As we do each week, we reflect back on our communal Torah discussion from this past Shabbat (held each week Saturday mornings at 10 am at this link).
This past Shabbat we studied a passage from our weekly parshah (Torah portion) called Shoftim, meaning “Judges,” in which Moses, in preparation for the Israelites’ arrival into the Promised Land, lays out principles and guidelines for the conduct of important offices, including judges and kings. For the latter he says, “[a king] shall not keep many horses or send people back to Egypt to add to his horses, since the LORD has warned you, “You must not go back that way again” (Deuteronomy 17:16) (emphasis mine).
We are warned that we must not go back. It’s an ominous passage, in a sense suggesting the importance that we not revert to Mitzrayim—Egpyt in Hebrew, which, when translated literally means something like “the narrow places.” We must not revert to our constricted sense of self, constricted way of viewing the world.
And yet, we are in the season of teshuvah, commonly translated as repentance, but literally translating to something like “to return.”
So on the one hand, we are implored, “you must not go back that way again,” but on the other hand we are exhorted to make teshuvah, to engage in a return. How do we discern which return is holy and which is a reversion, which brings us back to our core self and which is a return to mitzrayim, to a constricted way of experiencing ourselves and the world around us?
It is a challenging question. We recognized the importance of engaging with our past, of recognizing how fundamental a hold it has on us, while at the same time recognizing the importance of letting go of past narratives that are no longer serving us. We once again studied Rabbi Alan Lew who cited the saying that “forgiveness means giving up our hopes for a better past.” We should be excited about the possibility of a promised land, not feel like our work is about always re-litigating some past grievance.
We recognized our tendencies to revert to the same habits, the same missteps, and yet we also recognized the excitement, the holiness, in our ability to make progress, the ability to take habits that were generated in response to past conditions and move past them when conditions have evolved; when we’ve learned to let go.
May we have a season of meaningful teshuvah, of holy return.
To review the source sheet we studied this Shabbat, click here. To attend our Monday and Thursday 8 am singing and shofar blowing in Elul, click here. To attend our Wednesday 7 pm High Holiday Boot Camp where we’ll study teshuvah and related concepts, click here. And don’t forget to pick up your Mahzor and High Holiday Care Package from the synagogue in the weeks to come!
