Shalom, I am Rabbi Jonathan Ginsburg of the Ezra-Habonim, Niles Township Jewish Congregation of Skokie, Illinois. This video is about the Jewish doctrine of repentance, we call it Shuvah. What is the Jewish idea of repentance? What does it mean? What are the invocations of the Ramah applications? What are the boundaries? For the first point going to make is that we do not believe in original sin.
We read the story of the Garden of Eden, and I am saying that all human beings forever are damned at birth, unless they get the grace of God. Rather, we pray that we believe that all human beings are born with a pure soul, the Shah Matahara. We believe that, when you look in a baby, you are not saying a damned person; you see a person bore with a pure soul.
However, the way it God decide us, we make mistakes, and there are various levels of those mistakes. The main one is called (foreign language) which means missing the mark. By amenities says that, people are born completely devoted to law in course of the other, why would have the Torah in the first place. You know, the only reason that Torah make sense, to say do this and do not do that it is because we have free will.
Now, one of these is the passage form and I have already this mission of Torah. The book basically, the most important text of the freewill, we will talk about the essence of this idea. The amenity says, every person is born with the opportunity to live a certain way, and the way in which we understand that is the following. He says, let it not occurred in your mind, the God decrease of the birth of the person whether you should be good or evil.
A notion express by foolish people. If God worked a decree that a Persian would be either good or bad, if that were the very essence of a man’s nature, anything that irresistibly draws on under a particular course, why would you need the Torah? Whether my mind already says that every person has virtues and flaws, he says specifically every word, person he has virtues and sins. One was mirror exists as seen as the good man, one soon exceed as Merit as an evil man.
So given that, what does a loving, and merciful and kind God do? And amenity says, If a person has transgress any of the precepts of the Torah. Affirmative or negative, willfully or unintentionally, he must confess before God. Blesses be he when repenting and turning away from sin, honest well confess, my mind already says “Oh Lord I have sinned, I have done evil, I have rebelled against being of done this, I regret now and I am going to shave my axe, I will never do it again”.
This represents the essential part of confession. Now, if you have injured a person, you must fix it, you are not pardon unless you confess and resolve in every time you make such an offense, and fix it. Now, one time in Jewish history before the second temple was destroyed in the seventy of the Common Era, the way in which we repented was through sacrifices. But, my mind already says that this time, he is writing a thousand years ago where the temple no longer exists, we have no atonement to alter, there is nothing left but repentance.
He says, perfect repentance is the opportunity to do the offense again, but you refrain from doing it. Now, why do you repent? Well, maybe Jews are familiar with the ten days repentance, the period between the first of obituary called Rosh Hashanah, and you all keep for a day. And, that is the most propitious time in response to be thinking and focusing squarely on what have we done in the past and how we can fix it.
We have many prayers over the chorus if you all young Kippur, where we confess in the plural. We have sinned, please pardon us, but that is not the only time. And besides, you only keep or affect of the Talmud for transgressions that we have committed against God. For transgressions against the human being, young Kippur does not have any effect unless we attain pardon from the person we hurt.
The tradition says rather, we should be spending time everyday, in fact three times a day in our daily prayers except for the Sabbath. One of the 19 blessings and prayers in our daily amid, three times a day is “please forgive me for the sins that I have committed. Blessed are you Oh Lord who forgive transgressions”; and so, there is an opportunity many times a day to reflect them there.
Furthermore, in the ethics of the ancestors, as well as mind in these missions of Torah, He says that we should repent the day before we die. Which of course, need that we should be repenting everyday because we never know when we are going to be dying. The Sabbath between Rosh Hashanah and young Kippur, we have a special pathetic portion called The Sabbath of Return, the opening words repent of Israel
And so, I think this helps explains a lot of the basic idea that we do not have anyone to confess to other than God. We do not have priest and that fashion anymore; it is purely between us and God. And so, we are supposed to say to God when we have transgressed, please forgive us for the transgressions. This, another thought, my mind already says that you not just limited this sinful axe; a man does repent, and scan his, and search his life and his life for evil trace.
Repenting of anger, hatred, envy, staffing greed, excessive desire, and one must repent of all these things. Also, it is important to understand, that a sinful person who repented is not followed rule from God, and amenity says, let it not the repentant person imagine of his far or moved from the merit of the righteous. And a counter of the equities he has committed, that is not solved. He is tenderly love by the creator as if he never sinned.
One of my favorite images is my mind is asking us to view ourselves, as though we are equally balanced right now between our transgressions and our positive axe. And, the very next deed we commit pushes us to one side of the other. And then, he says that we all imagine ourselves as though, the whole ruled is evenly pours between good and bad. And, the next thing we do, than introduces evil and the fact that we have introduced evil at all mean that we have to do positive deeds, commandments, good deeds to counter balance the evil we brought in.
The final thought, what happens when the person that we have hurt refuses to accept our apology? The traditions say, try it three times, and if that fails then the transgressions are them and so, a merciful kind, loving God, (foreign language). Abundantly merciful for a thousand generations, who gives transgression and sin, that we must take the first step towards God for reconciliation.
