What is the nature of teshuva (often translated as repentance or return)? How does this process begin?  How do we ourselves take steps towards being our best selves, and how do we create the space for others to do so?

One immediate response might be that which Maimonides, the Rambam, suggests in his Laws of Teshuva: to identify all those things that we did ‘wrong,’ to articulate and enumerate them, to confess to them (vidui).  From there, the Rambam says, we can begin to do the work of not repeating such actions and behaviors.  We can begin to do the work of return–returning from ‘wrong’ behavior to our best and highest selves.

In his work Likkutei Moharan, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav offers an alternative approach.  Rather than beginning from the ‘wrong,’ he suggests, the seeds of teshuva begin with an identification and acknowledgement of what is right and good.

‘Know!’  he writes ‘You must judge all people favorably.  Even if you have reason to think that a person is completely wicked, you must search until you seek out some bit of goodness, some place in that person where he is not evil.  When you find that bit of goodness and judge the person that way, you may really raise him up to goodness.  Treating people this way allows them to be restored, to come to teshuva…‘

Here, Rabbi Nachman offers a gift for those of us who struggle to let go of grudges, to see beyond the frustrated personality traits of relatives, to open our hearts to people who have hurt us in the past.  Sometimes, Rabbi Nachman acknowledges, full forgiveness is too hard to achieve in one go. And yet, this does not need to discourage us entirely.  Even taking one step, seeing one good element in another human being, is a worthy exercise, because our small step will help enable that person to change.

This is an amazing claim!  The very opening of our heart towards another human being helps create the space for that person to move forward in teshuva, in return towards her best self!  The process of teshuva, therefore, is not one sided, it is not solely about me doing my best to make amends, do teshuva, seek forgiveness from people I have hurt, work towards my better self.  Nor is it reciprocal, with one person seeking forgiveness and another granting it.  Rather, the process of teshuva is dialectical and dialogical: it happens through the steps forward of the one who wants to change, and the belief on the part of another that the person has the potential to do so.

Rabbi Nachman does not stop with this tremendous idea.  He goes on to encourage us to do something even more challenging: to extend this position of open heartedness, of kindness, of belief in the goodness of a human being to ourselves:

“You have to search until you find some point of good in yourself to restore your inner vitality and attain joy.  And by searching for and finding some little bit of good that still remains inside of you, you genuinely move from the scale of guilt into the scale of merit.”

For those of us–including myself–who can be our own worst enemies, Rabbi Nachman’s words ring loudly.  Many times, we fail to acknowledge the goodness in our own work, our own capabilities, our own choices. Rabbi Nachman offers a beautiful practice—the practice of identifying one small good thing about ourselves—as a tool for releasing these patterns, which painfully prevent us from granting ourselves forgiveness, from becoming our best and highest selves

Rabbi Nachman then beautifully suggests that this behavior, the identification of the good in ourselves and in our souls, sends our unique melody out in to the world, blending the notes of our individual music into the symphony of humanity.

With wishes for a new year that is full of seeing the good–in our world, in our friends, families and colleagues, and in ourselves.  And may this goodness lead to renewal, return, and joyful songs.

Here we are in the Days of Awe, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. The books of life and death are open. This is the time, we’re told, that the gates to heaven are open. Teshuvah (returning/realigning/repenting) is most possible now. It’s a good time to meditate, I think. We can watch our own shifts and resistances and desires. We can take some time to reflect on what we love and what’s difficult for us, to see where we are in our worlds. 

I’ve been thinking about how we read the story of Jonah on Yom Kippur. In reading a lot of interpretations and drashes on Jonah, I keep coming back to one thought: Jonah is super unlikeable. And, Jonah is just like us.

In the story, Jonah’s prophesy is unwanted and resisted. God tells Jonah to go to Ninevah (probably to tell them to repent), and Jonah says no. He’s not interested in being a prophet. He doesn’t want people to think he’s crazy, and also, he’s scared. Of all outcomes. So he purposefully goes in the wrong direction: he goes west when God tells him to go east. When there’s a storm, sent by God, to sink the ship he’s tried to escape on, he goes to sleep in the ship’s hold [Can't we all relate to that? We're in the midst of a storm in our lives and all we want to do is crawl under the covers.], then asks to be tossed off the ship and is swallowed by the fish.

After praying and getting released from the fish, Jonah reluctantly goes to Ninevah, tells the people to repent… and they do! They totally listen and the city is saved by God, and Jonah is not happy. There’s more, but it’s the same thing. Then it ends. It’s a mysterious story. There’s no real change in Jonah’s unlikeability. He doesn’t seem to have redeemable qualities, just familiar ones.

