Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel
Year 2 Day 305
“The most unnoticed of all miracles is the miracle of repentance. It is not the same thing as rebirth; it is transformation, creation. In the dimension of time there is no going back. But the power of repentance causes time to be created backward and allows re-creation of the past to take place. Through the forgiving hand of God, harm and blemish which we have committed against the world and against ourselves will be extinguished, transformed into salvation.”(Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity pg. 69)
On this, the second day of the 10 days of Repentance, the brilliance of Rabbi Heschel is calling to us to end our fascination with perfection, decline to live in shame of our errors, and stop our needing to blame another(s) for the “missing the marks” we commit. T’Shuvah/repentance is, as Reb Meir states in the Talmud (Yoma 86b): “Great is repentance, because the entire world is forgiven on account of (one) individual who repents.” We all, according to Reb Meir, have the opportunity and responsibility to impact our world, individually, communally, and globally. All we have to do is be serious about our repentance, not use some formula to ‘get off the hook’ rather we need to own up to our errors, we are called upon by our tradition to end the blame and shame experience of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and by our Biblical figures, and by all of our ancestors.
It is “the most unnoticed of all miracles” because we save ourselves from being stuck in the mud and mire of denial, we extricate ourselves from the mendacity of self-deception, we come face to face with our authentic self and learn from our errors and the errors of our ancestors, our parents, our siblings, our historical figures, etc. Coming face to face with our authentic self is the pathway to a new creation of our living. Coming face to face with our learning is the pathway to transforming our errors into merits, changing the course of our life and the lives of those around us and people we have never even met. It is an “unnoticed miracle” by virtue of the change that happens both within us and to the people we make our amends to. It is an “unnoticed miracle” because we suddenly find ourselves living in a deeper, more committed relationship with our self, with another(s) and with God. We no longer need to hide from anyone else, we no longer have to live in willful blindness of our impact on another(s) and on our corner of the world.
The transformation that occurs is “a miracle”! We find ourselves able to suspend our “alien thoughts” of hiding, let go of our “alien intentions” of denying our errors, make the “I”, that is our ego, stand in concert with God and humanity to improve the world and one another. This transformation leads us to living in harmony with God, with our self, rather than hiding, rather than living in mendacity and self-deception. It allows us to be free of shame and not need to blame, it gives us the gift of living in truth and being able to say: “Oops, I made a mistake”, the 5 hardest words for most people to put together in one sentence. Because of our willingness to be in truth about ourselves, because of our tenacity in doing our own inventory, because of our going to people we have harmed and asking for forgiveness, our lives and the life of the entire world is created anew, transformed. The proof text of this is found in the words of the prophet Hosea: “I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely; for My anger has turned away him”(Hosea 14:5).
In recovery the 8th and 9th steps are the culmination of the freedom we began to experience when we worked the 4th and 5th steps. Becoming “willing to make amends” and then “to make direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others” is what Judaism has called us to do forever, what the Bible has taught us since the Garden of Eden, what Jacob failed to do with his brother Esau and what Judah did do with his brother Joseph. Even King David could admit his errors, once they were pointed out to him, and rather than deny them, he repented for them. The transformation, creation that Rabbi Heschel is talking about is delineated in the 9th Step promise: “we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us” and others.
Each year, since I began my personal journey of T’Shuvah, I have shed layers of self-deception and mendacity. I have been blessed to be able to see clearer and transform my ‘sins’ into merits. God has healed my backsliding and continues to do so, I experience God’s love through the myriad of people in my life who love me, care for me, rebuke me and strengthen me. The miracle of r