Dr. Zadok Krouz
The Confessional Characteristics
The article will discuss the dialogue between the skilled man and God continues with man’s confession. This is the final condition necessary for the meeting to take place. Man confesses because he thinks that to do so will benefit him. He believes that God can forgive him and hopes that, indeed, he will be forgiven. This hope for salvation is a fundamental of faith. The essence of the confession is the faith of the one confessing in God, for otherwise he would not confess before God at all.
Interim Summary
The second condition for the commandment to occur is discussed in two parts:
a. the first part, God’s imperative--"love me," is not yet the acknowledgment of love.
b. the concluding part, the response of the soul "I sinned," for it could not be that one commanded will remain silent. It was necessary that the revelation be in utterance, and what cannot be speech need be linked either before or after it.
In the context of this concluding portion, our discussion commenced on the third condition, that of man confessing his sin at its beginning, which brought the soul the bliss of being beloved. That confession paved the way for the fundamental confession-- "I am a sinner," in which the present tense is used. Only then were the doubts removed, and the soul is certain of the response it will receive from God (Star 213, 211).
Also discussed was the self-influence or internal persuasion that God forgive the soul and return its love, the manner of attaining a successful self-persuasion, which begins with acknowledging the past, which was marked by depression, the absence of love and shame for the sin. The soul then acknowledged the sinfulness in the present, a confession of the love of the soul. In analyzing the concept of the soul according to Rosenzweig, it was found to be comparable to the irrational, as set forth in his letter to Rudolf Ehrenburg. This comparison assisted greatly in explaining the idea of love, the content of the command which constitutes the living, existing and real essence in man, located within his consciousness and sometime becoming even its fixed thought. The explanation was enriched by examples from daily life, examples that emphasized the hidden powers of the soul, i.e. the irrational.
On the basis of these attributes, the concept of the reality of the acknowledgment of the love of the soul was explained. The commentaries of the present was found to be involved in singular realization of the concluding part of the commandment to love, and a completion of the confession. The present time was seen to be the pure act of love as this time proclaims the love as existing and, therefore, only in existing essence can the soul complete its real confession and say, "I know that I am loved (Star 212), in which is embraced the certainty that God loves it.
The shamed soul confesses "I have sinned" in the first phrase in the past tense, in which the love of God is absent. The soul completes its confession with the declaration ‘I am a sinner’ as an acknowledgment in the present, which becomes, in essence, an acknowledgment of love. The reciprocal relationship between the soul, the irrational, and the intellect is explained by the change in the soul, in particular the factors which assisted the soul to say courageously what was in its heart and which gave it absolute confidence in the certainty of the love of God. The circle was closed in man himself, "from its mouth" (Star 212).
Table of Stages of Utterances
The confession contains two phrases of speech, one following the other. The following table shows the conditions of revelation of God to man in the framework of all the stages of the phrases of speech. These stages are the guarantee of the conclusion of the revelation. "But now he must do so. For this it is by which revelation first reaches completion" (Star 214).
These conditions result from the first part of the commandment "love me," and the concluding part presents the response "I have sinned" and "I am a sinner," "for there must be a reply. Obedience to the commandment cannot lie in muteness. It, too, must become audible, must become word. For in the world or revelation, everything becomes word…" (Star 210).
TABLE 2
Acknowledging the Truth or Confessing the Sin
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Order of Utterance
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Expression
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Significance
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First
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"I have sinned" (Star 211)
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Lays foundation for acknowledging love
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Second
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"I am a sinner" (Star 211)
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Acknowledges love
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Third
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"I am yours" (Star 213)
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Acknowledges God
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Fourth
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"I called you by name, you are mine" (Star 214)
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Acknowledges closeness of God
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The First Stage (first utterance)
In this phase, the soul paves the way to the acknowledgment by saying "I have sinned" or "I was a sinner," each phrase referring to past acts. The utterance cleanses the past of the weakness of the past, a past of shame and negative aesthetic experience. The sinner feels abomination for the sin, which, according to Rosenzweig, is the source of disgrace and shame in himself. Abomination mixes with feelings of shame and reproach. The shame appears as a frightful monster and causes him, naturally, to be insecure and meek, unable to speak what is in his heart and doubtful of the answer he will receive (Star 211, 212).
