{"id":63880,"date":"2019-10-03T13:21:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=63880"},"modified":"2019-10-03T13:21:57","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:21:57","slug":"of-clean-slates-and-smashed-tablets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/of-clean-slates-and-smashed-tablets\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Clean Slates And Smashed Tablets"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"63880","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":63587,"related_cahpter":"321","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Special High Holidays feature","content":"<p>Doing teshuvah is not so much about beating yourself up over what you\u2019ve done in the past, but about changing yourself so that you act dif\u00adferently in the future. When done well, I think it is a self-affirming rather than self-denigrating process\u2026 [which is why] Yom Kippur is traditionally regarded as a joyful day. Notes Blu Greenberg, \u201cThe thought of starting with a clean slate, or of having an opportunity to continue to build up one\u2019s life, can be exhila\u00adrating.\u201d Some congregations even dance and sing at the end of the day.<\/p>\n<p>I want to be clear, however, that \u201cclean slate\u201d is not synonymous with \u201cthe slate you had before you committed the sin.\u201d That is not how teshuvah works. Rather, it\u2019s more like the account in the Torah of how, after the golden calf incident, Moses became so enraged that he smashed the stone tablets on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments. He then hiked back up Mount Sinai and begged God to forgive the Is\u00adraelites. God eventually did so, and God and Moses created a new set of tablets. Jewish tradition has it that Moses returned with these new tablets on Yom Kippur. And the Talmud claims that the Israelites saved the broken pieces of the old tablets, placing them alongside the new ones in the Ark at the heart of the Tabernacle, and carrying those shards with them on their journey through the desert.<\/p>\n<p>I love that the Israelites seemed to believe that those shattered pieces were also somehow holy and necessary for the process of teshuvah. This has been the case in my own life as well. I can recall moments in which I have been presented with the opportunity to re\u00adpeat a sin, and as I feel the pull of temptation, I\u2019ve found myself reaching back and running my mind over the jagged edges of those old fragments, reminding myself of the pain I caused that first time around. That is generally enough to keep me from transgressing again. According to Jewish tradition, this is the moment when you know you have truly repented\u2014the moment when you\u2019re presented with the opportunity to repeat a past sin, and you choose not to, be\u00adcause you have changed.<\/p>\n<p>We try our best to live by those new tablets, but we still carry our broken parts around with us to remind us not of who we <em>are, <\/em>but of who we <em>aren\u2019t\u2014<\/em>of who we do not wish to be. And I find it heartening that the Rabbis actually regarded someone who committed a sin and then did teshuvah to be in a better position than one who never committed that sin in the first place. \u201cIn the place where penitents stand,\u201d they declared, \u201ceven the completely righteous do not stand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Excerpt from Sarah Hurwitz, <em>Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life\u2014in Judaism (after <u>finally<\/u> choosing to look there),<\/em> Random House, 2019, p. 198-199.<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":63589,"id":63589,"title":"Sarah Hurwitz cover","filename":"Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/discovering-millions-of-pages-and-new-old-ideas\/sarah-hurwitz-cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"sarah-hurwitz-cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":63586,"date":"2019-09-26 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