{"id":42185,"date":"2023-09-01T01:29:53","date_gmt":"2023-09-01T08:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=42185"},"modified":"2023-08-30T09:54:29","modified_gmt":"2023-08-30T16:54:29","slug":"teshuvah-a-guide-to-repentance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2023\/09\/01\/teshuvah-a-guide-to-repentance\/","title":{"rendered":"Teshuvah: a guide to repentance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com\/photos\/gsankary<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote, is a wake-up call for the soul. Its message: \u201cArise from your slumber! Search your ways and return in teshuvah and remember your Creator!\u201d<\/p>\n

Teshuvah is the central theme of the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, known collectively as the Ten Days of Teshuvah. Typically, teshuvah is translated from the Hebrew as repentance, but it literally means return, as if turning back to something you\u2019ve strayed or looked away from. But that begs the question: return to what? Depending on the time and place, there have been different answers \u2013 God, a state of moral purity, the Jewish people and Israel.<\/p>\n

The Jewish Experience at Brandeis University asked Near Eastern and Judaic studies professor Yehudah Mirsky about the history of teshuvah. Mirsky, who is also a faculty member of the Schusterman Centre for Israel Studies, is the author of Rav Kook: Mystic in a Time of Revolution<\/em> (Yale University Press).<\/p>\n

Ancient Teshuvah<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Hebrew Bible sees teshuvah as principally a return to God. \u201cCome, let us return to the Lord,\u201d the prophet Hoshea (14:2) tells the people of Israel.<\/p>\n

In Psalm 51, King David seeks teshuvah for committing adultery with Bathsheba. Importantly, David\u2019s confession is addressed to God because, as he says, \u201cAgainst You alone have I sinned.\u201d<\/p>\n

Traditional rabbinical commentators have interpreted this to mean that teshuvah requires confessing your sins to God. Part of achieving intimacy with Him involves His knowing your sins. And only in that way can you return to Him.<\/p>\n

Talmudic teshuvah<\/strong><\/p>\n

For centuries after the destruction by Rome in 70 CE of Jerusalem\u2019s ancient temple, where Jews would say confession and offer sacrifices for atonement, the rabbis reworked biblical ideas and practices of teshuvah into a roadmap for spiritual and moral growth.<\/p>\n

In the Mishnah and the Talmud, the vast collections of law, theology, interpretation, folklore and more compiled roughly between 200 and 500 CE, they called for introspection, changing one\u2019s ways, and asking others for forgiveness.<\/p>\n

This line of thinking reached its apotheosis in Maimonides\u2019 Hilkhot Teshuvah<\/em> (The Laws of Return). He placed confession and regret at the centre of repentance so that teshuvah, according to Mirsky, became a process of \u201cmoral and spiritual self-cultivation and self-education.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teshuvah was no mechanical act. It had to involve genuine contrition and the individual becoming a better person. In addition to being a scholar, philosopher, jurist and communal leader, Maimonides was also a physician.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne senses his medical sensibility was at work here, too,\u201d said Mirsky. \u201cTransgression sickened the soul and teshuvah is the cure, a return to full spiritual and moral health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cosmic teshuvah<\/strong><\/p>\n

Already during the talmudic period, rabbis had begun talking about teshuvah as a spiritual energy flowing through the universe that was created by God when He made the earth.<\/p>\n

The medieval mystics who wrote the great texts of the kabbalah took this even further. They said teshuvah comes not only from inside the individual but is also a dynamic force all around us. To repent, you tap into it. As Mirsky put it, \u201cYou catch the wave.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 13th-century Zohar<\/em>, the foundational work of Jewish mysticism, teshuvah became a way of repairing a rupture or tear in the spiritual fabric of the universe. When the varying energies at work in the world \u2013 justice and mercy, male and female, tradition and change \u2013 go out of whack, teshuvah helps to rebalance them. In other mystical texts, return is seen as a kind of rebirth and the achievement of the soul\u2019s deepest freedom.<\/p>\n

Some 300 years later, Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great mystic of Safed in northern Israel, famously connected teshuvah with tikkun olam<\/em> (healing the world). Through teshuvah, Jews perfect God\u2019s work, helping usher in the Messianic Age.<\/p>\n

For Luria, this largely meant a kind of spiritual healing. But, over time, and especially in the last century, Jews have begun to connect this to ideas of social justice, adding another layer of interpretation to Jewish messianic ideals.<\/p>\n

Teshuvah and Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Mirsky\u2019s view, the Zionist movement secularized and redefined teshuvah.<\/p>\n

Political passivity, which the rabbis thought was anathema to the survival of the Jewish people, was now considered a sin. Repenting involved identifying with the nationalist yearnings of the Jewish people for a homeland. In this way, teshuvah returned Jews in the diaspora to Israel, and the Jews as a whole to a more vital sense of group identity.<\/p>\n

Kook\u2019s teshuvah<\/strong><\/p>\n

Past and present interpretations of teshuvah came together in the work of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Palestine and the leading thinker of religious Zionism. To him, all existence is rooted in God and seeks to return to God. That return takes the form of religious practice, social and ethical commitment, art and culture \u2013 everything we consciously do to make the world better for the Jewish people and ultimately all of humanity. And, all of these elements \u2013 the ritual and ethical, material and intellectual, the Jewish and universal \u2013 all need one another to do God\u2019s work in the world. (For more on Kook, see Mirsky\u2019s book.)<\/p>\n

American teshuvah<\/strong><\/p>\n

Teshuvah in the United States reflects the inescapable individualism of American life. The great American Jewish thinker Abraham Joshua Heschel linked teshuvah to the nation\u2019s ethos of spiritual growth and renewal. He wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sense of inadequacy ought to be at the very centre of the day [Yom Kippur].\u2026\u00a0 To put contrition another way, develop a sense of embarrassment.\u2026 We have no answer to ultimate problems. We really don\u2019t know. In this not knowing, in this sense of embarrassment, lies the key to opening the wells of creativity.<\/p>\n

One belief all Jewish thinkers share about teshuvah \u2013 the process only begins during the High Holidays. It\u2019s afterward when the real work begins.<\/p>\n

For more on teshuvah during the Middle Ages, see Mirsky\u2019s article, \u201cHow a lover of wisdom returns\u201d in Sources Journal (sourcesjournal.org\/articles\/how-a-lover-of-wisdom-returns<\/a>).<\/p>\n

\u2013 from the Jewish Experience \/ Brandeis University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twelfth-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides described the sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah as a wake-up call for the soul. (photo from flickr.com\/photos\/gsankary) The sound of the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, the great 12th-century Jewish thinker Moses Maimonides wrote, is a wake-up call for the soul. Its message: \u201cArise from your slumber! Search your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42187,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[781],"tags":[22603,20000,1802,22602,218,1984,1801,7394,22601,1971,1581,3643],"class_list":["post-42185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holidays","tag-abraham-isaac-kook","tag-abraham-joshua-heschel","tag-high-holidays","tag-isaac-luria","tag-judaism","tag-maimonides","tag-rosh-hashanah","tag-teshuvah","tag-yehudah-mirsky","tag-yom-kippur","tag-zionism","tag-zohar"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}