Sep 23/06 - Rosh Hashanah 5767: Aiming for Regret, Not Remorse

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

The Jewish holy days are, for the most part, celebrations of specific historical events as refracted through the memories of our people. Some ancestor of ours was a slave in Egypt, a witness to the giving of Torah at Mt. Sinai, to the forty-years’ journey, to our people’s return to the Land of Israel after hundreds of years in Egyptian exile.

On Rosh Hashanah, however, we “remember” something even more ancient: the creation of the world, or, more specifically, the creation of humankind on the sixth day of creation. The primary focus of the holiday is upon the gift and the power of memory itself. During the month preceding Rosh Hashanah we have been busy actively remembering and reviewing the past year, examining our deeds and misdeeds, and trying to undo damage caused by our behaviour. During the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we repeat and intensify this process, or try to cram that month-long self-examination into ten days. On that foundation we build a plan for the coming year. In the course of this soul-searching we find disappointing memories. We regret them and pray for strength to change our path in the future.

The brilliant and insightful Blu Greenberg speaks of the “4 R's of Rosh Hashanah” in her essays on the Jewish way of living. Rosh Hashanah calls for:

1. recognition of having done wrong
2. regret over not having chosen to act more wisely
3. resolution not to repeat the offense
4. restraining oneself in the face of temptation

This turning of the spirit is called teshuvah – turning, repentance. To do it properly, the turning must be in the direction of the future – to avoid its turning into remorse that can paralyze our need to act. The word remorse comes from a Latin root meaning “to eat again,” but as it is used, the term means, in effect, to keep biting again and again. Teshuvah doesn’t require us to be remorseful, punishing ourselves again and again for something we regret having done – it calls for us to change and not repeat old behaviours that harm us and harm others.

The spirit of remorse has been captured well in a poem by Emily Dickinson:

Remorse is memory awake
Her companies astir
A presence of departed acts
At window and at door

Its past set down before the soul
And lighted with a match
Perusal to facilitate
Of its condensed dispatch

Remorse is cureless
The disease not even God can heal
For ‘tis His institution –
The complement of hell

Our task is to remember the past with the consciousness that it remains forever past. “The unhappiness of hope,” Soren Kierkegaard writes, “is never so painful as the unhappiness of memory.”

The past cannot be altered – past unhappiness remains forever unhappy. But we must be able to forgive ourselves, to accept this turning of which we are speaking. It is not easy to accept the fact that we are limited – to forgive ourselves might imply that we are weak and imperfect.

“Our deeds,” writes George Eliot, “are like children that are born to us, they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.”

The fact is that we are limited, but we also possess the wonderful power to repent and change and learn from our errors. According to the midrash in Bereshit Rabbah, teshuvah was one of the six things created before the world. The angels wanted God to give them the Torah since they were perfect and would be able to uphold all its precepts, unlike imperfect human beings who would never be able to fulfill its obligations completely. However, God answered that the Torah would be given to humanity since teshuvah had already been created to remedy our transgressions.

Our experience of remorse sometimes makes us so embittered that we cannot forgive ourselves – but it also can make us more compassionate people able to understand that all of us are limited. In English usage when we say that someone is remorseless do we not, in fact, mean that that individual is lacking in compassion?

From Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s Fragments of a Future Scroll:

Once two children, the sons of Rabbi Shmuel of Lubavitch, were playing at the game of rebbe and hassid. Rabbi Zalman Ahron, then seven years old, was playing rebbe, while his younger brother, Rabbi Shalom Dov Baer, then five years old, played hassid. The younger brother girded his loins with a prayer sash, knocked softly at the door, and when invited to enter, approached his brother on tiptoe and said: “Master, please give me a tikkun ‘healing prescription’ for my soul.”

“What have you done?” the elder brother demanded. “I have stolen a pickle from Mother.” At this point Rabbi Zalman laughed, whereupon Rabbi Shalom Dov Baer, frustrated, turned to his older brother and said: “You are not a rebbe. A rebbe never laughs at the distress of a hassid.”

Another time the two brothers were playing the same game in the same positions. Rabbi Shalom Dov Baer asked for a tikkun for not having recited the blessing after eating an apple. Rabbi Zalman Ahron replied: “For the next 40 days you are to recite a blessing out of the prayer manual after eating any food.”

“You did not do it right,” his younger brother reproached him.

“How can you say this,” Rabbi Zalman Ahron argued, “I myself watched Daddy through the keyhole when a hassid asked him the same question, and I gave you his reply.”

“I too watched Daddy,” Rabbi Shalom Dov Baer replied, “but you don’t do it right. Daddy always sighs before he answers.”

We cannot withdraw from each other. We must understand and forgive each other and forgive ourselves, too, so that we can move ahead into this year with joyful expectation. In this respect, we must learn to recognize that our synagogues, like the best of our homes, are places where we are ready to respond to each other with love, understanding, appreciation, and trust. Our objective is always compassionate community, a circle of friendship, mutual respect, and mutual support.

The point made by declaring that Rosh Hashanah is a remembrance of the sixth day of creation – the day when God created human beings – is that it is a celebration of God’s faith in us – that we will recognize the need to do better for the sake of each other and our world as well as for the sake of God. In this respect, everything we learn and say about God is a reminder of our own power as human beings to create or destroy worlds for each other.

Let our worship during these High Holy Days guide us to becoming exemplars of the One Who Built Worlds with love and compassion.

Shanah tovah u’metukah. A good and sweet New Year!