By Rabbi Ben Hassan, Sephardic Bikur Holim
What is Yom Kippur? What does a Day of Atonement mean? Does it mean we can come to synagogue, say some prayers, and fast one day a year so we can run wild the other 364? And then come back next year to wipe the slate clean all over again? That’s pretty crude. I can’t imagine too many of us would believe that works.
We can’t buy God. He knows our deepest thoughts. We can’t try to look good in front of Him because He knows exactly what we’re thinking. Are we meant to beat our chests in remorse for our wrongdoings of the year gone by? Let’s be honest about it. Are we really going to change our whole lifestyle? Will next year be any different to the past year? So who are we kidding? Honestly, isn’t it all a bit hypocritical?
Throughout Yom Kippur and the days before it, we are involved in the process of teshuva, which most of us translate as repentance. When we look at the word repentance it means to feel or show that you are sorry for something bad or wrong that you did and that you want to do what is right. But I don’t believe that it is the real essence of tehuva. The Hebrew root for the word teshuva is shuv, which means return. On Yom Kippur, when we work on ourselves, we are not repenting; we are working on returning to our original selves, that time before we slipped up. So how do we return?
This is an easy question to answer but a very hard thing to put into practice. Maimonides explains that four key steps need to be accomplished for a person to do complete teshuva:
Step 1: We must stop doing the particular action.
Step 2: We must confess verbally what we did that was wrong.
Step 3: We must feel deep remorse for our past actions.
Step 4: When faced with the same situation, we must be able to rise above our temptations and never do the action again.
The four steps sound very simple, but each one requires a conscientious effort on our part to improve ourselves. Sometimes we make the mistake and think that uttering an apology will fix everything. That is only one of the four steps. Feeling remorse is not sufficient, even when there is sincere regret for our past deeds. We need the other steps with it.
Maimonides writes that complete
teshuva is only fully achieved when we find ourselves standing in exactly the same position as we were before, but this time we are able to strengthen ourselves and resist our temptations, whether that be gossiping, cheating on our tax returns, or any other commandment.
Toward the end of the Laws of
Teshuva, Maimonides writes a fascinating piece. He states, “Do not say that teshuva only helps in transgressions that are inherently an act, such as promiscuity, theft, or robbery; rather, just as a person refrains from these acts, so too must one search out evil thoughts and return from anger, hatred, jealousy, quarrelling, pursuit of money or honor, or being gluttonous, etc. One needs to do teshuva from everything.”
Maimonides is explaining that the root of our transgressions are not the acts themselves. It is our thoughts within. If we truly want to master the act of teshuva, we must purge our systems of our anger, hatred and jealousy. As Rabbi Elazar Hakapar says in Pirke Avot — Ethics of the Fathers, “Envy, lust and honor drive a person from the world.” As we approach this year’s Day of Atonement — this day of being at one with God — let us redouble our efforts to return ourselves to when we were free from all of our negative character traits. These traits prevent us all from being the people we want to be.
May we all be written and sealed in the Book of Life.