Teshuva, as we approach the High Holidays this year

This past year has been one of the most turbulent and painful the Jewish people and the State of Israel have known in recent memory. Jewish tradition, under such circumstances, bids us to introspection and soul searching – heshbon nefesh – both individually and nationally.

The Mishna (Avot 3: 1) states that we are all destined to give an account and reckoning – Din ve heshbon –  before God. The eminent rabbi of Brisk, Rabbi Yitschak Zev Halevi Soloveichik (1887 – 1959) was wont to explain the difference between accounting and reckoning.  Accounting, he said, is what is required of us for the choices we make in specific circumstances in which we find ourselves. Reckoning (heshbon), however, is the explanation we must offer regarding how we found ourselves in the compromising situation in the first place.

This means that we exercise much more control over our lives – and hence bear much greater responsibility for our choices – than we might like to think.  This also means that an integral aspect of repentance involves digging into our past in order to understand and interpret it.

There are two dimensions to this digging and the reason it is so necessary. The first is that in order to achieve authentic contrition, we must be fully aware of the depth of our responsibility for our behavior. This is required in order that we may achieve forgiveness, purge ourselves of guilt and move on.

The second dimension is alluded to in the Talmud Yoma 86b. There, the Talmud in attributes the following to the sage Reish Lakish: Great is repentance, as one’s intentional sins are counted for him as merits, as it is stated: “And when the wicked turns from his wickedness, and does that which is lawful and right, he shall live thereby” (Ezekiel 33:19), and all his deeds, even his transgressions, will become praiseworthy.

How are we to understand this enigmatic statement?  I can more easily understand that repentance may induce forgiveness. How are we to understand, however, the total transfiguration of sinful deeds into meritorious acts?

The key to being able to move forward and for teshuva to be effective lies in the power that human beings possess in the ability to interpret. Jews spend a great deal of time interpreting sacred texts and texts in general. But interpretation is much more than rendering new understandings through textual analysis.

Friedrich Nietzsche explains this well:

That the value of the world lies in our interpretation…that previous interpretations have been perspective valuations by virtue of which we can survive in life…that every elevation of man brings with it an overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every strengthening and increase of power opens up new perspectives and means believing in new horizons – this idea permeates my writings…Nietzsche, Will to Power 616 (1885-1886)

For Nietzsche, the Will to Power, the most fundamental human desire not only to survive, but to thrive, is intimately bound to the ability we have to give meaning to our lives through our power to interpret and thereby construct our own realities. New interpretations mean new perspectives and new horizons.  The power that interpretation exerts is not limited to fashioning a meaningful future; it has the potency to redefine the past.

Nietzsche again:

Historia abscondita – Every great human being exerts a retroactive force: for his sake, all of history is put on the scale again, and a thousand secrets of the past crawl out of their hiding places – into his sunshine. There is no telling what may yet become part of history. Maybe the past is still essentially undiscovered! So many retroactive forces are still needed! (Gay Science 34)

The “retroactive force” which will reveal the “hidden history” is the power we possess to interpret our past and give it the meaning that it needs to have in order to increase our mental well-being and vitality.

Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner, the famed Rosh Yeshiva of Chaim Berlin in NY, wrote to a student suffering from feelings of unworthiness and guilt, reflecting the same idea. Citing the verse from Mishlei 24: 16 For a righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again, he interprets it to say that not despite his fall will he will rise, but rather precisely because he falls he shall rise.

This means that the religious failure, the Sin, when it is properly leveraged should be understood as inextricably bound to the process of spiritual growth. This realization frees the troubled soul of the burden and guilt over her past actions. The Sin has been transformed through a new interpretation of the past.

Much has been written concerning the question of whether human beings possess free will to change their future. Teshuva thus conceived is tremendously empowering, actually endowing us with the power to change the past through an act of Will.

As individuals and collectives we carry the troubling and traumatic memories of the past.  Our natural tendency is to repress or avoid those memories in order to continue. This rarely works.

Nothing can erase the empirical facts of our sufferings and what our deeds have begotten.  Yet Reish Lakish calls upon us to confront our past and through an act of Will – Teshuva, a direct confronting of what went wrong in the past, enables us to find a way, an interpretation, which will confer a new meaning to our suffering which will engender vitality and thriving.

Very often both as individuals, and especially lately as a nation, we find ourselves in between a rock and a hard place, feeling that the situation in which we find ourselves offers us no choice in terms of in terms of the path we must take. This is a trap into which we fall at our own peril. The responsibility we have to explain to ourselves of how we found ourselves in this situation in the first place and the power we have to interpret our reality differently – seeing the possibilities which arise from the terrible tragedy we have suffered – is the key to our ability to move forward as individuals and as a nation.

—

Rabbi Hefter is rosh beit midrash of Beit Midrash Har’el, which is presenting a special program in Hebrew on September 25, in Jerusalem, in conjunction with Hadar, about Heshbon HaNefesh.  Visit הרשמה לפאנל – חשבון נפש | Beit Midrash Har’el (har-el.org) for more information.