A long time ago, rabbis only gave two sermons a year. The Shabbat before Passover, to explain all the ways to prepare for Passover and the Shabbat before Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuva, to tell you all the ways to prepare for Yom Kippur. Both are about housekeeping, if you will. One is about cleaning out the physical chamatz, the leavening before Passover and the other cleaning out our spiritual lives and returning to a more “pure” state. 

My job, then, is to teach you how to do teshuvah, return. And despite studying and reading about it for years, I don’t always get it right. We are taught that for sins against G-d, Yom Kippur atones but for sins against individuals, we need to make peace first with our fellow. (Yoma 8:9) 

And yet, I fail at this miserably. I once famously said to a friend that I didn’t have remorse or regret for anything. (I’m older and wiser now, so I do). And as much as I try to be kind, compassionate, caring and patient, I fail. I keep trying. I keep promising but I never have it quite right. I have all the excuses in the world: I didn’t get enough sleep. I didn’t eat the right things at the right time. I skipped lunch and my blood sugar is low.  

And even if I know the “rules”, I make more mistakes if I am not in balance. I lose patience. I get angrier faster and then despite really liking the reminder to think before you speak, to act out of love and remember this motto: “Is it necessary, is it kind, is it true.,” I botch it. I can even make it worse. 

And somehow, it’s your fault anyway, right? Exactly what we are not supposed to do. 

So how do we do this difficult thing the right way? 

Maimonides has 12 steps to teshuvah. That sounds hard. And in the children’s book, The Hardest Word, the Ziz, a mythical bird learns, spoiler alert, that the hardest word to say is “sorry.”  

The 12 Steps can be summarized as follows:
 

1. Regret the actions and aspects of yourself you would like to change.
2. Confess what you did out load to G-d. Your ears have to hear what your mouth is saying to be effective. 
3. Promise to do differently in the future if confronted with the same circumstances and make restitution. 

Why is sorry so difficult to say? I think there are several reasons. The first is that we are conditioned to not admit when we make a mistake. Think about the young child who breaks a dish. When the parent asks, “Who did this.” the child often immediately says, “Not me.” It is hard to say we were wrong. 

If you google for how to make an apology you will get recipes for 4, 5, 6 or 7 steps to the perfect apology. There is no one right formula. It has to be sincere and come from your heart: 

1. The first step in all of them seems to be to say you are sorry. Not, “I’m sorry, but.” Don’t add the condition.  
2. You have to own the mistake. The other person didn’t cause you to do it. 
3. You need to be specific. Describe what happened to the wronged person understands that you know what you did and why it was hurtful to them. Don’t deflect the blame back to them. (See #1) 
4. Develop a plan of making it right. How are you going to fix this? How is this not going to happen again? What concrete steps will you take? 
5. Admit (again) that you were wrong. 
6. Ask for forgiveness. This can be very humbling. It requires some courage and vulnerability yet that helps the person think that you mean what you say.  

These line up nicely with Maimonides steps. Sometimes, the person we are apologizing to is not ready to forgive. According to Maimonides we must sincerely ask for forgiveness three times. If they still refuse then it is on them.  

Sometimes we need to forgive ourselves as well as others. Mindy Ribner wrote a book called The Gift of a New Beginning which is sadly out of print. Designed to help us through these 10 days, she has a number of guided meditations in this book. Her one “Purifying Mediations I found particularly helpful: 

“Take a few breaths, and visualize the letter shin of the Hebrew alphabet as orange light in your head. The shin represents the element of fire. Visualize the shin and with a deep exhalation, make a SHHHH sound, corresponding to the letter. Imagine that the divine fire has entered you, surrounding and permeating you. This divine fire purifies you of all negativity. 

At the time of the Holy Temple, the Jews made atonement for their sins with animal sacrifices. They would confess their sins to the Priest and give the animal to be slaughtered. Symbolically they were slaughtering the animal soul within them which had caused them to sin. As the divine fire would consume the offering, they prayed that the divine fire would also purify them. Visualize yourself re-enacting this scene. See that the animal dies instead of you. You are given a chance to do teshuvah.” 

One step of teshuvah that we enact in the High Holy Day liturgy is the confession of sin. There are two parts to this. The Vidui and the Ashamnu. The Ashamnu is an alef bet order of sins recited in the plural that we beat our chests for. This is called a heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. Sometimes it seems that Yom Kippur is so negative with this repetition. I encourage you to try something else.  

Remember that you are created in the image of the Divine as a pure being. That G-d breathed your soul into you and that you are a beloved child of G-d. Try writing out the English alphabet a-z and finding a positive attribute for yourself. Amazing, Bold, Bright, Bubbly, Caring, Courageous, Daring, Engaging, Educated, Energetic…you get the idea. Remember that G-d will be with you through this process of teshuvah—return, renewal, introspection.  

If we approach these steps honestly with the people that we have wounded during the past year, and with ourselves. then, and only then are we ready to move into Yom Kippur.  It’s not too late. That gives me hope. G’mar Chatimah Tovah, may you be sealed for a blessing.