Kol Nidre 5770: TheTangled Web of T'shuvah

Tonight I want to talk to you about what I believe is the single most inspiring spiritual concept in our world today. This concept is one that gives hope to the downtrodden, offers redemption to the wicked and peace to those whose are riddled with self doubt. But for all its capacity to save us, to redeem us, this concept is also the source of great modern controversy. Many of us here doubt its awesome power, we are cynical of its potential and we simply cannot believe that it could be as powerful as it is made out to be.

The concept I am referring to is what I believe to be the single most inventive creation our great Rabbis ever made, which can be summed up in a single weighty word: T’shuvah. The concept of T’shuvah is often translated into English as repentance and this is the problem. You see, the English word repentance derives from the Latin word pentire, meaning to be sorry, but the rabbinic invention of T’shuvah means so much more than feeling sorry.

Being sorry, is simply an emotion. It is a feeling we experience when we regret what we have done; and don’t get me wrong it is an important element of our humanity. We do make mistakes, we are imperfect and the ability to feel sorry for these shortcomings is what hopefully leads us to make great and important personal change. But regret is only an emotion after all; whereas T’shuvah, T’shuvah is a process. It may indeed begin with feelings of regret, but T’shuvah is something so much more.

As you may know, the word T’shuvah comes from the Hebrew root shin, vav, bet, denoting a turning, or a return to something. The result is a concept which simply cannot be contained in the English word repentance. T’shuvah is an act, it is an art form, and it is a spiritual discipline. T’shuvah means allowing for the possibility of monumental change even within those who have lived a life of evil. It is at once, a commandment to ask for forgiveness from God and from our neighbors; but it is also an edict to forgive: to give penance to those who have harmed us, and yes, T’shuvha is even a demand to forgive ourselves.

In this one single word, T’shuvah, the rabbis created a world of infinite spiritual possibilities. Instead of envisioning a binary, black and white world, filled with virtue and sin, good and evil, righteousness and wickedness; with T’shuvah the rabbis discovered a world filled with dizzying shades of grey.

So how does one ‘do T’shuvah?’ As the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides explains, true T’shuvah, true repentance, is achievable by making verbal declarations, publicly or privately, to God and to our fellow human beings; admitting our culpability and asking for forgiveness. For Maimonides, the mark of the truly repentant person is that when they are confronted with the very same opportunity for sin, they ‘turn away’, jettisoning their former selves in favor of a more morally correct path. But this definition of the process of T’shuvah always makes me wonder, can it really be this easy?

When we discuss the process of T’shuvah do we really believe in its ultimate promise of personal redemption? Can it truly be that by deeply committing ourselves to positive personal change that we have the ability to atone for even our greatest sins? Do we humans actually have faith that people can change, or are we conditioned to see everyone as a sinner dressed in white?

Well, it doesn’t take a rabbi to realize that this past year’s headlines were riddled with complicated cases of T’shuvah in our modern society. Each one presents us with a case study for this staggering world of gray we find ourselves living in, and tonight, I want us to examine carefully what each of these examples of T’shuvah, or lack thereof, may have to teach us about ourselves. For the sake of clarity, let us name each of these examples with an easy-to-remember moniker that will help us keep track as we proceed: Let us call them: the Governor, the Swindler, the Senator and the Quarterback, and let us begin with the Governor.

Just for the record, I want everyone here to know that I knew something was fishy from day one! The moment that the story broke on the cable news channels that Governor Mark Sanford had gone missing, I knew that something was rotten in the state of South Carolina. So rather than giving him the benefit of the doubt, instead of believing for even a moment that he had gone on a camping trip, or needed some time away to do some writing, I condemned him from the start. It turns out, I was right.

As we all came to learn, far from seeking solitude on the Appalachian Trail, Governor Sanford was instead out strolling the beaches of Buenos Aires enjoying the company of a woman who was most definitely not his wife. He was caught, and the jig was up, the time had come for him to explain himself, to say he was sorry and to atone for his transgressions.

