Busha: Distancing Ourselves from the Cheit

Continuing with the words of boshti and in the Rambam's Ika HaVidui, וכן כיצד מתוודה אומר Ana Hashem

חטאתי עויתי פשעתי לפניך ועשיתי כך וכך והרי ניחמתי ובושתי במעשי ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה.

The pesukim that presumably serve as a makor for the Rambam, whether the pasuk in Yirmiyahu of Acharei Shuvi Nichamti, the pesukim speak about boshti v'nichlamti. As Ezra HaSofer, בושתי ונכלמתי להרים אלוקי פני אליך. They speak of boshti. What is adding the word bema'asai contribute? It's certainly unequivocally clear from context without it: חטאתי עויתי פשעתי לפניך עשיתי כך וכך v'harei nichamti v'boshti ולעולם איני חוזר לדבר זה, we wouldn't have missed the word bema'asai if it hadn't been there. So אלא מאי ייתכן לסבור, משל למה הדבר דומה. There are different causes of embarrassment. Let's say you have parents with a little child. A little child ich veis runs into shul in the middle of tekias shofar on Rosh Hashanah and starts singing "the shofar goes toot toot toot." So mistama, the parents are going to be embarrassed. It's cute, but the timing is a little bit off. So the parents are going to be the parents are going to be embarrassed. So what's pshat? They're embarrassed, not that they did something, but there's a sort of there's a little bit of a distance between the source of embarrassment and themselves. Let's say you have someone who's the head of a division, someone who has employees, who has underlings for whom he's responsible, and they do something which causes a big mess in a project that he's ultimately responsible for. So again, there's going to be a sense of embarrassment because there is a responsibility for what happened. The person can't disassociate himself, he can't not assume responsibility, but on the other hand, there is a little bit of a distance between the source of embarrassment and the person. Yitachen that what the mashma'os of boshti bema'asai is, it suggests and in this way is meforesh the pesukim, it suggests that type of distance. Boshti alone might mean if a person, again, continue with the mashal, let's say a person is currently an alcoholic, rachmana litzlan, he's currently a drunkard. So the embarrassment he has is I'm embarrassed at who I am. That's my embarrassment, that's my experience of embarrassment. I'm embarrassed at who I am, at what I am. Let's say a person is a recovered alcoholic, he's a reformed drunkard, he's totally dried out now. So he's embarrassed, he's not embarrassed at who he is, he's not embarrassed at what he is, he's embarrassed at what he used to do. So the Rambam tells us later in Perek Bet

מדרכי התשובה הלכה ד: להיות השב צועק תמיד לפני השם בבכי ובתחנונים ועושה צדקה כפי כחו ומתרחק הרבה מן הדבר שחטא בו ומשנה שמו כלומר שאני אחר ואיני אותו האיש שעשה אותן המעשים.

I'm no longer an alcoholic, I'm no longer a drunkard, I'm a different person than that person. Yitachen that's the pshat of the boshti bema'asai, when a person is coming to say vidui, there has to be he has to have created that distance. Then I'm not ready to be misvadeh yet. If the teshuva has happened, so then the teshuva has to have affected change in the individual. There has to be a bechina of איני אותו האיש שעשה אותן המעשים, so now my embarrassment is not I'm embarrassed at what I am, I'm embarrassed bemaasai and that's the mechuvan in the Rambam.