D’var Torah for Shabbat Shuvah, 5766

By Shevach Lambert

October 7th, 2005

We are accustomed to thinking of teshuvah as a deeply personal matter; a wrestling with one's own conscience. Yet certain rabbis in the Talmud declared teshuvah to have been "formed before the world was created," suggesting that teshuvah is one of the foundations of reality. What does that mean? How does a personal inventory become a cosmic principle? What kind of 'world' is created if teshuvah is at its core?

This kind of world is perhaps best expressed by the Hebrew word olam. Olam is an Einsteinian concept of reality; the word can mean 'world' or 'forever'; it can mean both. Olam refers to both space and time. Olam is spelled ayin, vav, lamed, mem. Some Jewish mystics have seen in each letter an allusion to the foundation of reality.

Ayin, which literally means 'eye,' alludes to the Divine Vision from which the wholeness of existence issues forth; As it says in Genesis, "vayar elokim et kol asher asah" - 'And G-d saw all that G-d made'; "va-hineh, tov m'od." 'and see, it was very good.' Tov m'od, very good; our sages understood the phrase to encompass yetzer tov and yetzer harah, good and evil impulse, light and light's shadow: each have their role to play in the unfolding of the Divine reality; both are included in the Divine Vision.

The next letter in olam is vav, which is also the third letter of the Divine Name. It is the letter of connection, the Hebrew "and," the conduit by which the vision – the ayin – of Creation is focused toward the next letter, lamed, which denotes direction, goal, or purpose; as we say l shanah tovah; toward a good year. The lamed suggests that what happens in the universe is not the result of random chance or accident, but is instead the result of purposeful direction. The potential envisioned in the Divine is aimed at realization; it is directed toward an end.

The final letter in olam is mem. Mem begins and ends both mayyim – water – and makom – place. Life begins in the primordial waters, the mayyim, and grows in intention and purpose, culminating in the Makom, the Place where G-d's vision for reality is reflected back to the Creator, in the form of human consciousness. In this respect, mem also stands for malkut, the tenth sefirah where the Divine Energy is latent in worldly reality.

The four letters of olam represent reality as viewed through the eyes of G-d: vision and purpose directed toward manifestation in a Place for G-d in the world. Yet if we were to remove one of these letters – the letter vav, the letter of connection, and the one letter also included in the Divine Name, we are left with the word olum, which in Biblical Hebrew means "hidden." Without this connection to Divine vision and purpose, the fullness of reality is hidden; it is potential only.

It is up to us to add the missing vav, the connecting letter, to reveal the holiness hidden in the world. As Jews, our vav-connectors are the mitzvoth. The commandments are the means with which we try to connect ourselves to the underlying divine vision and purpose of reality, because that which is most real is that which is most holy.

This is the season when we enact the one mitzvah which serves as a paradigm of all the mitzvoth. This is teshuvah, repentance, or returning. Teshuvah exemplifies the union of the spiritual with the physical, for with it we have the opportunity to transform our most precious possession – our lives –into alignment with G-d’s purpose for that life.

According to Rabbi Simon Jacobson, "the Hebrew word for repentance – teshuvah – actually implies the opposite. When you repent, the implication is that you're leaving the wrong path, regretting that you ever took that turn in the first place. But teshuvah literally means return, which implies that you are not leaving something, you are coming back to something." We are, in fact, returning to our higher Selves, trying to reconnect with the purpose for which we were created.

True teshuvah is a two step process: repentance, and return. By repentance, we mean the three R's: regret, rejection, and resolution. First we regret, we identify the harmful behavior patterns that led us off the path of wholeness and holiness. Next we reject; we try to actively let go of the emotional, spiritual, and physical baggage that hampers our progress. The third stage of repentance is resolution, where we seek to recondition these past behaviors into a new behavior for the future.

When we have accomplished the 3 R's of repentance we are ready for the second step of teshuvah, return. We must try to come back to our soul, to our divine essence, to our source in G-d. To do true teshuvah means that we must look at our lives not as a random series of disconnected events, but as a process fulfilling a purpose. Teshuvah asks us to examine our lives in light of our purpose, to see how far from the center of the world we have wandered, and allows us to reconnect with the ground of our being.

The Talmud attributes to Resh Laqish the view that when a sinner repents out of a loving desire to do the will of her Creator, all of her or his past sins are accounted as virtues. This is not to say that the past is forgotten, or that the pain and hurt of the sin are wiped away, but it does say that the context in which the reality of the sin is understood has changed. Before, your sins placed you at a distance from G-d; with the power of true repentance, those same sins now compel you to seek G-d’s presence. The measurement has changed; consciousness has intervened, reality is reborn.

But how does all this translate into everyday life? How do you maintain this vav connection, this spiritual realignment, in the face of the demands of just getting through the day? So often at this time of year we attempt to release some of the baggage the blocks our true sense of Self, only to have all that baggage come crashing back down into place as soon as we are confronted with a challenge or crisis. We fall back on our habitual responses, on our defense mechanisms, on all the old familiar tools with which we've fashioned a lifetime. What’s the point of teshuvah if it doesn’t seem to have any staying power?

For myself, I find that driving in an automobile in traffic is a sort of mechanical metaphor for the anxieties and frustrations that seem to crowd out the effects of teshuvah. Inside a car and confronting a commute, all of my fellow humans, my co-partners in creation, turn into malevolent freaks who should have been jailed at birth rather than handed a driver’s license. What’s going on here? Is this who I really am, and is all my teshuvah work but a temporary polish on a permanently tarnished brass monkey?

I think it's helpful here to first relax, be patient, and remember that in the Divine Vision, the ayin of olam, both light and shadow are included; yetzer tov and yetzer harah are both part of the whole, tov m'od, very good. Both the light and the dark have their role to play in translating the vision into direction and fulfillment.

The old patterns and defense mechanisms may still be there, even after heartfelt teshuvah, but make no mistake: they are being reconditioned; their context is being altered, their reality is changing. During and, hopefully, after this time of teshuvah, I may still instinctively curse the driver ahead of me for the sin of occupying my anxiety. But now I am at least aware that such a response indicates that my teshuvah is not yet complete. I am guiltily aware that such responses, however conditioned by a lifetime of practice, are not who I really am. They are telling me I still have work to do. Before, these anger impulses were just gut feelings; now they are slowly becoming messengers from my higher Self. Even in a flash of anger, I can still see the divine light behind the glare, noodging me toward a new reality, encouraging me to shiviti, to place G-d before me at all times and try to add the vav connector to reveal the divine message hidden in the situation.

Teshuvah is the paradigm of the mitzvoth; it underscores the meaning behind every commandment: to awaken the holy within the mundane, and align the world with its purpose. With Teshuvah, we add our own particular vav-connector and begin to reawaken to our individual role in establishing the malchut, G-d’s Place, makom, on earth. Teshuvah helps us open our souls to receive once again the breath of G-d, and through each of us does the olam, does the universe, continue to breathe.