This acknowledgment and the accompanying fear of punishment does not bring him to the second utterance, but brings rather sufferings of feelings of sinfulness and doubt and the absence of certainty and love. The sinful experience fills him entirely with fear of the response God is likely to give, and the more he takes it to heart, the closer he comes to overcoming it by the power of the presence of the response.
He begins to mount the ladder of "reality" for the fourth phrase of the acknowledgment of the sin. However, until his second answer, man is involved only in the demand, "love me" and not with the complete declaration of, "I love you." This declaration will not come, concludes Rosenzweig, for the sake of love’s tie to the moment on which the authenticity of the love of the lover rests. This authenticity would only be debased by acknowledging it, by continuously declaring it. It would be debased, debased to its "bases" for the love of the lover is baseless…(Star 193).
The Second Stage (second utterance)
With the acknowledgment, "I am a sinner," it throws the compulsion of shame far away and gives itself entirely to love. God created in man a self-defense mechanism which permits him to ignore and not recognize facts and flee from reality. Undoubtedly, man knew that he sinned and was faithless to his values. He knows the reason but is unable to speak it openly or to hear it from another. Anybody who speaks will be stabbed. At night, alone, his soul cries in secret, but during the day, with others, he is happy and friendly, and in order to cover up the truth alienated within him, he continues to sin, dashing quickly towards the rim of the abyss…
The acknowledgment requires man to bear the burden of the sin and that which accompanies it and to face it directly while suffering greatly, to recognize the facts as they are, to express clearly the truth as it is. There is in this a sort of sacrifice, a sort of shattering of will, doubt and hesitation by means of the daring and courage of going against nature while suffering the shame of the past sin. Rosenzweig summarizes this movement as a result of the sin. "And teach us, God, to acknowledge before you all our sins" (Neila prayer of Yom Kippur, Siddur 370). That is, to look at the truth, to look straightforwardly, to break the self-defense mechanism, to destroy the artificial barriers, to tear the mask, to finish via the mouth what began in the heart, each "for the purpose of stopping the deceit of our hands" (Neila prayer of Yom Kippur, Siddur 370). And then he states "You will accept us with a perfect repentance before you, as if we were fiery offering aromas, for the sake of your word that you uttered" (Neila prayer of Yom Kippur, Siddur 370).
Just as the sacrifice is burned on the altar, we burn by means of confession our peacefulness and silence, our introversion, our past life. Then, and only then, we reach the third response: "before God you will be cleansed" (Lev. 16:30); then, after such a confessional cleansing, we return circularly to God prior to the sin, the father in heaven, who cleanses insofar as we come to be cleansed.
It is being a past sin, man removes it with his confession; to do that, as shown above, he must overcome his disgrace. Only now, having shaken off the vulnerability of the past but still acknowledging that he is a sinner, the disgrace is removed. In daring to make his acknowledgment contemporary, he indicates that he has overcome the shame. Doubt falls away and he is certain, being confident of God’s love, of the answer he will receive. Hermann Cohen, whose writings Rosenzweig read and studied, writes on the matter of transgression and forgiveness: on this certainty of repentance, the Talmud says superbly: "if you saw a brilliant student commit a transgression at night, don’t think ill of him during the day, for perhaps he repented." This confidence requires no proofs, for it is the one absolute truth that exits "its mouth" (Star 212).
The transformation from acknowledging the past sin to the acknowledgment of the certain and absolute love of God is not intellectual. Man’s intellect was not involved; rather, the incident occurred principally in the domains of feeling, the irrational, the instinctive, faith and the experiential. Even the soul’s knowledge that God loves it, "I know that I am beloved" (Star 212), has its origin in the irrational and not in the intellect. Each act acknowledging the sin resulted from the confession of the present sinfulness that removes the negative aesthetic accompanying the sin.
Therefore, Rosenzweig says that the acknowledgment of the present sinfulness again is not an acknowledgment of the sin-- which became past as the sin itself which was acknowledged, nor is it even an acknowledgment of the love-void of the past; rather "I am a sinner" means that even in this present moment man is as far from God [" I am far from loving" (Star 212)] as God is near to man ["I know that I am beloved" (Star 212)] or, in other words, that the soul’s love of God is distant in the same degree that the soul knows it is loved by God. At this stage, then, the soul has yet to acknowledge God or even God’s closeness. The soul at this point is "far from loving," yet knows well that God loves it. The soul lacks, at the stage of acknowledging the love, the knowing and feeling, the experiential acknowledgment relating to God’s being. But it’s internal knowledge of its relation to God is absolute and certain because it knows that, "I know that I am loved (by God) (though) I am far from loving (God)" (Star 212).
The statement that "I am loved" is made in place of the utterance, "I am a sinner," which explains why, according to Rosenzweig, the sin was perceived as no longer existing. "I am a sinner" transfers itself totally to love because only in the response given in the acknowledgment of the love, does man recognize in that degree the kindness of God, revealed to him with enormous force, by means of which he attains devotion. By sayig. "I have sinned" in the past while suffering the pains of shame, while being uncertain of God’s response, and in recognition of the degradation of his shame and the ascendance of God, man observes God’s kindnesses in the looking glass of creation (Star 212).
Because man’s soul is raised in the present to this greater love because of the sin, God judges man with great kindness and favor, as if he did not sin at all. Therefore, we shall call the confession by the special name of the acknowledgment of love, which is on higher level since it brings the individual also to acknowledge god and his closeness to God. Therefore, "where those who return and repent are standing, totally righteous men do not stand, for only one who repents knows well the mercy of the love of God."[iv] But there are sins which, even after man repented or made the past sin into a current sin, do not merit God’s acceptance. For example, the transgression of desecrating God’s name which causes others to sin, whose punishment, repentance and the day of Yom Kippur, itself, do not have the power to suspend. And sufferings do not cleanse; only death cleanses. Only by "abolishing" the evil is the desecration of God removed. For if there remains in the world even a recollection of sin by the existence of blasphemy, the blasphemy continues to be present; therefore, God does not accept the repentance, and only by death is the desecration corrected. Death is part of the correction. Following repentance and Yom Kippur and sufferings, and only after these, does God totally complete the adjustment and permit man to be joined again with God. Rosenzweig writes: "Man dies his way into the over and is resurrected in him" (Star 197).
The Third Stage (third utterance)
Only when the soul confesses directly to God, "I am yours" (Star 213), does it admit and testify to the existence of God, and God the revealed acquires being. "If you are my witness, I am God" (Star 213). This is the apex of the acknowledgment of the soul itself to God. This acknowledgment exceeds previous acknowledgments; by acknowledging God, that which is missing in man is made whole. God’s love of the soul is not distant. The soul proclaims, "I am yours," I am close to loving God. This statement can be groundlessly: "the soul speaks it purely out of the living overflow of its blissful moment" (Star 214); any explanation will only damage the enormous and powerful force of the internal, pure faith experience that "my beloved, God, is truly God" (Star 213).
This stage is carved from the element of faith internal to man. This religious belief says that in spite of man being soiled and spoiled by the sin of the past, and that despite the lack of confidence and the doubt which gnaws away at the good that remains, he can, via powers within him alone, rise and exit the hopeless state he is in.
With the power of the present and the acknowledgment of the internal, experiential faith in him, man feels and knows that although all the doors are closed before him, there exists somewhere a narrow and secret path which winds and turns and twists between the mountains, one which goes up and down backwards and forewords. If he walks along this path, he will arrive at total devotion, having the certainty that nobody can stop him. If he wants to walk along public ways, "in the community of the praying,"[vi] on his way to confession and not "in the community of single persons," he will immediately be blocked -- who are you and what do you want here?
The high- road is closed before the man who sins. The angels of mercy do not let him pass, for no one can come to the gate of the King dressed in a sackcloth of sins and transgressions. But if the high-road is closed, he can pass along the hidden paths of the jungle. The road whereby he reaches the goal is not a public way, but the singular road of "the community of single persons," with each man and his path: "And God lifts up his countenance to this united and lonely pleading of men in their shrouds, men beyond the grave, of a community of souls…And the individual upon whom God shines his countenance rejoices and proclaims seven times: ‘God is the Almighty’!" (Star 349).
"I know that I am loved" is completed by the acknowledgment of the soul "I am yours" I am close to love. Thus, the soul admits that its being is in love and that it gives trustworthy testimony that God exists. Just as man feels and knows that another path remains available for him, so, too, must he believe that in the depths of his heart, there yet remains among the pile of cinders one burning ember, one spark, and from this single spark it is possible to start a fire anew.
