Q&A: Do Transgressions Require Intention?
Do Transgressions Require Intention?
Question
Hello Rabbi,
Has the question in the title been discussed? Is the discussion regarding transgressions identical to the discussion regarding commandments?
Answer
With a commandment, there is a discussion whether one has fulfilled one’s obligation or not. With transgressions, there is no “fulfilling an obligation,” and therefore when there is no intention (that is, when one did not say, “For the sake of the unification of the Holy One, blessed be He… I hereby intend to commit a transgression against His blessed will”), that does not exempt him. However, I have written that commandments require faith, and without faith even transgressions are not transgressions. See my article “Causing a Secular Jew to Sin” here on the site. Regarding adding to the commandments not at its proper time, there is a distinction between someone who intended to add and someone who did not intend to add.
Discussion on Answer
And also, the very fact that one is liable to bring a sin-offering for an unintentional transgression — that itself is a novelty, no?
“Commandments require intention” means the intention to fulfill one’s obligation (that is, intention for the sake of the commandment). The expression “for the sake of unification” is only one way of expressing that. What I wrote still stands.
This has nothing at all to do with the question of someone who is preoccupied or one who acts without intending to in the context of prohibitions. Rabbi Shimon, who holds that an unintended act is exempt, does not hold that commandments do not require intention.
Honestly, I was surprised by the answer.
Is intention necessarily “for the sake of unification”? When people say that commandments require intention, doesn’t the meaning mean awareness that there is a commandment involved here?
With transgressions, one has to become liable. All those discussions about an unintended act, being preoccupied, and the like — that’s what they’re about, no?