Shoftim: "You Must Not Go Back That Way Again"

Ehud Luz

The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, has two distinct meanings. The first derives from the verb "to return"; when used in this sense, it signifies going back to one's point of origin, returning to the straight path, coming back home after a period of absence. The second derives from the verb "to reply," and denotes response to a question or call that has come from without. The Jewish idea of teshuvah embraces both these meanings: It is a movement of return to one's source, to the original paradigm of human—or national—life, and also, simultaneously, a response to a divine call. The act of returning to one's original self is thus in and of itself a return to God and God's teaching...

Lesli Koppelman Ross

In Hebrew, Egypt is called Mitzrayim. According to the [centra] text on Jewish mysticism, the Zohar, the name is derived from m’tzarim, meaning “narrow straits” (mi, “from,” tzar, “narrow” or “tight”). When God took us out of Mitzrayim, God extricated us from the place of constricted opportunities, tight control, and narrow-mindedness, where movement was severely limited.

Each of us lives in our own mitzrayim, the external or physical narrow straits of financial or health constraints or, perhaps, personal tragedy... the psychological burdens to which we subject ourselves. [These burdens] work in two ways: they turn us into both slaves and oppressors, of ourselves and others....

Lew, Alan. This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared

Rambam, the great medieval philosopher and synthesizer of Jewish law, said that Teshuvah, this kind of moral and spiritual turning, is only complete when we find ourselves in exactly the same position we were in when we went wrong—when the state of estrangement and alienation began—and we choose to behave differently, to act in a way that is conducive to atonement and reconciliation....

The unresolved elements of our lives—the unconscious patterns, the conflicts and problems that seem to arise no matter where we go or with whom we find ourselves—continue to pull us into the same moral and spiritual circumstances over and over again until we figure out how to resolve them. They continue to carry us into harm’s way until we become aware of them, conscious of them, and begin to change them.

Lew, Alan. This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared

I wonder how many of us are holding on very hard to some piece of personal history that is preventing us from moving on with our lives, and keeping us from those we love. I wonder how many of us cling so tenaciously to a version of the story of our lives in which we appear to be utterly blameless and innocent, that we become oblivious to the pain we have inflicted on others, no matter how unconsciously or inevitably or innocently we may have inflicted it....

Forgiveness, it has been said, means giving up our hopes for a better past. This may sound like a joke, but how many of us refuse to give up our version of the past, and so find it impossible to forgive ourselves or others, impossible to act in the present? Tisha B’Av is the beginning of Teshuvah, the process of turning that we hope to complete on Yom Kippur, the process of returning to ourselves and to God. And the acknowledgment of the unresolved in our lives, as a people and as individuals, is the beginning of the sacred power the Days of Awe grant us—to transform our lives in this moment when we feel the pull of both the waning moon and the setting sun; in this place, in this life, here and now.

Michael Walzer

We still believe, or many of us do, what the Exodus first taught, or what it has been commonly taken to teach ... :

• first, wherever you live, it is probably Egypt;
• second, that there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land;
• and third, that the way to the land is through the wilderness.