The Nature of the Laws of Repentance in Rambam – Lesson 2 – Rabbi Michael Abraham

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This, yes. Okay, fine — no, I’m not there yet. So last time I spoke about the commandment of repentance. I said there’s apparently a contradiction in Maimonides; the Minchat Chinukh points to a contradiction in Maimonides. On the one hand, in Sefer HaMitzvot Maimonides writes that when he repents — meaning, that one must say confession together with repentance. That’s the force of it; that’s how he defines the commandment in positive commandment 73. At the beginning of the Laws of Repentance Maimonides writes: one positive commandment, that the sinner should return from his sin and confess. There’s a difference between the two formulations. In the wording in Sefer HaMitzvot it sounds like the commandment is confession. There is no commandment to repent, but if you repent you must confess together with the repentance. Maybe without that the repentance doesn’t work, or doesn’t fully work, but there is no commandment to repent. We compared it to… yes, like ritual fringes. If you wear a four-cornered garment, you have to put ritual fringes on it, but you are not obligated to wear a four-cornered garment. So that’s a conditional commandment. It is conditioned on the existence of certain circumstances. So confession too is a conditional commandment. If you repent, you have to confess together with the repentance. But repentance itself is like putting on a four-cornered garment — you can do it and you can choose not to do it; there is no commandment. On the other hand, at the beginning of the Laws of Repentance Maimonides writes that there is one positive commandment: that the sinner should return from his sin and confess. So it sounds as though there are two commandments… two details within that one commandment. It is counted as one commandment, but there are two details. One detail is to return, and the second detail is to confess. Okay? Now, the fact that one commandment can have several details shouldn’t surprise us; there are many examples of that. The recitation of the Shema morning and evening, and the four species — those too are different details that together make up one commandment. So here too there is a commandment to return and confess. But it is still clear from the wording that there is a commandment both to return and to confess. In that sense it is not like what is written in Sefer HaMitzvot. If it had said here, “when the sinner returns from his sin, that he should confess,” then it would fit. But it doesn’t say that. And in the other textual versions there’s nothing different either — that’s what it says there. So the Minchat Chinukh raises this and tries to maneuver and propose various solutions. It seems to me I don’t know of a satisfactory solution to this contradiction. I think the correct solution is what I proposed last time, namely that it depends on the question of what the role of these books is. In Sefer HaMitzvot, its role is to gather all the commandments we were commanded in the Torah. For Maimonides, whatever has no verse in the Torah does not enter the count of the commandments. Certainly not rabbinic commandments; not even commandments derived from interpretations. Meaning, only things that have an explicit verse commanding them. Maimonides repeats this in many places. Therefore, in Sefer HaMitzvot the commandment of repentance cannot appear, because there is no verse commanding it. What verse might there be that does command it? “And you shall return to the Lord your God.” But about that Maimonides writes in chapter 7 of the Laws of Repentance that the Torah promised that Israel would ultimately repent. He sees it as a promise, not a command. A prophecy, a promise, not a command. So if there is no commanding verse, then in Sefer HaMitzvot the commandment of repentance cannot appear, because Sefer HaMitzvot counts the 613 Torah commandments — the commandments that appear in the Torah. By contrast, in the Mishneh Torah Maimonides lays out everything that must be done. Not only what we were commanded in the Torah. For example, rabbinic commandments are certainly discussed in the Mishneh Torah too, right? The Laws of Hanukkah and Purim are all rabbinic law. And there is a section of laws in the Mishneh Torah that deals with the Laws of Hanukkah and Purim. And so too in all the other sections — or there is a section devoted specifically to rabbinic law. In the other sections there are Torah laws that are the core, but around them Maimonides also brings the rabbinic laws, of course, and laws given to Moses at Sinai, and laws derived from interpretation, and all the laws from all possible sources derived by reason — all of them are brought in the Mishneh Torah. Why? Because the Mishneh Torah has a different purpose from Sefer HaMitzvot. Sefer HaMitzvot is a collection of the commandments we were commanded — it is the skeleton of the Mishneh Torah. In the Mishneh Torah he gathers everything that has to be done. Now it turns out that what we have to do is broader than what we were commanded.

[Speaker B] But Maimonides talks there about roots and principles, and only what is written in the Torah. What about all the roots he talks about?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The roots there are exactly that — he writes that we count only what is written in the Torah, and that gets unpacked into many rules. It’s not so simple; you have to decide what counts as “written in the Torah.” Is an interpretation considered written in the Torah or not written in the Torah? What comes out of interpretation? All the medieval authorities think yes; Maimonides says no. You need some root principle. The second root. In other words, those roots there are really elaborations of this very issue; a large part of them elaborate exactly this point, yes.

