All It Takes Is A Little

Building Trains

The high holiday season is daunting, intentionally so. The heaviness of its words are meant to penetrate our hearts. The piercing cries of the shofar are primed to awaken us from our spiritual slumber. The serious demand of contrition in our interpersonal relationships require a hefty amount of emotional labor.

Year in and year out, I try to remind myself of this dynamic and year in and year out, I find myself disappointed. I didn’t do enough praying, soul searching, reaching out, and an endless list of what-ifs. This year, I felt a lot of self-blame.

Over the past couple of years, our family has had the privilege of watching our beloved Lauren lead communities through high holiday prayers and it is such a joy. Shifting off the bimah professionally has allowed me to spend time with our growing family, especially at shul. There’s a trade off in that exchange and for the most part, my cup is filled up in different ways.

This year, as Lauren led services in Los Angeles, I spent more time building trains in the back of shul in the kid’s play area (what should be a staple in every shul) than I did praying any words. In fact, if I had to quantify it, I probably spent about 10 minutes praying over two days of the high holidays. As I reflected on that, I felt that creeping disappointment come in.

I didn’t pray enough. I didn’t hear enough shofar. And I certainly didn’t do enough of the hard work of teshuvah, that elusive act of return we are demanded to seek out this time of year. It’s hard enough to maintain friendships during this early stage of parenting but to ask me to forge what has been breached felt too daunting.

Then, as is often the case, I came across a dazzlingly evocative text that stopped me in my tracks. It comes from Rav Kook, one of the great thinkers of 20th century Judaism, and the first Ashekanazi chief Rabbi of pre-mandate Israel. In the opening to his work on teshuvah, titled Orot Ha’teshuvah, the Lights of Teshuvah, he concisely summed up what I was describing before:

this subject [of repentance] is still a closed book and is in need of clarification.

Given the amount of ink spilled on repentance, I was pleasantly surprised by this. As much as it occupies a central role in so much literature, we return every year to teshuvah because it’s so necessary, it’s so hard, and its complexity is difficult to understand. As Rav Kook says later in the book, the work is so vital because teshuvah is:

¹the yearning of all existence to be better, purer, more vigorous, and on a higher plane than it is.

Teshuvah is the primary mover for how we get the world and ourselves where want it to be. How we toil at it is essential to the larger project of perfecting the world. That’s where the quote that grabbed me comes in. Because after all, given its import, how do we actually grapple with how to do it?

²To the degree that a person recognizes his sins, the clarity of the light of repentance shines on his soul. Even though ostensibly he has not yet gained the permanence of repentance in his heart and will, nevertheless, its light hovers over him, and it is already working to turn him into a new creation. Even those things that hinder repentance, to the degree that the person recognizes them, and does not disregard their reality, their hindrance becomes less powerful and their virulence diminishes. From this the light of repentance begins to shine upon him, and the holiness of the supernal joy already clothes itself in the essence of his soul, and closed gates keep opening before him. In the end he comes to such a supreme level that all the coils straighten, “every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the rugged shall be made level, and the rough places a plain.

The first step is just to recognize your transgressions. When you do that, you are illuminated. Despite the fact that process has barely begun and almost nothing has taken root, a shift has happened. That shift is evident in you becoming something new. That, in and of itself, takes a load off. All you have to do to start is recognize something.

You’ll notice this because some of the usual roadblocks that prevent you from doing the work will lose their power. We know this feeling. When we’re in the work, we can begin to see how we can hear our inner voice change tones. What was once self-admonishing becomes self-propelling.

What I found so powerful about this piece is how counter it runs to so much of what our larger culture demands of us. Grandiose undertakings are rewarded for the tectonic nature of their shift, but the truth is, popular culture may glorify that but teshuvah—real return, happens in bits and pieces. For it to happen, we all need to just start it.

That’s what I was thinking about as I reflected on what I had initially perceived as a lost Rosh Hashanah—not enough prayer, not enough reflection, and not enough teshuvah. But Rav Kook reminded me that there’s still time, plenty of it in fact. Because we don’t need to get to the finish line but actually just get to the start line.

As we mark this shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuva, the shabbat of return, I hope that we can take that lesson in. As Rav Kook writes earlier in this work quoting the prophet Isaiah:

Through the total revival that teshuvah extends to all those who embrace it, teshuvah brings upon a person a spirit of grace and supplication “As a man whose mother comforted us, so will I comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13).

Commenting on this verse, the 19th century Ukranian commentator Malbim interprets:

It’s like a person who is mourning their distant mother thinking that she has passed away only to realize that she is alive and is returning to comfort him.

Teshuvah reminds us that we are, in fact, enough. We can take its grace to remind us that in the moment when it feels so distant, all we have to do is take the first step. She is still there even when far away. The light then comes in and buoys us to stay in the work, no matter how hard it gets or how many train tracks might ‘distract’ us.

Shabbat Shalom, g’mar chatimah tovah, and wishes for a sweet new year!

1. Orot Ha’teshuvah, 20; 56.

2. Orot Ha’teshuvah 15, 7.