SHUVAH 86 THE PRESENT FUTURE – CHAT GPT VERSION
שובה ישראל עד ה׳ — this refers to the ultimate level of teshuvah, teshuvah mei’ahavah, that reaches the highest place, the כסא הכבוד.
The Dibros Moshe in Yoma, siman 11, anaf 4, discusses whether this level is actually required — and less is only bedieved — or whether it is simply an elevated level.
In Ki Savo, 30:2, we find the phrase: ושבת עד ה׳... בכל נפשך. This language, like that in Shema, implies actual self-sacrifice.
Rav Chaim Volozhiner, in his drush for Selichos, suggests that one must even be willing to give up his life for teshuvah if necessary.
The Gemara in Avodah Zarah 17a tells of one who returned from מינות and died — Rabbi Eliezer ben Durdaya — whose death came as he was so attached to his sinful ways. This supports Rav Chaim Volozhiner’s idea.
Similarly, the Smak (mitzvah 3) relates that the students of Rabbi Yehudah HaChassid gave their lives to repent for misusing Divine Names.
The Sharei Teshuvah (1:11, ikar 2) writes that the essence of teshuvah is to abandon sin — ויגמור בכל לבבו — and to fully commit never to do it again.
The Rambam in Hilchos Teshuvah (1:1) writes ולעולם איני חוזר, and again in 2:2, ויגמור בליבו.
The source passuk is Yeshayahu 55:7 — יעזוב איש דרכו. The Ibn Ezra explains that only abandoning the ways that led to sin in the past constitutes full teshuvah.
But this seems to require merely abandoning one’s plans for sin, not necessarily a positive commitment never to do it again. So where do the Rambam and Rabbeinu Yonah derive the requirement for an active commitment for the future?
The source is in the Yerushalmi at the end of Yoma and in Vayikra Rabbah 3:3, regarding the viduy of Yom Kippur — עוד לא אעשה. However, that only mentions the language of viduy.
Even though we understand the Rambam (2:3) and Rabbeinu Yonah (1:11), who both give the mashal that not abandoning our plans to sin is like holding a carcass in the mikvah — it should still suffice to abandon plans or aspirations to sin. Why do they both require an absolute commitment for the future?
Even within the mashal itself — to purify, one would not need to commit to never touching a carcass again! So why is that needed for teshuvah?
Yet we do see that the need to commit to the future in one’s viduy, or at least to incorporate it in thought while saying viduy, is clear from Rav Chaim Kanievsky. He was asked why the Rambam doesn’t mention the future in the viduy of Yom Kippur (2:8). Rav Chaim answered that with absolute regret in the viduy, the future commitment is already incorporated.
Rav Moshe was asked why this is not reflected in our text of the Yom Kippur viduy, and he answered that indeed it should be said — perhaps, as we’ll see later, the viduy of Yom Kippur is different.
An even stronger issue is the well-known principle that Hashem judges only the present — באשר הוא שם (Vayeira 21:17) — and not based on future deficiencies.
So we need a new understanding of באשר הוא שם and how it relates to future commitments.
Rashi brings from Bereishis Rabbah (53:14) the angels’ claim that Yishmael would one day cause Jewish death through thirst — and yet he was given water now? Rav Chaim Kanievsky (Derech Sicha, here) was asked: since when do angels know the distant future? He answered, “If Hashem wants, they can know.” Meaning, Hashem went out of His way to expose the future to the angels here, and then to diffuse their claim with the response — “Who cares about the future?”
We also find a strong association of time — past and future — with viduy. Viduy requires confessing the past and declaring the future. The first hoda’ah in the Torah was said by Leah with the word הפעם, and the last viduy in the Torah appears when something was completed — כי תכלה.
And teshuvah itself is hinted to with the word ועתה — the present.
The Maharal in Nesiv HaTeshuvah (ch. 5) explains that man is unpredictable. He can sway one way and then the other — until viduy. By saying “I used to sin,” he removes the yetzer from himself and gives himself over to Hashem. What is it about viduy that does this?
Rav Yerucham (Daas Torah, Chumash, vol. 3 p.128) and Rav Wolbe (Maamarei Yemei Ratzon, “Shofaros”) explain that the shofar represents revelation — the revelation of potential into practical: at the Akeidah, at Sinai, and ultimately, the revelation of our own spirit and soul hidden beneath the physical.
The shofar reveals that our רוח — our soul — is our truest essence, while the body is only a cloak, a מלבוש.
The Mesilas Yesharim, in his section on teshuvah, writes that regret functions like hataras nedarim — the regret removes the daas from the original vow or sin, as though it were done by another person, or by a shoteh. What is miraculous about this is that the change of mind — the revelation of the true self — occurs in the present, yet it removes the daas from the past.
This is the meaning of the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah 16b and the Rambam (2:4) that שינוי השם tears up decrees — because the person is now truly identified as a different being than the one who sinned. Or perhaps, the one who sinned was never the real me — that wasn’t the authentic self.
When one only regrets, he may fall back, as the Maharal noted — רשעים מלאים חרטה הם. But when one makes a statement of viduy, it places a time stamp on the present — ועתה — as Rav Yisrael Salanter said: “איז נישט נאר בעסער, נאר אנדריש” — I am not merely better, I am different. My current essence is changed. The past — חטאתי לה׳ — was wrong, but that is not who I am now, and not who I will be going forward.
The revelation of an authentic viduy identifies that the sin and the person doing teshuvah are not the same person. (If the sin was so intrinsic to him, its removal would indeed cause the soul’s departure from the body.)
The Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah 3:3 gives two analogies for this viduy that includes both regret for the past and commitment for the future.
Rav Yitzchak says: כאדם שהוא מלחים שני נסרים ומדביקן זה לזה — like one who smooths two surfaces so perfectly that they bond. The Pirush Maharzu explains this as the phenomenon now known as “van der Waals forces” or “cold welding” — in a vacuum, two perfectly smooth and clean surfaces can fuse into one continuous piece.
This analogy gives new insight. When one truly identifies with his spirit, it is not confined by time as the body is. In the world of spirit, היה, הווה, ויהיה all exist simultaneously — like frames of a long video, all present, though our finite perception only sees the current frame.
If we smooth out the “bumps” of the past through regret and commit to a smooth, clean future, all frames — our entirety — become clear and unified, bonding perfectly with Hashem — שובה ישראל עד ה׳ אלוקיך — up to the כסא הכבוד.
The atoms, as it were, don’t “know” they belong to different pieces. It recalls Yechezkel 1:14 — והחיות רצוא ושוב כמראה הבזק — and the angels ascending and descending on Yaakov’s ladder, as Yaakov himself was attached to the כסא הכבוד.
This reveals a new dimension of באשר הוא שם. Perhaps a person is judged by his current level, but there is a deeper truth: when there is absolute regret for the past and absolute commitment for the future, the entirety of the person — past, present, and future — is perfect in the present.
Hashem may know that the person will change, and that a later version may falter again — yet in this moment, his soul is revealed as completely pure. That is what Hashem showed the angels about Yishmael’s future: they saw future wrongdoing, but Hashem said that in his present state, his entire self — his totality — is pure.
This understanding — that viduy reveals a new self, utterly clean across all time — seems inconsistent with the practice of repeating viduy year after year. After all, if one has been redefined, why repeat?
Yet the Gemara in Yoma 86b records two opinions — the Chachamim and Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov — and the halachah in Rambam (2:8) and Shulchan Aruch (607:4) is that one may, or even should, repeat viduy from one Yom Kippur to the next.
Many reasons are given not to repeat it — Medrash Rabbah (Pikudei 52:2):
• It’s like a dog returning to its vomit (עתק),
• It can appear arrogant (בגאוה), as if there are no new sins,
• Or it can show a lack of belief in Hashem’s forgiveness (ובוז).
Still, we pasken that one may or should repeat viduy on Yom Kippur.
I would like to suggest that there are two different types of viduy — and two different types of teshuvah.
Commentaries note distinctions in the Rambam’s presentation. In 1:1, the Rambam writes: ועשיתי כך וכך... ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה — detailing the sin and the commitment not to repeat. There’s no mention of repetition. But later, in the Yom Kippur viduy (2:8) — הוידוי שנהגו בו כל ישראל אבל אנחנו חטאנו — there’s no detail, no future commitment, and the Rambam explicitly says it is repeated yearly.
The Rambam also distinguishes between general teshuvah (up to 2:6) and the special teshuvah of Yom Kippur.
Rabbeinu Yonah too notes a separate requirement of teshuvah (2:14, 4:17), and in 4:21 explains that there are two kinds of viduy — one that is repeated and one that is not.
There’s a Medrash Rabbah (Bereishis 22:13) — when Adam saw Kayin alive after his sin, he exclaimed: טוב להודות.
The Yerushalmi (Shavuos 1:5) says that when Moshe saw all the se’irim brought for doubtful sins, he asked what atones for known sins. Hashem replied with the words of Aharon’s Yom Kippur viduy — “והתודה.” Moshe then exclaimed: מזמור לתודה.
The Zohar (quoted in Reishis Chochmah, Ahavah 10:15) also reads מזמור לתודה as a reference to viduy. It says that the next verse — עבדו את ה׳ בשמחה, בואו לפניו ברננה — is fulfilled when one says viduy with his korban. The kohen brings simcha, the levi’im bring renanah. But now, without the Beis HaMikdash, how can a brokenhearted viduy come with simcha and renanah? The Zohar answers: through the praises of Hashem, through Torah and song that accompany viduy.
I would like to suggest that the two perakim in Tehillim referring to viduy correspond to the two types of viduy in the Rambam and Rabbeinu Yonah. One — טוב להודות — expresses teshuvah itself: the mitzvah to confess specific wrongdoing and commit never to repeat it. This viduy is not repeated; the person has changed completely — past, present, and future.
The other — עבדו את ה׳ — belongs to the avodah of Yom Kippur: to verbally say “we have sinned,” even without specific detail or personal feeling, acknowledging that all people sin — אין צדיק בארץ אשר יעשה טוב ולא יחטא. This viduy is repeated each Yom Kippur.
This explains why there can be a repeated viduy for Yom Kippur purposes, even though the teshuvah itself — the deep revelation of the self — should not require repetition.
This is the ultimate teshuvah — the revelation of the pure essence of a person that transcends time, bonding with Hashem like cold welding, up to the כסא הכבוד. It redefines באשר הוא שם — not as a point in time, but as an all-encompassing state.
The Rambam opens the Yad HaChazakah: לידע שיש שם מצוי ראשון. The Kesef Mishneh asks — where is שם? He explains that sometimes שם does not refer to one point, but to the encompassing of all points.
The Malbim even explains באשר הוא שם as referring to Hashem Himself — Hashem being there for salvation.
This is the revelation of the shofar: we are not bound by our material selves, nor defined by sin. Teshuvah allows us to identify with the eternal, timeless spirit within, and to return — body and soul together — in performance of Hashem’s mitzvos.