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Welcome to Kolot, the podcast of The Ark Synagogue, a bold, experiential and caring Progressive Jewish community in Northwood, London.
Through sermons, reflections and conversations from across our community, Kolot explores Jewish life, learning and values in the world we live in today. Rooted in tradition and open to new perspectives, these episodes bring together voices that inspire thought, connection and belonging.
Whether you are Jewish, exploring Judaism, or simply looking for meaningful reflection, you are warmly welcome.
To learn more about The Ark Synagogue, visit arksynagogue.org.
One of the central themes of the High Holy Day season, which we will enter in earnest this evening with our Selichot service, is the concept of t’shuvah.
The word appears in one of the many names that we give to the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur: Aseret Y’mei T’shuvah, most commonly translated as the Ten Days of Repentance. While the translation of t’shuvah as repentance is widely used, the Hebrew word actually means return.
In our Torah reading this morning, the word appears again and again. We read of Moses’ vision of a time in the future, when the Israelites have become scattered among other nations, having strayed from their relationship with God. Yet, rather than sketching a doomsday vision, Moses paints a picture of hope: וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ אֶל־לְבָבֶךָ — you will take it to heart. וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ — you will return to the Eternal your God. And then, in response, וְשָׁב יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ — God will turn towards you. The Hebrew root of the word t’shuvah appears 5 times in just three short Hebrew sentences. Turn, turn, turn, the text calls out to us. Turn towards God so that God shall return to you.
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Our tradition teaches that at this season of turning, life itself can change direction.
The American Reform Rabbi Jack Riemer, of blessed memory, captures this sense of movement in his poem “A Time of Turning,” which is included in the beautiful High Holy Day anthology of readings edited by Rabbis Andrew Goldstein and Charles Middleburgh. He begins:
“Now is the time for turning.
The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange.
The birds are beginning to turn and are heading once more toward the South.”
It has always struck me how timely the words feel at this season when we notice the first signs of summer coming to an end and realise that life itself does indeed change direction. But Riemer continues:
“For leaves, birds, and animals turning comes instinctively.
But for us turning does not come so easily.”
That is indeed the challenge of this season. For nature, a change in direction comes naturally with the seasons following the gentle rhythm of the Earth tilting on its axis as it orbits the sun.
For us, that same change in direction requires us to choose: it means acknowledging that the direction in which we have been travelling may no longer be the direction in which we want to go.
Years ago, right at the start of my rabbinate, I described t’shuvah this way:
“T’shuvah can be understood in a number of ways. Traditionally, it means ‘turning’ or ‘returning’ to God, to the Godly path. It can also be understood as ‘return’ to our own truest selves. In the morning blessings we say, ‘אֱלֹהַי נְשָׁמָה שֶׁנָּתַתָּ בִּי טְהוֹרָה הִיא—my God, the soul you have placed in me is pure.’ In our essence, as human beings, we are pure. In the course of living our lives we can wander from that point of purity, we can take paths that diminish ourselves or that cause us to diminish others. T’shuvah is the opportunity to return, to remember and reclaim that point of goodness within.”
The description is indeed reassuring: we have the power to return to who we were. But I’m no longer sure that returning is quite as simple as that. It is not possible to wind back the clock: We cannot unsay the hurtful words that we have spoken; we cannot undo all the bad choices that we have made; we cannot return to a relationship as it existed before trust was broken; and we cannot become the people we were ten years ago (lest we forget the small aches in our body remind us!).
So, if t’shuvah means returning, where exactly might we return to?
Many years ago, my teacher, British-born Israeli rabbi Michael Marmur, offered me an image that I still find most helpful. Instead of thinking of t’shuvah as a circle, which requires a return to the same point, we should think of it as a spiral. Having made the journey of t’shuvah, we return to our place of origin, but we are no longer the same person. We have grown and ascended the slope of the spiral.
And so, as another Jewish year draws to an end, we once again near the end of Elul, as we read the same Torah portion that accompanied us at this time of the year in years gone by. And we encounter Moses once more, reminding us that no matter how far we might have wondered, return remains possible.
We reach what looks like the same point on the circle but we are not standing where we once stood.
We carry another year of experiences: a year of joy and disappointment, courage and compromise, relationships deepened or damaged. Even the most sincere attempt at t’shuvah cannot undo what has been. We can return, but we will return changed. Maybe this is why Moses reminds us to pay attention to our heart: Vahasheivota el l’vavecha. You will bring it back to your heart.
Before t’shuvah, we are called to account for our deeds – this is what our tradition calls: cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul.
As Rabbi Riemer puts it so beautifully: “It means admitting that we have been wrong; and this is never easy. It means losing face; it means starting all over again.”
So, t’shuvah calls for radical honesty. It demands of us to recognise where we are, what we have done and to ask: in which direction do we want to travel.
Another teacher of mine, Rabbi Dick Hirsch, of blessed memory, used to translate t’shuvah as direction. He wrote, “t’shuvah, or turning-to-God/liness, is the process of deciding the direction of our lives.”
This is what Moses promises us in our Torah portion: not a divine reset button but a change in direction even though the past cannot be changed.
As I was preparing for this sermon, I was particularly struck by a short quote by Gloria Steinem, who died this week at the age of 92. For more than half a century she challenged women and men to imagine a world organised differently and to recognise that social arrangements which appear inevitable are very often simply arrangements that human beings have made and can therefore remake.
She often said:
“The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us.”
This too is a way of thinking about t’shuvah, for the word can also be translated as ‘answer’ or ‘response.’ I cannot necessarily control the events that shape my life, but as long as I am alive, I have some measure of control over my response to those events. I can shape my actions and intentions and the quality of my living.
This is the promise of this season: we cannot control everything that happens, but we can decide how to respond: we can turn and change direction. If only we accept our personal responsibility, if only we do t’shuvah, if only we change our way, there is still hope for us.
And so, as we prepare for the Aseret Y’mei T’shuvah, we are called to ask what direction we will choose to travel from here. The leaves will turn because they must. But we have the extraordinary and difficult freedom to decide whether we will.
וְשַׁבְתָּ עַד־יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ - You shall return to the Eternal your God.
May this be our time for turning.
Ken y’hi ratzon.
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