Day #18–Rambam DAILY Sefer HaMitzvos

and as mentioned yesterday we are studying one Mitzvah in depth for a few days and we also explained the reason for that the way it works is we don't go through the safer Mitzvahs in order what we're doing is we're studying whatever mits has correspond to what's being studied currently in the three chapters a day of mishna Torah and in the three chapters a day of mishita we're studying right now the laws of repentance laws of repentance is in total 10 chapters today is chapter four five and six of it um and it's just one biblical Mitzvah in in the entire uh subject as such we have a unique opportunity to really luxuriate uh to some extent just taking our time looking at different aspects of this one Mitzvah we're not in such a rush like we were in previous days so that being the case I wanted to indulge myself to share a pertinent that means a joke but it's a pertinent joke and should be apparent in just one moment why this is Jermaine the joke is a Helm story that the wise men of Helm convened a meeting to deal with a crisis that apparently someone had been down been down to the local jail house and heard that many of the men being held there complained that they were unjustly accused that they were in fact innocent so the wise men of Helm had this meeting that there are so many men in jail who claimed to be innocent what should we do about this apparent miscarriage of justice so they went back and forth they deliberated and in the end they decided you know what if there are so many innocent men in jail the only sensible solution is this we're gonna have to build a second jail one jail will be for the guilty and the second jail will be for those who are innocent okay that was the calm story joke why am I telling you this um the Mitzvah to confess is to confess whenever one repents for any sin however there's also a very specific application and that is in the context of capital punishment which we're not going to get into depth right now talking about that the the high court and how it administers the death penalty that's a subject we're going to deal with much much later almost to the very end of our yearly cycle when we get to the 14th book of the 14 books of mishita um but suffice it to say there are situations in which the death penalty was carried out historically and before the person would be executed they would be instructed to confess so that they can leave this world with a uh a clean slate so um there's an interesting interesting discussion about the scenario where somebody is unjustly accused where there were false Witnesses or conspiring Witnesses and the person is being executed and they didn't do what they're being executed for so what should they do should they confess confess what they didn't do anything so it's interesting that I'm in Safar Mitzvah says different than how he says in Michigan later in here in safer Mitzvahs the ramam says that you have to look at what the what the verse says when it says I'm talking about uh that's chapter 5 verse 7. it says they should confess their sins I share also that they did the previous verse the verse right before that which is which is chapter 5 verse six it says that uh that this person calls it a soul here but this person was guilty well ashma was guilty that's a source of madrush from the from the sages says that based on those words were to understand that only a guilty person would confess and therefore a person who was convicted of a crime he did not commit would not say that confession and that's what the ramam says here and say vermits was based on the merchanta however interestingly in mishna Tara later on in Sanhedrin meaning in the last book of the 14 books that's chapter 13 law number one that ambam says and this is based on not the mihilta but another source of equal reliability the the talmud the Rama bases himself anagamore inside base 43b where it says that they made it and across the board policy that even the innocent should confess why do they make that policy because when a person is brought out to be executed what what statement what what's the last opportunity he has to make a statement of protest he'll refuse to confess he'll say no I'm an innocent man and guilty people will forego the opportunity to confess which would be good for them spiritually so but they'll insist on not confessing because they want to appear innocent so because of that concern they made it an across the board policy no no everybody confesses yeah yeah we know you're innocent we know you're Innocent but confess nevertheless everybody confesses uh in that context at any rate like I said the Mitzvah to confess is anytime one does Toshiba uh not just in this very very specific and rare extremely rare context but since we have extra time to talk about this Mitzvah I wanted to share that interesting aspect of that Mitzvah with you we'll see you tomorrow for more about the Mitzvah of confession God willing