[Speaker D] He doesn’t count a law given to Moses at Sinai, he doesn’t count things from the Torah through interpretations.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s the detail in the second root. In the second root — we won’t get into that now. So since in the Mishneh Torah Maimonides counts everything that needs to be done, and not only the commandments we were commanded in the Torah, there he will include everything that needs to be done. Rabbinic law, as I told you; laws given to Moses at Sinai; interpretations; everything. So therefore there too he includes the Laws of Repentance and the fact that there is a commandment to repent. What does that mean? It means there is an obligation to repent, even though that obligation is not a commandment in the sense of a verse in the Torah commanding it. The Torah does not command it. So where does that obligation come from? It comes from reason. The fact that there is such a mechanism as repentance, which can atone for sins that we committed — that the Torah revealed to us. “And you shall return to the Lord your God” reveals to us that there is such a mechanism called repentance. It does not impose on us an obligation to do repentance. But if we understand that such a mechanism exists, then reason says that of course it must be used. I went into a lot of detail in the previous lecture; I won’t go into all the details now, I’m just sketching the framework for those who weren’t here. You can also hear the recordings, by the way. I said the recordings of these lectures appear in the WhatsApp group and also on my website. It isn’t uploaded here to the system because there isn’t yet a system during Elul and so on, so you can find it there. In any case, since there is an obligation to repent even though there is no commandment in the sense that there is no verse commanding us, then in the Mishneh Torah it will appear. There he lays out everything we need to do. In Sefer HaMitzvot it won’t appear because it cannot be an enumerated commandment. And that’s all. I think it’s a very simple explanation and the natural one. And then I moved on to discuss what it means that we must do this by force of reason. I brought various examples of things that obligate us by reason — say, character refinement, morality, I brought Torah study for example. And in Torah study I cited the Talmud in Menachot, which makes an explicit distinction there between a commandment and an obligation. And that distinction is what I want to apply also to repentance. There is a difference between a commandment and an obligation. A commandment is what the Torah commands. An obligation is something broader. Meaning, there are many things we need to do that are not the result of a command in the Torah. There were other examples as well, for example “You shall be holy,” where Nachmanides writes at the beginning of the Torah portion Kedoshim not to be a scoundrel with Torah permission. Now, Nachmanides himself, as I showed, does not add this to his count of commandments, this “You shall be holy.” Why not? Even according to the view of the Halakhot Gedolot, who does count “You shall be holy,” he does not explain it the way he explains it at the opening of Parashat Kedoshim. Meaning, for him, what he explains there at the opening of Parashat Kedoshim cannot enter the count of the commandments. Why not? So I said this is what I called “the scoundrel paradox.” What is “the scoundrel says in his heart, there is no God”? Because this is a scoundrel with Torah permission. If it entered the count of the commandments, what would happen? Someone who did that would be neglecting a positive commandment, right? It enters the count of the commandments. But then he would not be a scoundrel with Torah permission; he would be a scoundrel without Torah permission. He’d be neglecting a positive commandment. So these things must be done, but the Torah insists on leaving these obligations as extra-legal obligations. It has an interest in their remaining “with Torah permission.” It does not want to forbid them itself in a formal halakhic way. It wants us to do this because we understand that it is not right. And I cited Rav Kook from the letters as well, where he understands morality too — character refinement — as this sort of obligation. He says that if the Torah had commanded it, it would ruin it. Because then we would do it simply in order to discharge commandment number 113, okay? Instead of doing it because we understand that this is how a human being ought to look. Therefore there are things that the Torah deliberately prefers not to command us about. And that does not mean they need not be done. They must be done. They must be done, but for certain different reasons. There are various reasons. The Torah insists, or prefers, not to make them explicit commands. And therefore with the commandment of repentance too I want to say that the Torah does not want to command it; that is why Maimonides interprets “And you shall return to the Lord your God” as a prophecy or promise. Because the Torah is not willing to command this, does not want to command this, but that does not mean there is no obligation. There is an obligation to do it, but it does not want to command it. Why not? So I said that repentance in its essence is really when… let’s begin first with the sin. What is a sin? A sin is something that usually a person does when he is not in full control of his path. “Not in full control” doesn’t mean he is not responsible, because then it would be coercion and he would not be responsible. A sin is something for which you are responsible, you are answerable for it. But it is a state in which you do something that you yourself understand is not right. That means you were not fully choosing or deciding regarding that step, right? Because if you had decided and thought it was right, that’s what you would have done, no? In other words, if you yourself think it is not right and you nevertheless did it, that means you were not fully choosing. And that itself is your responsibility, because you should have insisted. I would call it dropping the reins. I let go of the reins that control the horses, yes, I let go of them and let the horses carry me. Maybe later I’ll go into that in more detail. Therefore, basically — so that’s the sin. So what does it mean to repent? To repent means to return to being a chooser. Because you understand that it isn’t right. If someone… maybe I’ll add something now that I didn’t say last time. What people today call a penitent, someone “returning to religion,” and what the Sages called a penitent — that is not the same thing. They are in fact two opposite things, not merely not the same. For the Sages, a penitent is someone who the whole time understood that what he was doing was wrong, but he sinned. And at some stage he took himself in hand and stopped sinning and began doing what he had always understood was right, okay? What today is called “returning to religion” is someone who was not committed — he genuinely did not think he was committed — and reached the conclusion that he had been mistaken. He changes his outlook. So when you look back at someone newly religious — let’s call him newly religious in our contemporary language — when you look back, his sins were not really sins. He didn’t know it was wrong; he had not yet adopted the outlook that those acts were wrong. He changed his outlook. The modern “returning to religion” person is someone who changes his outlook. It is not someone who improves his character or becomes more decent or more moral or more honest with himself or more of a chooser or anything like that. No, no — he was choosing then and he is choosing today too; he just chooses differently. He changed his beliefs. His beliefs used to be one way and now they are another. That is the modern newly religious person. A penitent is genuine repentance. Repentance means to return. To return to some place that was already within you beforehand. It is not a place that was born only now. Even then you understood that what you did was not right, but you fell, you did it, you didn’t hold the reins properly. So what happens when you become a penitent? You return to conducting yourself the way you always thought one ought to conduct oneself. Okay? So not only are these not overlapping concepts, in some sense they are opposites. Because the newly religious person, by definition, doesn’t need to be a penitent at all. There is nothing for him to return to. When he did what he did, he really believed that was the right thing. So what is he returning to? He changes — he changes his behavior, his outlook, sorry, not his behavior. Okay? A penitent is someone who returns; he returns to something that had always been within him, he just didn’t behave accordingly, and now he wants to behave accordingly, to be proper. The penitent functions on the plane of values; the newly religious person functions on the philosophical plane. What do you think? Do you think this way or that way? It does not belong to the value-based meaning, how decent or indecent you are. It’s about what you think. Do you think this way or that way? Think about the difference, for example, between tolerance and pluralism. People mix those up too — opposite concepts. Completely opposite. A pluralist cannot be tolerant, and vice versa. Why? Because a tolerant person is someone who accepts someone else’s behavior even though he disagrees with it. Right? A pluralist is someone who thinks that what the other person thinks and what he thinks are equally correct. He believes in a plurality of truths. “Plural” means multiple, yes? He believes in multiple truths. What’s the difference between them? There are many differences, but first of all on the categorical level: tolerance is a kind of value. Right? The sphere or semantic field in which we speak about tolerance is the moral semantic field. A tolerant person is moral — that is generally how people think — and someone who is not tolerant is less moral, okay? Pluralism is not connected at all to the moral field. Do you think there is one truth, or do you think there are multiple truths? That’s a philosophical question. It has nothing to do with morality. That’s another example of two concepts we are used to confusing even though there is an absolute categorical difference between them. In fact, someone who is a pluralist cannot be tolerant. Why? Because if I think you are as right as I am, then in what sense am I tolerant in containing your behavior? There’s nothing for me to contain; you are just as right as I am. Exactly. Meaning, therefore he also cannot be called tolerant. He doesn’t deserve moral credit for his tolerance. What credit? He thinks the other person is just as right as he is. What’s the problem? Obviously he won’t go beat him up to make him change his behavior, right? What’s the issue? The other person is as right as he is.

[Speaker F] No, but theoretically, at the base level, doesn’t a person always think he’s right? But here, not.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A pluralist doesn’t. The pluralist thinks there are multiple truths. Not that he is right.

[Speaker F] Someone with a philosophical outlook, or someone else, whatever — once he’s a pluralist, he’s struggling against his inclination, as it were.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s character work.

[Speaker F] Fine. It’s still something completely different from tolerance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore it doesn’t matter — even if you insert some value component into pluralism, it still isn’t the component of tolerance. It’s something entirely different. So one can debate that separately, but it still doesn’t change our point.

[Speaker F] It isn’t natural to be a pluralist.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter. We’ve left that behind. So for the sake of discussion I’m willing to accept that there is also some component of character work there, or a value component. But it isn’t the component of tolerance. The component of tolerance is applying patience to something I think is wrong — not recognizing it as right, but applying tolerance to it while I think it’s wrong. I am not a pluralist, and I think the other person is mistaken and I am right, but I still behave tolerantly toward him. Fine, I won’t get into the details, it’s just an example of two concepts that look like siblings, but they’re not even cousins. They’re enemies. Two truly opposite concepts. The same is true of the newly religious person and the penitent. The same thing. They are opposite concepts. The penitent is someone who always thought this is what should be done. He sinned, and now he returns — he comes back to what he truly thought all along. Now, if you didn’t believe in it, you can’t be a penitent. Where are you returning to? There is nowhere to return to. You didn’t think that way. That is not a return. The modern “returning to religion” person is actually facing forward, not backward. From now on he simply thinks differently. That’s all. Okay?

[Speaker E] And from that point on—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He can become, yes — as people always say, from when do I know that the penitent became a penitent? From when he starts talking during prayer. Then fine, after that he can also become a penitent. But the basic process is the opposite process, a different process. Okay. Yes, so what I was saying is that to be a penitent, in the sense I’m talking about here — not the modern newly religious person, which doesn’t interest me at the moment — I’m speaking about the penitent in the classical rabbinic sense, that means returning to something you always knew. So why didn’t you do it? You didn’t do it because you basically dropped the reins. Right? You weren’t a choosing person. Not — again, I am not taking away his responsibility, he is responsible because he should have been choosing. But in practice he was not choosing, and therefore he did the sin. If he had been choosing, he would not have done it. Okay? So what is repentance? If that is the sin, then what is repentance for it? To return to being a chooser. Right? Now I ask you: it is written in the Torah, “Choose life.” Does anyone count that as a positive commandment? Why not?

[Speaker G] Is it a recommendation?

[Speaker H] No, it’s—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a recommendation. It is a full obligation. A full obligation, not a recommendation. You can’t command it. Because you command only someone who is a choosing being. If he is a choosing being, you can command him to decide to do this and not to do that. But you can’t command a person to be a chooser. Being a chooser is the condition for being commanded. Right? Without that, you can’t command him. Freedom of choice. And he isn’t using it. That is exactly the problem of sin — that you are not using it. Of course he has the potential to be a chooser, otherwise he would be coerced and there’d be no point in his repenting. If he has no possibility of choice, there is no point in repentance. It isn’t a sin; he’s coerced. We are talking about a sin. Therefore I say that it makes no sense to command someone to be a chooser. Therefore no counter of commandments counts “Choose life” among the commandments. Because choice is the foundation required as a condition for there to be commandment at all. There is no point commanding cats, right? I command human beings, who can comply with or fail to comply with a command. Other creatures I program, I do not command. To command means to expect someone to choose to fulfill what I command him. Okay? And not to choose to depart from what I command him. Therefore this is a condition of your being commanded. So it makes no sense that within the system of commandments there would be a commandment to be a chooser, to choose. Exactly as there cannot be a law in a law book saying that one must obey the laws. Right? If I don’t obey the laws, then I also won’t obey that very law. Right? There is no point placing such a law in the law book. Right? This is also one of the problems with “I am the Lord your God,” which Maimonides counts as positive commandment 1 — how can one define that as a commandment at all? If you don’t believe in God, you are not subject to command. So there too there is a problem with that commandment. Yes.

