The full moon of Elul has passed. I missed the eclipse, but went outside late at night and stared for a few moments at the circle of red haze which surrounded that moon in the clear night sky. It was beautiful, but flushed, as if it wanted to illumine a whole and perfect world, but, looking down at our deeds on earth, felt shame. It struck me then that this moon was an emblem of Teshuvah.
Elul is the month of Teshuvah, repentance and return, an inner journey which becomes more intense through the Asseret Yemei HaTeshuvah, the Ten Days of Penitence from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur which will soon be upon us.
Yesterday, strangely, I heard the same question posed in two entirely different context: Does one have to repent for actions one did not do out of choice but because one was forced? As Daniel Taub, formerly Israel’s ambassador to the Court of King James, pointed out in a deeply touching talk last night, the legal answer may be ‘no’, but the emotional and moral answer is ‘yes’.
That’s because teshuvah is motivated not just by ‘What have I done wrong?’ but also, or even more so, by the feeling: ‘If only the world wasn’t like this; if only it was better.’ For teshuvah is about looking up as much as looking down. We may think of it as driven by guilt, but in truth it’s motivated by love. It’s compassion and love of life that makes us feel in our heart, and not just think abstractly in our head, ‘This gift of life, this beautiful world! We must not damage it so!’
That’s why the Torah teaches that teshuvah is an opening of our heart and soul. It brings us back to God, and God back to us, because it restores our awareness of how precious and sacred, yet vulnerable, life us. It awakens our love and compassion.
It’s that very love that makes us feel pain that the world is so wounded when it could, and should, be so wonderful. That’s what Primo Levi described, recalling the expressions of the first young Russian horsemen to approach the fences of Auschwitz, as ‘the shame a just person experiences… that evil should have been introduced irrevocably into the world of things that exist, and that [our] will for good should have proved too weak…’
Several times this year people have told me they feel ashamed. I won’t go into details. But I recognise the feeling. It bothers me sometimes in the supermarket, when I throw things into my trolley knowing that I’ve no idea out of what poverty or labour these products may have reached the shelves. It pains me when I see a smashed-up badger by the roadside. It sticks in me when a refugee, standing in my kitchen, tells me how and where his family were murdered. What horrors have we inflicted on innocent life? There are times I’m ashamed of being a human.
But teshuvah must not stop with shame. It must lead us to tikkun, healing and reparation. It must bring us to the question: ‘What can I do? What is the particular contribution I can make in this world full of wonder, and wounds?’ So many people answer in ways I deeply admire: ‘I’m helping with food rescue.’ ‘I’m baking challah for friends who’re having a tough time.’ ‘I’m in a group taking children who’ve faced trauma on therapeutic nature trails.’ ‘I play in a volunteer band, for displaced people, and in bomb shelters when the sirens go off.’
The love, the sorrow, the desire to make reparation, the commitment ‘This is what I’m determined to do’ – that is the journey of teshuvah.