COME NOW, LET

US DEBATE, SAYS THE LORD. IF YOUR SINS PROVE TO BE LIKE CRIMSON, THEY WILL

BECOME WHITE AS SNOW; IF THEY PROVE TO BE AS RED AS CRIMSON DYE,

THEY SHALL

BECOME AS WOOL.

(Isaiah 1:18)

It is taught

that Rabbi Eliezer said: If your sins prove to be

like crimson, etc., [k'shanim can

be read as "like crimson" or "like the years"] – [If

your sins prove to be] like the years [it takes to travel] from

heaven and earth, they will become white as snow – and if more than this

– they shall become as wool [which is not quite as white as snow is].

R. Yehoshua said: If your sins prove to be like crimson

– [If your sins prove to be] like the years of the [lives of the]

Patriarchs, they will become white as snow – and if more than this – they

shall become as wool. R. Yudin bar Pazi said: If your sins prove to be like crimson – in

the First [Temple period]; if they prove to

be as red as crimson dye, in the Second [Temple period].

The Rabbis say:

If a person's sins be as the number of his years, they will become white as

snow – and if more than this – they shall become as

wool.

R. Yudin Antidriy said: When sins

are minor, they will become white as snow; when they are serious – they

shall become as wool.

(J. Shabbat

9:3)

Goral, Atonement,

and Seal

Shlomo Fox

It is taught in a Baraita:

All [things] are judged on Rosh Hashanah, and their verdict is sealed on Yom

Kippur, so said Rabbi Meir.

R. Yehudah

said: Everything is judged on Rosh Hashanah, but verdicts are sealed for each

in its own time; on Pesah for the grains, on Shavuot

for the fruits of the tree, on Sukkot for water. Man

is judged on Rosh Hashanah, and his verdict is sealed on Yom Kippur.

R. Yossi

says: Man is judged daily, as is written, You

inspect him every morning (Job 7:18).

R. Natan

says: Man is judged every hour, as is written Examine him every minute (ibid.). (Rosh HaShana 16a)

According

to R. Meir and R. Yehuda,

Yom Kippur is the day when the verdict is decided, the day when one rises to

one's goral ["lot" or "fate"], as Scripture states: And

days (Daniel

12:13).

On that day one expects a day of fateful decisions. The Yom Kippur service is

replete with the casting of lots: lots used to choose priests to perform tasks

in the Temple, lots used to decide of the goats which is for the Lord and

which is for Azazel, and in this vein, the Book

of Jonah is read as the haftorah of the Minha service; in that book, Jonah is also selected by

lots.

Confession

is one of the elements of the day that is supposed to explain a person's goral.

As the RaMBaM wrote:

With regard to all the precepts of the

Torah, affirmative or negative, if a person transgressed any one of them,

either willfully or in error, and repents and turns away from his sin, he is

under a duty to confess before God, blessed be He, as it is said, When a man

have done (Bamidbar 5:6-7); this means confess in words; and this

confession is an affirmative precept."

How does one confess?

The penitent says: "I beseech you,

O Lord, I have sinned, I have acted perversely; I have transgressed before You, and have done thus and thus, and lo, I repent and am

ashamed of my deeds, and I will never do this again." This constitutes the

essence of confession. The fuller and more detailed the confession one makes,

the more praise worthy he is. (Hilhot

Teshuva 1:1, Hyamson translation).

Even

someone sentenced to death by the court must confess, as we read in the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 6:2):

When he is ten cubits away from the

place of stoning they say to him: "Confess, for it is the custom of the

executed to confess, for everyone who confesses has a portion in the World to Come…"

If he does not know how to confess,

they tell him: "Say [this]: ‘May my death be an

atonement for all my sins.'"

R. Yehuda

says: If he knows that he was falsely tried, he says, "May my death be atonement

for all my sins, except this sin."

They told him: If that is the case,

everyone would so speak in order to make himself appear innocent.

The

function of confession is to bring the sinner atonement and life in the World

to Come. According to R. Yehuda, confession has

another purpose; it affords one a last opportunity to address the court and the

Creator in order to express one's lack of comprehension of why one is being

hurt.

Should

one's sins be listed in detail, or is it enough to make a blanket statement of

confession? The Talmud (Yoma 86b) continues the

debate between the Tannaim and adds:

One must list one's sins in detail, for

it is written: Please! This people has committed a

grave sin. They have made themselves a god of gold (Shemot 32) – these are the words of R. Yehuda

ben Baba. R. Akiva says: Happy

concealed (Psalms

32)

Two good leaders arose for Israel,

Moses and David. Moses said: Let my sin be recorded, for it is said: Since

you did not have faith in Me to sanctify Me (Bamidbar 20). David said: Do not record my offense,

for it is said, Happy is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is

concealed.

