Points of Return
Thoughts on the Shabbat Before Rosh HaShana (coinciding with parshat Nitzavim 2022)
Every moment in time is a point of no return, no turning back the clock. And every moment in time is a time of teshuva, a time of return. Teshuvah, turning, return, is a core theme of our Days of Awe, and carries several different meanings. Teshuvah can mean repairing harm done to others, turning our life’s path to a path of truth, or repairing the harm we have done to our own souls. Each of these meanings is crucial for our spiritual growth. In these brief words for the Shabbat before Rosh HaShanah, I would like to focus on the first.
Teshuvah, at its most simple and perhaps most difficult level, means repairing the harm that we have done to others. In the default position of many people, they don’t know what they have done, they won’t admit what they have done, or they don’t take seriously what they have done. Many people have reasons and justifications for hurting others.
In the case of someone who does not know they have needlessly caused harm, we are duty bound to inform them, and not allow ourselves to bear resentment and grudges. In Jewish law, the aggrieved party is morally obligated to admonish those who have hurt us. If we don’t admonish them, we are complicit in their wrongdoing. We are ethically obligated to give others the opportunity to apologize and repair the harm.
We are further obligated to admonish people, when necessary, in a way that allows them to feel remorse and apologize. We must not admonish with anger and condemnation. We are called on to reason carefully with others.
It often happens that when we prepare ourselves to reason with others, or in the course of that reasoning with others, we discover our part in whatever went wrong. Reasoned admonishing can be an act of discovery. We hear their side, their experience of us. We find we share responsibility.
Shared responsibility does not divide up the moral obligation. Every person is 100% responsible for their part. I believe that one reason we are morally obligated to admonish others is that we find out we might be the very one who has trouble admitting what we have done. We tend to blame others in order to avoid looking at ourselves. In giving another person the opportunity to do to teshuvah, we discover our own obligation to do teshuvah.
Once we realize that we have committed a wrongdoing, we must confess. One of the deepest parts of the Days of Awe is the process of confession, a conscious, sincere and deliberate process of being morally accountable. We often find various circumlocutions to avoid sincerity. “I know I’m no angel” and “I’m not saying I’m perfect” are ways to avoid saying, simply, “I did something wrong.” Confessing wrongdoing obliterates the stiff defensiveness of the ego-self.
Our wrongdoing might not be concentrated into a specific act, but rather with how we comport ourselves. People can be arrogant, bossy and self-centered, speaking in order to gain attention, not because they have something to say. Some people unconsciously express superiority or mild contempt of others. Some people feel the need to persuade others to think as they do. Some people are habituated to make minor cut downs and put downs of others, and then claim that other people are too sensitive.
To engage truly in the process of teshuvah, unrelenting courageous and honest insight into the inner self is required. In Chasidic thought, there is special attention on hidden motivations. The patterns in the unconscious ego-self seem to conspire to create lives of inauthenticity.
I think if we do teshuvah correctly, we can feel distinctly uncomfortable in our own skins for a period of time. The goal in life is not to feel comfortable; life is not a couch in front of the TV. Our goal during these Days of Awe is to inflict upon ourselves a kind of spiritual pain, labor pains, if you will, that give birth to a truer version of ourselves.
To put this in terms of Chasidic thought, we aim to break through the husk of inauthenticity, of not being morally accountable, of not courageously gaining insight into ourselves. We break through that husk in order to release a spark of truth and life. The sparks accumulate to repair the vessels of the Divine Heart. As we repair ourselves, we are taught, we repair God.
The teshuva of repair is the first and constant step.