So he called a press conference, and in what was no doubt one of the most bizarre moments in our political year, he delivered his ‘apology’, to his wife, his family, his constituents and the television cameras. Despite the fact that there were what seemed to be sincere moments of heartfelt regret for the pain his actions had caused, he still stopped short of saying what he did was wrong. In fact, sprinkled between his admissions of guilt and his expressions of personal failure were two sound bites that simply overshadowed it all, and they were: “soul-mate” and “love story.” By calling his mistress his “soul-mate” and by referring to his extra-marital affair as a “love story,” his apology seemed dead on arrival.

But maybe we are being too harsh on the guy. After all, one of Maimonides’ instructions as to the proper way to do T’shuvah is to apologize to those who you have wronged, and if you make this apology in public, harei zeh m’shubach, well this is even more praiseworthy, claims the Rambam. So maybe Governor Sanford’s story is merely a case of a guy whose marriage simply wasn’t working, maybe he fell victim to his urges and to the temptation of new love, only to later realize that he had thrown away everything he had built in his life: a family, a career, and a reputation. Maybe he really is sorry. So I ask you, do you believe him?
I didn’t think so.

Which brings us to our second case-study in T’shuvah for this evening: the Swindler. In January the story broke that Bernie Madoff, the Wizard of Wall Street, and former chairman of the NASDAQ exchange was the criminal mastermind behind the single biggest Ponzi scheme in our nation’s history. He stole tens of billions of dollars from thousands of investors who had entrusted him with their foundations, their endowments and their personal retirement accounts. In a moment, people lost everything they had. The rich became poor and the powerful became powerless to stop this stunning flash of reality: that Bernie had stolen their fortunes and their futures. In time it came to light just how deep the rabbit hole actually went.

We came to learn that while Madoff did not discriminate when it came to his victims, he nonetheless specifically targeted elements of his own Jewish community who trusted him with their investments. Charitable organizations such as Hadassah, The World Zionist Organization, Elie Weisel’s Foundation for Humanity were bankrupt because of Madoff, and some institutions had to close their doors due to the depths of his deceit.

As the story went, with the collapse of the economy last fall, Madoff knew it was only a matter of time before his pyramid scheme fell apart. He was swiftly brought to trial, convicted and given the maximum sentence of 150 years for his crimes. At his sentencing, Madoff, with tears in his eyes spoke the following words:
I am actually grateful for this first opportunity to speak publicly about my crimes for which I am so deeply sorry and ashamed. I am painfully aware that I have hurt many, many people, including members of my family, my closest friends, business associates and the thousands of clients who gave me their money. I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for what I have done.

The account of his sentencing in the New York Times then described one final scene:
At the end of his personal statement, Mr. Madoff abruptly turned to face the courtroom crowd. He was no longer the carefully tailored and coiffed financier. His hair was ragged. His eyes were sunken into deep gray shadows. His voice was a little raspy,
“I am sorry,” he said, and abruptly added: “I know that doesn’t help you.”

Tonight, as we begin this ultimate day of repentance, how are we as Jews supposed to feel about Bernie Madoff? Yes we feel angry, yes we feel ashamed, yes we feel that his actions defamed his own name as well as the name of the Jewish people as a whole! But maybe he truly is repentant. Maybe his life has been one of tortured torment for many years and we should feel sorry for him. And if, if he has done T’shuvah, and if in his heart of hearts he is a changed person…than maybe we should forgive him. And so I ask you, should we?
I didn’t think so.

Now we move onto perhaps the most complicated case of them all: the tragic case of the Senator. Senator Ted Kennedy was a man who despite a life filled with mistakes, some of them severe, many of us could not help but love. In his recently published memoirs he is brutally honest about his history of heavy drinking and womanizing, habits for which he was well known. He also admits to being constantly tormented by that tragic night at Chappaquiddick when Mary Jo Kopechne, a twenty-eight year old woman died in his car. He admits to making “terrible decisions” that night, and he describes his regrettable actions after the accident as “inexcusable.” But the truth is we never will know the details of that New England night forty years ago.