Herein lies the dialectic of the response’s process. The acknowledgment of love has only one content--faith. The response in the present says that the forces in man permit him to vault from the feeling of sin which lowers him unrelentingly into another feeling, that of "I am yours" (Star 213). "Yesterday I was without love in shame and doubt… and today I am loved and certain"; between yesterday and today there is one moment, one jump. This jump is at the foundation of the sacrifice, which is the central part of the Yom Kippur service. "When a Jew brings the sacrifice, in what is he atoned? Can it be the two shekels of the lamb or ox? Of course not! The atonement comes to him in the confession of identifying his sin with the sacrifice. This confession is self-nullification and self-destruction, total submission, self-sacrifice of his entire being and of that which he possesses… as of he were sacrificed on the altar." Rosenzweig writes: "The pre-esthetic Whole must sacrifice itself for the sake of esthetic inspiritedness….when that human wholeness foregoes itself in favor of a something which it itself does not consider to have proceeded from within it…" (Star 222, 223). "But as artist it must sacrifice itself to them…" (Star 224). As a sacrifice on the altar, man sacrifices himself and when the sacrifice rises in fire, another man arises--the soul born in the arms of the beloved.
The polarity of the soul of man is now disclosed. The faith, in its experiential content, proclaims "him whom I have recognized as the lover in experiencing my being loved ("I know that I am loved") - ‘he is’." Now I am close to loving him because he, at his time is real --"he is" (Star 212, 213). And only with this certainty does the faith based on the experience find its rest.
The beloved soul knows God loves it, that he is truly God, and that he is the God of truth just as the beloved knows to believe that its beloved is not only the man who loved it but also he really and truly exists. This faith of the beloved is what makes him "properly man." The faith that "I know I am loved" and the faith in the love of God arouses the soul to speak. The first faith establishes the real, concrete being of all the senses. Only with this faith, this confession before God, can the soul testify to the being of God by that which he possesses: revealed divinity (Star 213, 212).
The Fourth Stage (the fourth utterance)
Now that God has acquired the being of God, revealed without dependence on a hidden being, He, too, can confess without endangering the pure presence of the experience. The entire experience of speech at this stage is in the open.
However, God cannot confess until He is revealed. When the soul acknowledges "I am yours," God can then acknowledge it. "Return to me and I shall return to you, said God." This verse from Malachi 3:7 reinforces Rosenzweig’s statement: "he (God) must be acknowledged" (Star 213, 214). Thus, even after man’s response--and though God indicated that was, indeed, "to me"--it remains necessary that He "return to you," that God complete his answer.
Had there not been a rapprochement on God’s part, man would still have been far from devotion to God, and the answer would have remained incomplete. Rosenzweig explains that only with the answer of God did the revelation occur. For the revelation, existing in the present to the One, is a vision of the creation of the past. If God’s answer had not taken place, the One could not see the creation of the past in the looking-glass of revelation in the present. "The creation that becomes visible in revelation is creation of the revelation." The idea that the meeting is a demonstration of creation, that the creation is seen through the power of the meeting, was already emphasized by Rabbi Yehuda Halevi in the Kuzari (1:13). The difference is in the manner of explaining the demonstration. According to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, it is public, whereas Rosenzweig views it as individualistic.
Were it not for the fourth utterance, the soul would have remained in a situation whereby there was only a one-sided acknowledgment of the divinity and not the ensuing acknowledgment of the closeness of a sensed, revealed God. Therefore, with the confession of the soul that "I am yours," God answers only by "I called you by name, you are mine." God does not answer with the similar, simple formulation of "You are mine"; he first raises the past (the creation of the past) and sets himself "[the existing revelation" (Star 214)] as the founder and initiator of the dialogue in the form of the imperative "I and You." Only in the imperative can God be revealed to man.
Therefore, in paralleling the past and the present, Rosenzweig maintains that in God’s response there is more than simple dialogue, but that the dialogue stands in relationship to the creation in the past, it "posits a relationship into the world of things" (Star 215). He grounds his present in the past but does not explain thereby the past. He simply sees the past in the light of the present, and requests for himself the status of the present in the world and not just within himself.
"You are mine" means that the lover is aware of having begotten the beloved in his love and given birth to her in travail. That is, from ‘distant I am from loving’ was born a new love, the love of the soul by God. This love was born on the basis of the knowledge or the faith that the soul knows that God loves it. Now he knows himself as the creator of the love, of the soul’s love that was missing in the second utterance.
With the consciousness that "I am close to loving" (Star 214), he enfolds her and envelops her with his love in the world -- "you are mine." "Now the soul is closer to loving, since it is close to God, which is the essence of the acknowledgment of the nearness of God. The "you are mine" that is spoken to it draws a protective circle about its steps" (Star 215).
