High Holidays: On Forgiveness & Repentance
Rabbi Tom Samuels
There is a beautiful Hassidic tale. Once, during the High Holy Days, the great mystic Rabbi Yitzchak Luria heard a Bat Kol, literally a “Daughter of the Voice”, God’s voice, telling him that for all his prayerful intensity there was one man in a neighboring town whose capacity for prayer exceeded even his own. As soon as he could, Reb Yitzchak traveled to that town and sought the man out. “I have heard wondrous things regarding you,” he said to the man when he found him. “Are you a Torah scholar?” “No,” the man said, “I have never had the opportunity to study.” “Then you must be a master of Psalms, a devotional genius who prays with great intensity.” “No,” the man said. “I have heard the Psalms many times, of course, but I do not know even one well enough to recite it.” “And yet,” Rabbi Luria cried, “I was told that the quality of your prayer surpasses even my own! What did you do during the High Holy Days that would merit such praise?” “Rabbi,” the man said, “I am illiterate. Of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, I know but ten. When I entered the synagogue and saw the congregation so fervent in their prayers, my heart shattered within me. I couldn’t pray at all. So I said: Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, here are the Hebrew letters I know: aleph, beit, gimmel, daled, hay, vav, zayin, chet, tet, yud. Combine them in a manner You understand, and I hope they will be pleasing to You. And then I repeated these ten letters over and over again, trusting God to weave them into words.” (From Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s book “Hassidic Tales”)
The High Holy Days have the power to enrich and transform our lives. To become aware, deeply aware at how fragile life is. And to open our eyes to the beauty and wonder that surrounds us. That we are all an intimate part of God’s creative powers. Together, as a community, we celebrate our opportunity to bring the Divine in to our lives. This is the High Holy Days, a festival of life.
But can we indeed derive meaning and inspiration from the High Holy Day services? How can we make these special days more meaningful to the expanse of Jews, their families, their communities?
Towards this, here are some thoughts and ideas on themes and texts that repeat themselves throughout the High Holy Day literature. A map, a compass, a jumping-off point for further exploration of the High Holy Days as a celebration of life.
On Forgiveness
The ancient rabbis wrote that forgiveness involves diving into the muck of our human-to-human relationships. We must recognize what we did, how we hurt the other person. And, we must genuinely regret our actions, and resolve not to repeat them. Rabbi Irwin Kula writes, “Maybe saints and enlightened beings forgive neatly and fully, but the rest of us, forgiveness is rarely achievable in some fairy tale way.” And so, during the days between Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur, we ask from our friends and family for Mechila, Hebrew for the relinquishing of a claim or a debt. We say to each other: “If there’s anything over the last year that I’ve done to hurt or offend you, I’m sorry.” While this type of forgiveness is certainly not the type of profound or heartfelt forgiveness we all yearn for, it is a good start. After all, our sages taught, there are no guarantees. No ultimate moment(s) of forgiveness. Rabbi Kula continues: “We are always making mistakes and correcting; offending and asking for forgiveness. We are never permanently guilty, nor permanently clean.”
On Sin
The Hassidic master, Rabbi (Reb) Nachman of Breslov taught: “It is to a person’s great advantage that he has an inclination to evil, (yetzer hara in Hebrew), for he can then serve God with that very inclination, overcoming it in the heat of his passion, and channeling it to the service of God.” To Reb Nachman, sin, the estrangement from God, is the very same engine that drives us on our journey back home, back to our core selves, back to God. It creates the empty space in our lives that allows for the creation of something new. Reb Nachman concludes, “Our sins should weigh heavily on us, for they provide the leverage that propels us higher — to live a new life in God’s light. The main thing is for a person to forget everything that happened, and to start again.” Tomorrow can be so much better.
On Repentance
During the High Holy Days we aspire to a state of complete Teshuva. This Hebrew term has often been mistranslated as “repentance”, a feeling of contrition or regret for past wrongs. But Teshuva has little to do with feelings of guilt and self-shaming. Teshuva, our sages taught, refers to returning to our core human selves. Warts and all. That all human beings have free will: the capacity to make great mistakes and the capacity to turn it around; the capacity for great evil; and the capacity for incredibly inspiring acts of loving-kindness. Our human weaknesses, our fears, even our despair, need not make us prisoners to any specific narrative. That there always remains hope, aspiration, a return to embracing our beautiful core selves.