[Speaker B] What’s a little hard for me is that there’s a commandment about love, which is something you can’t…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Actually about that I disagree, but that’s another discussion. I do think it’s possible. Yes. Fine, but that really takes us elsewhere. So what I want to say is: since one cannot command choice, therefore Maimonides also says there is no commandment to repent. Because what is repentance? Repentance is to return to being a chooser. And therefore according to Maimonides there is no commandment to repent. You ask: is there an obligation to repent? Obviously there is an obligation. It just cannot be commanded, so it does not enter the count of the commandments. Therefore it appears in the Mishneh Torah but not in Sefer HaMitzvot. Right. You did that successfully. You fulfilled the commandment of choosing — but not life. Fine. By the way, I’m not joking. I think there is value in your being a chooser even when you choose evil. There is value in that because at least you are choosing. Meaning, you have the image of God; you are not a cat or a sheep. You are sometimes between two considerations.

[Speaker F] You’re saying, okay, I now have to drive on the Sabbath, I don’t know, I need to be with my wife. Okay, so by choice you drive on the Sabbath, for example. Yes, you choose evil. But you are making considerations; you’re not saying, “I don’t care.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But in the bottom line, you are choosing evil. If you choose evil, then you fulfilled “choose” but not “life.” And I say there is value in that. Elijah the prophet says — just as an aside, since you asked — Elijah the prophet says to the people: “How long will you hop between two branches? If the Lord is God, follow Him; and if Baal, follow him.” Usually we understand that as some kind of rhetorical trick, yes? We push the people into a corner, because of course we are not going to tell them to follow Baal, right? But he is telling them: be serious. I read it literally. He says to them: you’re just nobodies. If you chose Baal, I would respect that — it’s your choice. A wrong choice, but you chose. That’s what you decided. But you are not choosing Baal. Like in that comic skit — I go with dad, he goes with mom, he goes with the gang. Fine? He goes wherever the wind takes him. Meaning, he is not choosing. He’s just a nobody. Someone who chooses evil is at least a choosing person; he has the image of God. Unfortunately he used it badly, okay. But it is still some kind of virtue. Just on the level of principle, because it also relates to education and what we define as educational success. Very often in religious society there is a tendency to look at someone who has abandoned his religious commitment as a failure. And I don’t think that’s right. If he really chose that because he felt it didn’t speak to him, he doesn’t believe in it, he believes in something else — then there is success here. Not complete success, but success. Meaning, your student, or your son, or your pupil — whatever — is a choosing being. Meaning, he decided what he was doing, and he did it. The hope is that he will also choose the good, fine, that is obvious. But compare that to someone who remains committed to Torah and commandments without any choice at all, just because that’s his comfort zone. Okay? That is failure. Educational failure. I prefer the first one. It’s more—

[Speaker H] Dangerous.

[Speaker F] More dangerous. No, but what is dangerous?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why dangerous? What?

[Speaker F] There’s more value in it? A person didn’t choose — let’s say he’s someone who becomes religious. So one person just got swept along with the crowd, and another chose to do evil. Is their repentance the same? Do they return to the same…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If he became religious, then he didn’t think it was evil in the previous period — unless we need to synchronize the terminology.

[Speaker F] Let’s say two people grew up religious, commandment-observant. One got swept along with the crowd and left it, and the other didn’t — he decided.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So the one who got swept along with the crowd and left — then the defect is lighter—

[Speaker F] The defect isn’t lighter, the wholeness is lessened, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He is both not choosing and doing evil — that’s the worst. I’m talking about someone who chooses to do evil. So I say: I respect him for the fact that he is choosing; unfortunately he chooses badly.

[Speaker F] And if he repents?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the one who chose, then—

[Speaker F] The one who chose — you tell him, wow, you did that deliberately; your situation is worse.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “worse”? He chose evil. Fine.

[Speaker F] Chose evil. And the one who got swept along — does he get some leniency?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He’s just a nobody, yes.

[Speaker F] Fine? So his situation is better?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I think the nobody is worse than the wicked person. But each to his own…

[Speaker F] No, yes — you know the joke?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In Bnei Brak they used to tell a joke about the Arab cleaner in the building who in the month of Ramadan was suddenly seen coming to clean the building. They asked him, “What, aren’t you religious?” He said, “No, I’m Religious Zionist.” Meaning, the claim is that… I have no personal opinion here. The expression “Religious Zionist” there — I’m not talking about knitted kippahs or a worldview right now — in Haredi slang means a nobody. What I earlier called a nobody. Meaning, he has no position of his own, he does whatever is convenient. Yes, sorry? It has no soul to it. If you have—

[Speaker C] A golem and you make it dance — you are giving it a certain movement.

[Speaker I] Yes,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But here I think it’s a little different, because it’s a decision to do good. Meaning, it looks like evil but the truth is it is good. Exactly. So here it’s totally fine. Meaning, you both chose and chose well. True, there are those who perhaps will see it as not good, or there may be some preliminary thought otherwise, but in the end, in the bottom line, it seems to me this is a choice for the good. That is completely fine. Yes. So therefore, the commandment of repentance too does not appear in Sefer HaMitzvot because it cannot be commanded, but there is obviously a full obligation to do it. The fact that it cannot be commanded is because it is so fundamental — not because it is unimportant, but precisely because it is so fundamental it does not appear in Sefer HaMitzvot. And one final point — here I’ll stop the summary already, though this summary has taken a long time — in chapters 5 and 6 of the Laws of Repentance Maimonides discusses the issue of choice. Two chapters devoted to the issue of choice. Now I ask: why does he place that here and not in the Laws of Grace after Meals? Fine, you have choice, yes? For example, whatever — honoring parents, Grace after Meals, Sabbath observance. Since you have choice, you can choose good or evil, so go make Grace after Meals. Why specifically in the Laws of Repentance does he place the discussion? In every act, in every commandment-act, the foundation is that you choose, right? If you don’t choose there is no point talking to you about commandments. Okay? In principle, he could have placed it in any legal section. Why specifically in the Laws of Repentance does Maimonides place it?

[Speaker E] Because repentance is wanting to be a chooser.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. So in all other commandments, choice is the foundation. If you are a chooser, then you are required to choose the good. Say Grace after Meals, keep the Sabbath, eat kosher, honor parents, something like that. But choice is not part of the essence of the matter; it is the foundation, and once it exists one can move on to the content itself. In repentance, choice is the content itself. What is required of you is to return to being a chooser. That is repentance. To return and choose the good — no, first of all to be a chooser. Then after that also to choose the good, but first and foremost to be a chooser. And therefore, I think that is why Maimonides chose to place the two chapters that deal with choice in the Laws of Repentance. And I said that as a result, one can understand the whole of the Laws of Repentance. Most of the Laws of Repentance are really laws that obligate us even though there is no commandment about them. That is the Laws of Repentance in Maimonides: laws that obligate us even though there is no commandment about them. First and foremost, the laws of repentance themselves — the first four chapters. Chapters 5 and 6 are choice; we already spoke about how we are obligated to be choosers but there is no command about it. After that there are poetic praises of repentance in chapter 7, and then he moves on already to the World to Come, serving God for its own sake, Torah study for its own sake, and things like that, love of God, fear of God — all of which are commandments already discussed in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Why does he come back to them here? Because here he is speaking about aspects not included in the halakhic obligations discussed in the Laws of the Foundations of the Torah. Here he is speaking about the service of God — service of God in a pre-halakhic or extra-halakhic sense, meaning not in the sense of fulfilling formal halakhic commandments, but doing what needs to be done. Very often that is even more fundamental than fulfilling the commandments. It is the foundation. But still, that is my claim about the whole of the Laws of Repentance. We’ll come back to it, I hope, at the end — the end of the series, not the end of today. Someone wanted to comment before? Yes.

