Meaning, there are all kinds of rebellions of this sort. It’s somewhat similar to the Protestant rebellion. It’s a rebellion whose aim is fundamentalism; it’s not a rebellion against fundamentalism — quite the opposite. The establishment is actually a more sober establishment. The Catholic establishment is a sober establishment, and many times people slander it for that, criticize it for that, because it seems like everything is technique and they find loopholes and somehow manage, and the substance is missing. In a certain sense it’s very similar to our own religious establishment, our own rabbinic establishment. Because in the end, I think sometimes this really does involve falseness, and with us too there is room for criticism that we are indeed losing the heart of the matter and getting hung up on the technique of the thing. But on the other side of the coin, that is the way to deal with sources and remain reasonable. Meaning, then you have to find technical solutions in order to preserve the logic and not cling to these principles without looking right or left and following them all the way. That is ostensibly more faithful, more meaningful, more impressive, but it very often leads to things that are blatantly unreasonable. Now I don’t know how to explain this to you from the sources. From the sources, you’re right — but it can’t be true, so “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation. That’s it. What do you mean, “an eye for an eye” means monetary compensation? You think I buy that? “An eye for an eye” — it says “an eye for an eye”; what stories are you telling me? Even the Sages were, in a certain sense, Catholics in this approach, and the Sadducees were Protestants, meaning going back to Scripture. A lot of these confrontations are very parallel confrontations. It’s very interesting — that conversation there was really eye-opening for me. After that I understood it also in the Christian sphere; so we talked about Islam. In Islam, the Shi’a, for example, has authority vested in the sages. In that generation they can do whatever they want — meaning whatever they decide is what determines things, and therefore the law there develops. In the Sunnah there is no possibility of changing.

[Speaker B] That’s why the Shiites succeeded in establishing a state that survives in a reasonably stable way — not especially friendly toward us — Iran. Iran is basically the only modern Muslim state that tried to function

[Speaker D] according to Muslim law.

[Speaker B] To a partial extent they succeed; they succeed in existing at all, and the fact is that they are willing to change.

[Speaker D] They’ve existed for thirty years? What? The Shi’a has existed for twelve hundred years already, I don’t know how long. They managed thirty years ago to establish a state, that’s all. There’s your proof. Which is what had to be proved.

[Speaker B] But Saudi Arabia is Sunni.

[Speaker D] Wait, they didn’t succeed — the fact is they didn’t manage until thirty years ago to establish a state.

[Speaker B] In the modern twentieth century, Sunnism is less successful, it copes less well than Shi’ism.

[Speaker C] There’s Saudi Arabia, no? They’re Sunni.

[Speaker B] Saudi Arabia, yes, they’re Sunni, but okay, I don’t know.

[Speaker D] You have Saudi Arabia, you have Turkey, you have…

[Speaker C] Turkey is Sufi.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Never mind. In any case, this analogy — how did we get to all this? Technique versus substance. Yes, exactly. Meaning, this indulgence thing for example — it could be that the church needed money. Now everyone will criticize them: what kind of cynicism is this? You need money so you sell it. But on the other hand, maybe they really did need that money for proper purposes, and without this they wouldn’t have been able to raise it. So they found some formal solution, and true, it’s crooked and irritating and it looks bad, but I don’t know, I have no idea, I don’t know how it developed. It could also have developed from greed — doesn’t matter. But on the principled level, formal solutions are often… a very important instrument if you want on the one hand to remain reasonable and on the other hand not deviate from the sources in an overly blunt way. Meaning, somehow to be able to get along with them, when the price is always that you get along with them in some formal way but you are not really fulfilling the spirit blowing out of the sources. In other words, you are basically doing what you think is right. In that sense the Shiites are like that too, and the Sunnis protest against it. That’s why the Sunnis are much more extreme in our world today than the Shiites, because the Sunnis are the ones attached to the past, more fundamentalist. And the Shiites have law, they know, they’re pragmatic, they can manage. Meaning, if today’s sages decide that Islam means something else, then now it means something else, from their standpoint. The Sunnis won’t accept that — they’ll blow them up. Meaning, there’s no such thing. There is the truth, and you go with the truth all the way. And so very often — we aren’t used to this — but very often these rebellions are rebellions on behalf of the past, in order to return to the past, not on behalf of the future. That’s what Yaakov Katz writes about Orthodoxy: that Orthodoxy is a new phenomenon. We always think Orthodoxy is Moses our teacher from Mount Sinai and the others are rebelling against Orthodoxy. Orthodoxy is a new phenomenon, meaning that is actually the new thing. And the rebellions, often — not all of them, but some of the rebellions against Orthodoxy — are rebellions in order to return to what once was. The feeling is that Conservative Judaism, for example — maybe even Reform, but Conservative — may be much closer to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) than Orthodoxy. No question, much closer to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) — again, not to the Talmud, to the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).

[Speaker B] From what you can see, I don’t know — prayer in the language, in the language of the country where we live, is perfectly fine according to the Shulchan Arukh.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? Right.

