The Essence of the Mitzvah of Repentance

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[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, Rabbi Chaim Vital, yes. Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin was a student of the Vilna Gaon. Rabbi Chaim Vital asks in his book Shaarei Kedushah, he asks why the Torah did not command us to improve our character traits. Why is there no such commandment? Now, the truth is, in parentheses, that there is such a commandment. It’s the commandment to cleave to the attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He. It’s a positive commandment in Maimonides, I think positive commandment number 8, something like that, I don’t remember anymore, doesn’t matter, one of the first positive commandments. There is a commandment to cleave to His attributes: just as He is merciful, so you should be merciful; just as He is gracious, so you should be gracious. So what is the meaning of Rabbi Chaim Vital’s question, why were we not commanded? We were commanded. I think the explanation is that what we are commanded is to cleave to His ways, to walk in the ways of the Holy One, blessed be He. To walk in His ways and to cleave to Him. What does it mean to walk in His ways? The way the Holy One, blessed be He, conducts Himself in the world, that is how we too are supposed to conduct ourselves. That is a practical command. What the Holy One, blessed be He, does, we too are supposed to do. If He has mercy, then we too must have mercy; if He forgives, then we too must forgive. Rabbi Chaim Vital was not asking about that. Rabbi Chaim Vital was asking about traits of the soul, not behavior. How do we know that one must repair one’s inner character traits irrespective of the practical consequences? Say that I behave perfectly, but inwardly my soul is crooked, my traits are corrupt, only I overcome them and nevertheless behave correctly. Rabbi Chaim Vital says that such a person is not a complete person. Maimonides too, in the sixth chapter of Eight Chapters, talks about this. This is not a complete person. Rabbi Chaim Vital says: yes, but there is no commandment about that; the commandment is to behave correctly, but there is no commandment to repair one’s traits. Why? So Rabbi Chaim Vital says that repairing one’s traits is a condition for being a person who can be commanded. So how can it make sense to command you to repair your traits? Repairing your traits is a condition for it to be possible to address you at all. Someone who doesn’t understand that he needs to repair his traits—there’s nothing to talk about with him, it’s pointless, it won’t help. Rabbi Kook says more than that. Rabbi Kook argues that if I had been commanded to repair my traits, that commandment would actually have been harmful; not only would it not help, as Rabbi Chaim Vital says, it would have caused damage. Why? Because then I would repair my traits because there is commandment number 613, I don’t know what, to repair my traits. What does a person look like when he repairs his traits because there is a commandment to repair his traits? Right, my favorite joke, they tell it in yeshivot about the yeshiva student who started dating for marriage. He met all kinds of girls and rejected all of them; none of them suited him. So the mashgiach in the yeshiva came to him and said: what are you, the leading sage of the generation? No one is suitable for you? Sit and work on your traits for a year, then come back and start meeting girls again. Fine. He works on his traits enthusiastically, studies ethical works, digs in, examines his deeds, repairs his traits. After a year he goes back to meeting all the girls and once again rejects them one after another. So the mashgiach asks him: tell me, you worked on your traits for a whole year? Did anything come of it? What did you do there? So the student says to him: I don’t know what you want from me, Rabbi. A year ago I was arrogant, I had corrupt traits, and none of the girls were suitable for me. Now that I’m righteous and my traits are repaired, all the more so none of them are suitable for me. Obviously. Now what does that story actually show? That story shows what a person looks like when he repairs his traits because there is a clause saying he has to repair his traits. You understand? It’s like—yes, it reminds me—there’s a joke about the maskilim, I think about Adam HaCohen. The joke says that Adam HaCohen wanted to repent on his deathbed before he died in order to disprove the saying of the Sages that even the wicked, standing at the entrance of Gehinnom, do not repent. Meaning, in order to refute the statement of the Sages, he wanted to repent on his deathbed. There are things that just cannot be done. Meaning, you won’t succeed even if you want to. So here too, it’s the same. But for our purposes, what this really means is that the Torah did not command character repair not because it is not important enough to enter Jewish law, but because it is so fundamental that the command itself would have ruined it. The command would have turned character repair into just one clause among many clauses in Jewish law, and people would not understand that character repair is something very, very fundamental. And therefore, precisely for that reason, the Torah does not command it, in order to leave it as a principle outside Jewish law, a meta-halakhic principle, a foundational principle, something that must be done because you understand that this is the right way to behave, not because there is a commandment to do it. The same thing with the commandment of Torah study; there are more examples of this, I won’t go into them here. So basically, coming back to our subject, my claim is that Maimonides says one must repent—why? Because reason says one must repent. The Torah did not command this, so it won’t enter the Book of Commandments. So what is this reasoning? This reasoning says: what do you mean? If you have the option of becoming righteous after having sinned, no one needs to command you; you should understand on your own that you need to repent. On the contrary. If they had commanded you and you did it because there is a commandment, then that repentance would not really be complete repentance. If you do it because you understand the problem of a person who has sinned, and you understand the value of a person who corrected it and repented—if that is why you repent, then that is full repentance. If you repent because there is some clause that obligates you to repent, then it is deficient repentance, not complete repentance. Therefore, on the one hand, we were not commanded regarding the commandment of repentance, but on the other hand we are obligated to do it. There are situations in which, you know, sometimes the Torah does not command because it cannot, but I have to understand on my own that this is incumbent on me. Another example of this: you know that Nachmanides, on “You shall be holy” and “You shall do what is upright and good,” writes there that the Torah expects us to act beyond the letter of the law, with piety, and not to be, as Nachmanides says, “a scoundrel within the permission of the Torah.” If you look among the positive commandments that Nachmanides adds to Maimonides, you won’t find that he added this commandment; in Maimonides it is not counted. You also won’t find that Nachmanides counts the commandment of “You shall be holy.” The question is why. And the answer is because if he had counted the commandment of “You shall be holy,” then those acts would become a halakhic obligation because such a commandment exists, and then it would no longer be beyond the letter of the law. The Torah wants me to act beyond the letter of the law, but if there were a commandment to do that, then that commandment would empty itself of content, because if there is a commandment to do it, then it is already within the letter of the law, not beyond it. And the Torah wants to leave those things so that I will do them as beyond the letter of the law, and therefore it cannot command me. But does that mean I am not obligated to do it? Of course I am obligated. I need to understand on my own that the Torah could not command me, but it is obvious that it wants me to do it. By the way, I think the same is true of beautifying the commandment on Hanukkah and various other things. Is it a bit like purity of the covenant, Rabbi? I hear? What?

