Reply To: The requirement for everyone to give Tochachah

Avram,

The reason one doesn’t give tochacha if there’s no chance the person will correct their behavior, is because if he won’t correct it anyway then by not giving tochacha he may be a shogeg rather than a meizid if you tell him he is committing a wrongdoing. (But if there’s a chance, even less than likely, he’ll correct himself then we do give him the tochahca even if the risk is more likely he’ll become a meizid.)

Given that, in your example it would seem one should still give him public tochacha (after the private tochacha failed) since at that point he is certainly a meizid even without further tochacha.

That being said, I could hear a reasonable argument the other way (against my point) to not give it publicly in your example if it truly was absolutely certain it would not help (i.e. not even a 1% chance). But I think my point is far more compelling because of a) what the reason for not giving tochacha is and b) the seforim doesn’t specify an exception to not giving the public tochacha once the private tochacha failed (whereas the seforim do specify the exception to the private tochacha in the aforementioned condition) and c) even if there’s no chance of him correcting himself, it may still be appropriate to embarrass a public intentional wrongdoer who refuses to correct his behavior after having been privately advised. (I offhand seem to recall point c explicitly being cited in seforim.)