This past Tuesday night I taught a class titled, Is Time Real. We concluded the class with a famous reading from the Talmud that states, “If we repent with all earnestness, we cannot only get rid of our past sins, we can transform them into past virtues.“
I would like to expand on this idea a little more, as it relates to this week’s Torah portion as well. The question is, on a practical level, how does that happen? How can we travel to the past and make that change?
There are multiple levels for doing Teshuvah, repentance.
1 – Our regret for committing a sin comes more out of fear of what effect the sin will have on us, not for any other reason, and we don’t want it to be part of us anymore. So we repent and ask for forgiveness in order to remove this stain from our past. This is analogous to being so ill that we have to remove what ails us from our being (perhaps even through surgery), so that we no longer have whatever is making us ill. However, as hard as we try, even the curative process affects part of us in a negative way. For example, through surgery, hopefully we are left with just a scar, but as we know, once we are hit with a disease, we are always more susceptible to being affected again. The same is true with this level of Teshuvah: As hard as we try, we have to remain alert for the possibility of the sin creeping back into our lives.
2 – We repent out of love. We want to become closer to G-d to the extent that our sin is not pulling us down anymore. Just the opposite, though, as our past action is what propelled us to become a better person. Hence, the sin is not a “disease” anymore, but a wake-up call to become a “healthier” person—this “surgery” that we undergo is not a pain in the neck, but an opportunity to really live a long and productive life. So the scar that we are left with becomes a badge of honor, as this is the impetus for the change that we have made in our lives.
Yet, here is the catch. Was the sin part of the cure or just the catalyst to get rid of that sin and become a better person? It would seem that it is not part of a person anymore. This leads us to the third level.
3 – The sin that was committed is not only the catalyst to finding the path of return, but it is part of the process of the rehabilitation itself! This means that the sin has a unique quality that can be transformed from something negative to something positive. Just like the disease that has to be removed from us, the cure can only come from the disease itself. We see this kind of process today with gene therapy, where the healing ability comes from the person himself or herself.
This kind of connection with ourselves is something that every person can achieve—with some effort.
Shabbat Shalom