Weekly Torah portion: Nitzavim-Vayelekh

Every Jew must search his deeds and repent on his own

Professor Rabbi David Golinkin |Published: 09.07.07 , 07:29

Next week we shall celebrate the holiday of Rosh Hashanah. It is therefore fitting to delve into the concept of Teshuvah (repentance). Rabbinic Judaism believes that God gave us the choice to stumble in sin, yet He also gave us the ability to repent.

The doctrine of free choice was explained very clearly by the Rambam – Maimonides - in his Laws of Repentance (5:2) “Every person is worthy of being as righteous as Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses) or as wicked as Yeravam (Jeroboam), wise or foolish, merciful or wicked… and so with all the other attributes, and there is no one to force him… and no one to pull him in one of two directions, rather he by himself and by his own will turns to whatever direction he wishes to turn…”

On the other hand, just as a person has the ability to sin, so has he the ability to repent. When a person sins (hoteh) he misses (mahatee) the goals set for him by God and His Torah; when he repents, he returns to God and His commandments and thereby “hits” the lofty targets of Judaism.

And who must initiate and execute the process of repentance? We do not have priests or saints to absolve us of our sins. Every Jew must search his deeds and repent on his own. And thus we learn from the story of Elazar ben Durdaya (Avodah Zarah 17a) “who did not miss a single harlot in the entire world.”

In the end, he decided to repent. What did he do? “He went and sat down between two mountains and two valleys and said: mountains and valleys, beg mercy for me!” but they refused. “He said: Heavens and Earth, beg mercy for me!” but they refused. “He said: Stars and constellations, beg mercy for me!” but they refused. “He said: it is up to me! He put his head between his knees and cried bitterly…” We all resemble Elazar ben Durdaya. We all look for a “mountain” or “valley” to beg mercy for us, but repentance cannot be achieved by proxy; in the end everything depends on our desire to improve ourselves.

And how does one repent? Here are five of the paths to repentance described in our sources:

1. Regret – “He must regret his evil deeds and say within his heart: What have I done! How was it that the fear of God was not before my eyes?” (Rabbeinu Yonah, Sha’arei Teshuvah, 1:10)

2. Confession – to confess our sins. But it is not sufficient to read the lists in the mahzor. Everyone must confess his own actual sins. (Shulhan Arukh, Orah Hayyim, 607:2)

3. Reconciliation – to go to our friends, appease them and ask them for forgiveness until they forgive us. (Ibid., 606:1)

4. Abandoning the sin – “And what is repentance? That the sinner should abandon his sin and remove it from his thought and resolve in his heart not to repeat it.” (Rambam, ibid., 2:2)

5. Not to repeat the sin when a similar opportunity arises – “What is complete repentance? When the opportunity presents itself to repeat a sin he has done in the past, and he can repeat the sin, yet he abstains from doing so because he repented.” (Ibid., 2:1)

May it be God’s will that we take to heart the message of the High Holy Days and, as a result, may we experience the vision of the Prophet that we recite in the Tashlikh service on Rosh Hashanah: “He will return and have mercy upon us, He will cover up our iniquities, may You hurl all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19).