[Speaker C] Is it a bit like purity of the covenant?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know. Purity of the covenant—maybe that’s not obligatory at all, because it really isn’t binding.

[Speaker C] It appears in the Torah, but it also appears in the Shulchan Arukh, but he doesn’t count it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Shulchan Arukh doesn’t count it. He writes that there is a problem. But again, what is purity of the covenant? Wasting seed is a prohibition. It is a prohibition that has a source. Purity of the covenant, and the things associated with purity of the covenant in kabbalistic books and things like that—those are things beyond Jewish law. And there I’m really not sure whether it doesn’t enter Jewish law because it is fundamental, or whether it doesn’t enter Jewish law because it simply isn’t sufficiently binding. Or perhaps it’s… And where exactly is the boundary? What do you mean, where is the boundary?

[Speaker E] What Jewish law says. What Jewish law says. Even in Jewish law, regarding wasting seed, there are disputes among the halakhic decisors about the status of that matter.

[Speaker C] Yes, but I mean in general, overall, so according to what the Rabbi

[Speaker E] is saying, there is some kind of basic backbone

[Speaker C] that every Jew is supposed to have that is beyond Jewish law. For example, we explained… okay, I, you

[Speaker E] no, I can’t hear you. What we said

[Speaker C] is that there is supposed to be a process, a deep inner backbone in a person, from which the desire to repent comes, and then where is the boundary? Because on the face of it, anything that exists inwardly within a person obligates him.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but it’s not the desire to repent, it’s the obligation to repent. And even if you don’t want to, you need to understand that you are obligated to repent. But to understand it through your own reasoning, without a command. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you must want it in the psychological sense; rather, you have to understand that there is an obligation to repent because you are supposed to be a corrected person. It got cut off there; I think there was more to continue, but I can’t hear. Fine, let’s continue. So that’s up to here regarding Maimonides’ view. Let’s go back for a moment to the Meshekh Chokhmah. The Meshekh Chokhmah wanted to argue that there cannot be a commandment beyond confession. Right? And therefore he says that in Maimonides there really is no commandment to repent, only a commandment of confession. But as I just showed you, that’s not correct. In Maimonides there is indeed no counted commandment to repent, but there is an obligation to repent. And the question of the Meshekh Chokhmah remains even about that. What is the meaning of an obligation to repent beyond the prohibitions and commandments that the Torah imposes upon us? Even if it is not a commandment but only an obligation outside the system of commandments, one still has to understand what it means to define such a thing as an obligation beyond the prohibitions and commandments that the Torah itself or Jewish law itself imposes upon us. But I think there is some mistake in the line of thought of the Meshekh Chokhmah. The Meshekh Chokhmah assumes that the whole content of the commandments of repentance is to abandon the sin and not return to it, and to confess. And therefore he says: the first part cannot be defined as a commandment, so all that remains is confession. But I think that’s a mistake. He understands repentance as something whose essence is the result. The result that I will no longer have sins. And I claim that repentance is a process, not the result. It is an act that I have to perform, whose result is that my sins are erased and I no longer have those sins. But the path there—that is the commandment, not the result or the state created in the end. Look, I’ll give you an example—or not an example, rather—a teaching of the Talmud says that “In the place where penitents stand, even the perfectly righteous cannot stand.” In truth, a penitent is preferable to a perfectly righteous person. Now explain that to me: what does it mean that a penitent is preferable to a perfectly righteous person? The perfectly righteous person did not sin at all, fulfills all the commandments of the Torah, day and night is occupied with commandments. How can the penitent be greater? What could be greater than a perfectly righteous person? At most, if he repented, everything is erased for him and now he becomes perfectly righteous. How can it be that a penitent is greater than a perfectly righteous person?

[Speaker A] Maybe the level he is at, since he has an evil inclination and overcame it and so on?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The righteous person also has an evil inclination. It’s just that the righteous person never fell; he managed to overcome it from the start. The righteous person has an evil inclination too.