God completes his answer and cleanses the heart of man totally from any doubt: "A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you" (Ezek. 36:26). Thus, the soul becomes a part of the world, an integral part of the creation as looking-glass of revelation. And only from this looking-glass to its presence is there real status in the world. For that which is grounded in the past is, in its presentness too, a visible reality, and not merely internal. Therefore, the soul "can roam the world with eyes open and without dreaming. Now and forever more it will remain in God’s proximity" (Star 215).
"Now it knows: it need but stretch out its right hand in order to feel God’s right hand coming to meet it." God gave the power of this absolute certainty in His utterance grounded in the past "you are mine," and its faith came to rest (Star 215).
The first element, then, in repentance ("I have sinned") is the courage to acknowledge the sin of the past, even though such an acknowledgment is insufficient. In order to attain complete repentance, one must accept the sin as a present transgression ["I am a sinner" (Star 211)], thereby overcoming the shame of the sin by admitting that one remains a sinner, but at the same time removing the shame.
The role of present sin in repentance is, on the one hand, a declaration that the current sinfulness is not again acknowledgment of the sin that became past like the sin itself on which it confessed. The present sinfulness is not an acknowledgment of the absence of love in the past but, the soul proclaims, even at this moment God’s love of the soul is distant in the same degree that the soul knows that God loves it. God judges man according to the moment, as with Ishmael: when Hager cast him under one of the bushes, it is written "for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is." Rashi comments: "according to deeds the he does now he will be judged, and not according to what he will do in the future. As if the angels, prosecuting, state: Almighty, he whose descendants will kill your sons, like for one who is thirsty, you raise him a well? And he responds: Now what is he--righteous or evil? They said to him: Righteous. He said to them: According to his current deeds I judge him, and that is ‘where he is’. (Gen. 21:17) Rosenzweig states: "It is certain of God’s love in the very moment that shame withdraws from it and it surrenders itself in free, present admission - as certain as if God…" (Star 212).
The repentance of the soul is nourished by the acknowledgment of love, but acknowledgment of God is missing. The acknowledgment of love is the foundation of the experiential belief of the certainty of the knowledge that it is loved. The answer of the soul "I am yours," fills the space created in the relationship to God. "I am yours" suggests that not only does the soul know that God loves it, but that it is close to loving Him. The soul now knows God as a lover--"He is" revealed, for "God, my beloved is truly God."
However, the response is not completed without acknowledgment of the closeness of the sensed, revealed God. Following the soul’s confession to the revealed God, God can respond, "I called you by name, you are mine." This response testifies to a double relationship. I called you by name within the past creation; "you are mine" is revealed in the present. Thus, God wants to position man in the world and not only within himself; God has begotten the beloved in His love. The beloved who was distant is born not only in the consciousness of man but in His real perception. Thus, the soul knows that henceforth it need but stretch out its right hand in order to feel God’s right hand coming to meet it. With this utter certainty, its faith came to rest.[vii]
LIST OF SOURCE MATERIAL ABBREVIATIONS
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Yehuda ben Shmuel HaLevi. Sefer HaKuzari [The Book of the Kuzari]. Jerusalem: Zifroni P, 1961.
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Kuzari
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Siddur Imrei Ephraim [Prayer Book Imrei Ephraim]. New York: Mesorah Publication, 1985.
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Siddur
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Rosenzweig, Franz. The Star of Redemption. 2d ed. Trans. William W. Hallo. New York: U of Notre Dame P, 1985.
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Star
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1 Talmud, Tractate Berachot 19. Cohen, Dat H’Tvuna M’Mkorot H’Yehadot. [Religion of Understanding from the Sources of Judaism], 259.
2 See below Chapter Three: The History of the Orientation, and "The Power of the Orientation".
3 See below Chapter Three: The History of the Orientation, and "The Power of the Orientation".
4 Talmud, Tractate Berachot,34B
5 See Rashi, Talmud, Tractate Yoma, 89A
6 See Cohen, Hermann, "Transgression and Forgiveness" Religion of Understanding from the Sources of Judaism, 253-254; "… it was decided that the confession would be spoken, in the company of those praying."
7 Compare Cohen, Religion of Understanding, 259. See also, the Talmud, Tractate Berachot, 19A, on the matter of complete certainty.