Elul Series Part III: Teshuva & Positive Habits

This article can be found at NJ Jewish Link: https://jewishlink.news/teshuva-and-positive-habits/

Part I

What are your primary associations with the words Yom Kippur and repentance?

I ask this question to students in seminary classes. Even though students in different programs have widely varying amounts of Jewish background, the common answers invariably remain the same: saying sorry, fixing something wrong, forgiveness. All of these are true, and are, in fact, included in Maimonides’ four steps of repentance.

But it also misses the point. The goal of the High Holidays is not to apologize or be granted forgiveness. The Hebrew word “teshuva” is most commonly (mis)translated as “repentance” but, in fact, its actual translation is “return.”

The goal of the High Holiday season is to return to God, to return to our friends/family/colleagues. Maimonides himself—at the end of his treatise on teshuva—emphasizes that its proper, ultimate outcome is an overwhelming sense of love and connection with Hashem. Apologizing and forgiveness remain important, then, but only as a means to the end of bridging the gap, of achieving a more authentic relationship with God and our fellow man.

The corollary of this is that teshuva can be partially achieved not only through fixing what went wrong, but simply by increasing the good. As it turns out, starting a new positive habit can be transformative. In “Better than Before,” Gretchen Rubin writes, “Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life. We repeat about 40% of our behavior almost daily, so our habits shape our existence, and our future. If we change our habits, we change our lives.”

Whitehead’s observation that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them,” speaks to the need for automation to achieve technological and scientific advances. The value of automation as applied to personal growth emerges from a concept articulated by Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler called “levels of choice.”

Imagine two people walk past a McDonald’s: Person A grew up observant, never had a cheeseburger in his life and barely registers the McDonald’s existence. Person B grew up eating cheeseburgers every month, but just a week ago decided to refrain from eating meat and milk together and is salivating. Both decide not to buy a cheeseburger. Did they observe the same commandment? Do they get the same reward?

Rabbi Dessler notes that only person B truly chose not to eat it, and thus receives greater reward. But if 10 years later, person B also doesn’t care about cheeseburgers, his reward will diminish. Is that bad? No, because with cheeseburgers having evolved into an automatic “no,” their cognitive resources can now be dedicated to different areas of struggle for which they receive reward.

Photo by Megs Harrison on Unsplash

“Wait,” you might ask, “Aren’t we supposed to have intention in prayer? And in all our mitzvah observance? Praying on autopilot isn’t good! Observing Shabbat out of habit isn’t the point!” This is true, at least on an ideal plane. What’s also true is that as human beings—not angels—no one is on the ideal plane. Take prayer, for example. While it is sometimes better to say less prayers with more intention, one should not limit themselves only to praying for the few moments one can muster proper intention for.

The Talmud rules that when the first blessing of the Amidah is said on autopilot it is invalid and must be repeated; however, in the 16th-century—the leading authority of Ashkenazic Jewish law—the Rama, wrote that times have changed. He rules that today, one should not repeat the blessing because we assume we will again not have the requisite intention. If this was true before the advent of smartphones, how much more so it is true today!

Note, however, the Rama still rules we should pray—even with our presumed lack of intention. For good deeds and prayer done on autopilot remain valuable. The easiest example to imagine this with is charity. If one gives charity robotically, the recipient still benefits. So it is with all our good deeds, and from within that framework of automatic habituation will emerge the precious, if rare, moments of true connection.

Adopting a positive habit in advance of Rosh Hashanah is essentially Rabbi Israel Salanter’s idea of a “kabbalah.” The habit can be in the realm of man-to-God (e.g., blessings before food) or the realm of man-to-man (e.g, visiting the sick/calling one’s grandparents before Shabbat).

Deciding upon a new habit is great, but implementing and sticking to it is a struggle. An immensely difficult struggle! Thus, that humorous but disappointing moment when we realize our current new year resolutions are the same as last year’s, and the year before that. Next week, we will discuss some psychologically helpful strategies to maintain a positive habit.