[Speaker A] He never tasted the taste of sin.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He didn’t taste it. So why is the penitent preferable to the perfectly righteous person? I’ll tell you why. Because the penitent progresses and reaches perfection. The righteous person is in a state of perfection. The advantage of the penitent over the righteous person is that he underwent a process of progress. At the end of that process he became perfectly righteous. But along the way he gathered with him this advantage too—that he progressed. And the point is that the value of the process of repentance is not only that in the end I become clean and righteous, but there is value in the very progress toward the perfect state. Beyond the fact that in the end I too will be perfect, the progress toward perfection is itself the advantage or the value in repentance. And that exists for the penitent but not for the perfectly righteous person. And that is why the penitent is preferable to the perfectly righteous person. By the way, I think this is the reason that in repentance out of love, deliberate sins are turned into merits. What does it mean that deliberate sins are turned into merits? The sin you had turns into a commandment. Now what does that mean? That it gets erased? I repented, so it gets erased. How does the sin now become a merit? Because the process of erasure does not end with the fact that now it is erased, but when I went through the process of repentance, that too has value. Beyond the fact that the sin is erased in the result. There is an additional value in the fact that I made the journey. This is what we talked about regarding “sin and repent,” yes, that someone who wants to sin and then repent supposedly gains more than a perfectly righteous person. Why? Because he has the value that he progressed toward being perfectly righteous. It’s not just that now he is perfectly righteous; the path of progress is itself a path that has value. Look, there’s an interesting point here. What?

[Speaker C] What is its value?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Its value is the progress from a bad state to a good state; that has value not only because in the end I reach the good state. The progress itself has value. To ask what its value is—that’s a question that can’t have an answer. Value is always the thing that explains why other things have significance. And when you ask why value itself has significance, how do you want me to answer you? With another value? Then you’ll ask about that too, why it has significance. Value is that thing which is somehow supposed to be self-evident, grounded in itself. Okay? The claim actually is—

[Speaker C] Progress itself is an axiom.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Just as being perfect is an axiom. Everything is axioms. Every value is an axiom. The definition of a value is an ethical axiom. That is the definition of values. They are those things that I place at the foundation of ethics; I have no explanation for them, and with them I explain other things. Say there is a value to human life, then with that I can explain why murder is forbidden. But if you ask me, explain to me why human life has value—I have no explanation. That’s just how it is. No, again, “that’s how it is” not in the sense that I simply feel like it, but because it is so self-evident from within itself that I don’t need to explain it to you. It’s obvious. After all, every explanation always explains claim A by means of claim B, then you explain claim B by means of claim C. In the end you will be left with some claim that you won’t be able to explain, right? Otherwise it’s an infinite regress. In ethics, the explanations end in values. Values are the point where ethical explanation begins. It’s an ethical axiom. Okay? The claim here is that perfection is composed of: A, my state; and B, the path I took toward that state. The path is itself a kind of perfection. It is not only a means so that afterward I will be perfect; rather, the very progress along the path is itself one of the perfections. Rabbi Kook writes in volume 2 of Orot HaKodesh, he asks a question. He assumes this premise, that a person’s self-development is one of his perfections. The very fact that he is developing. Meaning, development is not only a means so that afterward I will be perfect; rather, development is itself one of the perfections too, it has intrinsic value. So he asks: if so, it turns out that the Holy One, blessed be He, is not perfect. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, is already perfect; He has nowhere to progress. So that means He cannot progress. If He cannot progress, then He does not possess that perfection of becoming perfected, of advancing. So that means He is not perfect. And if He is not perfect, then He can progress. You can now continue this loop. That is Rabbi Kook’s claim. Now, he answers there something that really has to be read inside and understood; I think he means what I’m going to tell you here. I think Rabbi Kook’s claim is that this is basically why we were created. The Holy One, blessed be He, cannot develop. He cannot progress, because He is already perfect. But development is itself one of the perfections. So what does He do? He creates an incomplete world with incomplete people and places upon them the task of developing. Through that development that we undergo, we thereby complete the Holy One, blessed be He. He Himself cannot undergo a process of progress, of development. He does it through us. Now what does that mean? I’ll try to explain it a bit more. Here I’m moving into philosophy or physics or a few other things. Do you know Zeno’s paradox about the arrow in flight? Zeno has many paradoxes about the concept of motion. One of them is the paradox of the arrow in flight. What does that mean? Zeno asks: suppose we shoot an arrow. At every moment we look at the arrow, the arrow is in a different place, right? Look at it now—it’s here. A moment later it’s here, another moment later it’s here. It keeps advancing. So Zeno asks: so when is it moving? At every moment it is standing in a different place. So when is it moving? How does it pass from place to place if at every moment it is standing? It is only standing in a different place. So how does it change its place? That is Zeno’s paradox. Various explanations have been proposed. I once wrote an article about this in some philosophical journal, Iyun. Various explanations were proposed based on the infinitesimal, basically saying that a straight line is not composed of points but of infinitesimals, arbitrarily small segments. And therefore one cannot really look at the arrow at a point in time, only over an arbitrarily small segment, and over a segment it is always advancing. I once thought maybe it could be explained with the uncertainty principle in quantum theory. Because the uncertainty principle says that you cannot know the position and velocity of a particle simultaneously. Right? What does that mean? That if you know where the particle is located, you cannot know that it has a velocity or what that velocity will be. If you know its velocity, then it has no position. So that means that Zeno’s question is based on a mistake. He wants to know the velocity and the place of the arrow at the same moment. But as I wrote in that article, this is what you might call an English-English dictionary, or a French-French dictionary if you like. What do I mean? When I don’t understand a word in English, I go to an English-English dictionary… when I was in high school, we weren’t allowed to use an English-Hebrew dictionary. I think today it is allowed. Only English-English. Now, you don’t understand one word in English, you go to an English-English dictionary, and it explains it using ten other words that you understand even less. How does that help you? Meaning, to explain Zeno’s paradox of the arrow using the uncertainty principle of quantum theory is an English-English dictionary. I also don’t understand the uncertainty principle of quantum theory, so what does it help me that you explain that unclear thing by means of this other unclear thing? What did I gain? And therefore I argued that I can do the opposite. I’ll explain the paradox of the arrow in flight logically, and that can give an explanation to quantum theory. So I say as follows. Look. Let me ask you a question: what is the velocity of a body? What is the velocity of a body? Usually the answer you get is: how much place it changes per unit of time, right? Say it changed place and it took it such-and-such time; the quotient, place divided by time, that is the velocity. Okay? The meaning of that is that a body cannot have a velocity at a point in time, because at a single point in time it changes no place, and there is no division by zero, impossible, the body has no velocity. At a single point in time it changes no place. But anyone who knows a bit of basic mechanics knows that bodies do have velocities at a point in time. When we derive the position function with respect to time, we get the velocity function. That means there is a velocity at every point in time. Plug the time point into the function and you get the velocity at that point. The meaning is: the velocity of the body in the time interval around that point. It is not velocity at the point itself. It is velocity over a small interval of time around that point. But I claim that’s not correct. A body has velocity at a point in time. Distance divided by time is the way you calculate velocity, but it is not the definition of velocity. That is what in philosophy is called an operational definition. An operational definition means a definition that tells me how to calculate the quantity. But when I ask what this quantity is—not how to calculate it—it is not place divided by time. Velocity is the rate of change of place. Velocity is not the rate of change of place. Velocity is the potential of the body to change place. And if a body has velocity, that means that if I wait a little, I will see that it changes place. But clearly velocity can belong to a body at a point in time, whereas a change of place cannot occur at a single point in time. At a single point in time the body is in a certain place. To see the change of place I need to wait a little and give the body time to change its place. Meaning that the change of place really is not in a point in time but only over a segment of time, but velocity can belong to a body even at a single point in time.

