"[Psychology] is vastly more than fixing what is wrong with [people]. It is about identifying and nurturing their strongest qualities, what they own and are best at, and helping them find niches in which they can best live out these strengths."
-Martin Seligman, PhD, Leading Authority in Positive Psychology
"Penitence" just doesn't have the same ring it used to in an era yearning for well-being, happiness, and self-confidence. "Repentance" isn't much better, etymologically seeming to indicate that whatever penitence is, one should do it more than once. If you go down the list of synonyms, "contriteness," "shame," "self-reproach," it just sound terrible.
It's a good thing none of these have anything to do with Judaism. The word the Torah uses is "תשובה" "Tshuva" and it means "Return."
Right now, we are in the home stretch of the "10 Days of Tshuva" that was introduced with a running start by the month of Elul, began with Rosh Hashana, and crescendos with Yom Kippur. Aside from the Catholic terminology which messes up our grasp of concepts which are authentically rooted in the Torah, we generally-speaking don't intellectually understand why things like Yom Kippur work, and therefore deep-down, we maybe don't believe it does. How can this process of tshuva erase mistakes I've made, terrible things I've thought, said and done? A years worth of negativity, and "zap" it's gone?
Most of us look inside ourselves and see some good, some bad, some neutral. Good traits, bad traits, good things we did, bad things we did...On the Doppler radar we'll see some white, some black, some gray...overall, if you step way back to look at your own spiritual map, you will see a more-or-less gray satellite image.
This is incorrect, inaccurate, and empirically and metaphysically false.
Every human being at his core pines "to be good."
When we watch movies, we project ourselves into the role of the hero, wishing we had that opportunity to save those people in the burning building, or take a stand against the criminals, or not miss the chance to express our love before it's too late.
I challenge any person to say that he values an 18-year single-malt whiskey more than those couple of weeks that he stretched himself for that friend who was going through a hard time. No one will say that he has more long-lasting fulfillment from the spring break in Cozumel, than even a single time he was able to stop himself from saying something hurtful to another person. A lifetime of putting on tefillin, lighting Shabbat candles, running an honest business -- these are, by far, the most precious possessions we have. Undoubtedly.
The problem is that we forget this...
And the point here is of course not to toss the Glenlivet or cancel the trip to the beach, rather that we don't distinguish clearly enough between the pleasures in our life. "I like being honest and I like a good scotch." Obviously, no one would ever utter such a stupid sentence, but because we do not take a stand for the great pleasures of life, we effectively identify equally with both.
We're not just gray blobs of good and bad stuff mixed together! We are good people! More than that, we are tsaddikim righteous, giving people -- at the very least, we want to be! We all want loved ones to remember us when we're gone for our uprightness, honesty, kindness, empathy for others, and wisdom.
The institution of positive psychology has thankfully given us empirical data to prove that all of this is accurate. But what is beyond the scope of academia is that the reason this is true is because, in reality, we are neshamot-souls that try throughout the year with trial and tribulation to shine through our bodies. That soul is nothing less than a "chelek Eloki miMaal" unique rays of G!d's Light from above. Our goodness is our essence -- not an accident. (If you're wondering, "what happened to Original Sin?" you've got the wrong religion.)
Only the clarity from this awareness can pierce the gray inside of us, revealing our goodness as our essence, and consequently, making any "bad" within us a mistake, accidental and incidental. By identifying with certainty with the good, we effectively say, "I could never do something like that, and would never do it again." This is the return to our essence.
Everything revolves around this principle on Yom Kippur. Contrary to popular belief, fasting and not showering is not a punishment to rectify our sins, rather a method to re-identify with who we are. The neshama-soul has five different aspects: the lifeforce, the oneness, the illumination, the spirit, and the pure identity. Normally we live a double-life as souls and bodies, getting what we need from both, but on Yom Kippur, we go back to our source to remind ourselves of ourselves. This is executed through the five things we abstain from on Yom Kippur:
Instead of gleaning our life energy from food and drink, we turn to the lifeforce within us.
Instead of the unity of intimacy of husband and wife, we turn inwards to our oneness with the Infinite.
Instead of the clean, shining feeling of stepping freshly out of the shower, we look to the illumination of our soul.
Instead of the feeling the uplift of comfortable shoes, we let our feet hit the ground in thin-soled shoes, so that our soul seeks the uplift within.
Instead of the purity of scent produced by perfume, we turn to our soul where our identity stands pristine.The day is a day of communal prayer and introspection, of a community returning. After finding ourselves again, we of course go back to eating, drinking, and everything else because we now have the clarity to make all of those actions holy and spiritually enriched.
Over the last decade or so, the idea of flashmobs has captured the imagination of many around the world. Even when they do things as mundane as standing still in a train station; when so many people do one thing it in concert, it is stunningly powerful. If we look at Yom Kippur as a day of self-flagellation, it is hardly a flashmob any of us would want to be a part of. But if we see it for what it is, a community worldwide returning to their Divine roots, to the sublime values with which we define ourselves in our hearts but forget through the vicissitudes of time, habit, and error -- we will see the beautiful symphony of tshuva which we have the privilege to join in together -- a global symphony which could never be captured on youTube because it occurs in the hearts of a nation.
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This piece is based on the end of the Maharal's Drush leShabbat Tshuva normally printed in the back of Be'er haGola.
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