What parable is similar to Moses and

David? [They are] like two women who were flogged by the court. One of them

played the harlot while the other ate [in some tests: "stole"] pagei shevi'it

shevi'it said to them: "Please, announce why

she was flogged so that people will not say that one [of us] was flogged for

the other's crime. They brought pagei shevi'it and hung them around her neck, and they would

declare before her: "she was flogged for an infringement of the Sabbatical

Year."

The

Talmud illustrates the disagreement between the Tannaim

regarding confession by citing the examples of Moses and David, and points out

the reason for listing sins in detail with the parable of the two women who

sinned. What does this parable teach us?

Prof.

Saul Lieberman wrote in his book Greeks in Jewish Palestine (pp.163): "It is

therefore quite certain that the Rabbis used here a figurative expression,

implying by pagei shevi'it

they favor an unmarried woman or even the connubium

of the betrothed with her own bridegroom before they were fully married…The

regular procedure [common in Greek law] was to exhibit the sinner adorned with

objects which reminded him of the character of his sin. The unripe figs were

taken in our case as a symbol of premature enjoyment."

Prof.

Daniel Sperber (In Sidra

7, 1991)

offers an additional explanation: While we have seen situations in which a

woman is brought to suffer capital punishment while she is "decorated"

with a string of figs, pagim are fruit,

including figs, which are insufficiently ripe – she is completely innocent. It

is well known that she has not sinned.

In

ancient Greece, and

especially in the city of Athens,

some people were selected from the lower class and supported by public funds. When

calamity struck the city – be it a draught, a plague, or the like – two of

those selected people would be brought as sacrifices to Azazel,

a man for the men and usually a female for the women. The man would wear a

black string around his neck, while the other had a string of white figs

wrapped around his/her neck. They were taken through the city's streets with

great pomp and publicity, and then out of the city, where they were stoned to

death."

Prof.

Sperber writes:

This ancient and barbaric custom was

burned into the memory of the Greek people and even into that of the Romans, as

can be seen from its being cited in later Roman and Byzantine sources. Perhaps

some foggy memory of the custom found its way to the Tannaim.

According to this suggestion, they knew of the possibility of two women being

sentenced to death, one for harlotry and the other innocent. The innocent one

goes wears a string of white figs (pagim!)

around her neck.

The Jewish Sages of those days

interpreted this "picture" as if it referred to someone who had dealt

with the pagei shevi'it

in the special significance of this expression for the language of the Sages,

and she begs them to decorate her with those pagim

in order to publicize her deed. In fact, she is begging to be so decorated in

order to publicize her innocence.

I

would like to go further with the claims of Professors Lieberman and Sperber and suggest that the Sages did in fact know of this

custom. That is why they related the parable to two of Israel's leaders: David, who sinned

and wanted to hide his transgression, and Moses, who wanted his transgression

to be recorded – by means of the customary symbol of unripe fruit being hung

around his neck – thereby implying his innocence. In other words, the Gemara is trying to find a gentle way of having Moses say "I

am like a scapegoat".

The

Talmudic discussions addresses the question of whether sins must be listed in detail, and it brings a parable in order to make a daring

statement: we do not always have a sin to describe; not everyone is corrupt. Sometimes

one's goral parallels the predicament of the scapegoat, and so the woman

asked that her transgression be recorded, and Moses wanted to be told in which

way had he sinned.

According

to this approach, one might say that the significance of the liturgical

confession, "We have sinned! We have betrayed!" may not necessarily

be relayed only by exclamation marks, but perhaps also by question marks: "We

have sinned?" This process requires each of us to clarify for himself why

he is liable to punishment. If we have sinned, let our transgressions be

written down so that we might know what we have done.

From

here to the essence of kapara – atonement.

This

word – kapara, like the word goral,

combines the notion of "covering up" as in the word kaporet [a covering] with kefira

– denial. That is to say, we must clarify whether kapara

assumes the possibility of covering over the past and opening a new page, or

whether kapara involves erasing the past, as

the House of Shamai said in connection with the

regulation regarding the return of stolen construction materials that had been

incorporated in a building, i.e., that the building should be torn down [in

order to retrieve the stolen materials], and only afterwards can a new

beginning take place on wholly new foundations.

This

is similar to the debate in the Gemara regarding the

opinion of the House of Hillel; does the Holy one

blessed be He hide iniquity or pass over iniquity? The Talmud (Rosh HaShana 16b) states:

The House of Hillel

says: and abundant in loving-kindness, i.e., He tends towards

loving-kindness.

How doe He do this?

Rabbi Eliezer

says: He hides it [sin], for it is said: He shall return and grant us

compassion; He shall hide our iniquities (Micah 7).

Rabbi Yossi

bar Hanina says: He forgives it, for it is said: Who

forgives iniquity and passes over the transgression (Micah 7).