[Speaker A] So does everything in the world have velocity?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, either zero velocity or some other velocity, but it has velocity. Sometimes it has zero velocity, and then it has no potential for a change of place. And that’s when the derivative of the position function is at a maximum or minimum. Okay? The claim, basically, is that one has to distinguish between change of place and velocity. Velocity is not a change of place; velocity is the potential to change place. It’s also interesting that velocity is denoted by v, right? Velocity. Not speed, but velocity is denoted by v. And potential is also denoted by v. I don’t know whether that’s connected or not, I think not, but that is how it is usually denoted. In any case, the claim is that if I return to Zeno’s paradox, I say this: Zeno asks, let us now look at the flying arrow. At every single moment it is standing in a different place. So when is it moving? My answer: not true. At every single moment it has velocity. It is not standing in a different place, it is in a different place. Do you understand the difference between being in a place and standing in a place? Someone who is in a place means he is at x equals 2. Someone who is standing at x equals 2 means he is at x equals 2 with zero velocity, because he is standing. But even a moving body is in a certain place. It just isn’t standing in that place; it is in that place. If you want to translate that into French, Eliav, I don’t know if what I said is clear, because it’s a difference between words in Hebrew.

[Speaker A] I didn’t understand what you said already.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying there is a difference between being in a certain place and standing in a certain place. When I’m standing—say I say that I am standing now at this point. Does what I said here mean only that my location is x equals 2? No. When I say I’m standing in a certain place, besides my location I’m also saying that I’m standing, that my velocity is zero.

[Speaker F] Uriel, translate please, I didn’t understand.

[Speaker C] I’ll try to translate for a second. The Rabbi is explaining that the difference in physics may simply be what velocity is. Now, velocity can be defined as either x divided by t, meaning space divided by time that we spent in order to see it.

[Speaker A] But in fact the Rabbi is explaining that it’s not—

[Speaker C] the function itself—that’s not what defines velocity. V equals dx over dt, that’s the calculation of velocity, that’s not velocity itself. What is velocity itself? It’s the potential to change place. And in fact that means that when I see something in one place, it always has a velocity—in fact it always has the potential to move. For example, when I see something in place x, that means it has a velocity, it has a potential, either to move there, either a velocity of zero or some other velocity. And there is a difference between the potential and the usual calculated definition.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So now if I return to Zeno’s paradox of the arrow in flight, where is his mistake? He says that at every moment the arrow is standing at a different point. But no, at every moment the arrow is in a different point. It is not standing. It is in a different point, but it has velocity. And you ask when it is moving? At every single moment it is moving. You will see the change of place only if you wait a little time. But when you ask when it is moving, at every point and point it is moving. It has velocity. It is not standing; it is in that particular place.

[Speaker C] Let me try for a second to understand; let me try a bit more.

[Speaker F] Did you understand what Zeno’s paradox is? No? Then go ahead, explain it to me please.

