Boshti Me’Ma’asai

The Rambam's core essential Nusach of Vidui

אומר אנא השם חטאתי עויתי פשעתי לפניך ועשיתי כך וכך והרי ניחמתי ובושתי במעשי ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה. זהו עיקרו של וידוי.

In the beginning of Perek Bais when the Rambam is first talking about Vidui but he's talking about Teshuva, Halacha Bais:

ומה היא התשובה הוא שיעזוב החוטא חטאו ויסירו ממחשבתו ויגמור בלבו שלא יעשהו עוד שנאמר יעזוב רשע דרכו ואיש און מחשבותיו וכן יתנחם על שעבר שנאמר כי אחרי שובי ניחמתי ואחרי הודעי ספקתי על ירך ויעיד עליו יודע תעלומות שלא ישוב לזה החטא לעולם.

So not surprisingly, basically what the Vidui does is it mirrors the Teshuva. It articulates the Teshuva. Yitnachem al she'avar, the person says nichamti. And the resolve shelo ya'aseh and ויגמור בלבו שלא יעשהו עוד is ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה. The one element which you have in the Vidui which isn't mirroring the Teshuva process that the Rambam describes is the boshiti. The Rambam doesn't describe that as part of the Teshuva, the person is mitbayesh. So l'chora, the simple Pshat is as follows. משל למה הדבר דומה: let's say you have a newly licensed teenager and his parents give him the car and they tell him with certain stipulations that he has to be home by 11:00 at night, that he can't be playing the radio while he's driving because he's a new driver, can't have a car full of friends. And then he goes and he ignores all those guidelines and he totals the car. He totals the car. So what does he feel? So he feels unbelievable remorse at what he did. And he certainly has learned his lesson and he's not going to do it again. When he has to then go home and face his parents, that's when he feels the Busha. He doesn't feel the Busha when he's just thinking about the self-destructive behavior. He feels the remorse, he's inspired to the resolve about the future, but the Busha, the embarrassment, is when he then has to look his parents in the eye and tell them "I went against everything you told me and this is what resulted." So that's the Pshat that the Rambam mentions the Busha davka in the Vidui, not in the description of the Teshuva. The Teshuva is the analog to again the person's thoughts and emotions and reactions after he totals the car. And the Vidui is the analog to standing in front of his parents and owning up to what happened. The Rav calls attention to the Rambam's phrase חייב להתוודות לפני האל ברוך הוא, that when a person is mitvadey he has to have this same sense and awareness that a person is supposed to have at the time of Tefila of standing in the presence of Hakadosh Baruch Hu, speaking to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that's the same sense that the person has in the Vidui and that's why now is that's what triggers the Busha. Just one last comment on the boshiti. The idiom that the Rambam has here in the context of the Vidui is boshiti be'maasai. He uses the prepositional beis. Later in Perek Zayin, Halacha Ches, the Rambam writes

בעלי תשובה דרכם להיות שפלים וענוים ביותר אם חרפו אותם הכסילים במעשיהם הראשונים ואמרו להם אמש היית עושה כך וכך ואמש היית אומר כך וכך אל ירגישו להם.

They don't react, they don't respond,

אלא שומעין ושמחין ויודעין שזו זכות להם ושכל זמן שהם בושין ממעשיהם שעברו ונכלמין מהן זכותן מרובה ומעלתם מתגדלת.

So here the idiom of the Rambam is with the prepositional mem, not the beis. Not that they're boshin be'maaseihem but they're boshin mi'maaseihem. What's the difference? I do not know. I don't know, but maybe the following. The broader context in Perek Zayin as the Rav explains, Perek Zayin the Rambam first depicts Teshuva mei'ahava. That's where the Rambam first introduces it in Hilchos Teshuva. Teshuva mei'ahava we know... is that זדונות נעשות לו כזכויות, that not only are they downgraded to shgagos, but better, far more than that, it's na'asos k'zchuyos, meaning that the person is now drawing something from his ma'asim, right? It's not only that he's successfully doing teshuva, but there's actually something that he's now retroactively gaining and drawing from the ma'asim. Maybe that's hinted at in the difference between the beis and the mem. When a person—the stam ikkar haviduy doesn't assume, realistically, doesn't assume that a person's doing teshuva me'ahava. So what a person says is boshti b'ma'asai. Again, I'm embarrassed at my actions. The embarrassment from my actions is the embarrassment which is something which is uplifting. That's something which the person is at this stage—it's again, it's something uplifting, it's something that he's drawing from. Here the idiom becomes boshti mi'ma'asai.