Was Senator Kennedy drunk? Was he in a relationship with Kopechne? Was he in some way responsible for her death that night? Were his actions immediately following the accident, his waiting to call police and the giving of false statements, the result of shock and bewilderment, or the calculated steps of a cover-up? Yes, the late-Senator admitted to making mistakes at Chappaquiddick, yes he admitted to feeling regret and tremendous sorrow; but he still never really came clean about the details of that night.

But despite this lack of clarity many of us came to love him and admire him. We look upon his many ma’asim tovim, his good work as the Liberal Lion of the Senate over his nearly fifty years as a public servant. We see how he championed the causes of the poor, the downtrodden, the uninsured and the immigrant. Recently we read his letters to the Pope and were touched by his admissions of imperfection, as well as his statements of personal faith. But can these admissions of regret, these letters to the Pope and a legacy of good legislation hope to entirely atone for a self-professed life of missteps and mistakes? Can a lifetime of good deeds in some way erase the death of a young girl or ever hope to bring comfort to her family? So I ask you yet again, should we forgive him?

This one is certainly a little trickier.

Now we arrive at our final examination into the tangled web of T’shuvah we witnessed in the year that was: the quarterback. The terrible case of Michael Vick is the tale of a man who had everything: fame, fortune, talent, and who lost it all because of an obsession with the gruesome and wholly immoral ‘sport’ of dogfighting. Worse than his addiction to watching dogs maim and kill each other, worse than his inability to say no to his so-called friends, was the proof that was brought against him showing how he tortured and murdered dogs who were no longer able to fight.

Not that it would matter to him, but he is most certainly guilty of transgressing an important mitzvah in the Torah, namely that of Tza’ar Ba’lei Hayim, preventing cruelty to animals. Our Jewish tradition mandates that when we as human beings find ourselves in clear positions of power, like that of the human relationship to an animal, we must hold ourselves to a higher standard. We must not abuse this power, like Michael Vick did; we must treat all creatures as God’s creatures, which Michael Vick most certainly did not. For his gruesome crimes against the powerless, many among us feel he can simply never be forgiven.

But, on the other hand he was punished, he was bankrupt and he did serve his time behind bars. In fact, in a recent interview on “60 Minutes” he admitted to crying himself to sleep at night while in jail. He also confessed to being a changed man; a man who, like many, found a path towards the light of God from within the darkness of a prison cell. He claims that he is committed to ridding our communities of animal cruelty; he claims that he has learned from his mistakes. But is all of this true, or is it simply the result of a team of professional advisors guiding him on the path towards atonement. And so I am forced again to ask: do we believe him?

Maybe the jury is still out on this one.

Friends, this is the complicated reality of T’shuvah: it is at once something we all want to believe it, and yet we all find ourselves struggling to admit that it actually exists. Can T’shuvah truly atone for everything, or are there crimes for which there can be no forgiveness? Does everyone deserve a second chance in life, or are there some who do not deserve a reprieve. Should we trust in their process of T’shuvah, or are we resigned to cynicism in saying, people can never change. Ultimately, perhaps this is just an unfortunate reality to our human condition: maybe it is simply in our nature to doubt someone else’s contrition.

Yet here we find ourselves, gathered together for another Yom Kippur. It is my hope that we have assembled here tonight to begin the earnest process towards T’shuvah. I would like to imagine that each of us has articulated our apologies aloud for our families, our friends and our God to hear. I would like to believe that we will spend the next 24 hours in serious contemplation which will lead to a year when we are different, when we are changed, when we are better. But unfortunately, I know that this is not the case. I know that for many of us Yom Kippur is simply a formality.

And so tonight and tomorrow as we beat our chests and beg for God’s forgiveness, let us keep one simple prayer in mind.

“Please God, we pray that You are more compassionate than we are.”