[Speaker C] So I’m going to explain again what Zeno’s paradox is. I’ll just explain the paradox to them, Rabbi, because not everyone understood what the paradox is; they didn’t understand the paradox. The paradox is basically this: there is a question when I see an arrow flying. If I take each point—where is the arrow? It is at a specific point. So how does it move forward? It is at one point, meaning, if I keep dividing and dividing and dividing, every time I look at the arrow, it is somewhere, situated somewhere. So when does it move? At what moment does the arrow move? Basically the Rabbi explains what the difference is: that in each place the arrow has a velocity. Just because at the same moment it is here, it is situated somewhere. There is a difference between being situated somewhere—that is the state—and having the potential and velocity. Meaning, in every place it has a velocity. If you wait some time, if you wait a few seconds, you will see it move. Is the paradox understood? Okay? So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what I basically want to claim is this. It means that when we talk about velocity and place, that is only one example of the relation between a function and a derivative, for those who know mathematics, or between change and state. And there are many examples. Even a change in spiritual state can be looked at on those two planes. There is the spiritual state in which I am, and there is my movement from one spiritual state to another. Place and velocity on the spiritual axis—that is basically being righteous and being a penitent, right? Meaning, a penitent is someone who has velocity, someone who changes his spiritual state. A perfectly righteous person is someone who is in the perfect state, but he is static. When I say that repentance has value not only because it turns me into a righteous person, but because of my movement itself, because I am improving—what am I actually saying? That the importance of repentance is not the function but the derivative, not the position but the velocity, okay? And therefore a penitent is preferable to a perfectly righteous person. I’ll perhaps give an example that sharpens this a bit more. Look, there are places where we can see a similar phenomenon. For example, some people want to say that if there is some factory where people work, a complicated factory with various divisions and people and things like that, then the factory often looks for ways to improve. How to become more efficient, how to make production better, marketing better, management better, and so on. But sometimes even the fact that we are thinking about how to be better and trying to change various things—even if the state we reached is perhaps not actually better or more efficient—still the very fact that we are making changes can improve the factory. Improve the product, the output, the work in the factory. Because people feel that it is dynamic. People feel that there is thought about how to work correctly, that there is an attempt to improve things, and then even if you didn’t manage to improve and the new state is not better than the previous one, still the very fact that you made changes and you tried and you searched gives people some sense that there is thought behind the process. That the factory is not stagnating, not fossilized. It is not staying the same all the time, but trying to improve. And that itself is an improvement. The improvement is not that you reached a state where the factory produces more efficiently, but that the very fact that you are changing and trying to improve itself creates improvement. Even if the state you reached is not itself better. That may also be an example of what I’m saying here. And therefore I think the Meshekh Chokhmah is mistaken when he says that repentance contains nothing except the commandments that exist anyway. Say we are told there is a prohibition against eating pork. So the Meshekh Chokhmah asks: suppose I ate pork. Now I need to repent. The Meshekh Chokhmah says, what is there to command about repentance? Obviously you must not eat pork, because there is a prohibition against eating pork. Not true. There is an obligation to repent. My transition from a state of eating pork to a state of not eating pork has value not only because afterward I am no longer eating pork and thus keeping the prohibition against pork, but because the very fact that I moved from the first state, which was less good, to the second state, which is better—that movement is repentance. That would not exist if there were only a prohibition against eating pork. That is what the idea of repentance adds. And therefore the Meshekh Chokhmah understands repentance as something result-oriented. You should repent in order to be better. I argue that if there is a commandment—or even not an explicit commandment but an obligation in Maimonides—to repent, that means there is something in repentance beyond the fact that I no longer commit the transgressions. Because otherwise it really would be a superfluous commandment, or there would be no such obligation. The obligation is to be advancing. That is the obligation. And therefore penitents are preferable to the perfectly righteous, because the essence of repentance is the progress, not the fact that in the end you become perfectly righteous. The progress—that is what gives the penitent an advantage over the perfectly righteous person.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, if we take the example of velocity as the potential for changing place, then according to this repentance comes out as the potential for progress in the service of God. And therefore it would follow from this that all of us are penitents all the time, even when a person does not return—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to that, it comes out that he is always in potential. No. You have to generate such a potential. It’s like not every object has velocity. Only if it really has velocity. Every object has the theoretical potential to change place, but that’s a theoretical potential. I’m talking about an object that has velocity now, and this is a potential that is being realized, not a potential that exists only in principle. A person who is a penitent—by virtue of his birth, a person has the potential to improve, that’s obvious. But that is what the Holy One, blessed be He, did. The question is what we do. We become penitents when we have velocity—not when we could have velocity, but when we have velocity. The change of place we will see only afterward, if at all. Or even if we fail, it may be that we don’t succeed in repenting, but we improved, we tried, we advanced—so we didn’t succeed, but we are still penitents. And therefore when Maimonides says, “What is complete repentance?” yes, “until He who knows all hidden things testifies concerning him that he will never return to this sin again,” that is what Maimonides writes in the laws of repentance. All the later authorities ask: if so, then there is no such thing as a penitent. In the end we all return. So what, there is no penitent? He says no, that’s not correct. Because if I am now in a state where I have the potential to improve, then I am now considered a penitent. The fact that in the end maybe I fail and do not manage to reach a better state—but I was on the way, I advanced. What can I do, I didn’t succeed. That is called a penitent. He who knows hidden things testifies concerning him that he is in a state such that if nothing else happens, he will improve. But it is possible that other things will happen that will not allow me to bring my potential from possibility into actuality. Still, the fact that I had that potential means that I am a penitent.

[Speaker C] Okay? What? And therefore repentance itself is also repentance?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore the potential, the desire, or the potential spiritual improvement is itself repentance. Even if in the end you do not reach the state where you are more improved, you are still a penitent.

[Speaker A] Okay, if that’s true, if that’s true, why are there commandments and transgressions for which there is no repentance?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, there is no—there are commandments and transgressions not for which there is no repentance, but for which repentance alone is not enough. One must repent. There are the gradations of atonement in tractate Yoma. There are things for which repentance alone is sufficient; there are things for which repentance plus death is needed, repentance plus suffering. Desecration of God’s name is not atoned for until the world to come. But fine, repentance is always needed; it’s just that repentance alone is not always sufficient.

[Speaker E] If anyone wants to comment or ask, also on other things, then please. I’m finished.