Rabbi Tom Samuels
There is a beautiful Hassidic tale. Once, during the High Holy Days, the great mystic Rabbi Yitzchak Luria heard a Bat Kol, literally a “Daughter of the Voice”, God’s voice, telling him that for all his prayerful intensity there was one man in a neighboring town whose capacity for prayer exceeded even his own. As soon as he could, Reb Yitzchak traveled to that town and sought the man out. “I have heard wondrous things regarding you,” he said to the man when he found him. “Are you a Torah scholar?” “No,” the man said, “I have never had the opportunity to study.” “Then you must be a master of Psalms, a devotional genius who prays with great intensity.” “No,” the man said. “I have heard the Psalms many times, of course, but I do not know even one well enough to recite it.” “And yet,” Rabbi Luria cried, “I was told that the quality of your prayer surpasses even my own! What did you do during the High Holy Days that would merit such praise?” “Rabbi,” the man said, “I am illiterate. Of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, I know but ten. When I entered the synagogue and saw the congregation so fervent in their prayers, my heart shattered within me. I couldn’t pray at all. So I said: Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, here are the Hebrew letters I know: aleph, beit, gimmel, daled, hay, vav, zayin, chet, tet, yud. Combine them in a manner You understand, and I hope they will be pleasing to You. And then I repeated these ten letters over and over again, trusting God to weave them into words.” (From Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s book “Hassidic Tales”)
The High Holy Days have the power to enrich and transform our lives. To become aware, deeply aware at how fragile life is. And to open our eyes to the beauty and wonder that surrounds us. That we are all an intimate part of God’s creative powers. Together, as a community, we celebrate our opportunity to bring the Divine in to our lives. This is the High Holy Days, a festival of life.
But can we indeed derive meaning and inspiration from the High Holy Day services? How can we make these special days more meaningful to the expanse of Jews, their families, their communities?
Towards this, here are some thoughts and ideas on themes and texts that repeat themselves throughout the High Holy Day literature. A map, a compass, a jumping-off point for further exploration of the High Holy Days as a celebration of life.
On Forgiveness
The ancient rabbis wrote that forgiveness involves diving into the muck of our human-to-human relationships. We must recognize what we did, how we hurt the other person. And, we must genuinely regret our actions, and resolve not to repeat them. Rabbi Irwin Kula writes, “Maybe saints and enlightened beings forgive neatly and fully, but the rest of us, forgiveness is rarely achievable in some fairy tale way.” And so, during the days between Rosh HaShanna and Yom Kippur, we ask from our friends and family for Mechila, Hebrew for the relinquishing of a claim or a debt. We say to each other: “If there’s anything over the last year that I’ve done to hurt or offend you, I’m sorry.” While this type of forgiveness is certainly not the type of profound or heartfelt forgiveness we all yearn for, it is a good start. After all, our sages taught, there are no guarantees. No ultimate moment(s) of forgiveness. Rabbi Kula continues: “We are always making mistakes and correcting; offending and asking for forgiveness. We are never permanently guilty, nor permanently clean.”
On Sin
The Hassidic master, Rabbi (Reb) Nachman of Breslov taught: “It is to a person’s great advantage that he has an inclination to evil, (yetzer hara in Hebrew), for he can then serve God with that very inclination, overcoming it in the heat of his passion, and channeling it to the service of God.” To Reb Nachman, sin, the estrangement from God, is the very same engine that drives us on our journey back home, back to our core selves, back to God. It creates the empty space in our lives that allows for the creation of something new. Reb Nachman concludes, “Our sins should weigh heavily on us, for they provide the leverage that propels us higher — to live a new life in God’s light. The main thing is for a person to forget everything that happened, and to start again.” Tomorrow can be so much better.
On Repentance
During the High Holy Days we aspire to a state of complete Teshuva. This Hebrew term has often been mistranslated as “repentance”, a feeling of contrition or regret for past wrongs. But Teshuva has little to do with feelings of guilt and self-shaming. Teshuva, our sages taught, refers to returning to our core human selves. Warts and all. That all human beings have free will: the capacity to make great mistakes and the capacity to turn it around; the capacity for great evil; and the capacity for incredibly inspiring acts of loving-kindness. Our human weaknesses, our fears, even our despair, need not make us prisoners to any specific narrative. That there always remains hope, aspiration, a return to embracing our beautiful core selves.