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Rosh Hashana Message
Return Again
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Background
Rosh Hashana. We are here again. At the mere mention of this awesome holiday, many are hit by a powerful wave of nostalgia. The synagogue, the Chazzan (Cantor), dipping the apple in the honey, honey cake, the familiar songs and tunes, the blowing of the shofar, the familiar machzorim (prayer books- for Rosh Hashana) and on and on.
And inevitably, for those that have gone through the intense emotion of the day, for those that have really pushed themselves to do ‘teshuva’ (repentance), committing themselves to becoming new people for the new year, there are other familiar feelings that also come along: fatigue and failure. A feeling of having to get themselves started up again for the process of trying to improve and become better. A process which they may have gone through a number of times before, and each and every time they fell short of the lofty goals and expectations that they had set out for themselves.
For such people, Rosh Hashana is bittersweet (pun intended). Rosh Hashana is a reminder of times where they felt so close to Hashem, when they felt really really ‘good’, but were then hit by the stark and difficult reality of having to leave the cocoon of the High Holy Days and face regular life. A regular life that had the same struggles and challenges as before, for which their spiritually ‘high’ self did not prepare them for, and which beat them down. Again. In short, Rosh Hashana, for many, is the beginning of the process of feeling like an abject failure.
Question
What can be said to such a person who has experienced this? They tried, they did their best, and they were crushed by the magnitude of the task and they can’t try again. Can we blame them? What are they to do?
Answer
Of the most classic pesukim on teshuva, which Rabbeinu Yonah quotes in the first paragraph of his magnum opus, Shaarei Teshuva, from Yermiyah (3:22), says ‘שׁ֚וּבוּ בָּנִ֣ים שֹׁובָבִ֔ים אֶרְפָּ֖ה מְשׁוּבֹֽתֵיכֶ֑ם’, ‘return, my sons who are rebellious, I will heal you from your rebelliousness.’
If you analyze these terms for ‘rebellious’ you see something very interesting. They are called ‘shovavim’ which literally means those who are ‘returners.’
What does this mean- ‘return my sons who are shovavim, who are returners’? Yirmiyahu is addressing people who have done teshuva previously, in fact they have done teshuva so many times previously that they are called ‘shovavim’! People who return! And what is Yirmiyahu telling them, in his prophesy from Hashem? You, returners, who have constantly done teshuva, but who continue to slide back into your old ways- do teshuva again! Don’t give up!
Why? Why should I not give up? The path seems hopeless!
The answer is- ‘אֶרְפָּ֖ה מְשׁוּבֹֽתֵיכֶ֑ם’, ‘I will heal your rebelliousness, I will heal your backsliding.’ I will heal the source, the pain, the emptiness, the sorrow, for which you seek a balm and which is why you keep backsliding and returning to your aveiros.
In this passuk, Yirmiyahu is sharing with us an amazing insight- keep returning! Keep doing teshuva! Even though it didn’t work last time and even though it may not have worked the previous 100 times! Do teshuva again! And if you do, if you gather your strength for yet another time, if you gird yourself for another maximum effort at returning to Hashem with all your might- then Hashem will heal the underlying issues and problems that keep dogging you, keep pulling you back down to your ways of aveirah. Don’t give up! Keep plugging away!
How does this work? Is it magic?
I think that this is to be understood on 2 levels- one I will call ‘seguli’ (good luck charm) and the other I will call ‘sichli’ (logical):
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Seguli- it is magic. Hashem can do emotional surgery, psychological surgery, on a person so that whatever it is that they were missing, whatever was driving them towards doing aveiros (sin) will no longer afflict them. Hashem guarantees, Yirmiyahu tells us, that if you gather your strength again, when you are feeling like giving up, like you can’t do this anymore, and you go through the entire teshuva process with all of your effort, Hashem says- I will fix you in a way that you don’t keep backsliding into your aveiros. I will ‘sprinkle you with pure, holy waters’ which will bring back to life the dead spirit you feel inside.
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Sichli- it is logical. When someone does teshuva again and again and again and keeps falling back into the same aveiros, they think nothing has changed. They think that they are just as messed up and just as ‘bad’ as they were before, if not worse. But nothing could be further from the truth. The yetzer hara (Satan, evil inclination) wants you to think you are doing nothing, in order that he can lull you into despair and giving up hope. But in truth, when you do teshuva and then fall back into the same actions, you are a completely different person who is falling back into those same actions.
Inside, under the hood, the impressions and marks on your soul which were etched by the teshuva you had done, are not gone. Those impressions are still there. Perhaps they are not significant enough to completely change the way you behave, yet. But with time and with repeatedly doing teshuvah, they will. You will change, completely, from where you were to become a whole new person.
Famously, Rebbi Akiva, at the age of 40 years old, was an ignoramus. He had attended yeshiva when he was younger, but he found his heart to be closed, dense and unaffected by Torah. He had given up on ever becoming a Torah scholar. But then, one day, he was walking along the river and saw an amazing sight- he saw a great big rock that had had a hole bored straight through it!
What was clear, upon further investigation, was that this rock had been bored through by a single, steady, drip of water which was going straight through the now clear hole in the rock. Rebbi Akiva was astounded by what he saw and took to heart the powerful lesson that consistent, steady, repeated effort, will make an impact! With that inspiration, Rebbi Akiva set his efforts on learning Torah again and in short order became one of the greatest Torah scholars, in history.
Does the drip of water give up hope!? Does the drip of water cease pounding against the rock because it isn’t satisfied with its progress and feels dejected at seemingly accomplishing nothing?
As you do teshuva again, and again and again, with as much energy and emotion as you can muster, you will change. You will become new. You will become healed from your scars and wounds and anxieties and fears and insecurities, and low self-esteem and whatever else it is that is wearing you down- and you will become a good person who does the will of Hashem b’lev Shaleim (with a complete heart). You will transform into someone who is so proud of their doggedness and accomplishments, that you stuck to the program of life and pulled yourself out of the rut of the pit of whatever it was you were grappling with, and you emerged to be victorious. This confidence, this newfound source of self-esteem and belief in yourself will power you to ever greater heights.
This is just one of the reasons why growth and accomplishment is not nearly as far as it seems. Growth is not linear, it is compounded. Just like when someone takes a step up a mountain their perspective changes dramatically and suddenly, so too, the possibilities in life change dramatically as one makes a concrete step or two in the direction of growth and becoming a better person. As they accomplish and are out of being stuck, and as their happiness, excitement and confidence grows, they will pick up speed and quickly come to a place which seemed too infinitely far from where they just were.
The trick is to focus on, and appreciate, the small incremental improvements that are barely perceptible and to use that as fuel to keep going, never give up and do teshuva, return, yet again.
Wishing everyone a wonderful Shabbos, Yom Tov, and a ‘ksiva v’chasima tova’, a sweet and happy year,
Rabbi Eli Meir Kramer
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