[Speaker A] Thank you, Rabbi. One small question? I wanted to suggest a different answer to your first question. You asked why Maimonides did not count the commandment of repentance in the Book of Commandments and only counted the commandment of confession, right? So maybe one could say that there is a rule in Maimonides in the Book of Commandments that he also did not count general commandments, commandments that fall across all commandments, like beautifying a commandment for example. Beautifying a commandment, if we say that beautifying a commandment is not an independent commandment, then it applies to each and every commandment, so he does not count it. Maybe the commandment of repentance is the same, that it applies to every commandment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is certainly possible. It’s not exactly general commandments. I wrote about this in one of the recent columns. It’s not exactly general commandments. General commandments—that’s in the fourth root. This is a common mistake people make, even later authorities by the way. It’s a mistake. There are later authorities who argue that Maimonides did not count the commandment of settling the Land of Israel because of the fourth root. In the fourth root it is written that he does not count commandments that include the entire Torah. But that is not correct. Because the examples he brings in the fourth root are commandments like “you shall keep all My commandments.” These are commandments that contain no novelty at all, because they simply repeat once again that one must keep all the commandments. But with the commandment of settling the Land of Israel, even if one assumes that it includes all the commandments—and in my view that is absurd, but there are those who assume it—still, the claim is not that it adds nothing new, that it merely repeats that one has to observe Jewish law. Rather, what do they want to say? It’s a very fundamental commandment, like the idea I mentioned earlier, that there are commandments which, precisely because they are so fundamental, are not counted. So I think the commandment of settling the Land of Israel is not omitted for that reason. But this principle is true, in my opinion, and I indeed demonstrated it with beautifying a commandment, but there the definition is a bit different. Rules that pertain to the whole system of commandments will not enter the counting of commandments as one of the details. Not because they are terribly fundamental, like I said before, but because this is a meta-halakhic rule. It is not Jewish law. It is a rule that tells me how one fulfills laws. Therefore its place is not in the Book of Commandments. That is probably what you were trying to suggest here. It is indeed a somewhat different formulation from what I said here, and it’s possible too.

[Speaker A] Okay, and the second question I wanted to ask is something I asked you a few days ago already: why did free choice enter—why did the discussion of free choice enter the laws of repentance? That is something fundamental, so why not in the laws of foundations of the Torah? And I didn’t understand what you answered.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think it is exactly what I said here. What is choice? Choice means not the act. Choice means the mental potential to perform the act. Right? I decide to be a choosing person. That is called repentance. Repentance means returning to being a person who chooses, because usually a person who sins is a person drawn after his urges. He did not really choose, and therefore he was dragged into sinning. To repent means to return to being one who chooses. That is repentance. That is why the discussion of choice appears in the laws of repentance. Because in principle it could also have appeared in the laws of Grace after Meals. In Grace after Meals too, a person has to choose to recite Grace after Meals, or not to eat pork, or to honor parents, or observe the Sabbath, or whatever. Right, but in repentance it is not a condition for the commandment—it is the commandment. In all the other commandments it is a condition: you have to choose to do the commandment. Here it is the commandment itself. You don’t have to do anything; you just have to return to being one who chooses. That is called repenting. That is exactly the potential aspect I spoke about earlier. When you actually choose and do the good things, that will already be the good state you reach. But the potential to reach the good state is itself returning to being one who chooses. That is called repenting.

[Speaker A] I understand, thank you.

[Speaker C] I had another question, Rabbi. It’s more in relation to part of the whole line of argument—I wrote down a few points for myself—that the Rabbi explained that repentance does not stem from obligation, right, that it is not counted as an obligation because it is not a Torah obligation in that sense, but because it comes from an inner psychological inclination, and then because it belongs to the world of values, which cannot be defined. And if I connect the potential and the other points, it comes out from this that the whole purpose of repentance is actually to return the person to the basic recognition of the deep structure of his soul. Meaning, beyond intellect, to return to that very clear state that precedes intellect, that precedes knowledge.

[Speaker A] Kind of Kookist, no?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t think that’s—that’s—

[Speaker C] that’s exactly what it comes out to be, I—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I wouldn’t define it that way. I—it’s similar, but it’s not exactly that. I think it’s true that it is beyond intellect, but not beyond it because it is higher. Beyond it because it is different. Say my intellect tells me what is right and what is not right. Morally too—in my view that is also an intellectual matter—religiously too, philosophically too, everything. But in order for me also to carry out what is right, it is not enough to know that it is right; I also have to be a choosing person, a person who controls what he does. Because otherwise I may know that these things are right, but my urges will drag me into not doing them.

[Speaker C] Right, it’s the realization of the potential. It’s the realization of the potential.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This is creating the potential, not the actual realization; the realization will come afterward. Creating the potential means this potential in which I take the reins into my own hands. I become a chooser, and what I think is right is what I intend to do. Meaning, it’s not just the intellect recognizing what is right, but the commitment to do what I recognize as right. That is repentance, or that is the essence of repentance. Do you understand what I’m saying? It’s not necessarily to know myself inwardly; to know myself inwardly is the intellectual matter of knowing what is right and what is not right. Here I’m saying it goes beyond the intellectual in the sense that it’s not talking about what is right and what is not, but about the fact that I am going to do the right thing, not merely recognize that it is the right thing. Is that in that manner?

[Speaker F] Yes, not that way; I didn’t fully understand, it wasn’t in that manner. Would you like to translate?

[Speaker C] No, translate all of it. Okay. So the Rabbi asked me to translate for a moment into French. In fact, the question that I asked the Rabbi was a question according to Rav Kook, that is, is this…

[Speaker F] …what it means to repent.

[Speaker C] I understood your question, I understood your question, I’ll answer you. Okay. The Rabbi’s answer in fact was that it is not returning to oneself. In fact repentance is being obligated to do the good thing. Because knowledge is to know what is good or not good, and repentance is to be obligated to do what is good.

