Ha’azinu
Shabbat Shuvah
Deuteronomy 32:1-52
Hosea 14:2-10
Micah 7:18-20
Joel 2:15-27
I love the awesome quality of these Yamim Nora’im/Days of Awe. I love the feel of the synagogue filled to overflowing, with song powerful enough to rise to the gates of heaven. I love the sense of piety and prayerfulness; in these days, even ordinary greetings turn into prayers. And I love the work of tshuvah/turning or repentance.
In this season, I am drawn into heshbon hanefesh/ accounting of the soul. I know the exploration will highlight flaws and missteps that I have tried to shut out of consciousness. Yet I know that such a process of fearless moral inventory can give rise to transformation. In fact, I have learned that profound movement to a new way of being — in myself or in another — rarely happens without the kind of deep inner work that these days require of us.
Yet I often sit with people for whom self-examination turns into self-loathing. Sometimes, the ritual of beating our breast becomes a repetition of a lifelong pattern of self-hate. Such dark places tend not to incubate new life. Such a tshuvah process may get stuck in self-doubt and a conviction that one’s sins are unforgivable. How are we to ask the hard questions about our lives, and still know that tshuvah is an opportunity for forgiveness, for change, for transformation?
Jewish tradition has long distinguished between two modes of tshuvah: tshuvah mei’yir’ah/repentance motivated by fear and tshuvah mei’ahavah/repentance animated by love. Tshuvah mei’yir’ah is undertaken out of fear of punishment or consequences. These are the times when we know we must change “or else,” so we grit our teeth and do what we must.
Tshuvah mei’ahavah, by contrast, stems from a sense of possibility. At such times, we envision a better way and gratefully sense that we will be given just what we need to renew our lives. We are hopeful, eager to see what may lie ahead.
Reflecting on this week’s parashah and special Haftarah, the Sefat Emet teaches that our self-examination is grounded in our connection to the Divine. He examines the beloved verse, “Return us to You, O God, and we shall return” (Lamentations 5:21, quoted in the Machzor). Sometimes, he suggests, we are so mired in sin that we can only change because our fear of the adverse consequences of our actions has grown stronger than inertia and habit. At such times, we need the Divine, as it were, to initiate the dance of tshuvah, hence, “Return us to You.”
“But those who return from love do so on their own, because of the love of God that burns within,” he continues, and hence the second part of the verse, “we shall return.” This highest form of tshuvah is not the fruit of grim self-flagellation, but a natural outgrowth of knowing the ways in which the Divine lives within us. When we remember our own innate holiness, we are naturally moved to transform our lives.
“The verse continues: ‘…renew our days as of old.’ This refers to the root attachment that all of Israel have to God; ‘For God’s people are a part of God’ (Deut. 32:9), from “The Language of Truth,” translated by Arthur Green.
Quoting our parashah, the Sefat Emet writes, paradoxically, that it is not our sinfulness but our essential divinity that moves us to change. Our essential unity with all that is good naturally moves us to purge everything that may obstruct the light of who we are.
Another Chassidic master, the Degel Machaneh Ephraim, offered a similar teaching in his commentary to Parashat Nitsavim. Reflecting on the talmudic statement that “One who repents from love — that person’s sins become merits,” he puzzles over how the worst of our flaws can become transformed. He says that it is like planting a seed. First, the seed is planted in the ground. Then the seed opens, decomposing into the earth. Only then can new life begin to grow.
This tradition of interpretation envisions tshuvah as opportunity rather than obligation, as an invitation to new growth rather than a vehicle for self-punishment. These sources encourage us to do our inner accounting with hope, trusting that our courage and honesty will bear fruit in the new year.
May the new year bring rich fruit in our lives, blessings for our loved ones, and peace for Israel and for all the world.