Repentance before the Mitzvah: Reuven Opened the Way

1“Reuven returned to the pit.”¹ Rashi comments: “He was occupied with his sackcloth and his fasting for having disturbed his father's bed.” But this is difficult, for Chazal teach in the Gemara: “Whoever says that Reuven sinned is simply mistaken. … He demanded redress for his mother's humiliation. He said: If my mother's sister was a rival wife to my mother, shall the maidservant of my mother's sister be a rival to my mother? So he arose and disturbed her bed.”² Since Reuven did not sin, what did he need to repent of?

2The Midrash, too, comments on this verse: “‘Reuven returned to the pit.’ Where had he been? … R' Eliezer says: with his sackcloth and his fasting. When he was free, he went and looked into that pit; this is what is written, ‘Reuven returned to the pit.’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him: ‘Never has a man sinned before Me and done teshuvah, and you have opened with teshuvah first. By your life, a descendant of yours will arise and open with teshuvah first.’ And who is he? Hoshea, as it says, ‘Return, Yisrael, unto Hashem your God.’”³ The holy sefarim have already found this Midrash puzzling: the Reishis Chochmah, the Shelah and the Bnei Yissaschar all point out that Kayin and Adam HaRishon had repented before Reuven.⁴ Why, then, did Hashem tell him, “Never has a man sinned before Me and done teshuvah, and you have opened with teshuvah first”? We must also ask: what does “before Me” mean?

3Let us first cite a teaching of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on the verse “These are the generations of Yaakov: Yosef.”⁵ As the Midrash teaches, the word eileh, “these,” discounts whatever was mentioned before it.⁶ Applied to Yaakov Avinu, it means that he always discounted his own earlier deeds, judging them lacking. This is the meaning of “These are the generations of Yaakov: Yosef.” The name Yosef can be read yosif, “he added”: Yaakov constantly added good deeds, for he was always afraid that perhaps he had not yet fulfilled his duty to Heaven. Those are his holy words.

4aWe may explain all this with a familiar idea: there are two kinds of teshuvah. The first is repentance for actual transgressions: a Jew who has, Heaven forbid, committed a transgression repents of the blemish and damage he caused. But there is another kind, which the holy sefer Maor VaShemesh describes on the verse “These are the words that Moshe spoke.”⁷ Rashi on that verse explains: “Since these are words of rebuke, and he listed here all the places where they angered the Omnipresent.” The Maor VaShemesh asks why Moshe Rabbeinu chose that particular time to rebuke Bnei Yisrael. Why did he not wait until he had explained the Torah to them, just before his death?

4bHis answer: Bnei Yisrael now stood just before Moshe would teach them Mishneh Torah, the Book of Devarim, and teshuvah, we know, must come before Torah study and before prayer. This is handed down in the name of the Chozeh of Lublin, zt"l: before engaging in Torah and prayer, he would turn his thoughts inward to teshuvah. One who does not repent before learning, he said, falls, Heaven forbid, under Dovid HaMelech's words: “But to the wicked God said: What have you to do with recounting My statutes?”⁸ In his great humility, the Chozeh feared that he himself might be such a person. So here, before Moshe “undertook to explain the Torah,”⁹ he roused Bnei Yisrael to repent of all their sins before they heard the words of the Torah. He rebuked them even for sins that were small in their eyes, sins that only their fathers, not they themselves, had committed. He also stirred their hearts about the lesser failings that lead to those sins, for one must repent even of small failings. Those are the holy words of the Maor VaShemesh.

5His words teach us a second kind of teshuvah: even when a person remembers no transgression, he should always search his deeds and set them right. For “There is no righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin.” As the Alshich and the Noam Elimelech explain, this means that a person cannot do good without some trace of sin mingling with it at that very moment.¹⁰ He must therefore always do teshuvah, examining his good deeds and setting them right, so that he will be fit to perform the mitzvos of Hashem, blessed be He.

