Rosh Hashana

Returning To One's Godly Origins

by Rabbi Haim Lifshitz

Teshuva is less development than discovery. It is less a track from earth to heaven arising from the practical realm ( “doing”) than a dynamic structure in which two hostile antagonists strive to destroy each other “until the third scripture comes and resolves them” through the intervention of a human being, who returns them to their Godly origins.

Therefore Teshuva requires a return to one’s own uniquely human self, whose origin is in God. Once one has discovered one’s own Godly origins, one has met the pre-conditions of Teshuva, and one can resolve life's “contradictory scriptures”. Such Teshuva brings with it a new burst of creativity, and a new ability to resolve conflict.

Akeidat Yitzhak

The midrash seems to contradict itself on the issue of the akeida – the Binding of Yitzhak on the altar. One midrash describes the joy that accompanies Avraham on his path, while another describes the tears that pour from his eyes as he binds his son and stretches his hand to take up the knife.

I have pointed out that both of these midrashim are necessary to describe the level of absolute perfection that Avraham had reached. This acme of human perfection continues to protect us to this day, by the support structure of merit and credit that this perfection has built. It is upon this structure that a Jew stands when facing God, and it is solid enough to support all future generations.

Had Avraham’s behavior been in keeping only with the second midrash, it would reflect a normal human being in a state of anguish. Had it been in keeping only with the first midrash, it would reflect the inhuman extremism of the religious fanatic. It is only the combination of the two extremes that can accurately portray the father of all believers, that can truly perfect the picture of Avraham: Awestruck, we glimpse the terrifying splendor of eternity.

Avraham reconciled the ultimate conflict, and merged the furthest extremes of human experience. These are opposite extremes that all human beings must confront. The way one uses one's human quality to regulate and reconcile one's opposite inclinations will determine the level of one's spiritual and moral behavior.
What are these opposites that one must reconcile, and the problem one must cope with all one's life long? It is not the conflict of being torn between good and evil, between yetser hatov and yetser hara. The real problem is the contest between detachment – the refusal to relate to the real world because one would prefer to remain above it supposedly (as in asceticism or transcendental meditation) – and the other alternative, sinking to the bottomless depths of physical reality and the survival instincts.

These two tracks, each offering the opposite option, nevertheless both share a common feature: Both lack a human dimension. Without a human dimension, one runs back and forth along the instrumental /manipulative track. It does not matter whether we transcend or sink, whether we consider ourselves spiritual or physical. In either case, we relate to reality an instrument to be manipulated in order to advance our egoistic interests. This attitude can absorb every sphere of life, and it can absorb religious belief as well.

Instrumental Attitudes Play a Starring Role, Even in the Earthly Heavens of Religious Faith.

One can run the religious track by detaching from reality, by hovering loftily above reality and trying to ignore it, forgetting that reality does not ignore one in turn, does not let one go quite so easily, that one may one day be forced to pay a heavy moral price for one's detachment from one's fellow human beings. Eventually the lofty religious track can turn into a religious instrument for advancing egoistic interests, a religion empty of personal values and personal involvement, a religion that is heartless.
Teshuva must encompass the physical and the spiritual, merged and regulated by humanness and personal involvement.

Fearing the Day of Judgment

Rosh HaShana in the Kelm Yeshiva was described as a scene of wailing and terror. Great tsadikim – the spiritual giants of Kelm – wept bitterly in sorrow and dread. One wonders: “And we, who trail in their footsteps, how shall we answer [for our deeds]”?

Let us examine the roots and causes of this fear, because it is difficult to comprehend. A simple and spiritually undeveloped person - we can understand - finds himself standing empty-handed before the heavenly judgment. He may well have reason to fear. But tsadikim with abundant resources of spiritual merit and credit - what do they have to fear?

Furthermore, fear is the response to unknown dangers that lurk ahead. How can we explain fear in these great people, whose awareness was of the clearest sort, whose faith and confidence was of the highest degree, who did not know what it was to doubt God’s presence or their own path to serving Him. After all, the Torah is the clearest path there is.
You may say the tsadik weeps in the consciousness of his own sin. Yet if so, why fear and sorrow? Let the tsadik do as the Rambam recommends in his three stages of Teshuva - “veshav veripa lo” - and he will be returned to his whole and healed state.

Firstly, the tsadik feels the weight of the responsibility for his whole generation upon his shoulders.

Secondly, a tsadik feels sorrow precisely because he recognizes his enormous potential for serving God, and feels that he has actualized so little of the potential, and used so few of the powerful tools that God has bestowed upon him. Therefore it is right and proper that the tsadik should weep.

All these issues apply to the righteous, who have attained great heights, who have reconciled inner contradiction; they weep for other reasons...
In our own spiritually impoverished generation, so unconscious of God’s presence, so unaware that God’s rule determines experience and plays the central role in events - the Kelm approach may not work.

Trying to rouse spiritual sleepers by directing them toward a Lithuanian Musar approach can make some run very far, and others kick everything out, choosing instead the secular life, because belief is so hard for them that they cannot even accept the simple parable of the fishes and the fox.

Therefore, for simple people, it is important to emphasize the simple basic truths: There is a Master, Who is in charge of things. Everything in the world is controlled from above. It is one’s personal task to discover God’s presence in one’s own reality, and to reconcile the “contradicting scriptures” of one’s own private life. This discovery is within one’s own power, within one’s own hands, “in your mouth and in your heart to do it” - confidently, knowing that one’s path of worship is right and effective, and delighting in this knowledge.