Teshuva as a Paradigm for the Interaction of Heart and Mind
There is perhaps no area of Jewish Law or Jewish life where we experience the imbrication of halakha and agadda more powerfully than the mitzvah of teshuva (repentance). The notion of asking for forgiveness from another human being demands that we first be aware that we have wronged another. If I stole your car, it is not hard to understand the need to return it. It can be much harder, however, to truly know if I hurt your feelings.
There are three Medieval masterpieces that seek to organize and systematize this area of Jewish Law. Rambam’s The Laws of Repentance, Hilkhot Teshuva, of Maimonides (1138-1204) is one of the earliest and arguably among the most influential attempts at codification. In it he outlines a cognitive process with a beginning, middle, and end. The Laws of Repentance are set as the conclusion to Sefer ha-Mada, a halakhic work of philosophy. In these laws, Rambam deals with some of the most perplexing paradoxes of Jewish thought, divine foreknowledge, and human free will chief among them. The concluding chapter of the Laws of Repentance is about the mitzvah to love God–one of the more challenging mitzvot for Maimonides.1
The Rambam’s choice of organization is always significant. His decision to situate the Laws of Repentance as part of a broader exploration of foundational philosophical questions should not be ignored. The rational mind seeks order, structure, and direction. The ten chapters of the Laws of Repentance outline a process that can and must be repeated year after year.
In the opening section of the Sefer ha-Rokeach, Rabbi Eleizer of Worms (c. 1176-1238) also attempts to bring together the diverse Rabbinic traditions on repentance. This foundational work of Chasidei Ashkenaz could not be more different from Rambam’s. The choice to place these laws at the beginning of his life’s work should not be overlooked. In it, repentance is structured as an embodied process of penance based on the severity of sin. There are requirements for very specific kinds of behavior, but not many cognitive stages of inner processing. R. Eliezer outlines the appropriate number of fasts for certain kinds of sexual sins, for example. He also gives advice on how long one ought to abstain from meat if one violated the laws of Kashrut.
For Rambam, repentance is primarily a cognitive-rational process that we engage in with another. For R. Eliezer, repentance is an embodied-arational journey on which we are often alone. One could also see these approaches as moving in opposite directions. For Rambam, the mind drives the body, while for R. Eliezer, the body drives the mind.
R. Yona’s (c. 1210-1263) Shaarei Teshuva sits somewhere between Rambam and R. Eliezer of Worms. He occupies a kind of middle space between the hyper-cognitive Rambam and the deeply embodied Sefer ha-Rokeach. He does not codify based exclusively on sin and punishment, but he also does not focus on a natural, internal, cognitive process. R. Yona invites the reader into a more poetic search for meaning and repentance, though one that is structured and rational.
He opens Shaarei Teshuva with the following two sentences:
Among the gifts that the Blessed Divine gifted with His creations was that He prepared for them a path to rise up from the pit of their behavior (Job 33:18), to save their souls from destruction, and to turn His wrath from them (Psalms 78:38). God taught and reminded us to return to Him when we sin against Him because of His goodness and uprightness, for He knows their consciousness (Psalms 103:14) as it says Good and upright is God therefore He shows sinners the way (Psalms 25:8).2
In this opening R. Yona presents God as a giver of gifts and a teacher. When we learn to think about the Creator of the World as One who seeks our best interests, we too can strive to attain that very same goal. Repentance is a divine gift that has the ability to inspire deep internal change. One of the biggest departures from Rambam and R. Eliezer is that R. Yona presents the notion of teshuva as a gift.3 Gifts are beyond the natural order, unanticipated, and serve as a break from what we might have otherwise expected.
The gift that R. Yona describes in this first paragraph is a pathway to uplift ourselves from the “pit of our behavior.” There is something harsh, but very real and honest, in the awareness that we all occupy a pit at some stage in our spiritual and religious development. This book does not see the world through rose-colored glasses, but rather with a refreshing honesty about humanity.
It is also surprising that R. Yona describes this gift as having been given to all of “God’s creations” and not particularly to the Jewish People. He will go on to quote Biblical verses that describe a Jewish path, but the gift of teshuva is too big and too great to be limited to just the Jewish People.
We then learn that “God taught and reminded us to return to Him”4 because of “goodness and uprightness.” Not only does God gift us a path of teshuva, He also teaches us how to walk this path. This dual notion of God as gift-giver and educator repeats itself throughout the liturgy of the Yamim Noraim, in particular in the Selichot. God is the one who, “Taught us to recite the thirteen [attributes].”
The emotional complexity of interpersonal teshuva emerges from three short narratives that appear in Yoma 87a.5 One of the themes that repeats in each of these stories is the question of hierarchy. When someone has wronged one of the religious leaders of a community, it is not simple to just walk up to them and apologize. Three different Rabbis—R. Yirmiya, R. Zeira and Rav—each struggle to find a way to connect with the person who has apparently hurt them. R. Yirmiya shows up at the home of a colleague who has wronged him and has waste water poured on his head. R. Zeira appears to be able to manufacture a ‘chance’ encounter with someone who has wronged him and it works out for the best. Rav, in an attempt to do the same, so angers the butcher who wronged him that the butcher dies in a terrible accident.
The mitzvah of asking for forgiveness from our fellow human beings simply cannot be done without having an emotional awareness of the dynamic between two people. Is it too soon for me to reach out? Did I wait too long? Is the person ready for my phone call? Have they cooled down enough that they are able to hear an apology? The sensitivity needed to do this well cannot be “paskened”; it requires living with the messiness of life.
One of the challenges that we face is the strong desire to imagine that Jewish Law operates akin to math or science. In fact, Halakha is much closer to art and literature. The false dichotomy between Halakha and Agadda can sometimes allow people to off-board their own human intuition in the name of the “Law.” What that misses is the deeper understanding that Halakha and Agadda are always walking together and we dare not choose one over the other. The melding of heart and head is the only way forward.
In Mimini Mikhael: Essays on Yom Kippur and Teshuva, Rabbi Michael Rosensweig makes similar points about the location of the Laws of Repentance. See, in particular, the second chapter in which Rav Rosensweig offers a comparison to R. Yona’s Shaarei Teshuva as well.
See Yerushalmi Makkot 2:6 where this same verse is used as a source for the idea that God “teaches the path of repentance.” This notion of God as teaching the path is a key point of R. Yona’s opening. See also Rambam Laws of Repentance 6:7 where he builds on this same verse as well.
See Bavli Pesachim 54a where teshuva is listed among seven items that were created before the world was created. This notion of repentance as a gift from before the creation of the world has echoes in Mesilat Yesharim chapter 4, Nefesh ha-Chaim 1:17, and Kochavei Ohr Ma’amar
See also Bavli Rosh ha-Shanna 17b where God models for Moshe, and for us, how the prayer leader (shaliach tzibbur) is meant to be enwrapped in a tallit.
See Anger and Forgiveness by Martha Nussbaum, pages 85 to 88 for a different kind of analysis of these stories.
Rabbi Jeffrey S. Fox, Rosh HaYeshiva and Dean of Faculty at Maharat, was the first graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. Upon graduation he served as the Rabbi of Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood for seven years. In Rabbi Fox’s tenure at Kesher, the community grew three-fold from 30 families to nearly 100. During that time Rabbi Fox also taught at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah as well as in the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Bergen County. He also served on the board of the Synagogue Leadership Initiative of the UJA of NNJ. Rabbi Fox was a Senior Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute and has also been a member of the faculty of the Drisha Institute, the Florence Melton Adult Education School in Westchester County, and Hadar.