[Speaker E] Now, you said one cannot command someone to repent, to be a penitent, one cannot command—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That,

[Speaker J] because—

[Speaker E] one cannot command him to choose. But if he is a penitent, that means he is someone who chooses. He chooses — in many other things he chooses, and chooses correctly. Here he chooses incorrectly.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So—

[Speaker E] what you are asking of him is not “be a chooser,” but “choose correctly.” So how can that not be commanded? So I’ll tell you.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your answer is twofold. First of all, the basis of repentance is to return to being a chooser. True, there are people for whom that part is less important, because they are choosers and only need to change the content of the choice — fine, there are such people — but that still does not mean there is no essential connection between choice and repentance. But beyond that, I want to claim: there are almost no such situations. We’ll get to that later. There are almost no such situations. A person who truly chooses will not do evil. A person who does evil — I’m talking about a penitent, not someone leaving religion. If he doesn’t believe, fine, then he’ll do it because he doesn’t believe, he doesn’t think Jewish law obligates him, so of course he’ll violate it. A penitent is someone who does think it’s right, so why doesn’t he do it? In most cases, when we speak of “choosing evil,” it isn’t choosing evil. It is non-choice. He is simply not choosing at all — not failing to choose the good, but not choosing. He lets the horses lead him. And once he lets the horses lead him, they sometimes take him into doing evil, but he does not decide to do the evil. Heretics are people who believe differently. That is exactly the— what? He gives up that value of Sabbath observance in favor of honoring, I don’t know, friends. So he makes a compromise. He says — what do you mean compromise? That’s what he thinks?

[Speaker F] There’s a value here of domestic peace…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not interested. In the end, does the value of domestic peace override the value of Sabbath observance in his eyes? On certain Sabbaths… and on certain Sabbaths it overrides the value? Yes. Then he chose according to what he thought. And if afterward he decides that he was thinking wrongly, then he is a newly religious person, not a penitent. There is almost no such thing — it is hard to imagine a person who lucidly chooses his path and goes and does something that in his own view is absolutely forbidden to do. It doesn’t happen. Usually it happens through a more complex process that we’ll discuss later. It doesn’t happen. Therefore I think that is the more essential answer to what you said — that repentance is really to return to being a chooser, period. Choosing evil is a concept that exists on the conceptual map, but it almost never really appears. There’s no such thing as choosing evil. Think of a person who thinks murder is evil, horrible, awful, and decides to murder. That’s what he chose. He didn’t choose — his inclination overcame him, his anger overcame him, I don’t know why he did it, for various reasons, but he did not really choose. Or alternatively, he truly thinks it is good, like those Nazis who think one should kill Jews or homosexuals or I don’t know what. Then apparently they thought that was right. Fine, and that’s why they did it. But to think of someone who thinks this act is a moral outrage and lucidly chooses to do it — that’s hard to imagine. It is definable on the conceptual level, but hard to imagine in reality. Therefore I think that in essence repentance really is returning to being a chooser. But I’ll flesh that out a bit more later.

[Speaker E] We can’t choose evil consciously?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We can, but it almost never happens.

[Speaker E] It doesn’t happen? Yes, it’s hard to imagine such a thing. If there is choice, then choice is only in the good.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. I’m saying, I can’t commit to you that such a thing never exists, but it almost never happens. It’s hard to imagine such a situation. Okay? A person is born with the capacity to choose; now he has to decide to use it. Yes, he has choice, he isn’t a cat. But there are human beings who choose to behave like cats — meaning, they choose not to be choosers. Fine? Good, let’s…

[Speaker K] “The mind rules the heart”? “The mind rules the heart,” yes, exactly the same thing.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Completely agree. And maybe we’ll get to it later — in the Tanya, chapter 9, he essentially speaks about this issue and I think it’s an excellent point. I hope to get to it later. It is basically a struggle between mind and heart. The question is which one rules. Fine? To be a chooser means to let the mind rule the heart. To be a cat means to let the heart rule the mind. But I’ll get to that later, because I think it’s a point with enormous implications. So I want to come back to it later.

[Speaker B] Tanya says that.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Yes. I hope to get into it; we’ll see. Good, so let’s begin for a moment. Up to here was more or less the summary, with a few comments. Now let’s get into the details a bit more. I want to begin with an attempt to put our view of the issue of repentance in order. When we look at the Laws of Repentance, which is our topic here, everyone sees that these are not standard laws. This is not a standard legal section like all the other sections in Maimonides. Why not? Because it is full of all kinds of poetry and prophecies and praise for those who repent and attempts to motivate me to repent and all sorts of things like that. In Grace after Meals — again, I don’t know why I started abusing Grace after Meals. In Grace after Meals Maimonides nowhere writes: look how great is the stature of one who blesses the Holy One, blessed be He. The Holy One and all the heavens are perfected, I don’t know, and all the prophets prophesied in praise of Grace after Meals, and so on. He doesn’t write that anywhere. He writes that only in the Laws of Repentance. And in the Laws of Repentance, in my opinion, 70 to 80 percent of the legal section is these poetic passages. Meaning, almost nothing in the Laws of Repentance is actually laws. So what is that doing here? Why is it written this way? Now usually when we see things like that, we are used to treating it as the relation between law and aggadah — or thought, if you like. There are the halakhic details, and there is the underlying conceptual foundation beneath them. The practical translation of that conceptual foundation is the details, the halakhic details, the binding norms. I want to argue that here it is not like that. Because if it were “thought,” it would not be in the Mishneh Torah. The Mishneh Torah is not devoted to thought; for that there is Guide for the Perplexed, for anyone who wants thought. The Mishneh Torah brings the laws. And in the Laws of Repentance even what seems to us aggadic is not aggadah. It’s something else. The relation between the aggadic sections and the halakhic sections in the Laws of Repentance is not two sides of the same coin — the thought, whose practical translation is the law, two sides of one coin. No. In the Laws of Repentance I want to argue that the relation is different. We are dealing here with two different mechanisms of repentance. There is the conceptual, more abstract mechanism of repentance, and there is a halakhic mechanism of repentance with details. Okay? That is basically the claim. Now I’ll try to show it. Okay?

[Speaker E] Getting pleasure from repentance — that’s also some kind of repentance. That… that pleasure from repentance… the very desire…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s also true, but that’s not what I said. What I said is that there are two different mechanisms of repentance. There is a formal mechanism of repentance, which says: we have rules — what is done, what comes before, what comes after, what is indispensable — like everything else in Jewish law. Okay? And there is a mechanism of repentance that is not subject to those details. Meaning, it works differently. And that is what looks like conceptual statements in Maimonides, or aggadic ones, or something like that. Meaning, it is not two sides of the same coin; it’s two different coins. Okay? Now I’ll try to show that. So let’s begin. “Every single human being has merits and sins. Whoever has more merits than sins is righteous; whoever has more sins than merits is wicked; half and half is intermediate. And so too a country: if the merits of all its inhabitants are greater than their sins, then it is righteous, and if their sins are greater, then it is wicked; and so too the whole world.” I’m reading from Maimonides in chapter 3, the beginning of chapter 3 of the Laws of Repentance. So this law is difficult — people have already noted that. Well, maybe I’ll continue, and then we’ll return to it. In law 2: “A person whose sins are more numerous than his merits…” Now he explains what happens with the righteous, the wicked, and the intermediate. “A person whose sins are more numerous than his merits immediately dies in his wickedness, as it says, ‘for the greatness of your iniquity.’” Apparently there aren’t many such people. “And so too a state whose sins are more numerous immediately perishes, as it says, ‘the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great.’ And so too the whole world, if their sins exceed their merits, they are immediately destroyed, as it says, ‘And the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great.’ And this weighing is not according to the number of merits and sins but according to their magnitude. There is a merit equal to several sins, as it says, ‘because in him there was found some good thing,’ and there is a sin equal to several merits, as it says, ‘one sinner destroys much good.’ And they are weighed only according to the knowledge of the God of understanding, and He knows how to assess merits against sins.” Okay, so here he essentially says: in law 1 he distinguished between intermediate, righteous, and wicked in all the circles — individual person, community, nation, world, and so on. In law 2 he explains what happens to each one. Fine? The wicked person immediately dies — he already said that in law 2, right? Here he says what happens with the intermediate and the righteous, and that already takes us to the Ten Days of Repentance. On Rosh Hashanah they judge, and everyone gets stamped: righteous, intermediate, or wicked. The wicked are eliminated — you know, on Rosh Hashanah there is mass mortality on Yom Kippur, it’s well known. The righteous remain and all is well; they remain for life. And the intermediate are suspended. Fine, if they repent they are sealed for life, and if not they are sealed for death. Law 3: “Anyone who regrets the commandments he has done and reconsiders his merits and says in his heart, ‘What did I gain by doing them? If only I had not done them,’ has lost them all, and no merit is mentioned for him in the world, as it says, ‘The righteousness of the righteous shall not save him on the day of his wickedness.’ This refers only to one who regrets former deeds.” That’s from the Talmud in Kiddushin; we’ll get to it later. What matters more for us is the next part: “And just as a person’s merits and sins are weighed at the time of his death, so every year the sins of each and every inhabitant of the world are weighed with his merits on the festival of Rosh Hashanah. Whoever is found righteous is sealed for life, and whoever is found wicked is sealed for death, and the intermediate are suspended until Yom Kippur. If…” yes, “if he repented he is sealed for life, and if not, he is sealed for death.” Okay? So here, essentially… okay? Here he continues and says what is done. First he explained what happens to the wicked. The wicked immediately dies — he already said that in law 2, right? Here he says what happens with the intermediate and the righteous. Then he says: “Even though the sounding of the shofar on Rosh Hashanah is a decree of Scripture, there is a hint in it — namely: Awake, sleepers, from your sleep, and slumberers, arise from your slumber, examine your deeds, return in repentance, and remember your Creator. These are the ones who forget the truth in the vanities of the times and wander all their year” — sleep, in both senses — “in vanity and emptiness which neither profits nor saves. Look to your souls and improve your ways and your deeds, and let each of you abandon his evil way and his thought that is not good.” “Therefore every person should see himself throughout the entire year as though he were half meritorious and half liable. And so too the whole world, half meritorious and half liable. If he committed one sin, he tipped himself and the whole world to the side of liability and brought destruction on it. If he performed one commandment, he tipped himself and the whole world to the side of merit and brought salvation and deliverance to himself and to them, as it says, ‘the righteous is the foundation of the world’ — that one who acted righteously tipped the whole world to merit and saved it.” “Because of this matter, all the house of Israel has the custom to increase charity and good deeds and to engage in commandments from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur more than the rest of the year, and to rise at night during these ten days to pray with supplications and words that subdue the heart,” and so on. Let’s try for a second to see what we have here in these four laws. There are several problematic things here. First of all, the question is: how is it even possible — what are the odds that there are intermediate people in the universe at all? Someone whose sins and merits are exactly equal. Zero, right? The Talmud says exact precision is impossible. Zero chance. So what are the Ten Days of Repentance for? Everything that happened on Rosh Hashanah has already happened. The “intermediate” is an empty set. There is no such thing. So what is the meaning of the Ten Days of Repentance, which are intended only for the intermediate, as we said, right? Second, this whole business sounds a little strange — counting commandments and sins, and half-half, a little more, a little less. If I have one commandment less I’m wicked, one commandment more I’m righteous, exactly equal I’m intermediate. It sounds a bit too accountant-like, right? Something a bit too petty.

