“What must we do before we can request God to forgive us?” asked the teacher, hoping her students had remembered the class on repentance the day before. An eager hand shot up from the back, “Yes, Johnny?” “Miss, we have to sin!”
Though less facetiously, most of us think like Johnny. We retain the simple view that the process of us repenting, and God forgiving, is triggered by a sinful act. And so, we come to synagogue to admit our wrongdoings: we ate what we shouldn’t have, we broke Shabbat, we didn’t give much charity, and so on.
We think of mitzvot as specific actions, and when we fail to do them, we ought to beg forgiveness and commit to do more.
Maimonides, the 12th-century Jewish scholar and theologian, thought otherwise. He was the first to gather rabbinic statements about teshuvah (repentance), which were scattered across the Talmud, and produce a systematic treatment of the subject.
In chapter seven of his Laws of Teshuvah, he writes, “Don’t think that teshuvah only applies to sins that involve an action, such as promiscuity, robbery or theft. Rather, just as a person must repent from these, so too they must search through their bad character traits, and repent from them: from anger, from hatred, from envy, from rivalry, from triviality, from chasing money and honour, from overeating, and so on – from all of these they must repent.”
Simmering beneath actions lie our attitudes, and Maimonides teaches that we must repent from them as well. Getting angry, hateful, jealous, resentful or childish, as well as being desperate for wealth, respect, and large helpings of food, are intense desires that can catch us all. They skewer our perception of what really matters and drag us down.
Maimonides continues with a warning, “And these sins are more difficult than those that involve an action, for when a person is submerged in them, it is much more difficult to separate themselves.” So, we might change our actions, but have we changed ourselves?
There are parallels in modern psychology. Some therapies are behavioural and action-focused, while others, like psychodynamic and psychoanalytical methods, are more extensive and exploratory (and often more expensive!). They examine your underlying personality.
However, rather than seeking therapy only when life has become unbearable, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and the days in-between, are our annual opportunity to experience a therapeutic process.
The prayers give us the language to reflect on who we are, not just what we’ve done. To my mind, concentrating on the ones that speak to you is more valuable than rushing through the entire corpus.
I see the machzor for holy days as a toolbelt rather than a straitjacket – it contains the passionate compositions of Jewish poets from different centuries and places, all expressing their inner lives and feelings. Of course, some resonate more than others – and those are the ones to focus on.
Similarly, the various traditions, like dipping apple in honey and hearing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, and dressing in white and fasting on Yom Kippur, are all motivators for us to look inside ourselves.
The first lets us taste how sweet life can be, the second prompts us to listen to our inner voice and the third is a constant reminder of our fragility. The fourth is a reassurance that we are not irredeemably sullied; purity is possible.
Even the flat-out kneeling during the Aleinu prayer, though physically dramatic, is essentially an expression of vulnerability before our Creator. If this is too taxing due to age, arthritis or other infirmity, then you are not obliged to kneel. But, if your reluctance hails from social discomfort then, well, that’s the point. Losing composure and lowering ourselves is a raw and healthy admission of our weaknesses.
Real change, of course, is never easy. Rabbi Israel Salanter, the 19th-century founder of the Jewish mussar (ethical) movement, used to say, “It is easier to go through all of Shas (the whole Mishnah/Talmud) than to change just one character trait.” And former Chief Rabbi Sacks once said to me, “It is so sad that a person can go through the whole Talmud, and yet the Talmud has not gone through them.”
It is true that the rabbinic sages encourage us to do more mitzvot during this time, but a close reading of their words shows that they don’t think a few more actions will really tip the scales of merit. Instead, doing these mitzvot is an expression of our desire to chart a new path.
Even if we can’t sustain those actions afterwards, showing God and ourselves that we can act differently is the first step to becoming different. What counts is the path to personality change. It is the mind that matters. And so Maimonides ends his point by quoting Isaiah (55:7), “Let the wicked one forsake their path, and the sinner their thinking; and so turn back to the Lord, and God will show mercy… and forgive.”
With its trillions of connections, the brain is the most complex organ in the human body. While coders may try to train AI to ape it, the High Holy Days teach us to respect the power of the mind, and provide us with ways to take more control, and so change for the better.
Rabbi Zarum is dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, where he holds the Rabbi Sacks chair in modern Jewish thought
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