Each

of these sages cites a verse from the prophet Micah, the very verses chosen as

an epilogue to the haftorah of the Book of Jonah:

18) Who is a God like You, Who forgives

iniquity and passes over the transgression of the remnant of His heritage? He

does not maintain His anger forever, for He desires loving-kindness.

19) He shall return and grant us

compassion; He shall hide our iniquities, and You

shall cast into the depths of the sea all their sins.

20) You shall give the truth to Jacob,

loving-kindness to Abraham, which You swore to our

forefathers from days of yore.

That

is to say that the Holy One blessed be He sometimes acts as One Who hides sin

and sometimes as One Who forgives sin. In continuation to my discussion above, "there

is a time to describe the sin in detail" and "a time to forgive the

sin"; a time to confess, as David confessed to the prophet Nathan, I

have sinned, and a time to raise complaints against Heaven, as Hannah and

Moses did (Berakhot 31b-32a).

The

final verse attributes truth to Jacob and loving-kindness to Abraham,

ascriptions that demand deep understanding of the behavior of those patriarchs.

It teaches us that only one who contends with something is allowed to offer

instruction in it.

We

might add to the verse and read it: You shall give truth to Jacob, loving-kindness

which You swore to our forefathers from days of yore.

The understanding of goral and of the essence of atonement requires more

than one meaning.

The

real test of atonement comes with the end of Yom Kippur, as R. Simha Bunem of Pishcha explained in a parable:

One of R. Bunim's

hassidim came to visit him

and spilled out his heart to him, saying that he had devoted many days to

fasting and mortification in order to rise up and achieve the higher levels of

spirituality, but he felt that none of this helped him in the slightest bit.

R. Bunim

answered him by telling a story: Once the Ba'al ShemTov ordered that his horses be hitched and he set off

with them on the road. Since he had set out to attend to a most pressing matter

and wanted to reach his destination as quickly as possible, he made the trip in

a leap, the horses flying like arrows from the bow…

The horses were flying in the air over

the roads and they wondered why they did not stop by any inns, for they were

used to making stops to be given fodder and water. It occurred to the horses

that perhaps they might not be horses at all, but rather human beings, and that

when they arrived at a town they would certainly have a meal placed before them

as is done for humans.

However, they flew over town after town

without respite. It occurred to them that perhaps they were not humans, but

rather angels, for angels have no need for food.

Later, when the Ba'al

Shem Tov reached his destination, the horses were led

into the stables and they began guzzling down their feed in the manner of

horses.

"It is not during the fast" –

concluded R. Bunim, turning to the hassid, "that a man becomes

an angel. The main thing is how he behaves after the fast."

Indeed;

atonement, in its various meanings, is strongly dependent upon a person's

readiness to change and to implement that change in his daily life.

May

we bless each other and be blessed with a good "seal," a seal marking

change and improvement.

Shlomo Fox teaches at

Hebrew Union College,

at Beit Shemuel, and at Kolot. He is educational director of the IDF project at Beit Morasha.

Repentance raises a person up from

all of the low-places of the world, but even so, it is not a stranger to the

world. Rather, it lifts up the world and life with itself. It refines sinful

tendencies. The powerful will, which breaks through all limits and causes sin

is itself transformed into a living force that performs great and lofty works

for the good and for a blessing.

(From Rabbi

A.I. Kook ztz"l, Al Ha-Teshuvah)

The repentance which brings about

a radical transformation of a whole way of life leading to a rebirth of the

personality is repentance of redemption; another type of repentance, unlike

this kind, is directed against a specific sin – it is repentance of expiation.

(Rabbi Joseph

Soloveitchik, On Repentance, Pinchas H. Peli, editor, pg. 174)

Hannah Senesh – Confession

On the eve of

Yom Kippur 11 October, 1940, Hannah Senesh wrote the following

lines in her personal diary, which was published after her death:

'I would like

to confess, to give an accounting of myself, an accounting to God; that is to

say, to measure my life and deeds against the highest, purest ideal that stands

before me; to compare what should have been with what was.

I shall begin

my confession in the name of humanity. There is no sin in the world that does

not enter this year's list of transgression, seven-fold more than in other

years… and the plan for the new year – to study and delve into my profession

and into the language and to search out the path. To be a

human being.

I fear that

conditions here make that last item very difficult, but I will try.

For that is the

only path worth taking. But how?

After a year I

shall see if I succeeded.

I still want to

write down an attempt at a poem [her first Hebrew poem].

In the bonfires of war, in blazes and

flame,

Amidst these stormy days of blood

Here I light my little lantern

To search for a

human being.

The fire's flames extinguish my light,

The fire's glare blinds my eyes,

How will I look, how will I see, how

will I tell, how will I know him,

When he stands before me?

God, give a sign, set a sign on his

forehead

So that in fire, and flames, and blood

I will know the pure and eternal

radiance,

He whom I had sought: a human being.

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