More Discussions for this daf
1. Walking without Torah 2. Repentance after a Repeated Sin 3. Di Zahav
4. Changing Meizid to Shogeg 5. אביי כדשקיל בישרא מתרי שותפי 6. מחוי רב יהודה
DAF DISCUSSIONS - YOMA 86

jesse rasowsky asked:

in the beraisa on yoma 86b (the eleventh wide line), rabbi yose bar yehudah says that a sin committed four times isn't forgiven. why is that so? shouldn't repentance be just as effective whether you transgress one time or a hundred times? and if the number of times the crime was committed does make a difference, then why is three the critical number?

thanks,

jesse rasowsky, jerusalem, israel

The Kollel replies:

(1)

(a) The Rosh here writes that when the Gemara says that on the fourth time he is not forgiven, this does not mean that he is not forgiven at all, but rather that his atonement becomes more difficult to attain. The Gemara above 86a states that, generally speaking, if one transgressed a positive commandment and did Teshuvah one is forgiven immediately. If one transgressed a negative commandment and did Teshuvah on this, the Teshuvah suspends the forgiveness which is only attained after Yom Kippur. If one transgressed a prohibition for which the punishment is being cutting of from the People or the death penalty at the hands of Beit Din and then did Teshuvah, the Teshuvah and Yom Kippur suspend the forgiveness which is only attained after the person has to undergo suffering.

(b) This only applies if one committed a crime less than 3 times. After 3 times, a positive commandment receives the status of a negative commandment and, in turn, a negative commandment receives the status of a prohibition which carries the punishment of cutting off or the capital penalty. So if someone transgressed a positive commandment 3 times he only is forgiven through both repentance and Yom Kippur, whilst if he did a negative prohibition 3 times he requires Teshuvah, Yom Kippur and suffering to receive forgiveness.

(c) The logic behind this is that some crimes are lighter than others. However if someone does lighter crimes on a regular basis this means he is not taking them seriously and shows that there is an element of rebellion against Hash-m, which is why continued lighter transgressions are considered to be as bad as isolated heavy crimes.

(2) The Ra'avad (in his amendments to the Rambam Hilchos Teshuvah 3:5) has a different and more lenient approach. He explains that even though serious crimes require Teshuvah, Yom ha'Kipurim and suffering to attain forgiveness, this only applies if a person has become accustomed to these transgressions but if he is only at the beginning of sinning, Hash-m has a special mercy upon him and says that Teshuvah alone is sufficient to gain forgiveness even for the serious crimes. Only after the third time are these severe transgressions punished in the full way.

(3) It seems to me that 3 is the critical number because we see generally in Halachah that 3 times create a Chazakah, as we find in the well-known Gemara in Bava Kama that an ox only acquires the status of a goring ox if he did it 3 times, and similarly in many other areas of the Torah. So the first 3 times that someone transgresses this is considered as just a chance isolated occurrence, but after 3 times it is harder for him to get forgiveness because he is already a frequent sinner.

Shavu'a Tov

D. Bloom

The Kollel replies:

1. I am assuming that you are referring in your questions to the way the Rosh learnt the Gemara. No, the teshuva does not set his sin-count back to zero, The proof for this is the Gemara above 86a that if a person transgressed a positive commandment and then repented, he does not leave his place until they have forgiven him. We learn from this that when R. Yosi bar Yehudah said in our Gemara that he is forgiven after the first transgression, this certainly means that he did teshuva. It follows that when he did it the fourth time, which according to the Rosh gives the positive commandment a more severe status of beng equivalent to transgressing a negative command, this is referring to a scenario where he did teshuva meanwhile but nevertheless because of his repeated transgressions, the teshuva does not help entirely, and the positive still get transformed into negative.

[I saw in the Notes of Rav Elyashiv Shlita that he also points out that he did teshuva in between]

2. In my opinion, the weight does not shift a second time. My proof for my argument is that I saw in the Tosefet Yom Hakipurim, by Maharam Chaviv on our sugya, that he writes that the explanation of the Rosh is a big chidush and he does not know where the Rosh got it from. Rav Elyashiv also writes that the Rosh is a chidush. If so, I argue that we can apply a principle that the Gemara states in several places (one of these is in Shavuot 25b, near the bottom of the page) "Ein l'Cha bo Ela Chidusho" - if you say a chidush, then you don't take it further than the original novelty and you should not pile on even more new chidushim onto the old one.

[ However even though the above Mefarshim write that the Rosh is a chidush I think we can offer a source for it. This is from the Ran on the Rif in our chapter (4b in Rif pages end of DH v'Gars') who writes that if one transgresses a negative commandment several times this is not considered as lighter than committing a death penalty once (therefore it is preferable to slaughter a Kosher animal on Shabbat for a dangerously ill person who must eat meat even though one has Treifa meat available because otherwise he will transgress the lighter negative command for every k'zayit). I suggest that the Rosh uses similar logic and maintains that transgressing a positive commandment many times, is just as bad as transgressing a negative one]

3. I also believe that chilul Hash-m is a class by itself. I think that the fact that the Rosh did not mention anything about chilul Hash-m suggests that he is not taking his chidush that far. I would add another principle that we have:- we always try to make life easy for Baalei Teshuva. An example of this is in Shulchan Arukh Orach Chaim 128:35 that if a Cohen killed someone even inadvertently then he is no longer allowed to bless the people. The Rema there comments that if he had done teshuva then one may be lenient and allow him to go up to the "Duchan" in order to be lenient on repenters, because otherwise this may lock the door in front of them and discourage them from doing teshuva. I suggest similarly that if we say that the person who did the heavy crime 4 times gets a din of chilul Hash-m, this ma make him lose hope of ever doing teshuva.

Yeyasher Koach again for your very thoughtful questions

KOL TUV

D. Bloom

The Kollel replies:

Follow up reply:

I asked question (3) - Can repeating a heavy crime three times add on death to the requirements for atonement? - to one of the Gedolim and he answered "Eino Muchrach" - one is not forced to say that the heavy crimes become equivalent to Chilul Hash-m if done 3 times. It may be that it is only Chilul Hash-m that can ever acquire this special status.

D. Bloom