Good news — you are in the wrong!
D'varTorah

Good news — you are in the wrong!

Congregation B’nai Israel, Emerson, Conservative

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the time of year when we focus on what we have done wrong. At the risk of stating the even more obvious, this is almost no one’s favorite subject.

We can — and often do — frame the High Holidays in positive terms. Teshuva means remembering and returning to our best selves. Praying to “our Father, our King,” we implicitly acknowledge our own royal nature. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav famously encouraged sinners to search out the good points within themselves.

But if we want to honor and experience the prime directive of these Days of Awe, then we need to inquire deeply into all the ways we have fallen short, caused harm, and been untrue. “The Day of Judgment is here!” We face up to transgressions against other people, ourselves, and the Divine.

Of course, penitence is not limited to this season. The goal is not to save up all our introspection and accountability for the 10 Days of Repentance. The month leading up to High Holidays is devoted to cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. Each New Moon is also called a miniature Yom Kippur. Jews express regret and ask for forgiveness in the daily Amidah. Every day is a good day to take responsibility and mend your ways.

But the rituals of these Days of Awe direct us to admit — now! — what we have done wrong. The shofar sounds an alarm, breaking through our defensiveness and deflection, motivating us to make improvements (one literal meaning of the root sh.f.r.) before it’s too late. On Yom Kippur, Jews traditionally abstain from work, food, drink, ablutions, and sex, stripping away favorite activities and distractions — while also evoking mortality, foreshadowing a time when our bodies will disappear while our souls abide. The 25 hours of the holiday stretch before us, with little to do but engage in the urgent spiritual work of repentance.

Each of us must confront our own failings. But this difficult, individual work feels a bit safer and more palatable when we do it together. On Yom Kippur, we re-enact the majesty of the Avodah service, when people in the ancient Temple fell on their faces in awe and repentance. We confess aloud, in the plural. I marvel of the genius of our calendar; I feel so blessed that my season of repentance also happens to be your season of forgiveness.

Still, it’s never pleasant to acknowledge that we have done wrong. Jeremiah put it this way (31:19): “With repentance, I am filled with remorse. Now that I am made aware, I strike my thigh [as a gesture of self-reproach]. I am ashamed and humiliated, for I bear the disgrace of my youth.”

No wonder we are tempted to defend, rationalize, project, or minimize! But the tradition demands that we actively embrace the sorrow and regret of culpability — not forever, but as a necessary step in the process of repentance.

People who refuse to be accountable are capable of doing unrestrained harm. In “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil,” psychiatrist M. Scott Peck recalls a deeply depressed young man who landed in a psychiatric ward after nearly killing himself by driving into a wall. Attempting to build rapport, Peck asked him what he got for Christmas a short time prior. It emerged that his parents had gifted their depressed son a gun for Christmas — the very gun that his older brother had used to kill himself six months earlier. The parents couldn’t see anything wrong with this gift. “We are not made of money,” they said. It was “a perfectly good gun.” Peck concluded: “The central defect of evil is not the sin, but the refusal to acknowledge it.”

The essential lie that “People of the Lie” tells is: “I am blameless.” When people with that hardened position become parents, children are in danger. When people with that conviction become national leaders, countries — and the world — are in danger.

The High Holidays help save us from this lie. We all say and do blameworthy things. Consciousness of guilt feels terrible — and can also spur us to apologize, make whatever repairs we can, change our patterns, and heal whatever is broken within us that led to sin in the first place. Then we let go of righteous guilt, whose job is done. This is the formula for teshuvah.

Occasionally, people in your life may helpfully point out possible blind spots to your own bad behavior. (Warning: rebuke or criticism won’t always be delivered gently.) It would be defensive to say, “I don’t get defensive.”

By logic, if not by visceral response, we should actually be excited when we realize that we are guilty of wrongdoing. That realization is where both power and growth begin. If all harm is caused by outside circumstances or other people, what agency do I have to improve anything? Understanding that you have done wrong is the first step in setting things right.

I learned from my spiritual teachers: “Train yourself not to shrink from the awareness of your faults. Be grateful! New awareness heralds more enlightenment and freedom.”

Awareness that you are wrong is grace. This is easier to see for others, perhaps, than for ourselves. People who blame others, play the victim, or otherwise refuse to accept responsibility in a given situation are supremely unattractive — even, to use Peck’s word, revolting. But people who can unequivocally, vulnerably, admit that they were wrong are usually beautiful, gracious. Those they harmed are likely to accept their efforts at repair with grace. And even if the regret and fallout prove to be crippling, people of the truth are always better off than people of the lie.

Sheepish confession: While writing this column, I visited a relative who told me that I had injured her by responding with my own upset to something she had observed in synagogue that upset her. I initially got defensive, but then caught myself — thanks in part to you, dear reader. I was wrong to express my own upset, instead of witnessing and addressing hers. I felt remorse and then relief at understanding the truth. I apologized sincerely, and we both felt uplifted.

In the 24 hours since, I unpacked my inner dialogue and learned lessons that will help me respond more compassionately in the future, both to myself and to others, when people tell me about their distress.

The gift of knowing you are wrong keeps on giving!

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