Musar על ברכות 68:22

The seventh: "He will again have mercy on us" - behold, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not follow the trait of flesh and blood. [That trait is that] if [someone] angers him - if he is appeased from him, he is a little appeased, [but] not like the previous love [he had for him]. But if a person sinned [to God] and he repents, his stature is greater with the Holy One, blessed be He, [than before]. And this is [the meaning of] "In the place that penitents stand, [even] completely righteous ones cannot stand" (Berakhot 34b). And the reason is like they explained in the chapter [entitled] HaBoneh (it is in Menachot 29b in our texts) regarding why [the letter,] hey is made like a portico: "Such that the one that wants to exit from his world [may] exit." The explanation is that the world was created with a hey. And the Holy One, blessed be He, created the world widely open to the side of evil and sin. There is no side that does not have physicality, the evil impulse and defect - like a type of portico. It does not have fences but rather has a large breach, open towards the side of evil, to the bottom side. How many openings are there for anyone who wants to exit from his world - he cannot turn to a side that he will not find a side of sin and iniquity to go out to the external forces (chitsonim)! But it is [also] open from above; so that if he repents, he will be accepted. And they asked, "Let him be taken back through [the bottom]!" [They answered,] "the matter will not help." They [meant] with this that one who repents will not suffice to be fenced from iniquity [with a fence] like the fence of the righteous ones, since they has did not sin - a small fence suffices for them. However a small fence will not suffice for the sinner that sinned and repented. Rather, he needs to fence himself with several difficult fences, since he already breached the small fence once. If he approaches there, his impulse seduces him easily. Rather he needs to distance himself with a very great distancing. And for this [reason], he does not enter through the opening of the portico, where the breach is there. Rather, he ascends and enters through the small opening, [such that] he makes several difficulties and mortifications for himself and [thereby] closes the breaches.

And, likewise, one who is accustomed to eat unkosher meat or to feed it to a Jew. And this is intimated in the Torah, it being written (Shemoth 23:1): "And men of holiness shall you be to Me, and flesh torn in the field you shall not eat. To the dog shall you throw it," after which it is written (Ibid. 23:1): "You shall not spread a false report." It emerges, then, that the verse of "To the dog shall you throw it" is found between these two sins — eating treifah [torn flesh] and speaking lashon hara, to teach us that for these two sins, a man may be reincarnated as a dog. And this is what King David, may peace be upon him, intimated in (Psalms 22:21): "Rescue from the sword, my soul; [rescue] from the dog, my soul," followed by "I will speak Your name to my brothers, etc." That is, I do not use my tongue to speak lashon hara, to be punished therefor by this dreadful reincarnation, but I use it to praise You and to exhort Israel, that they should fear You and praise You. And know that the Kabbalists have said that even though when a man is reincarnated in the form of another man he is unaware of his prior state, still when he is reincarnated as an animal or as a bird, he is aware of his prior state and suffers terribly at having descended from heaven from the form of a man to the form of a beast. Therefore, every man should fear and tremble and be soft of heart while he yet lives, while he yet has free will and knows his G-d, so that He forgives his sins and removes His wrath from him. And when his soul leaves him he will rest in peace and repose in His shade in Gan Eden. For He is gracious and merciful and abundant in lovingkindness. And (Berachoth 34b): "In the place where penitents stand, absolute Tzaddikim cannot stand." Until here, the words of the Sefer Charedim, in short.

As to what our Sages, of blessed memory, said (Berakhot 34b), “In the place⁴⁶See Meyer Waxman A History of Jewish Literature (New York: Bloch, 1933) Vol. 2, pp. 278-279 for an analysis of our author’s unique treatment of this passage. where the repentant stand, the completely righteous cannot stand,” they said the truth. For obviously, the righteous men and the intermediate ones have each one a lofty place near the Creator, blessed be He. Therefore, our Sages, of blessed memory, said that in the place where the repentant ones are, the righteous do not stand: they meant that their place was not among the repentant ones but in another place. There is still another meaning, namely, that the Creator will do for the sake of the penitents more than He will do for the sake of the righteous, just as He did for the sake of the people of Nineveh, and as He did for the sake of Ahab with whom he was extremely patient, and all this that the Creator might show the wicked His love for the repentant ones. This is an illustration of His hand being outstretched to the repentant ones in order that they should repent of their evil, and for this reason He will at times do miracles for the penitents such as He would not do for the righteous. This is not because the virtue of the repentant ones is as great as the virtue of the righteous, but because in the case of the repentant ones, if the Creator does not receive them and does not show His love for him, they will return at once to their evil ways. But as for the righteous man, because the Creator knows his heart, He does not reveal His love to him, for the Creator knows the integrity of his heart, and that the righteous man will not blaspheme God or be wrathful because he quarrels with His judgments. A parable on this theme would be a king who has two servants, one faithful and the second a flatterer, and the flatterer angered the king and did all sorts of evil things to him, all the evil that he could, and the king was wrathful with him and cast him out from his presence. Thereafter, the flatterer returned to seek the good will of the king, and he fell at his feet, and the king had pity upon him and received him. One day the faithful servant made a request of the king, and the flatterer made a different request of him, and the king ordered that the request of the flatterer be granted, and did not grant the request of the faithful servant because he knew the honest heart of his faithful servant, and he knew that his faithful servant would not consider the refused request as an evil thing, and that the faithful servant would not reproach himself for being faithful. As for the flatterer, the king knew that if he did not grant his request, the flatterer would return to his original evil and consider the king’s refusal wicked, and in the evil of his heart he would repent that he had served his king, and he would say to his companions, “It is not fitting to serve a king such as this, for I requested of him a simple thing and he did not grant it. How then can any man trust him?” This is the way of the Creator with repentant ones. Here is another interpretation, and it is the right one. There are repentant people whose hearts are as honest as those of the righteous and those who are called righteous. In the beginning, they were perfectly righteous, and they erred, or it happened that they sinned, their evil inclination was stronger than their good inclination. After this, they returned to their original righteousness. Their righteousness and their service to God were doubled because of their desire to atone for their sin which they had done, and these are more honored ones than the righteous, for their righteousness is double that of the righteous who never sinned. Of these one can say, “In the place where the repentant stand, the completely righteous cannot stand.”

