Devar Torah for Shabbat Shuvah, by Howard Menaker
10/07/2023 07:21:21 PM
Shabbat Shalom. Today is the first Shabbat of the New Year, the shabbat traditionally known as Shabbat Shuvah – or as it also called, Shabbat Teshuvah.
What sets Shabbat Shuvah aside, and gives it its name, is the haftarah, the first words of the which are from Hosea Chapter 14, verse 2. “Shuvah Yisroel,” “Return, O Israel.” These words contain the essential message of this Shabbat: the call to return.
Teshuvah is the central theme on this Shabbat. However, there is an essential conflict in the combination of Shabbat and teshuvah.
Shabbat is supposed to be a day of rest, of joy, reconciliation, and both spiritual and physical rest. Shabbat rest entails not only ceasing physical work but also inner calm and tranquility. Shabbat is about being present.
In contrast, the word “Shuva” is an active verb, which means that the person involved is actively returning to God, to a life consistent with moral and ethical behavior. This return requires work: energy, action, and movement toward a good and moral life.
Furthermore, we generally understand teshuvah as repentance, return, and renewal, inner change that entails a certain amount of work and retrospection focusing on remorse, and the negative aspects of our past. This is because someone who is satisfied with, and happy about, everything he or she has done, regrets nothing. Teshuvah requires the repudiation of the past and the need to distance ourselves from it in the future.
Can both of these words actually have meaning when they are combined into the same phrase?
The answer to this question is contained in the words of today’s haftarah.
Most of the prophecies of our biblical prophets are full of harsh rebuke about sins and the punishments that the individual, and the nation, will suffer because of them. The Talmud describes the words of the prophets as “words of complaint,” referring to the prophets’ complaints about Israel and about their sins.
Most prophets’ words deal primarily with teshuvah out of fear – fear of sin and fear of punishment – whereas the haftarah chosen for today encourages us to seek teshuvah out of love, a teshuvah whose whole essence is found in God’s love for us and for those who return.
Hosea’s prophecy in this haftarah contains very few words of rebuke or punishment. The essence of this haftarah is a call for teshuvah, in words of conciliation, beauty, and reassurance. It reads:
“I will heal their waywardness
and love them freely,
for my anger has turned away from them.
I will be like the dew to Israel;
who will blossom like a lily.
Like a cedar of Lebanon
they will send down their roots;
their young shoots will grow.
their splendor will be like an olive tree,
their fragrance like a cedar of Lebanon.
People will dwell again in their shade;
they will flourish like the grain,
they will blossom like the vine—
Israel’s fame will be like the wine of Lebanon.
These words of promise, stated with great tenderness, are meant to inspire people in a different way: Look how much love God bestows on all who love God! This is the teshuvah of our Shechina, the maternal side of God.
And remember we have just come through Elul, the month whose very name is an acronym of Ani l'dodi v'dodi li, meaning "I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine". God is our beloved, not only our judge and ruler.
Between the judge passing judgment on us on Rosh Hashanah, and the ruler finalizing our decree on Yom Kippur, stands this Shabbat, Shabbat Shuvah, whose whole essence is the relationship of lovers who hold each other in a loving embrace.
On Shabbat Shuvah, we emphasize a teshuvah of love, not a teshuva of remorse and pain. This kind of teshuvah is a return that is not only based on love, but can only be achieved by returning with love.
But we need to take a moment to ask: What does "return" actually mean?
This season is a time for making teshuvah because we have grown distant from God. This Shabbat is time to come home. Come home to the Source of All. Come home, lovingly, to the land of your soul. The message is clear: No matter how far away you feel, you can always return. You can always come home.
But Shabbat Shuvah is not only a time to return to God, but also, and perhaps more importantly, to return to our deepest selves. It is a time for taking stock of who we are and repenting for our missteps, our distance from our own souls, our distance from love and from holiness, and from our deepest yearnings. We try to forgive ourselves for the places where we've fallen short or missed the mark.
Alan Morinis, the author of “Everyday Holiness”, the basic text many of us use to study Mussar, challenges us to make loving return by asking ourselves:
- How well have you lived up to your potential? Where have you fallen short?
- Will you look in the mirror one day and ask: why didn’t I achieve my dreams? What is keeping me from achieving those dreams?
Rabbi Julie’s theme for this HHD is Hillel:
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
How do these questions relate to Shabbat Shuva? How do they tell us to act on this special and holy shabbat?
Let’s take the first question: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?"
Well, it seems obvious that Shabbat Shuva, the High Holy Days, and especially Yom Kippur, is a time for us to be “for ourselves”. We stand before God in repentance, engaging in direct conversation with the Almighty.
All of us live busy and chaotic lives. We often do not stop to be here “for ourselves”.
We are trying to make a living, raise a family, just to exist in the world. Our focus tends to be on output; long hours at work, time-consuming commutes and responding to the demands of family, clients, and colleagues. Consequently, we are left with very little time for any meaningful input into our spiritual lives: personal learning and development, examination of our souls, cultivating relationships and just thinking and reflecting. As a result, we lose touch with who we really are, what we are truly capable of, and what matters most in life.
Teshuvah is the process of lovingly returning to our deepest self and rediscovering the moral core of our value system.
It requires being honest about the mistakes we have made, and admitting the wrong we have done, apologizing to those we have hurt, and promising not to repeat our misdeeds. In this way we can love ourselves, hope to move past our wrongdoings and, we hope, be wiser and more careful in the future.