6This may explain Reuven's teshuvah. True, he did not sin, as Chazal said. But, as the Midrash explains, his day had come to attend to his father,¹¹ so he first went to his sackcloth and fasting, to repent before the mitzvah of honoring father and mother. It was the second kind of teshuvah, which is not necessarily done for a sin. In it a person searches and examines his good deeds so that no trace of sin will be in them and he will be fit to fulfill the mitzvah. That is why Reuven repented even of the thought of wanting to disturb his father's bed, though in actual deed he did not sin. This answers our first question, and both statements of Chazal hold true together: “Whoever says Reuven sinned is simply mistaken,” and he was occupied with his sackcloth and fasting.

7Here, then, is the meaning of Chazal's words “Never has a man sinned before Me and done teshuvah,” and of “before Me” in particular. No one had ever stood before the Holy One, blessed be He, to perform a mitzvah, regarded himself as a sinner, examined his deeds and repented. The same idea explains “you have opened with teshuvah first.” Kayin and Adam did repent, but theirs was the first kind of teshuvah, for what they had sinned. Reuven practiced the second kind, examining his deeds before performing the mitzvah, and in this he was the first. The word “first” (techilah) is precise. Reuven opened the way as the first to practice a teshuvah of “first”: when he came to engage in his service before Hashem, he examined his deeds first.

8Hashem's next words to Reuven carry the same meaning: “By your life, a descendant of yours will arise and open with teshuvah first.” Hoshea, Reuven's descendant, would arise and urge Israel to this kind of teshuvah. Indeed, Hoshea said: “Return, Yisrael, unto Hashem your God.” The name “Yisrael,” which Yaakov received after he prevailed over the angel, is a higher level than “Yaakov,” as the Zohar teaches.¹² Hoshea is telling Israel: even though you stand on the level of “Yisrael,” you must still repent, “unto Hashem your God.” That is, when you go to stand before Hashem to serve Him, you must first scrutinize your deeds and repent of them.

9This, we may say, is what my holy father meant by his teaching on the verse “These are the generations of Yaakov: Yosef.” Yaakov discounted his earlier deeds, and afterward he added good deeds, as the name Yosef, “he added,” says. In other words, when Yaakov came to add more and engage in Torah and mitzvos, he first examined his earlier deeds and repented of them.

10aPerhaps this also explains a practice taught in the name of the holy Arizal.¹³ Before praying, a person should take upon himself, saying the words aloud: “I hereby accept upon myself the positive commandment of ‘You shall love your fellow as yourself.’”¹⁴ The simple reason is that when a person joins himself to the whole of Israel at prayer, his prayer will be accepted among the prayers of all Israel.

10bBut we may suggest another reason. As we have seen, a person must return in teshuvah before he goes to stand before Hashem in prayer. And we know that when a Jew joins himself to the whole of Israel, Heaven sees no sin or iniquity in him. This is how the sefarim Yismach Yisrael and Tiferes Shmuel explain the verse “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov, nor seen wrongdoing in Yisrael; Hashem his God is with him, and teru'as melech, the King's friendship, is in him.”¹⁵ Teru'as comes from re'us, fellowship and joining together. When a person binds himself to the community in fellowship, the verse applies to him: “He has not beheld iniquity in Yaakov.” For he is part of the whole, and, as is known, sin cannot touch the whole at all. So accepting the mitzvah of “You shall love your fellow as yourself,” [which joins him to all Israel,] helps a person to be clean of sin and to return to Hashem in complete teshuvah.

11Here, too, lies the meaning of Chazal's teaching: “‘You shall love your fellow as yourself’: this is a great principle of the Torah.”¹⁶ To fulfill the Torah properly, a person must first repent before he studies Torah and does mitzvos, so that the verse “But to the wicked God said: What have you to do with recounting My statutes?” will not apply to him. The principle, then, is to live with love for one's fellows. When a person joins himself to the many, no sin or iniquity can be seen in him, and he will be able to return to Hashem, blessed be He.

12May the Holy One, blessed be He, help us also to practice what we teach, living with love for our fellows, and through this may we bring the redemption near. For, as is well known, Chazal said: “Israel will not be redeemed until they form one band.”¹⁷ Amen.