[Speaker B] Maybe it’s not by numbers.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait — ah, so that point I’m going to answer indeed. So Maimonides ostensibly tries to answer that. He says no one knows God’s weighing — what each sin is worth, what each commandment is worth. But that doesn’t help at all, because then what comes out is that the total we are dealing with is a weighted sum. It isn’t an ordinary sum, right? Not simple addition but weighted addition, a linear combination. Okay? So if that’s the case, with a weighted sum too, what are the odds that the wicked and the righteous come out exactly the same? Still zero. It doesn’t matter whether the sum is weighted or not. In the end, the result is different, but the chance that they come out identical — even when the sums are weighted — is still zero. So that changes nothing, and therefore that isn’t really an explanation of what he writes there. And one final thing I want to note is: why does Maimonides say, regarding the intermediate, “if he repented he is sealed for life, and if not he is sealed for death”? The Lechem Mishneh already asks this. Suppose he did not repent — then he remains intermediate. Why is he sealed for death? What, does the Holy One incline toward harshness? Usually He inclines toward kindness, right? Not toward evil. So if you are exactly balanced, then what? Leave him suspended… If anything, you tilt toward kindness, not toward harshness. Why only if he repented? If he… more than that, there’s another question: what happens if he just did one more commandment? If he did one more commandment then he tipped the scale, right? Everything should be fine. No — Maimonides says if he repented, good, and if not, then not. What about doing more commandments? No, commandments count only until Rosh Hashanah. In the Ten Days of Repentance, only repentance counts. Not commandments. And Maimonides says, “Because of this matter all Israel have the custom to increase charity and prayer and so on,” and one has to understand “because of this matter.” He isn’t talking about commandments. This isn’t to accumulate more commandments, but these are ways of repentance — meaning, if you do this it will help you repent. That’s all. You don’t do it in order to enlarge your stockpile of commandments, because if that were the case then “because of this matter all Israel have the custom during the Ten Days of Repentance to redeem the firstborn donkey, in order to add another commandment.” Why specifically charity or supplications or whatever? Clearly Maimonides understands that repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil decree in the sense that they help me return in repentance. But what is required of me is repentance. Meaning, adding commandments won’t help here. All the other commandments end on Rosh Hashanah. From then on, only repentance can help. And the question is why. So I found two answers — “answers” is confusing here, given our topic — two approaches among later authorities. The first approach, a somewhat sharp one, is from the author of Ha’amek Berakhah, a student of Rav of Brisk, who died young — Rabbi Aryeh Pomeranchik, I think his name was. Rabbi Aryeh Pomeranchik. He says like this: basically, on Rosh Hashanah we are judged for the acts we did over the course of the year, from Rosh Hashanah to Rosh Hashanah. What came out, came out: intermediate, righteous, wicked — meaning, you put the balance on the scale on Rosh Hashanah, and that’s the result. Now, from there on the next year begins. Do commandments — excellent; for the judgment of next year they will accumulate for you. But when you are being judged for the previous year, what use are commandments you do in Tishrei? Tishrei belongs to the next year. What can you do that can still change your judgment? Repent. Why? Because repentance erases a sin you committed in the previous year, and changes the balance as it stood on Rosh Hashanah itself. You can’t do things facing forward; all you can do is try to change your status retroactively. Okay, and therefore only repentance helps. That is his claim — not the addition of commandments. Fine, that’s one direction. The second direction is from Rabbi Chaim Friedlander in Siftei Chaim, the spiritual supervisor in Ponevezh. He says that “intermediate,” “righteous,” and “wicked” are not a simple count of commandments — not even a weighted count — but the question is what your spiritual direction in life is. If your direction is positive, then you are righteous. It could be that you have many sins — we’re all human, we fall, what can you do? Okay? It could even be that you have more sins than commandments — I’m not sure he says that, but I’m extending it even further. You could have more sins than commandments, but your basic direction is that you genuinely want to do good. You fell — what can you do, people fall. “A righteous person falls seven times and rises.” Okay, so you are righteous. If your direction is negative, then you are wicked. You may have done many commandments because you wanted, I don’t know, publicity, or I don’t know what exactly. But it is not about the number of commandments; it is about what your direction in life is. And an intermediate person is someone sitting on the fence, with the comedy gang. He goes with the crowd. He has no direction of his own. He is not righteous, not wicked — he goes with the crowd. Okay? That is the intermediate. Fine? Now if that is so, first of all it is clear why only repentance helps. Only repentance helps because only repentance turns you from wicked to righteous; what difference will one more commandment make? So you did one more commandment — so what? The number of commandments is irrelevant. What you need is to change your direction in life. So now it is also clear how there can be an intermediate person. I asked before how that is possible — precision is impossible, so how can the number of sins exactly equal the number of commandments? He says: that’s not what’s happening at all; we are not counting commandments and sins. We are looking at whether you are more or less equally balanced between the two directions. Then you are intermediate. You do not have a clear decision that you belong to the positive direction or the negative direction. So yes, like that midrash — and again, another Bnei Brak joke — about the Religious Zionists. Rebecca felt that there were twins in her womb, so Rashi brings the midrash that when she passed houses of idol worship, the boy wanted to come out, and when she passed study halls, he also wanted to come out. She said: this boy is completely confused. She went to the study hall of Shem and Eber to ask them what was going on with this fellow. And they answered her: don’t worry, there are two in there. One wants to come out to study halls, and one wants to come out to houses of idol worship. Okay? By the way, I don’t know who that is — there are rabbinic midrashim where it’s not even clear who is who; it may even reverse later, and that’s a different discussion. But do you have today something like that? That all year we do one kind of thing—

[Speaker C] and as Yom Kippur approaches we suddenly start doing all kinds of things. Yes, exactly,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] and that is exactly what doesn’t help, exactly what doesn’t help, right.

[Speaker H] Fine?

