Coming Home

Rabbi Melanie Aron

August 31, 2002

Irish folk tales talk about the pot of gold found at the end of the rainbow. In American history it was the new frontier which was the land of promise. When things became difficult, one could always move on, move west, to a place where one could make a new beginning.

Rabbi Bradley Artzon, in a recent article in Tikkun magazine, notes that for Jews the ideal was not moving on but moving back. The word Teshuvah, which we translate into the English concept Repentance, means literally, turning, or returning. When we find that we have lost our way, when we reap the consequences of bad decisions and find our lives in havoc, the Jewish way is not to move on to some new spot, but to find our way back to a better place.

That focus on returning rests on certain suppositions.

The first is contained in one of the prayers a Jew traditionally recites every morning. "Elohai Neshamah shenatana bi tehorah hi. O God the soul which you have implanted within me is a pure one." Judaism believes that people are essentially good, that we begin with a clean slate, and are born in a state of purity. Therefore returning to our original state is a return to both purity and innocence. Repentance has the power, as the prophet states, to make us as clean as newly fallen snow, though our sins be as red as scarlet. Whatever wrongs we have done, we can repent: we can express our regret for our actions, we can work to repair the damage we have caused, and we can test the strength of our repentance through our actions in the future. In Jewish tradition it is our action and lack of action which is sinful and not our essential selves. Therefore we can reclaim the pure soul that God implanted within us.

The second supposition is that within every Jew no matter how far they have strayed from their tradition there is what is called in Yiddish "a pintele yid". This tiny bit of Jewish identity can remain dormant for years, but sometimes and for some people there is a time in their life when it suddenly begins to call to them. Many times in our history Jews in trouble have sought to evoke the pintele yid in a fellow Jew who has risen in the world, but strayed far from their people. Rabbi Salantar of the musar movement was well known for appealing even to meshumads, to those who had renounced Judaism and risen to high stations in Czarist Russia, and appealing to their better nature in helping their people.

Repentance can mean returning to a time when that pintele yid played a larger role in our lives. Many members of our congregation here at Shir Hadash, raised with very little Jewish tradition, or having left the synagogue as teenagers, and not reentered until their son's bris, have rediscovered their Jewish identy. Some have found as parents that Judaism was more important to them than they had previously thought. Others in midlife have begun to seek a meaning in life that goes beyond career and material success, and have found it through Judaism. Returning can mean that you can go home again, even if for some, you were never Jewishly home in the first place.

Finally as we read in this weeks Torah portion, returning is not a single step. The traditional commentaries make much of the fact that in a single paragraph in Nitzavim, the Hebrew word SHUV, return, is used seven times. They note that returning is not an all or nothing proposition, nor is it something that is only one sided. The rabbis believe that before we even begin to change externally there are certain internal changes that must take place. They describe the first step in this way: One must arouse oneself from the depths of lethargy and despair, and only then take action. One can return with baby steps and God responds even if you have not gone half way. The rabbis write that when one turns, all the spiritual forces of the world join in your efforts.

As the month of Elul draws to a close, we pray Hashiveinu Adonai, Cause us O God to return, help us turn back to our better selves, help us to find our way home, help us to take the first step.