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Week 5: Response from
Rabbi Elliot Schoenberg |
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Most striking is Rav Kook's location of teshuvah. It is not in the head or in the mind. For the sudden teshuvah, the transformation is in our hearts "The only limit is the limit placed upon it by your own heart, for you cannot grasp more than your heart is ready to absorb." For the gradual teshuvah, it is our emotions "The change is inspired' by the feeling that your behavior must be improved." Is the heart identical with one's emotions? Wherever one situates one's emotions, it is clear that for Rav Kook, teshuvah is not an intellectual project, but one involving different aspects of our being, or perhaps, our entire being. Teshuvah is not in the head or in the mind.
Such a proposition poses profound difficulties to modern Jews. We are so oriented to an intellectual approach to life. Even this project assumes that by intellectually studying and reacting to a series of texts, we will someone be moved to change. Yet to experience teshuvah as Rav Kook describes it, we must be open to a broader range of experiences than merely an analytic approach. This shift to a more holistic way of looking at one's spiritual life ironically has parallels in new scientific understandings of life on earth. Scientists such as Stuart Kauffman suggest that life is not, as Darwin pictures it, a mere set of random accidents. Instead, he argues, that life has profound tendencies towards self-organization. Creativity, he argues, is found in the narrow zone of all organisms and systems between a chaotic breakdown on one hand and rigid immobility on the other. Analysis, which seeks to break things down into components to study, cannot give us insight into behaviors of organic systems. Similarly, looking at teshuvah as an analytic, intellectual process will not give us insight into its holistic nature. We need to be open to a more encompassing approach to teshuvah to appreciate Rav Kook's insights. Teshuvah is not in the head or in the mind.
To follow Rav Kook's insights, one would have to devise approaches that are more experiential, more holistic. Perhaps we would refer back to the great philosopher Abraham Joshua Heschel, who suggests more encompassing approaches to spiritual enlightenment. He talks about experiencing the wonder of the natural world, the amazing beauty, grandeur, and harmony that surrounds us, as one way of connection. He talks about meeting the Divine in the performance of the mitzvoth. He talks about reading ourselves into the Bible as a third way of connection. Or perhaps we could turn to the great philosopher Martin Buber, who suggests we can only know God through relationships. Buber is reported to have met a man who was critical of his work. "I argued with him," Buber said with regret. "I should have taken a walk with him. Through our relationship I might have shown him what I meant." Only by actually taking that walk with God can our hearts and emotions be stirred to teshuvah.
The major mitzvah of Rosh Hashanah is the hearing the blasts of the Shofar. Our task is not to understand the shofar or scrutinize the shofar sounder but to sit back and hear the sound so it will bring us to Teshuvah. If we really hear it, it will transform us. Teshuvah is not in head or in the mind. It is in our hearts and in our emotions.
Rabbinical Assembly -- New York, New York
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