[Speaker L] Why specifically on Yom Kippur is that the time for confession? Because — no, for confession—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] All through the Ten Days of Repentance, and it culminates on Yom Kippur. All through the Ten Days of Repentance, because that is precisely the time when we can change status. Meaning, we repent and turn from wicked into righteous; we change spiritual direction. Before that, in Elul, those are only preparations. In any case, what is this whole business? So in Bnei Brak they ask: why did she go to Shem and Eber? One righteous and one wicked is better than one Religious Zionist. Fine — meaning, both of them decided. One decided he is righteous, one decided he is wicked. But one who is constantly, at one moment going to the study hall and at another to the houses of idol worship — that’s the worst of all. That’s in the spirit of the joke, of course. In any event, there could have been righteous, wicked, and Religious Zionist. Fine. In any case, Rabbi Chaim Friedlander essentially says that the discussion of righteous, intermediate, and wicked is not according to the number of commandments, and not even according to a weighted total, but according to your basic direction in life. That solves most of the questions I raised earlier. Therefore there can be such a thing as an intermediate person, therefore only repentance helps and not other commandments. What else was there? More or less that. What I want to say, though, is that Rabbi Chaim Friedlander perhaps fits the language of Maimonides less well. “Intermediate, righteous, wicked, their sins are balanced, half sins and half merits.” In terms of logic it is clearly much more sensible. God is not an accountant counting how many you have — oops, one over the line, you’re done. But in Maimonides’ wording it fits less smoothly. Ha’amek Berakhah’s explanation fits Maimonides’ wording perfectly, but less well in conceptual logic. This is the eternal yeshiva dilemma: is it better to force the wording or to force the reasoning? Ha’amek Berakhah forces the reasoning, and Siftei Chaim forces the wording. I’m like the comedy troupe — I prefer both; I go with the crowd. Now I’ll try to explain why there is no contradiction here. What I want to claim is that there are two different mechanisms of repentance here. Two different mechanisms — not two different answers. Each one is speaking about a different concept of repentance altogether. And both concepts exist on the map. This is not a dispute. Each one is simply speaking about a different concept of repentance. I’ll start with Ha’amek Berakhah. Suppose a person did many commandments between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He comes to Yom Kippur; he did not repent. He is intermediate, did not repent, but did many commandments. He arrives at Yom Kippur — if he had been in that state on Rosh Hashanah he would have been perfectly righteous, crowned and all the angels dancing around him. But what can you do — he missed the office hours. He did it two days later. So he is judged for death immediately, dies in his wickedness. A bit strange, no? When you kill him, he is already righteous. Not that he is going to become righteous later and we judge him based on his future — those are other topics. No — he is already righteous. You kill him even though he is righteous. Why? Because on Rosh Hashanah during office hours he wasn’t righteous. But at the time of carrying out the sentence he is righteous. Why are you killing righteous people? I don’t care right now whether one literally dies or not, but what is this punctilious judgment, this bookkeeping attitude of: “you missed office hours, how many commandments exactly, which obligations did you fulfill, which not”? It sounds a bit petty.

[Speaker M] Even someone sentenced to death is brought back from the way to the gallows if he has something to say.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But not if he repented. Repentance doesn’t help there. Although I’ve written — I spoke about this, I don’t remember if it was last year or two years ago — I spoke about the fact that in my opinion repentance would help even there. But that is not the accepted view; there is a Mishnah in Makkot from which it sounds otherwise. Still, I think one can prove that it is true. But that is another issue; I don’t know whether we’ll get to it — maybe at the end of the series I’ll note it too. The accepted view is that repentance does not help for court-imposed punishments. Meaning, if you are liable for lashes or for execution, you get it whether you repented or not. So I want to talk for a moment about these two tracks we see in Ha’amek Berakhah and in Siftei Chaim. I think Ha’amek Berakhah is talking about formal halakhic repentance. And Siftei Chaim is talking about essential repentance. Siftei Chaim is talking about the “thought” or aggadah — though it isn’t really thought — but that side of it. And Ha’amek Berakhah is talking about halakhic repentance, about the law. What do I mean? There is a procedure of repentance. Following Saadia Gaon, we know that we divide it into four stages. The first stage is abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession. Confession is not an additional stage — it can be; acceptance for the future and verbal confession. Those are the four stages you need to go through. That is a formal definition, and then they discuss what is indispensable, what is not indispensable, whether the order matters or doesn’t. There the discussion appears, at least among the Litvaks, as a halakhic discussion. Like any halakhic discussion elsewhere, with details, rules, what is indispensable, what is not — all fine. That is the repentance of Ha’amek Berakhah. There is another repentance, and that is the repentance where a person… think about what Siftei Chaim is really saying. When he talks about repentance, he is not talking about abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future… he is talking about an inner upheaval, right? You were going in one direction, or in some complex direction, whatever, and you change your spiritual direction. We are speaking here of a psychological revolution, not of ticking four boxes for each commandment. Basically, what one has to do according to Ha’amek Berakhah is gather the list of sins one committed, and for each build a table, with as many rows as sins, and four columns: regret, abandoning the sin, acceptance for the future, confession. Tick all the boxes for each sin and discharge your duty. Okay? No, I’m not being cynical. That is what one has to do. That is exactly what one has to do.

[Speaker E] And also to regret — it’s not just “I regretted.”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Slowly, slowly — now I’m coming exactly to that. I’m coming exactly to that now. But it is absolutely like that in this repentance. Yet clearly there is also another kind of repentance — the repentance Siftei Chaim is talking about. I turn myself upside down. I now become a person whose direction is positive. Not “becoming religious” — that’s not the point — but becoming a penitent. So the penitent, who changes his spiritual direction — what he believed, he believed before too that this is what should be done. But he changes his spiritual direction, meaning what he actually does, what he tends to do, yes? This is inner work. Not checking boxes in a form. Okay? That is a completely different type of repentance. Now, what is the difference between these two? If you did repentance of the first type… the second, sorry — let’s call it the great repentance. There is the small halakhic repentance, the bookkeeping one, and there is the great repentance. If you did the great repentance, then truly there is no point in punishing you. What do you mean? You really are a different person. What is the point of punishing you for something you once were, when now you no longer are that? What difference does it make? Okay? But if you did the small repentance, then in fact you did not really repent. There is a novel feature that the Torah introduced: even though you go through this procedure and it’s not that you underwent a psychological revolution, it still counts for you — it erases the sin you committed. Okay? It atones for the sin you committed. A novelty of the Torah. So that too is a way of repentance. Okay? So we basically have two ways of repentance. One way is the bookkeeping repentance of Ha’amek Berakhah, and the second is the inner work. Now let me show you this also in its implications. In the Maharal — there is a Talmudic passage in Rosh Hashanah 17 that interprets the Thirteen Attributes there. Do you know that joke about Brisk… no, not the joke about Brisk, sorry, toward the end there in the piyut “Who knows one?” Three times… “Thirteen, who knows?” What is “thirteen attributes”?

[Speaker G] The thirteen attributes of the Holy One, blessed be He, up to “and clears.” Agreed?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The thirteen attributes of mercy. In Brisk they come and say: a fortiori, an inferential principle from one text, an inferential principle from two texts — the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted. Fine? Those are the thirteen principles. That’s the question whether you’re a Hasid or a Litvak. For the Litvak, the thirteen are the principles by which the Torah is interpreted, and for the Hasid, they are the thirteen attributes of mercy. Okay? And Rabbi Menachem Azariah of Fano even makes a parallel between them. Meaning, kal va-chomer corresponds to wisdom, and binyan av to understanding, and so on. He develops it at length there in Asarah Ma’amarot, the book Asarah Ma’amarot. In any case, for our purposes, here of course it’s the thirteen attributes of mercy, yes? Not the thirteen principles by which the Torah is interpreted. So the Talmud says: “The Lord, the Lord” — I am He before a person sins, and I am He after a person sins and repents. Meaning, the attribute represented by the divine names “The Lord, the Lord” at the beginning there is basically what is responsible for repentance, right? The acceptance of repentance, or repentance itself. In Shevuot 39 the Talmud explains the attribute “and clears.” It says like this: “But isn’t it written ‘and clears’? Yet also, ‘He does not clear’?” That is needed for the teaching of Rabbi Elazar, as it was taught: Rabbi Elazar says, it is impossible to say ‘and clears,’ for it was already said ‘He does not clear’; and it is impossible to say ‘He does not clear,’ for it was already said ‘and clears.’ How so? He clears those who repent, and He does not clear those who do not repent.” Fine? Now the Maharal, in Netivot Olam, in the section on repentance, asks: so what is this? There are two attributes, out of the thirteen, responsible for repentance? Both “The Lord, the Lord” and “and clears”? There is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger — these are all attributes of divine conduct. And regarding repentance there are two attributes: “The Lord, the Lord,” and “and clears.” So why do we need two different names to manage repentance in the world? Look at his strange answer — his strange approach. I didn’t bring the quotation here, so I’ll tell you orally. He says that the repentance of “and clears” is repentance for some of the sins. The repentance of “The Lord, the Lord” is repentance for all the sins. Why? Why can’t you just do ten repetitions of the repentance of “and clears” and get atonement for all the sins? Why do you need a different attribute here? Small mercy and big mercy? Then make two mercy attributes — compassionate and compassionate and compassionate and gracious? Why is this a quantitative issue at all? You could just do ten rounds of the repentance of “and clears” and it would cover all the sins. So what’s the problem? Let’s think for a moment what it means: “He clears those who repent and does not clear those who do not repent.” When you do the procedure of repentance, among other things you have abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and confession. Let’s focus for a moment on regret. Can there be such a thing as genuine, piercing, complete regret for one single sin?

