Stillness And Motion In Teshuvah

Dear friends, 

Today is the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, which marks the beginning of the season of Teshuvah. This word, Teshuvah is usually translated as repentance, or return, and indeed this week we began our study of Maimonides’ Hilchot Teshuvah, which we are calling The Laws of Repentance. In our class we dug into some of  the layers of the word. Elana pointed out the circularity implied in it, Shuv, Hebrew for “again,” a kind of turning around and around, turning to face ourselves facing the world.  Lashuv means to re-turn. What might we be returning to? God perhaps, to who we are, to goodness, to a more honest version of living maybe. 

For Maimonides, part of the return is to believing that we are capable of improvement and change. Every year we have to remind ourselves that we do have the capacity to change. We don’t have to remain caught in the same tendencies that limit our freedom. As a matter of fact, an important part of Teshuvah for Maimonides is rejecting the notion that we are destined by God, or conditioned by society to do or not do certain acts. He spends significant time convincing us that we really do have freedom of choice, and these ideas of predetermination or societal influence are, in the context of a Teshuvah, a shunning of our most sacred duty: ״שיהיה האדם משלים את עצמו ואת כל הנברא בשבילו״ “that each person should work toward perfecting themselves and all that was created for them,” in the words of the the Italian Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lutzato. 

Maimonides expresses this in part by expounding on an inner tension within the word Teshuvah. On the one hand, as we learned, the word implies movement through the meaning associated with turning and returning. On the other hand the word is also related to the word Lashevet, to sit. As TNS Rabbinic Chavurah member Yoni Kretzmer explained on Wednesday, sitting is associated with peace and blessing. After our wandering we will arrive home. Then we will “sit safely on your land,” and enjoy the fruit, the bread and the wine it provides. When Jacob says: “And I shall return peacefully to my father’s home,” his return, in the Hebrew is a type of sitting down. 

The inner tension of stillness and movement that is expressed by the Hebrew can be found in another verse about Jacob: “וישב יעקב בארץ מגורי אביו”, “And Jacob sat in the land where his father resided.” The word for resided “megurei,” comes from the word Ger, meaning a stranger in a strange land. Sitting too comfortably, without a slight sense of strangeness from where you live is deadening. We have to sit with the strangeness. Rabbi Tzadok of Lublin taught that Jews are meant to build ביתא באווירה דעלמא, “a house floating in the air of the world,” rather than one that sits on the ground. The Midrash tells us that “Vayeshev - And he sat - denotes sorrow.” 

On the other hand, from the first day of Elul until after Yom Kippur we add Psalm 27 to our daily prayers. This poem sits very comfortably on the central and most commonly sung line:

אחת שאלתי מאת יהוה אותה אבקש: שבתי בבית יהוה כל ימי חיי לחזות בנעם יהוה ולבקר בהיכלו״

 : One thing I ask of YHVH, only it do I seek: 
To sit in the house of YHVH every day of my life, to gaze upon the sweetness of YHVH, and to visit Her palace.”

This is Teshuvah. To step out of the internal motion for a moment of stillness and perspective, to be still with the movement. Then we might know that we are freer than we think: free to sit in the deep parts of who we always were, and free to step out of who we’ve been until today; Free to be and free to become.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha