Q&A: Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory
Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory
Question
To the honored gaon Rabbi Michael Abraham, may he live a good long life,
A] In the Talmud in Yoma 86a it is explained: “Rabbi Levi said: Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory, as it is said: ‘Return, O Israel, unto the Lord your God.’”
Why, then, did the Talmud not bring an explicit verse from Scripture: “And you shall return unto the Lord your God”?
B] Tosafot on Shevuot 13a, s.v. “de-avad,” wrote as follows: “That he acted close to sunset. But after the sending away of the goat, it cannot be explained that way, for it atones the entire day. Even though it implies above (8b) that offerings do not atone for sins committed afterward, even on that same day, where it says there is a practical difference regarding impurity that occurred between one and the other, the sent-away goat is different, for with regard to it the verse says: ‘For on this day he shall atone for you, to purify you from all your sins,’ implying that it atones the entire day.”
At first glance, the words of Tosafot are not understood, because seemingly the atonement of the sent-away goat is the atonement of an offering; rather, the atonement of all offerings is through their sacrifice on the altar, whereas the atonement of the goat is through the confession made over the sent-away goat. If so, from where would one even think that it should atone for future sins?
C] On the upcoming Rosh Hashanah, if a yeshiva student wants to walk from his yeshiva to outside the city, to a base located near the city, but not within the 2,000-cubit limit, is there any permission for this on Rosh Hashanah, since carrying was permitted for the sake of food preparation [Shulchan Arukh 518:1-2; a need of food preparation for a person, all the more so a human need…],
and if we say that this is a human need, or should we say that the two are not comparable.
With blessings and thanks
Answer
Hello,
A] Perhaps because they want to prove that repentance is great, and therefore a verse that is not a command is preferable. The command calls on you to return unto God, but that does not necessarily mean that this happens in every process of repentance. Beyond that, according to Maimonides in chapter 7 of the Laws of Repentance, “And you shall return unto the Lord your God” is not a commandment but a promise for the future to come. That is how it will be then, but that does not mean that every act of repentance at any time is like that.
B] Your assumption that the goat is an offering is really not an agreed-upon assumption. Ibn Ezra already wrote on the Torah that it is not an offering, and Nachmanides’ comments in Parashat Acharei are well known. Beyond that, there is also the atoning force of the day itself, so in any case this is not only the atonement of an offering. From the plain sense of the Torah it appears that the goats are not atoning offerings at all, but rather the means of entering the sacred precinct (“With this shall Aaron come into the sanctuary”), and the atonement follows as a result. I discussed this at length in my article on the two goats.
C] Regarding the prohibition of boundaries, the halakhic decisors dispute whether it is rabbinic or Torah-level. But in Maimonides it appears in chapter 27 of the Laws of Sabbath, after he finishes describing the rabbinic labor prohibitions. This implies that it is an independent prohibition and not one of the labor prohibitions. From this it follows that the rule of “since” was not said regarding it, because that rule was only said about labor prohibitions. See that Maharsha wrote this in Ketubot 7a:
“Rather, the truth points the way that there is no difficulty here at all. Certainly, if the prohibition of boundaries were included in the category of labor, it would be included in the permission of ‘only that which every person must eat,’ etc. However, boundaries are not included in labor and are not comparable to kindling… as opposed to boundaries, which were prohibited as an independent prohibition, not on account of labor; for there is no tanna at all who would include boundaries among the labors of the Tabernacle. Rather, it is simply a concern of the verse and an independent prohibition, unrelated to the prohibition of labor, like the prohibition of leaven on Passover or the new grain before the Omer, and the like. So what connection does this have to the permission for food preparation? There is no basis at all to permit it for the sake of food preparation if it is Torah-level. Just as one may not permit an egg laid on a Jewish holiday that follows the Sabbath for the sake of food preparation, because preparation is an independent prohibition and not part of labor, and was not permitted by ‘only that which every person must eat’—so too it is clear that one may not bring something from outside the boundary for the sake of kiddush, etc….”
Therefore, in my humble opinion, it makes no difference whether this is for a human need or not. The rule of “since” and the permission for food preparation were not stated regarding boundaries, because this is not a labor prohibition.