Aviva Zornberg’s theory about Jonah resonated with me. She asks what exactly Jonah is resisting, and finds that he’s completely uncomfortable sitting between life and death. Jonah can’t acknowledge that no one has any security, that life is uncertain. Zornberg says that it’s unbearable for Jonah to recognize that we’re not firmly in life or death; we’re somewhere in between. She says that Jonah is “deeply allergic” to standing in uncertainty, and it’s actually an unbearable position for any human being. Except that this is exactly what life is, standing before God, in between life and death, always.

In the story, we find that Jonah would rather die, and asks for it, than stay in this in-between, of life. When Ninevah is saved, after he fulfills his prophecy, he is disturbed because this is also uncertain. His perspective might be that God is showing that nothing is for sure. Jonah thought the people would ignore his prophesy and be punished, but instead they all repented and saved their lives. This doesn’t make any sense. It’s frustrating. In a logical world, where Jonah, and probably all of us, would feel more comfortable and safe, evil people would be punished, good people rewarded. But this is not the world.  

This sounds a lot like the kabbalistic concept that the world is broken, and the path is messy.

On Yom Kippur we pray the al chet- the prayer with all the sins, it’s usually translated as sin, but it really means missing the target. So teshuvah is returning to the target, returning to the path. It’s also what we’re doing in meditation. We have a target in mind: focusing on the breath, a prayer, sitting in awareness, awaking our hearts and minds to compassion and kindness. And then we misstep, we miss the target and we return again and again and again. We distract ourselves often because we, like Jonah, feel completely uncomfortable with our human-ness, with standing before God, sitting between life and death, and when we run away from that reality, we misstep. We make mistakes, and we hurt ourselves and others.

We can use our meditation practice, especially in this time of the Days of Awe, as an invitation to sit in that in-between. We can recognize our uncertainty and be gentle with it. Here’s an opportunity to not approach this intellectually and not think about it, but to feel what it’s like to return, to practice teshuvah, to allow our practice of returning be a reminder of what it feels like to sit in uncertainty, to feel what Jonah felt, but not to run away.

Somehow Jonah’s story is a little bit inspiring in that “what not to do” way. We learn that resisting and running away may lead to our worse case scenario, and sitting with the way things are often changes our perspectives and strengthens our capacity to practice teshuvah, returning and realigning with our true and best selves.

May we all have meaningful and sweet new years.

I don’t know about you, but I often find the High Holidays very daunting. I mean, we’re supposed to take stock of our entire selves, turn our lives around, and inspire G!d to grant us another year of life! Stakes can’t get much higher.

Part of it, too, is that t’shuvah, the process of reconnecting with our deepest selves, can bring on a feeling of powerful catharsis and clarity. Once you’ve experienced that, it’s hard not to want to experience it again, hard not to try to recreate that “perfect combination” of practice and circumstance.

I’ve experienced the same thing with my meditation practice. Paradoxically, it’s when meditation has been extremely powerful for me that I have trouble sustaining my routine—because I’ve developed an expectation of how it “should” be, and I get wrapped up in feelings of failure when I can’t recreate that experience every time I sit.

One of the teachings in my meditation community (Art of Living) is that meditation is the art of doing absolutely nothing. While it takes effort to control the body, it takes effortlessness to “control” the mind. The more we aim for a certain emotional or spiritual experience, the farther we are from it. The more we are able to surrender, the more we are transformed.

I think that’s what Moses means (in Parashat Nitzavim, which we read shortly before Rosh Hashanah): “For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven….Neither is it beyond the sea….But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it” (D’varim 30:11-14).

In a sense, t’shuvah is beyond us. Like many things divine, it’s even beyond anything we can imagine. That’s why, when it happens, we feel like we are overflowing with blessing—we are literally taking in something larger than we are. In that sense, t’shuvah is a miracle—it’s something that is given to us, not something we produce. Instead of fighting for a particular experience of t’shuvah, I find it more useful to focus on cultivating openness—which is just a fancy way of saying that I actively practice doing nothing. To me, this year at least, t’shuvah isn’t about doing the impossible—it’s about doing the thing that’s very near to me. I can’t create the miracle, but I can show up to witness it.

As I have mentioned in some of the sits, I’ve always struggled with some of the traditional ways T’shuva and repentance were taught to me – the guilt-inducing, chest-beating, “I’ve-been-so-bad-but-next-year-I-will-be-better” variety. As a kid during the High Holidays, I was racked with guilt about how “bad” I was, and how badly I wanted to be better. Once I told my little sister that every time I was mean to her, she should say the words, “Rosh Hashana!” and I would stop.  A few weeks later, I yelled at her about something and she cried,  “Rosh Hashana! Rosh Hashana!” I repressed an enormous urge to punch her in the face. I stopped yelling at her, but my anger did not go away – it simmered right beneath the surface until the next time she, or someone else, crossed my path, when I would lash out again.