[Speaker B] And now Orthodoxy has decided no, that people pray only in Hebrew, but in that respect they are… The Reform wanted to pray in German.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Reform wanted to pray in German, and that of course is the height of heresy and the height of rebellion against the custom of our forefathers. It’s in the Talmud: “these things may be said in any language,” seventh chapter of Sotah. Yes, but this… yes. Women being called up to the Torah — doesn’t matter — all kinds of things like that that turned into these articles of faith, when it’s against the Talmud. I’m not even talking about whether you can interpret it this way or that way; it’s simply against the Talmud. Meaning, anyone who does it now is Reform, a heretic, an apikores, whatever. These are fascinating processes. In any case, back to us. So substantive repentance is basically repentance that is exempt from the requirements, from the halakhic criteria. That is the claim. Now I want to continue — I think that’s where I got to, I’m not sure, if I remember correctly. I want to talk a bit about the question of the special grace that exists in repentance. I don’t remember if I already spoke about this. Did we already start talking about it a little? More or less, that’s where we got to, I no longer remember. Mesillat Yesharim at the end of chapter 4 says: “And if you say, if so, why does the attribute of mercy exist, since in any case one must be exacting in judgment over every matter? The answer is: certainly the attribute of mercy is the world’s existence, for without it the world could not endure at all. And nevertheless the attribute of justice is not impaired. For according to strict justice, it would have been proper that the sinner be punished immediately upon sinning, without any delay at all, and also that the punishment itself should be in fierce anger, as befits one who rebels against the word of the Creator, blessed be His Name, and that there should be no repair for sin whatsoever. For truly, how can a person repair what he has distorted once the sin has already been done? If a person murdered his fellow, if he committed adultery, how can he fix such a thing? Can he remove the deed that was done from reality?” Meaning, this cannot be according to strict justice. “However, the attribute of mercy gives the opposite of the three things we mentioned: that time is given to the sinner and he is not destroyed from the earth immediately when he sins, and that the punishment itself will not be unto destruction, not to the very end, and that repentance will be given to sinners as complete grace, such that the uprooting of the will is considered like the uprooting of the act.” Meaning, the fact that you uproot the will, that you regret it, is as if you never did the act — it uproots it, rewrites history. “That is, when the penitent recognizes his sin and admits it and reflects on its evil and repents and regrets it with complete regret, from the outset like regret over a vow itself, so that he is totally comforted and would desire and long that the matter had never been done, and he feels strong pain in his heart that it was done already, and he abandons it for the future and flees from it — then uprooting the matter from his will is considered for him like uprooting a vow, and he is forgiven. And this is what Scripture said: ‘Your iniquity has departed and your sin shall be atoned for’ — that the iniquity truly departs from reality and is uprooted by the fact that now he regrets and is comforted over what was retroactively. And this is certainly a grace not according to strict justice.” Strict justice was not supposed to allow such a thing, but there is a special grace that this happens. So on this Rabbi Elchanan asks — I don’t remember, did we talk about this? Rabbi Elchanan asks from the Talmud in Kiddushin that a completely righteous person who rebelled at the end lost his merits. The Talmud asks: let him be considered half and half — let him keep half the merits, and the sins he does from now on will accumulate against him? And the Talmud answers: when he regrets his earlier deeds. When he regrets the earlier deeds, then he loses them. Rabbi Elchanan says: if so, then apparently the idea that uprooting the will is like uprooting the act is not a grace beyond strict justice, because otherwise it should work only for good and not for bad. The Holy One, blessed be He, inclines toward grace; He doesn’t incline toward doing harm. So if uprooting the will is not like uprooting the act by law — it’s only beyond strict justice — then when I uproot the good will I used to have, it shouldn’t be uprooted. Because here we don’t do things beyond strict justice. That’s Rabbi Elchanan’s question. And then he asked the Chafetz Chaim about this, and the Chafetz Chaim told him that this is repentance out of love and that is repentance out of fear. Repentance out of love — then it is uprooted according to strict law. Repentance out of fear — there it is a special grace that it is uprooted. When the wicked person — the righteous person, sorry — who rebelled at the end and regrets the earlier deeds, that is of course the antithesis or the negative parallel of repentance out of love, because this is basically someone who does not do it out of fear; he does it because he doesn’t believe in it, he doesn’t want it, he truly regrets what he did, really regrets what he did. So that is parallel to repentance out of love; therefore there it is indeed uprooted by law, and so merits too are uprooted, not only liabilities. Repentance out of fear, which exists only on the side of repentance and not on the side of going secular, but only on the side of repentance — there it is only beyond strict justice. And that is what Mesillat Yesharim is talking about. Rabbi Elchanan says that in Mesillat Yesharim, and generally in other places where we see that this is a special grace, it does not sound like this applies only to repentance out of love and not to repentance out of fear. And then he enters into another kind of argument about this. He says that in every — I’ll just say in one sentence — he says that in every transgression and every commandment there are two aspects. There is the aspect of obedience or rebellion against the command. Did I talk about this? Obedience or rebellion against the command. And there is the substantive aspect, the repair or corruption in the act itself. For example, in a transgression there is corruption, and therefore the Torah prohibits it. And if I violated the transgression, then besides the corruption I also rebelled against the command. Meaning, there are two problems in a transgression that a person commits. And in a commandment that a person fulfills there are two virtues: first, the repair that the commandment brings, and second, the fact that he obeys the command. So Rabbi Elchanan claims that the grace is that uprooting the will should be considered like uprooting the act. Uprooting the will certainly cleanses the violation of God’s will, the rebellion against the command, because now I have changed my will, so what are you blaming me for regarding the will I once had? Now I have a different will. So that is by law. But the fact that the act I did — not the bad will I had, not the rebellion against the command, but the corruption — how does the corruption change if I now regret it? That is grace. The idea that uprooting the will should be considered like uprooting the act is not according to strict law; it is beyond strict justice. That is Rabbi Elchanan’s claim. And therefore the Talmud in Kiddushin is talking about the fact that uprooting the will changes the will, and that is strict justice, but when the uprooting…