And the act of teshuvah is so great that our tradition sees a person who repents as being greater than the one who is wholly righteous, that a person who has sinned and practiced teshuvah is of a higher religious order than one who has never sinned. This is interpreted to mean that however great an individual may be by virtue of his or her natural character, the person who is capable of growth and change is even greater. That is the power of teshuvah.
I know of no more loving or uplifting message for the start of the New Year. We all fall short of our ideals and aspirations. It is crucial to our psychic welfare to remember that what Judaism values most of all is our struggle to overcome our shortcomings. At the top of the spiritual hierarchy are not those naturally inclined to do “the right thing”, but those who have strayed and stumbled and fought their way back.
There is another element to "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" The obvious answer to this question is that if we are not for ourselves, nobody will be for us.
However, the obvious answer is obviously wrong. The Torah does not encourage narcissism.
As Rabbi Julie reminded us on Rosh Hashanah, there's a long list of people in each of our lives who are “for us”, who love us, even in the moments of our lives when it is hardest to love ourselves. Our parents and friends, teachers and families, and our community, are all here for us, all the time. The right answer to Hillel's first question is therefore not to live a life of selfishness, but a life where we are aware of the vast web of support and love that will never abandon us; A life that practices gratitude every day.
We should all know the names of the people on our "Hillel list" and thank them sincerely and often for reminding us that our blessings always exceed our burdens.
Meister Eckhardt, the medieval German mystic, was right when he taught: "If the only prayer you ever say is 'Thank You!' it will be sufficient."
So, that leads us to Hillel’s second question: “If I am only for myself, what am I?”
I was an English major in college, and somewhat of a stickler for good grammar, so it is immediately apparent to me that this question is grammatically incorrect both in Hebrew and English
The rules of grammar dictate that it should read: "If I am only for myself, who am I?" (not what)
The answer to this question, and the reason for this word choice, is that if we only care for ourselves we become things, not people. We become more a "what" than a "who." Helping others defines us, expands us and teaches us that only by getting outside ourselves, only by giving and loving, can we find ourselves.
Stephen Sondheim (of blessed memory), who many of you know is a sort of rabbi to me and from whom I have learned many lessons, put it simply:
Phone rings, door chimes, in comes company!
No strings, good times, just chums, company!
Late nights, quick bites, party games
Deep talks, long walks, telephone calls…
Thoughts shared, souls bared, private names
All those photos up on the walls…
those good and crazy people, your friends…
That's what it's really about, isn't it?
And in another moment, he reflected: “Alone is alone, not alive”.
On a slightly more spiritual note, we are taught that our teshuvah must be accomplished together. Remember that the Avinu Malkeinu and Al Chet, our deepest prayers on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, are said as a community, and in the first-person plural, asking for forgiveness for us all.
We must find the balance between being for ourselves and not being ONLY for ourselves. After all, our rabbis have encouraged us to keep two slips of paper in two pockets: “The world was created for me…..I am but dust and ashes.“ We must balance these thoughts every day.
Judaism calls on each of us to recognize our uniqueness and as a result to make a distinctive contribution in life. It is not a lesson about taking; it is a lesson about giving, about loving, and doing something extraordinary with our lives.
In other words, identifying that which is unique in us leads us to think less about what we need and more about what we are needed for.
So Hillel issues a call for return, a teshuvah with love, to our community.
It has been asked: “How might we approach strangers on the street if we were convinced that we and they were God?” If in every moment, every object, and every being, is the Divine before us, we bring a freshness and openness to our experience, ready to find God in every moment”.
So finally, let’s consider that moment: Hillel asks: If not now, when?
We can’t change the past and can’t predict the future. So whatever you need to do, do it NOW. We all know the lesson that we should not put off until tomorrow that which we can do today. Tomorrow is never guaranteed.
And we feel that truth more intensely than usual as we sit here today. In a little more than 48 hours, the High Holy Days will conclude with Ne’ilah. The Gates will close, and we will be sealed in the Book of Life, hopefully for good and health and happiness.
So, now is the time to return. Ask the hard questions, now. Do the hard work, now. But also remember now, on Shabbat Shuva, that our God is a god of love and forgiveness, and that teshuvah is based not in fear but in love.
We should listen to Hillel, and take away the lesson that we must return at every moment – not just on the High Holy Days. It is said that every breath we take is a new beginning, a new life. Just as God breathed life into Adam, he breathes life into our souls every time we inhale.
We must remember that even though God is breathing life into us with every breath, how we live our life IS a choice. We cannot choose what happens to us, but we are empowered to choose how we deal with it. With every breath, we have the choice to live the life we want for ourselves.
We can choose life, right now. We can choose to reawaken our emotions, to refocus our energies, to do teshuvah. We can hope that in making this choice moment by moment, day by day, we will one day become the versions of ourselves that we strive to imagine.
In the words of Hillel,
If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
If I am only for myself, what am I?
And if not now, when?
Our lives are a collection of millions of choices, each one made NOW. Each one forming our lives from that moment forward.
Shabbat Shuva focuses us on our return, but it, and the messages of the entire High Holy Day cycle, should stay with us throughout the year. Returning is a daily requirement, a way to our inner souls, our secret to holiness. We always have to do teshuvah NOW.
Shabbat Shalom and may you be sealed in the Book of Life for a meaningful, rich and holy life.