The general rule of the matter is that a man should repent of all bad qualities, and one who does repent his evil qualities needs very great strengthening, for when a man is already used to them it is very difficult for him to abandon them, and on this subject it is said, "Let the wicked forsake his way and the man of iniquity his thoughts" (Is. 55:7). And let not a man who is truly repentant think that he is far away from the status of the righteous because of the sins and the wrongs which he has committed. It is not so, for he is as beloved and dear before the Creator, Blessed be He, as though he had never sinned. Not only this, but his reward is great, for he has tasted the taste of sin, and yet abandoned it and conquered his evil inclination. Our Sages said, "In the place where penitents stand, even the wholly righteous cannot stand" (Berakoth 34b), that is to say, their status is even higher than that of those who never sinned, for they subdue the evil inclination more than the others. All of the prophets without exception commanded us concerning repentance (ibid.), and it is only through repentance that Israel is redeemed (see Yoma 86b, Sanh. 97b). And the Torah has already assured us that Israel will ultimately repent at the end of their exile, and they will immediately be redeemed. As it is said, "And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee, the blessings and the curse which I have set before thee and thou shalt bethink thyself… and shalt return unto the Lord thy God… that then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the peoples" (Deut. 30:1—3).

We can now understand Rashi's comment on the first verse in our פרשה that the Torah evidently speaks of a מלחמת רשות, an expansionary war. The Torah had already stated that in the wars fought to conquer ארץ ישראל no prisoners must be taken. It says: לא תחיה כל נשמה, "You must not allow anyone to survive" (20,16). In Sotah 35b, however, Rashi derives the permission to take Canaanite prisoners from the fact that the Torah must speak about an expansionary war and the prisoner in question is a Canaanite who had been resident outside the boundaries of ארץ ישראל to whom the commandment: "Do not allow a soul to survive" does not apply. Rashi purports to quote the Sifri on our verse: Should it occur to you that this verse speaks about a campaign involving the capture of ארץ ישראל, this is impossible since we must not take any prisoners from the inhabitants of ארץ ישראל. Therefore the reason for this verse is only to permit you to keep a Canaanite prisoner of war captured in another country. [The wording of Sifri as printed in our editions (Malbim) is different from Rashi. Ed.] Let us now consider the implications of the above comments on the allegorical explanation of the passage. We would say that though the Torah wages war against the evil urge it does not envisage total annihilation of the evil urge, but rather the Torah suggests that it must be controlled, i.e. be taken captive. Utter destruction of the evil urge would result in utter destruction of mankind; there would no longer be an urge to indulge in union with one's wife and begetting children. The evil urge in all its facets including the sexual urge is to be indulged only minimally under controlled conditions. The Torah's description of the feeling of fondness entertained by the captor for his captive, i.e. וחשקת בה, is a metaphor for the positive feelings we often entertain for the evil urge. The message the Torah has for us is that as soon as we experience such feelings of attraction towards anything sinful we must suppress the evil urge by making it appear as despicable as per the examples in our passage which are designed to make the sexually attractive prisoner lose her allure.This is the advantage of the repentant sinners of whom our sages in Berachot 34b state that their moral/ethical plateau cannot be equaled even by the perfectly righteous who have nothing to repent of. The repentant sinner is at an advantage over the perfectly righteous because he has trained himself to resist temptation when it assails him. The totally righteous person, who has never been tempted has not yet learned that he has to "stand" aside lest temptation may overcome him. I have elaborated on this whole subject in the appropriate chapter of my treatise עשרה מאמרות.