[Speaker F] Exactly.

[Speaker C] Rabbi, I translated what Eitan said here. He said basically that knowledge is to know what is right and what is not, whereas repentance is the commitment to act on that knowledge. Right. So repentance—then how is a thought of repentance considered repentance? After all, the thought does not come into action.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A thought of repentance is part of the way I restore myself to being a chooser. What is a thought of repentance? A thought of repentance means: I now decide to return to being a chooser. I still haven’t done anything, only returned to taking control into my own hands. From now on I am going to do what I know. I knew even beforehand what is right and what is not right. Even a person who sins knows what is right; it’s not that he doesn’t know. He just doesn’t do it. What is not right is that he is compelled.

[Speaker C] Can the Rabbi sharpen that a bit more?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because—

[Speaker C] I’m reminded of the Talmudic text in Kiddushin regarding someone who said, “On condition that I am completely righteous”; she is certainly betrothed. Ah… betrothed out of doubt, not certainly. What comes out of that is that he still has not reached the state where he does what he wants, what he has in mind. He only thinks about it.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Meaning, he decided to become a penitent. It still hasn’t come to practical expression, but he already did something: he created the potential that in the next few moments he will also do the right thing. And by the way, it’s doubtful betrothal, not certain, lest he thought of repentance.

[Speaker C] Right. So I’ll ask a question—just to be precise, if I understood the Rabbi correctly, basically repentance is the desire to be committed to my decisions.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Not desire, but the decision to be committed, yes. To be committed.

[Speaker C] Okay. And therefore from there follows acceptance for the future.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And therefore even if that acceptance for the future will not later be realized—it could be that I fail, that I fall again—but if I accepted it and returned to that state as of now, then I am a penitent.

[Speaker C] So repentance is acceptance for the future.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Rav Saadia Gaon already speaks about there being four stages in repentance: abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession.

[Speaker C] Right, but according to the Rabbi it comes out that repentance is only acceptance for the future and not regret.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, this whole process in the end is needed so that you return to being committed. You need to abandon the sin, you need to regret what you did, and from that you accept upon yourself for the future to act properly. When you’ve finished this process, you are a penitent.

[Speaker C] So as long as I have not accepted something for the future, there is no repentance. Right.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Abandoning the sin is not—so—

[Speaker C] Meaning, it’s not returning in repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It is not full repentance. I assume that even that has some value, but it is not full repentance. Abandoning the sin is merely observing the prohibition against eating pork, as Meshekh Chokhmah says. Fine, you stopped eating pork, very nice, so from now on you’re observing Jewish law. But repentance is something beyond merely observing Jewish law, and the whole point here was something beyond Meshekh Chokhmah.

[Speaker F] Yes, yes. Good. Any other question, even if it’s related to the class? If anyone has another question… Could someone translate, please, Eliyahu?

[Speaker A] What is the root of saying that there can be, when there can be, when one has commanded matters—no matter what—there can be several categories of commandment, since Maimonides has at least ten.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. First of all, there are explicit Talmudic texts. For example, the Talmudic text in Menachot 99: the Talmudic text says, “This book of the Torah shall not depart from your mouth”; Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmani said: this matter is neither an obligation nor a commandment, but a blessing. So you see there is a difference between obligation and commandment. Fine?

[Speaker A] But what is the difference?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The difference is that there are certain things that, although we are not commanded in them, we are obligated to do them. For example, things that emerge from reasoning. The Talmudic text in Berakhot 35 brings there that there is an obligation to bless over food. Not afterward—afterward it is “And you shall eat and be satisfied and bless,” that is Grace after Meals. But blessings of enjoyment—“who creates the fruit of the tree” or “through whose word all came to be,” the blessings before food—where do those come from? The Talmudic text looks for a source, and in the end it reaches the conclusion that it is reasoning: anyone who benefits from this world without a blessing is as if he committed misuse of sacred property—

[Speaker A] Yes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] it is like sacrilege. So—

[Speaker A] There is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] there is a logical reason to bless, and the obligation to bless is a full obligation even though it comes from reasoning. But when I make the blessing, do I fulfill a commandment? What? I didn’t understand. When I make the blessing, do I fulfill a commandment? No, you do not fulfill a commandment because there is no command. It is not counted among the 613 commandments to say “through whose word all came to be.” No, obviously not; this is a rabbinic law. So I fulfill an obligation and not a commandment? Yes. Pnei Yehoshua there asks—in Berakhot he asks—so why in fact are we lenient in cases of doubt regarding blessings? After all, everything that comes from reasoning is Torah-level, and we are accustomed to saying that blessings are rabbinic law. Why are we lenient when there is doubt regarding blessings? Here it is Torah-level. My claim is that this is an obligation and not a commandment, and since it is only an obligation and not a commandment, it may be that its doubt is treated leniently.

[Speaker A] Can you sharpen more what the difference is between obligation and commandment?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obligation is everything one must do. Not everything one must do is by force of a command. There are things you understand on your own that must be done, so you don’t need a command in order to be obligated. Maybe I’ll give you another example. Several later authorities ask about a contradiction. So there is no obligation that is not from reasoning?

[Speaker F] What? So according to your view there is no obligation that is not from reasoning.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, there is either command or reasoning.

[Speaker F] Either command or reasoning. So where there is obligation there is reasoning; where there is no reasoning there is no obligation.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or there is a command. If there is a command, then you don’t need reasoning.