[Speaker J] It atones for all the other sins even though he doesn’t regret them? Yes. A person, say, over one transgression.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s just titles. I’m asking you psychologically — think for a moment. Can a person fully, truly, authentically, deeply regret just one sin, and not care about the rest? Obviously not. It simply cannot happen. This isn’t about interpretations. Becoming newly religious.

[Speaker J] To regret — what exactly are you regretting?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You regret that you sorted on the Sabbath? What’s wrong with sorting on the Sabbath? The fact that Jewish law forbids it, right? Meaning, you regret that you acted in a way Jewish law forbids. That is the essence of the regret. But if you regret that, then in essence you regret all the sins. It is not regret over one sin. There cannot be essential regret over one sin. There is no such thing. It’s an oxymoron. Because if you regret only the act of sorting, not the sin involved in it, then it’s not regret at all, it means nothing. Right? So you regret that you sorted — but at that same moment on that Sabbath you could have gone hunting. Hunting is more enjoyable than sorting. Okay? You understand that this isn’t repentance. You need to regret the sin in the act, not the act itself. But if you regret the sin in the act, then you regret all sins, not only one. Because what stands at the base of all the sins is that you violated the will of God. And that is what you regret. Okay, what I want to say is this: the Maharal is talking about the two moves of repentance I discussed earlier. The great repentance is the repentance of “The Lord, the Lord” — “I am the Lord before he sinned, and I am the Lord after he sinned and returned,” where he has changed and become a different person. That is the repentance of “The Lord, the Lord.” And naturally, since he underwent an inner transformation, it applies to all sins, right? In other words, you are not going sin by sin. This is what the Maharal means when he says repentance for all sins. “For all sins” means repentance that doesn’t go offense by offense, but repentance for the whole story, for my state as a sinner. Okay? I am not repenting for all the individual sins but for my whole sinful being. That is all of them together — there is no need to go one by one. The repentance of “and clears” is a special novelty of the Torah: that even if you do not regret in the way I just described, if you do the formal or quasi-formal procedure — because regret does still have to include some inner element, you cannot just tick a box for regret and that’s it, I don’t think you can define such a thing — but okay, not a truly deep regret, more that you are sorry you stumbled here, something like that — then they tell you: if you did the four stages, acceptance for the future, confession, and everything, it is forgiven. It atones for you. And that too is a novelty. But what gets atoned for? Only the sin regarding which you did the four stages. Not the whole picture. Okay? So if you choose the small repentance, then it is repentance for some of the sins. Whatever you repented for gets atoned for; what you did not repent for does not get atoned for. Right? That is what the Talmud means when it says He atones for those who repent and does not atone for those who do not repent. You are atoned only for what you repented for. In the “The Lord, the Lord” mode, there is no such thing as atonement for what you repented for; if you returned, you returned over everything. There is no partial repentance there. Okay? Therefore that is the great repentance, the repentance of “The Lord, the Lord.” The repentance of “and clears” is the small repentance.

[Speaker J] But why, if the small repentance doesn’t clear all the sins, is it still a special grace?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it is a special grace that the Torah introduced: even though we do not undergo that psychological revolution, but instead do something fairly procedural, still the Holy One, blessed be He, comes toward us and grants atonement. That is a special grace, yes.

[Speaker E] Two levels of repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. The great repentance is what one might call the philosophy of repentance — what one might call the non-halakhic, non-detailed side. In a moment we’ll see this. But that’s the point. The small repentance has halakhic rules. Stages, indispensable elements, non-indispensable elements; each sin you committed gets erased, each sin you did not address does not get erased. It works according to rules. Therefore also according to Rabbi Chaim Friedlander — according to Ha’amek Berakhah — if you did commandments during the Ten Days of Repentance, yes, that doesn’t help you. Why doesn’t it help? Look, you chose to work in the bookkeeping mode, right? Fine, no problem — the Torah recognizes that. But then work according to the rules. Meaning, if you repented by Rosh Hashanah, then this year you got through safely. Special grace — but the Torah is willing to accept that. If not, then for next year your commandments are not lost. For next year they will be credited to your merit. But you lost the previous year. Okay? Unless you erased one of the sins from there. There are rules. The bookkeeping there is the very essence of the process, because you chose the bookkeeping track. You chose not to do the deep, root-level, psychological repentance, but instead a bookkeeping repentance. Fine — then you have to work according to the rules. Those are the Laws of Repentance. The Laws of Repentance are the rules of how to do the bookkeeping repentance. Okay? But great repentance is not the Laws of Repentance. It’s something else. Then of course you get atonement. There’s no need for Torah novelties or anything. If you are a different person, there is no reason whatsoever to punish you. If someone sinned against me and he truly, truly repented — he didn’t appease me, but I know he did complete repentance — then obviously I should forgive him. I don’t need the Holy One, blessed be He, for that. It’s obvious. Why should I bear a grudge against him when he is already something else entirely? I bear a grudge against who he was. But if now he is something else, then this is not grace and not some special novelty. It is just obvious. Why punish someone who is righteous? What is the idea? Okay? So these are two different mechanisms. Now I’ll show you that not only am I just saying there are two different mechanisms — it has consequences. The great repentance does not require any of the details of the Laws of Repentance. If you did it, you are set. It doesn’t matter whether there was confession, no confession, regret — all the details don’t matter. Not at all. All the discussions in the Laws of Repentance, even in those formal parts — what is indispensable and what is not, what comes before what, what stages there are — that all belongs only to the small repentance. I’ll bring you two proofs. One proof from law and one proof from aggadah.

[Speaker F] What is the procedure of the great repentance? What? What do you say? To say “without…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait a second. There is no procedure. Procedure belongs to the small side.

[Speaker F] But what do you say?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In a moment.

