Teshuvah                         T. Gardner                                      5768

      Rosh Hashanah. The beginning of the year. Tradition has it that the anniversary of the creation of the world is today, the first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei. The month that ended yesterday, Elul, is considered to be a month of reflection. A month of preparation for the “cheshbon nefesh,” the spiritual accounting we do on these awesome and sacred days. It is a time in which we examine both our deeds and our thoughts, the work of our hands and the work of our hearts.

Last year during the month of Elul, I attended Shabbat services at a synagogue to which I only went occasionally. One of the service leaders gave a sermon on teshuvah. The word “teshuvah” is translated in the Oxford Hebrew Dictionary as “repentance.” This service leader said that one of the great things about Judaism is that, once a year, we have an opportunity to do teshuvah. And I thought to myself, ‘What does he mean, once a year?’ 

If you want to talk about the great things about Judaism, surely one of them is that repentance is always available.

Our High Holiday prayerbook, our Machzor, is entitled The Gates of Repentance. The title is taken from a quote from Rabbinic literature. The gates of prayer are sometimes closed, but the gates of repentance are always open.

But what do we mean by the word ‘repentance?’ In Hebrew, the word teshuvah means turning. Teshuvah is translated as repentance because we turn away from our sins. When we turn away from our sins, we turn towards Gd. Other ancient religions of the Middle East also spoke about turning, but not in the same way. Their gods might turn towards you, and they might turn away from you. There was absolutely nothing you could do to affect the turning. Only in Judaism do we turn towards Gd. 

In Catholicism, of course, to repent you must go to a priest and confess. Based on your level of contrition, the priest may assign you penance, and may or may not grant you absolution.

In Judaism, we also have confession. The confession is called the vidui, and we say it at fixed times. We say it once a day during tachanun, a part of the daily morning service that is no longer said in most Reform synagogues. We say it once a year, during the High Holidays. And we say it once in a lifetime, just before death. In each case, we don’t really talk specifically about what we have done wrong. There is a set liturgy, a formula to say.

On the High Holidays we confess in the first person plural, and we confess to a number of things that we may or not have done. אשמנו, בגדנו, גזלנו. We are guilty, we have been faithless, we have robbed...  

We confess as a community, not as individuals. Because of this, no one is humiliated in public, because no one knows what any specific individual has done. But if that is the purpose, why not just confess silently to what we have done? And why confess at all? Does confession lead to repentance?

People seem to be willing to confess the most embarrassing things on T.V. Actors and singers confess their addictions, their infidelities, their error in making anti-semitic or racist remarks. People who are not famous might as well confess in public too, to get their fifteen minutes of fame. That is, after all, the point of that kind of confession. It does not lead to repentance, only to notoriety. And yet, to acknowledge one’s error is a necessary first step on the road to repentance. 

The vidui, the liturgical confession, gives us a chance to remember the sins that we have committed. We may not have taken bribes, we may not have hated without cause, but there is no one here who is not in need of teshuvah. We all say and do things that are hurtful to others. Many of us should give more to charity. We could do more for the environment. We may not always treat everyone we encounter with the full respect due to every human being, made in the image of Gd. But our natural reaction is to make excuses for ourselves. I didn’t give that guy money because he will probably use it to buy drugs. I didn’t look the cashier in the eye because we are both busy. I didn’t take political action because one person can’t make a difference anyway.

Confession strips away the delusion that we have been as good as we can be. We haven’t. And when we say the vidui, while we confess to things we have not done, all of the things we have done come back to us. The need for teshuvah becomes pressing. It might be cathartic to confess individual sins in front of a T.V. audience, but the focus would be on the shame, not on the sin. The vidui gives us a chance to know in our hearts where we have fallen short.

But this is only the first step of teshuvah. Our tradition tells us that we should go to the people against whom we have sinned and ask their forgiveness. It is not enough to send an email to everyone in your address book saying ‘Sorry!’ No sin is too small. No sin is too large. Go to him and confess what you did. He may have forgotten it. He may never have noticed it. It may have been bothering him for months.

In some cases, you cannot apologize. Abraham Joshua Heschel tells a story of Chaim Soloveitchik the rabbi of Brisk, the Brisker Rebbe, on a train traveling from Warsaw back to Brisk. Some men on the train, not realizing who he is, try to get the rabbi to sit in on their card game. When he refuses, they are angered by his attitude, and push and insult him. When they arrive at the town, and the men see the big group assembled to meet the rabbi, they realize who it is they have been insulting. 

The next day one of the men comes to see Rabbi Soloveitchik. The man apologizes abjectly. He had no idea who the rabbi was, he thought he was just an ordinary man. And the rabbi refuses to forgive him. 

The man goes back to him again and again, trying to apologize, but each time the apology is rejected. Finally the man asks the rabbi if it is not true that Jewish tradition insists that sincere apologies must be accepted. “Yes,” says the Rabbi Soloveitchik, “but I cannot accept your apology because your transgression was not against me. Had you known I was the Brisker Rebbe, you never would have insulted me in that way. Your transgression was against the ordinary man you thought I was. You need to apologize to all ordinary people, whom you were so willing to insult.”

