Repentance: never too early?

Here’s a thought for Shabbat Bereshit.

Some mishnayot in Avot are discussed only on account of what they say. Others offer an extra dimension for discussion on account of the way they say it. One such mishnah is this teaching by Rabbi Eliezer (Avot 2:15):

יְהִי כְבוֹד חֲבֵרָךְ חָבִיב עָלֶֽיךָ כְּשֶׁלָּךְ, וְאַל תְּהִי נֽוֹחַ לִכְעוֹס. וְשׁוּב יוֹם אֶחָד לִפְנֵי מִיתָתָךְ. וֶהֱוֵי מִתְחַמֵּם כְּנֶֽגֶד אוֹרָן שֶׁל חֲכָמִים, וֶהֱוֵי זָהִיר בְּגַחֲלָתָן שֶׁלֹּא תִכָּוֶה, שֶׁנְּשִׁיכָתָן נְשִׁיכַת שׁוּעָל, וַעֲקִיצָתָן עֲקִיצַת עַקְרָב, וּלְחִישָׁתָן לְחִישַׁת שָׂרָף, וְכָל דִּבְרֵיהֶם כְּגַחֲלֵי אֵשׁ

[Translation] Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own, and don’t be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. Warm yourself by the fire of the sages, but beware in case you get burned by its embers; for their bite is the bite of a fox, their sting is the sting of a scorpion, their hiss is the hiss a serpent, and all their words are like fiery coals.

This mishnah is introduced by a statement that Rabbi Eliezer and the four rabbis whose mishnayot come after his own each taught three things. However, if you count them, you will see that there appear to be not three things but four. Leaving aside the frivolous suggestion that the Tannaim couldn’t count and the unprovable hypothesis that an extra teaching was added to the other three after the original mishnah was composed, the statement that R’ Eliezer teaches just three things screams out for a plausible explanation.

Many rabbis have solved this problem by linking two of the four together as a single item of guidance. Perhaps the most popular combination is that which binds “Let the honour of your friend be as precious to you as your own” to “Don’t be easy to anger”. This is quite reasonable. The two axioms are next to each other and they fit in terms of content: if you are quick to get angry with someone, you are not exactly treating their kavod, their honour and sense of self-respect, as you would your own.

The Maggid of Kozhnitz, in his Avot Yisrael, offers another possibility. He yokes “Don’t be easy to anger” with “Repent one day before your death”. In doing so he invokes a teaching of R’ Levi of Berditchev that, if a person wants to lose his temper with someone else, he should do his repentance first because the day one loses one’s temper with another is like the day of one’s death. Comparison of an angry person with a dead one is made explicitly in the Zohar: as with death, so with anger, one’s soul departs as it were from one’s body.

In practical terms, the Avot Yisrael advises us to stop, think, do perform a vidui (“confession”) and then repent before whipping oneself up into a rage. The promise is that, if you seriously follow this procedure, you won’t get angry at all. Though Avot Yisrael does not add this, we note that he is advocating a practical regime for suppressing his inclination to get angry which is compliant with Ben Zoma’s apothegm at Avot 4:1 that we call a person “strong” not because he conquers cities but because he can curb his own yetzer, his inclination to do wrong.

What does this discussion connect with Parashat Bereshit, the biblical account of the Creation and of God’s subsequent evaluation of the creation of humankind?

We learn that teshuvah, repentance, is no mere afterthought.  According to Pirkei d ’R’ Eliezer, teshuvah was created even before the Seven Days of Creation. One can take this literally, of course, but it is more meaningful to take it as a warning to us all that we should stop for a moment before we act, and take stock of our intended actions. Are we about to do something that we might (or certainly will) regret and come to repent, or are we doing something that our consciences can comfortably live with?

When we read parashat Bereshit we see various aspects of teshuvah. Adam and Chava sin but do not repent. They are punished severely. Cain sins and, while he does not formally repent, when he says that his punishment is more than he can bear, there is arguably a sign of charatah, regret, in the implication that, had Cain known the severity of his punishment, he would not have killed his brother.  Later it is God who repents, as it were, for having created humankind: though on one level He in his omniscience would have known that we found fail to exercise properly the gift of bechirah (free will) He gave us, by expressing both His disappointment of us and His preparedness to tolerate us despite our faults, He teaches us that, along with teshuvah, the world we live in is sustained by forgiveness and forbearance. We would do well to emulate His example.