The same thing happens when I tell myself  I’m going to be “better” these days. It never hurts to set a Kavannah (intention) to try and change habit patterns- like when I tell myself to get serious about flossing or removing my make-up before going to sleep. But telling myself to be nicer to people, to forgive hurts, to open my heart or to be more compassionate – for me, it doesn’t work.

For me, it works better to bring the gentle light of awareness to WHY I am not nice to people, to WHY I can’t forgive someone, to WHY my heart feels closed. Usually, the reasons are shrouded in hurts and shame that are really old, or deeply repressed. When I honor those feelings – even feelings that have led to lots of suffering – they come loose and fall away on their own. In a class I once took with Rabbi David Ingber, he called this the “T’shuva of love.”

I know that everybody’s path to T’shuva is different, and different things work better or worse for different people. If you are like me, however, I want to offer you this:

Those ways you were “bad” this year – those things you are ashamed of -those things are little voices from within you crying out for your attention and healing. They are a huge gift – points on a map calling for you to sit with them, and hear what they have to say. I know I’m mixing mad metaphors here, but you get the idea. Our bodies are beautiful, miraculous machines that are continually trying to move us closer to healing and wholeness, even when we act unskillfully.

Finally, here is a poem that speaks to this point for me, although I have no idea what the poet, Norman Fischer, was thinking when he wrote it:

RESPONSIBILITY

Tonight it’s quiet or in the quiet
Or, at least, the quiet
Is all around us. What is it
I’m worried about when I
Worry about anything? What is it
I tangle up in, wanting to go home?
From down here I look up at myself
In the little bright square of window
Staring down at me in bemusement
Querying what’s it worth. But that’s
A question snaps shut on itself
Thoughts with teeth or claws
To scrape away to the very core. What
Cares contains its value, a half life,
Mixed, no doubt, yet fair.
It’s always fair or anyway
It’s always what’s there…
And it’s not our fault.

(c) Norman Fischer, from Slowly but Dearly , 2004.

Yesterday was Labor Day, and I was thinking about labor and work as concepts. I kept coming back to idea that this process of t’shuva, or returning, using the entire month of Elul to prepare for the High Holidays, is a lot of work! Repentence, meaningful and open-hearted t’shuva is kind of intense, and it’s nice to have an entire month to prepare. I imagine that without that preparation, we’d show up and it would all be too much.

I’ve been reading a lot about preparing for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, traditional and nontraditional practices, and kapparot kept coming up. If, like me, you’ve never heard of it, here’s what that means: the day before Yom Kippur people used to (and apparently lots of people still do in Israel and even in certain areas of Brooklyn) take a live chicken, swing it around their head, and offer it to God in exchange for their own lives, sort of a sacrificial atonement, another kind of scapegoat. After this, the chicken is slaughtered and given to a poor family for their erev Yom Kippur meal.

After reading about this, I started doing some research because I was kind of horrified by my own visions of screeching chickens, blood, and feathers. I veer towards metaphor when it comes to sacrifices. In my internet scouring, I came across the following story:

A devoted student goes to his Rabbi and asks to watch him perform the ritual of kapparot, because he’s never seen it before. The Rabbi says, I’m so honored that you want to see me practice this mitzvah, but honestly, my practice of kapparot is not that exciting- you should go see the innkeeper do it.

The student goes to the innkeeper’s house and asks to watch him perform the ritual. The innkeeper sits in a chair in front of his fireplace, with two “books of repentence,” two tattered notebooks. He opens the first book, read it carefully out loud, and begins to weep. The book is filled with mistakes and misdeeds that he committed in the past year. After he finishes reading from the now tear-soaked pages, he swings the book around his head and tosses it into the fire.

He takes a deep breath and picks up the second notebook. The ritual repeats, with him weeping and reading. This time, he reads a longer list of mistakes and misdeeds- that God had committed in the past year. After reading this list out loud, crying as before, he swings the notebook around his head, and throws it into the fire.

There are two aspects that I wanted to speak about regarding the story. First, I love that the Rabbi recognized and shared with his student the power of personal prayer, individual spiritual practice, and truly heartfelt work. It’s a nice reminder that there’s no “right” way to return, to repent, to practice.

Second, this story speaks directly to the fact that we’re not alone in this hard work of returning and repenting. I read somewhere (I think in a poem) that even solitary prayer takes two, and it feels correct that personal atonement is only part of the whole of t’shuva, and maybe it isn’t quite complete without acknowledging our own disappointments and sadness about the world, in God, about things we don’t feel responsible for. This relates well to meditation- fully feeling that broken-heartedness, letting yourself inhabit that place of disappointment and sorrow, voicing it, swinging it above your head, and then tossing it into the fire, letting it go. Recognizing that all of this pain is not ours alone, we’re in a partnership within ourselves, with other people, and with God. This idea of working together to realign and find our place in the world can be a comfort, especially at this time of year as we are recounting and assessing our previous actions and accountability.

May you all be blessed with a beautiful Elul!