[Speaker F] Yes, yes—where there is—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a commandment. Otherwise how would we know that it is an obligation? Obviously, if there is no command and no reasoning, where would it come from? There is a Talmudic text—later authorities ask about a contradiction between two Talmudic texts. The Talmudic text in Yevamot 33 brings that if a minor produced two pubic hairs and entered the Temple on the Sabbath, then he became obligated in all the commandments at that moment when he produced the two hairs. That is regarding “one prohibition does not take effect upon another prohibition.” So you see that a minor before producing two hairs is not obligated in commandments. But the Talmudic text in Sanhedrin 59, I think, in the topic / passage of stumbling and disgrace, there it says that a minor also has transgression. For example, if he has intercourse with an animal, that is called a transgression, a stumbling. The later authorities ask: how can that be? In the Talmudic text in Yevamot we see that a minor has no transgressions; in the Talmudic text in Sanhedrin we see that a minor does have transgressions. What is the answer? That transgressions whose basis is reasoning obligate even minors. Why? Because the entire exemption of minors is only from things about which we are commanded in the Torah. The Torah that commanded said: I do not command minors, only adults. But something that comes from reasoning—who is obligated in it? Whoever understands it. If the minor understands it, then he is obligated. It has nothing to do with minor or adult; whoever understands is obligated. Maimonides, for example, writes in the laws of hiring that one does not impose an oath on a minor because he does not know the punishment of an oath in relation to his claim—the punishment of an oath. What does it mean that he does not know the punishment of an oath? He has no punishment? The answer is that he does. If—

[Speaker A] If he knows, if he understands, if—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] if he understands the severity of a false oath, then there is punishment upon him. It’s just possible that he doesn’t know, so don’t administer an oath to him.

[Speaker A] Fine, so in summary: there is an obligation that stems from a commandment, and there is an obligation that stems from a command. Fine? But now, there are commands that also…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] By the way, in another article I wrote that there are obligations of a third type. There are obligations that stem from the fact that I know this is the will of God even though there is no command. But there is no reasoning in it.

[Speaker A] For example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But I can understand that this is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants without His having commanded me.

[Speaker A] Give an example?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An example—I brought several examples there. For instance, setting aside one grain of wheat as terumah exempts the whole heap. So if you separate one grain of wheat as terumah, the matter is fixed. You can eat. But rabbinically one separates more: one-fortieth for a generous eye, one-fiftieth for an average eye, and one-sixtieth for a stingy eye. But in the Talmudic text in Chullin and in Maimonides it is clear that these measures are Torah-level; they are not rabbinic. It is true that one grain exempts the heap, but the Torah expects me to separate more. Now, I have no reasoning for why I need to separate more. But I can see from within the Torah, even though there is no explicit command, that this is what it wants. That is good enough for me to understand that I need to do it. Here I have no reasoning in the sense that I understand why it is right, and there is also no command. But I have interpretive tools that show me that this is the will of God or the will of the Torah.

[Speaker E] So—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That is a third type of reasoning. Elchanan Wasserman brings for this some verse in translation: “which I did not command, nor did I ordain, nor did it arise in My heart,” that’s what it says in the prophet. So he says: “I commanded,” “I ordained,” and “it arose in My heart” are these three types. There is something you are commanded in, there is something that is right, and there is something you understand that the Holy One, blessed be He, wants. Understood.

[Speaker A] “It arose in My heart,” yes?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, very good.

[Speaker A] Fine.

[Speaker C] Okay, Rabbi, that reminds me a bit of vows, no? Of—this reminds me of the world of vows.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why can one make a vow? Yes, because in vows there is an explicit commandment.

[Speaker C] Right, but generally this reasoning comes—meaning a person has some reasoning, he makes a vow, and then he also enters into something beyond the plain commandment.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, but the reasoning obligates even without your making a vow about it. Well—

[Speaker C] Yes.

[Speaker A] Rabbi, just one more question, not so related, a somewhat polemical question. When there are crises, like for example the coronavirus and so on, all kinds of rabbis stand up and say that this crisis is because we sinned in this or that, and that we have to repent for this sin or that sin, that we have to repent for specific sins A and B. Does that make sense? Is there a source for it? Or is it just nonsense?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is logic to it, there is a source for it, but you know, I don’t agree with it. Why? Because I think that what happens in the world does not happen from the Holy One, blessed be He; it happens because of people or the laws of nature.

[Speaker A] I understand. Right, that really is your whole thesis.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. But that does not mean that if something happens, it is not a good opportunity to examine our deeds. Not regarding a specific sin, because there is no reason that this sin caused it. But there is good reason to wake up and examine our deeds.

[Speaker A] Yes, exactly. The question was about a specific sin. They say there is a coronavirus crisis because we talk in synagogue.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That of course… all of that is just nonsense, of course. I mean, people latch onto something simply because that’s what bothers them. Why should the coronavirus be connected to talking in synagogue? Why not to slander? Or desecration of the Sabbath? Or I don’t know what?

[Speaker A] Neglect of Torah study? You know, they said there’s a lockdown and now we can’t talk to each other, so it’s because we already talked too much in synagogue. And then…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Maybe because we spoke too much slander? Anyway, that’s just nonsense. Just stupidity. It’s not… But to return in a general way from sins, or in a place where there is a very clear correlation—I don’t know if there is such a thing, maybe—then there is logic to it, but I don’t agree with it, as I said before. But it’s not that I don’t agree—it’s just nonsense. Thank you very much. Okay, friends. All the best to you, a good year, may you be sealed for good, really, may you be written and sealed for good. Thank you very much.

[Speaker C] Thank you very much. Goodbye. Thank you very much.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much.

[Speaker F] Wow, that was long.

[Speaker C] Wow, same here.