Shabbat Shuva
In the Talmud we find a
controversy between Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Abahu,
as to who is greater the Zaddik Gamur, the “wholly righteous,” who has never sinned, or
the ba’al teshuvah, the “master of
return” who has repented of sin. Rabbi Yochanan
said, “All the prophets prophesied only concerning the ba’alei
teshuvah, but no eye has seen the reward that awaits zaddikim
gemurim. Rabbi
Abahu opined the opposite, “In the place where the
masters of return stand, the wholly righteous cannot stand.
Berachot
34b (6th Century
The (usual) type of repentance
that the text acknowledges is the repentance that follows upon punishment for
sin…Now, repentance has a preemptive power. Genuine repentance can intercede between sin
and its punishment…nothing is foreclosed.
All is open. God waits for us…The audacious, theological leap
represented by this new, prophetic image of repentance is not to be
minimized. It is one of those
astonishing developments in the history of Jewish thought that is further testimony
to our ancestors’ theological creativity.
For indeed, where would we be if the Deuteronomic
notion of repentance still reigned?
Where would we find the incentive to repent, if sin must inevitably be
punished? Why bother?
Neil
Gillman (Contemporary)
I had managed to gain a little
access form time to time to one of the great rabbis of our generation, and
there I found myself rushing out the door, reviewing the personal questions I
felt I needed to bring to him. My
daughter and my then pregnant wife watched as I dashed out. I stopped, looked at my wife and said, “Is
there anything you’d like me to ask him??”
My wife said, “Please ask him how often one offers faith to a child?” When I asked, my spiritual guide made two
points. “First,” he said, “Don’t
hesitate to teach a child something he or she cannot yet understand.”… “And Second,” he said,”Don’t hesitate to teach a child the most
abstract notions. Children are often
better able to understand them than adults, who already have too many obstacles. When you say to a child, “God is
everywhere,” the child has no difficulty with the idea.”
Arthur Kurzweil (Contemporary)
During his lifetime, Rav Kook
applied his teachings in his efforts to bring his people to collective
Teshuvah. One problem to which he
addressed his energies was the predicament of Jewish faith…Rather than boldly
addressing the issues of the day, Orthodox rabbinic authorities had retreated
to concentrate on superficial nuances of Jewish law. Although much research was dedicated to
obscure points of kabbalistic lore or to trivial
interpretations of antiquated philosophy, the “soul of Torah” had been
abandoned….A second concern in pursuing communal Teshuvah was to mend the
fractures within the Jewish people…Although he felt that defection from religion
was a great moral sickness…he also claimed that the violence of atheism will
cleanse away the dross that accumulated in the lower levels of religious
faith…Kook was also confident that the secularists would be caught up in this
wave of Teshuvah; but, he admonished, this would happen only if the religious
community reached out to them in genuine affection…