This kind of apology is not possible. Nor can we apologize to that man on the side of the road who we passed by, although he held a sign that said ‘Hungry.’ There are many people who, for whatever reason, we cannot contact to make our apology. Jewish tradition also provides for teshuvah in this case.

Whether or not you are able to make confession, whether or not you are able to apologize, teshuvah has a very specific goal. The key is hidden in the meaning of the word itself. 

The secret is that the word “repentance” is not really a good translation for “teshuvah.” We live in a Christian country, and naturally our Judaism is colored by the Christian society in which we live. When we sin, Christianity demands that we must be truly penitent. We must be sorry for what we have done. The word ‘repent’ means to think again. Re-Pent. We thought it was okay to perform a certain action, but now we think again and we realize it is not okay. But Judaism goes further.

Teshuvah, as I metioned before, means “turning.” The ultimate goal of all repentance is to physically turn away from the bad you have done. You can repent in thought alone, but to do teshuvah, you must change your actions. So if you are unable to apologize, after truly trying, you can still do teshuvah by turning away from your sin. Maimonides quotes the Talmud when he says that we never know if our teshuvah is sincere until we have a chance to commit the same sin again, and this time we do not. When given the opportunity to do something wrong, we turn away. We turn away from the sin, and we turn towards Gd.

This brings us to tomorrow’s Torah portion. The Akedah. The binding of Isaac. Much has been made of the fact that Gd tested Abraham. That Isaac went along willingly. Rabbis have argued for centuries about how old Isaac was, whether he knew he was to be sacrificed, what Abraham was thinking. There has been speculation on the identity of the two servants who accompanied them, why Abraham woke up early, and why we read this Torah portion on Rosh Hashanah. 

One answer to the last question might be that this is a story of teshuvah. 

Gd commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham and Isaac travel for three days, bound for the place that Gd will show them. Why did Gd make them travel for three days? Our tradition tells us that it was so no one could say Abraham sacrificed Isaac on the spur of the moment, that he didn’t have time to think it through. Every step that Abraham took for three days was an opportunity to turn aside. Every moment was a moment in which he could have turned from death to life. But he continued in the same direction, step by step. Without pause. Without turning to the left or to the right. Because Abraham could not turn towards life without turning away from Gd.

Abraham and Isaac climb the mountain. The wood is laid out to burn the sacrifice. Isaac, Abraham’s beloved son, is bound, and laid upon the altar. The terrible sacrificial knife is in Abraham’s hand.

It seems as if there is no way to avoid this awful murder. How many crimes occur because the criminals are there, and each thinks “I can’t back out now without looking bad?” How many weddings take place despite misgivings on the part of the bride or the groom, because the clothes have been bought and the invitations have gone out? At a certain point, actions take on a grim inertia of their own. Once you are on top of the roller coaster, there is no place to go but down.

And yet. And yet.

And yet at the last possible moment, the knife is in the hand, the hand is in the air, there is a turning aside! Abraham does not do teshuvah! Gd does teshuvah! Gd turns aside from the course Gd was on, the roller coaster miraculously turns into a smooth track, the valley is exalted and every mountain and hill is made low, the crooked is made straight and the rough places made smooth. (Isaiah 40:4)

When Gd turns aside from His evil action, Abraham is able to turn aside from his. One teshuvah leads to another, which leads to life for Isaac, the love between Isaac and Rebecca, their son Jacob, and the entire history of the Jewish people. All from one act of teshuvah.

   No matter how inevitable an action may seem, even if it is commanded by Gd Himself, teshuvah is always possible. The gates of teshuvah are always open. But at no time is teshuvah more available than now, during the days of awe. Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom Ha-Din, the day of judgement. According to the Talmud, Gd opens the Book of Life on Rosh Hashanah. Gd weighs our good and evil deeds, and then writes what will be in the year to come. This is a metaphor. We are told that we will be judged by the end of Yom Kippur, because the danger is that if the gates of teshuvah are always open, we might very easily put it off. I can always do teshuvah tomorrow, next week, next year. No. The time to do teshuvah is now.

Between this moment and the closing blessings of Yom Kippur, please take time to reflect on your life. Think of something you do that you shouldn’t, something you should do that you don’t, some way to make yourself a better person. And commit yourself to turning. 

Is it that easy? No. Teshuvah is hard work. It is hard work, but it begins with a commitment to turn.

 No matter how far away you have gone, if you turn towards Gd, Gd will turn towards you. You may only be able to take a tiny step towards redemption. Sometimes you cannot even move an inch forward. But you can always turn, turn towards Gd, and Gd will turn towards you.

The beautiful thing about Judaism is that the gates of teshuvah are always open. Our task as Jews, as human beings, is to walk through those gates. Only then will we be worthy of that great act of teshuvah, Gd’s turning to the good, that created us as a people.

I pray that 5769 will be a zissen yor, a sweet year, for all of us. May we find this year eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to turn. Shanah tovah.