[Speaker B] Here,

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here, I’m answering you now. The Talmud answers you. Look. The Talmud in Avodah Zarah says: “They said about Elazar ben Durdaya that he left no prostitute in the world with whom he had not had relations. Once he heard that there was one prostitute in the cities across the sea, and she took a purse of dinars as her fee.” Yes, there was apparently one more sin he still hadn’t managed to commit, and he had to catch up with that too. “He took a purse of dinars and crossed seven rivers to reach her. In the midst of the act she passed wind. She said: Just as this wind will not return to its place, so Elazar ben Durdaya will not be accepted in repentance. He went and sat between two mountains and hills. Elazar ben Durdaya, yes — not Rabbi Elazar, just Elazar ben Durdaya. He said: Mountains and hills, ask mercy for me! They said to him: before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves, for ‘the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed.’ He said: Heaven and earth, ask mercy for me! They also rejected him. He said: Sun and moon, ask mercy for me! They rejected him. He said: Stars and constellations, ask mercy for me! They said to him: before we ask for you, we must ask for ourselves,” and so on. “He said: The matter depends only on me. He placed his head between his knees and wept bitterly until his soul left him. A heavenly voice came forth and said: Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya is destined for the life of the World to Come.” Fine. Then Rabbi cried and said: “There are those who acquire their world in many years, and those who acquire their world in one hour.” And Rabbi said: “Not only are penitents accepted, they are even called ‘Rabbi.’” He began as Elazar ben Durdaya and ended as Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya. Rabbi says: I work my whole life so they’ll call me Rabbi — not for that, but that’s why they call me Rabbi. Okay? This Jew cries for one hour and becomes Rabbi and acquires his world. How is that fair? How can that be? Now I ask you: that Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya, in that hour when he cried until his soul left him — did he also sit there with a table and go through all the sins he committed and tick off regret, abandoning the sin, acceptance for the future, verbal confession? You have to verbalize all the sins you committed. There’s no chance, right? Obviously not. So how can it be that he is destined for the life of the World to Come? He did not fulfill the commandment of repentance in its formal details. Meaning, he did not fulfill the indispensable details in the Laws of Repentance. Because that repentance is not part of the Laws of Repentance at all. That is repentance — not the Laws of Repentance. The Laws of Repentance are the small repentance, when you want to work on the formal halakhic level. If you truly repented and became something else, then obviously you get atonement — you don’t need to fulfill all the details, even the indispensable ones. If you repented, then obviously you are atoned. No question. Look at another example. This one is from law, from the Talmud in Kiddushin: “If a man betroths a woman on condition that I am righteous, even if he is completely wicked, she is betrothed, perhaps he had thoughts of repentance in his heart.” Okay. “Perhaps he had thoughts of repentance in his heart.” Now tell me — as he said “Behold, you are betrothed to me,” did he in his mind also detail all the sins, verbal confession, regret, abandoning the sin, acceptance for the future for each and every one? Meaning, he went through a secret scroll and checked everything off? How can it be that he becomes righteous? Obviously — right? You understand that if someone truly repented, no one gets petty with him about whether he technically fulfilled his obligation and which stages of repentance he did and didn’t do. Obviously not. All the discussions we call the Laws of Repentance speak about the small repentance, not the great repentance. You want to go on the formal track — you haven’t really changed, but you are doing it on the formal track — fine, follow these rules and you’ll get atonement. Okay? Maybe I’m being too sharp. I want actually to sharpen this because it also connects to your question earlier, Avner. Look, I’m describing this here—

[Speaker K] as two polar mechanisms of repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But you understand there is a continuum in between. Meaning, let’s start with the small repentance. There you have abandoning the sin, regret, acceptance for the future, and verbal confession. Again, I’m focusing on regret. So some level of regret has to be there; it’s not enough just to say “I regret it” — it has to express something, right? It is not the deep essential regret, the full change of direction, but there is some dimension of regret here. Okay? So already there there is something of the great repentance. It isn’t only procedure, right? Now suppose I regret a bit more deeply — then it already extends farther, right? Then it perhaps covers more sins or a greater percentage of each sin — however you want to put it — but it starts moving closer to the essential regret. Now, the more deeply I deepen my regret, the more I move along the axis between the small repentance and the great repentance. Think of it as a combination: p times small repentance plus 1 minus p times great repentance. When p starts from zero, you are in the great repentance, right? Increase p from zero to one, and you get to the small repentance — a kind of transpose. Okay? Basically, that p is the regret. Meaning, the question is how deep your regret is. And the depth of your regret moves between zero and one. When it is zero — or epsilon — you are in the small repentance, okay? When it starts to grow, you begin to deepen the repentance, to understand that you don’t want to be a sinner at all, until eventually you reach full regret and you are in the great repentance. Therefore I think: first, this is not a digital signpost. It needs one of those Apple sliders that moves continuously, not discretely. But beyond that — you also asked how one does this. I think the way to do it is to begin with the small repentance. To begin there, with the procedure, and deepen a bit more and think a bit more and try to understand what sin means, and then try to repent more deeply until you get as close as possible to the great repentance. I don’t think anyone can be entirely at the poles. Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya is like the pole of the great repentance, but that’s a story, yes? It probably wasn’t literally like that. It comes to describe that mechanism of the great repentance. And the message to us is that we should aspire to advance from the small repentance toward that point — to acquire our world in one hour. Okay? But that is a direction, a call to direction; not a description of a practical model, or even of an ideal model — ideal, yes, but not practical. We should aspire toward it, and the more we get close to it, the better. Now I want to move for a moment to the next part. We’ll see how much we manage.

[Speaker N] You spoke about great repentance. The Talmudic place where it’s described — and in general, he repented — it’s on the level that in the end the Talmud says “perhaps he merely thought…”

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That takes us back — what, are you talking about the Talmud in Kiddushin or Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya? In Kiddushin, the one who betroths the woman? Why did he have thoughts of repentance — why not… “perhaps he thought…” No, “perhaps he had thought,” not “perhaps he will think.” “Will think” is irrelevant. He has to be righteous at the moment he betroths her, because he betroths her on the condition that he is righteous now, not on condition that he will become righteous. So we’re talking about his having had thoughts of repentance during the betrothal or a moment before — doesn’t matter.

[Speaker E] Yes, yes, Maimonides also—

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] brings it as a doubtful betrothal. What is doubtful? There is doubt whether he repented or not. But on the side that he did repent, she is betrothed. So I don’t care that it’s doubtful; the doubt is because I don’t know the facts, whether he repented or not. But if he repented, then she is certainly betrothed. Here I want to enter — I see I’m not really going to get far enough — so I’ll just tell you, I’ll do what’s called revealing the ending — the word escaped me — a spoiler, yes. I basically now want to discuss the question whether repentance works as a matter of justice, or whether it is beyond the letter of the law. We are used to many books — I brought Mesillat Yesharim here, but there are many others — that talk about repentance as a special grace that the Holy One, blessed be He, did with us, something beyond the letter of the law. I want to argue that this is true regarding the small repentance. Regarding the great repentance, it is a matter of justice. It is not beyond the letter of the law. And therefore the formal details are not required there, because it is not “law” at all in that sense. It doesn’t work by halakhic rules. If you are a different person, why should you be punished for the sins of the one you used to be? Yes, Maimonides says, “I am not that same person,” remember?

[Speaker E] The law of human beings, right?

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Human beings — “those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and iron,” yes, those who sit in huts of clay. But the Holy One judges differently. I said earlier that in my opinion it is that way among human beings too, but for that I’ll have to prove it, because that is not the accepted view. On the contrary, almost no one thinks that. But I think I have good proofs for it. In any case, what I want to say is that the grace people speak about, that God accepts repentance, refers only to the small repentance. The great repentance is not grace — it is justice. And yet, to continue the promo, the spoiler — I will still argue that there is some kind of grace there too. And the grace is the very fact that it is possible at all. Yes, what Avner asked earlier: “Okay, I want to repent — what am I supposed to do now? How do I actually do it?” And I’ll explain later that this is not just some feeling of helplessness. There is a logical problem here. A problem in logic, not in psychology and not in anything else. It is a logical problem: the great repentance is not fully definable logically. And I think that is why — we’ll return to Rabbi Elazar ben Durdaya — why he turns to all the heavenly bodies and asks them to do repentance for him. You want to repent? Then repent! Why are you bothering them? They have no minds, but you’re bothering whatever they would have had. Determinism. Yes, why should they ask mercy for you? Ask mercy for yourself! What is the issue? No — his helplessness came from the fact that a person cannot do such a thing. He is looking for someone to help him, to do it for him. It is, of course, a literary description. But it describes that same sense of helplessness that says: okay, what Avner asked earlier — okay, I really want to do great repentance. How do you start? How do you run it? How do I make an inner reversal from what I am now to what I want to be? From what I am now, how do I deliberately turn into what I want to be? Fine, all that I’ll still explain next time. Okay? So this issue of the small repentance and the great repentance will continue with us, and that’s why I mentioned it now — so the framework will be clear and I won’t need another half hour next time to repeat the summary. Good. That’s all from me. If there are questions or comments, then…

[Speaker E] In theory, in what you presented, the great repentance does not pass through the small repentance. It’s instant repentance; it happens without passing through the small repentance.

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Maybe it happens through the small repentance — why not?

[Speaker E] If that’s what happens to the one who betroths, or to the one who repented in a single hour…

[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He began with the small repentance, and the regret deepened and reached full regret, and everything was atoned for. He started with regret over one sin, and then he starts to understand what a sin is, what it means to violate the will of God, and suddenly he understands the whole story. It’s like what happened with Elazar ben Durdaya — that overturning there, yes, she let out that wind, and she said that just as this wind doesn’t return to its place, so too Elazar ben Durdaya — and suddenly that shook him up, meaning, all at once he… and then he did complete repentance. That’s it — the desire to repent is already the repentance. I mean, the process itself is the repentance, not the result. But we’ll spell that out properly next time, because there is a logical problem here that has to be explained.