High Holidays: Prayer as a Pathway to Teshuvah
Rabbi Tom Samuels
There is a famous Yiddish saying: “If a Jew breaks a leg, he thanks God he did not break both legs. And, if he breaks both legs, he thanks God he did not break his neck.” This reminds me of a wonderful passage in the Talmud where God prays that He will use His omnipotent power with compassion and love. It goes like this:
“Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yossi, God, the Holy One, Blessed be He, prays. But what is God’s prayer? Rabbi Zutra says in the name of Rav, God prays like this: May it be My will that My mercy overcome My anger, and My loving qualities override My strict traits; that I treat My children with the quality of mercy and that I always deal with them beyond the letter of the Law.”
Imagine that. God prays to engage with His children, with humanity, “beyond the letter of the Law.” But what does this really mean? How are we mere mortals to understand, to integrate this message into our own, complicated and nuanced everyday lives? How are we supposed to pray?
Rabbi David Aaron suggests that to understand prayer in the Jewish tradition, we must start with the Hebrew word praying, LeHeetpalel. In Hebrew, verbs can be conjugated differently. A verb in relation to someone else is conjugated differently than a verb in relation to myself. If I am going to dress my son, in Hebrew I would say Ani Malbeesh. If I am dressing myself I would say Ani Mitlabesh. The “T” sound indicates that this is an act which is reflexive. The word LeHitpalel in itself, its sound, tells me something. The act that we do when we open up our prayer books is LeHitpalel. That I am not trying to change God, but trying to change myself. And what am I trying to change about myself? I am trying to palel myself. So what does palel mean? In the Torah when Joseph comes to his father Jacob and asks for blessings for his two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, Jacob’s grandsons. Imagine how emotionally charged this moment is when Jacob thought his son was dead, and now, not only is Joseph alive, Jacob can see and bless his grandchildren.
“And Israel (Jacob) said unto Joseph: 'I had not thought (Lo Pilalti) to see your face; and, lo, God has let me see your seed also.’” (Genesis 48:11)
The great Medieval commentator Rashi explains that the word Pilalti means “to fill my heart to think the thoughts.” And thus, the term LeHitpalel means the intentional act to fill my heart, to think the thoughts, to dream the dreams, to anticipate the unimaginable and yet to imagine it none the less. LeHitpalel is an exercise of vision and imagination. We are visionary. When we pray we are doing a self-induced experience of imagining peace in the world, redemption, health.
It is these very same ingredients of authentic, aspirational prayer, which constitute the ancient Jewish process of Repentance, which in the Hebrew, Teshuvah, literally translates as “returning.” An intentional act of changing extant assumptions, habits, and patterns. In fact, Teshuva is not at all about repentance, but really a return, a journey home. Teshuvah is the longing, the yearning, the pining to return to that state of embracing our internalized God.
There is a story about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. One day his older brother died, and a newspaper got the story wrong and printed Alfred’s obituary instead. Alfred opened the paper that morning and had the unusual experience of reading his obituary while he was still alive. “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday,” the obituary began. Alfred threw down the paper. That’s not how I want to be remembered, he said. That’s not what’s important to me, he said, and right then and there he decided to throw his entire fortune into rewarding people for bettering this world and bringing it closer to peace.
“Yom Kippur,” writes Rabbi Alan Lew, “is the day we all get to read our own obituary. It’s a dress rehearsal for our death. We are rehearsing the day of our death, because of death, like Yom Kippur, atones.”
And so, Rabbi Lew continues, “…the year rolls by with all its attendant loss and failure, death and disappointment, but at the end of the year, there is a day that heals. The voyage between death and birth, between the home we come from and the home at the end of our voyage, is a journey of healing."
G’mar Chatimah Tovah. My this High Holy Day season be for you a journey of transformation and healing. May these Holy Days carry you home.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
There is a famous Yiddish saying: “If a Jew breaks a leg, he thanks God he did not break both legs. And, if he breaks both legs, he thanks God he did not break his neck.” This reminds me of a wonderful passage in the Talmud where God prays that He will use His omnipotent power with compassion and love. It goes like this:
“Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yossi, God, the Holy One, Blessed be He, prays. But what is God’s prayer? Rabbi Zutra says in the name of Rav, God prays like this: May it be My will that My mercy overcome My anger, and My loving qualities override My strict traits; that I treat My children with the quality of mercy and that I always deal with them beyond the letter of the Law.”
Imagine that. God prays to engage with His children, with humanity, “beyond the letter of the Law.” But what does this really mean? How are we mere mortals to understand, to integrate this message into our own, complicated and nuanced everyday lives? How are we supposed to pray?
Rabbi David Aaron suggests that to understand prayer in the Jewish tradition, we must start with the Hebrew word praying, LeHeetpalel. In Hebrew, verbs can be conjugated differently. A verb in relation to someone else is conjugated differently than a verb in relation to myself. If I am going to dress my son, in Hebrew I would say Ani Malbeesh. If I am dressing myself I would say Ani Mitlabesh. The “T” sound indicates that this is an act which is reflexive. The word LeHitpalel in itself, its sound, tells me something. The act that we do when we open up our prayer books is LeHitpalel. That I am not trying to change God, but trying to change myself. And what am I trying to change about myself? I am trying to palel myself. So what does palel mean? In the Torah when Joseph comes to his father Jacob and asks for blessings for his two sons, Ephraim and Menashe, Jacob’s grandsons. Imagine how emotionally charged this moment is when Jacob thought his son was dead, and now, not only is Joseph alive, Jacob can see and bless his grandchildren.
“And Israel (Jacob) said unto Joseph: 'I had not thought (Lo Pilalti) to see your face; and, lo, God has let me see your seed also.’” (Genesis 48:11)
The great Medieval commentator Rashi explains that the word Pilalti means “to fill my heart to think the thoughts.” And thus, the term LeHitpalel means the intentional act to fill my heart, to think the thoughts, to dream the dreams, to anticipate the unimaginable and yet to imagine it none the less. LeHitpalel is an exercise of vision and imagination. We are visionary. When we pray we are doing a self-induced experience of imagining peace in the world, redemption, health.
It is these very same ingredients of authentic, aspirational prayer, which constitute the ancient Jewish process of Repentance, which in the Hebrew, Teshuvah, literally translates as “returning.” An intentional act of changing extant assumptions, habits, and patterns. In fact, Teshuva is not at all about repentance, but really a return, a journey home. Teshuvah is the longing, the yearning, the pining to return to that state of embracing our internalized God.
There is a story about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. One day his older brother died, and a newspaper got the story wrong and printed Alfred’s obituary instead. Alfred opened the paper that morning and had the unusual experience of reading his obituary while he was still alive. “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday,” the obituary began. Alfred threw down the paper. That’s not how I want to be remembered, he said. That’s not what’s important to me, he said, and right then and there he decided to throw his entire fortune into rewarding people for bettering this world and bringing it closer to peace.
“Yom Kippur,” writes Rabbi Alan Lew, “is the day we all get to read our own obituary. It’s a dress rehearsal for our death. We are rehearsing the day of our death, because of death, like Yom Kippur, atones.”
And so, Rabbi Lew continues, “…the year rolls by with all its attendant loss and failure, death and disappointment, but at the end of the year, there is a day that heals. The voyage between death and birth, between the home we come from and the home at the end of our voyage, is a journey of healing."
G’mar Chatimah Tovah. My this High Holy Day season be for you a journey of transformation and healing. May these Holy Days carry you home.