Vidui: How Can We Revisit and Transform the Past?

This article first appeared in the OU Women's Initiative newsletter for Aseret Yemei Teshuva 5785.

Although we have grown up with it and often taken it for granted, the very concept of teshuva is incredibly moving. In Yoma 86b, Reish Lakish tells us that when we complete a true teshuva process, our zdonot - our purposeful, premeditated sins - can be completely transformed. If we repent from fear (תשובה מיראה), say vidui and klap “al chait” because we are suffering or are afraid of punishment, our sins will be thought of as unintentional errors. If, though, we repent from a place of love (תשובה מאהבה) because we desire and seek a certain type of relationship with Hashem, our sins will become merits and we will find ourselves ahead of where we were before we stumbled.

In On Repentance, Rav Soloveitchik explains that although Rambam never explicitly uses Reish Lakish’s terms of תשובה מיראה and תשובה מאהבה, he structures Hilkhot Teshuva in a way that fleshes out the difference between them. In the early chapters, Rambam presents the type of teshuva that is done from fear and which will bring atonement, as well as, lighten the severity of the sins of the past. Beginning in Chapter 7, however, after a discussion of the role of בחירה חופשית (free will) in our lives, Rambam writes of a person who is totally redeemed after having done teshuva and who stands before his Creator as if he had never sinned. This is the person who repents from love; a person who has lived life one way and who has now decided he wants something else. A person who takes destiny into their own hands and who chooses to stop blaming others following the realization that only they are responsible for their life.

Repentance from fear can transpire even without this kind of complete transformation. Teshuva m’yira involves refraining from sinning but it does not involve employing our free will, to break with behaviors and underlying attitudes of our past in an effort to remake ourselves, in the way that teshuva m’ahava does.

Rav Soloveitchik describes the powerful process of teshuva m’ahava as follows:

“If the penitent utilizes the power of free choice to form a new way of life for himself and establish a new set of rules which will affect all his natural reactions, if he succeeds in shaping a radically new personality for himself, then he is not in danger in backsliding to his former sinfulness. And, indeed, why should he revert to the way of sin? After all, the desires and inclinations which nurtured his sinfulness no longer pertain to him; they no longer play a role in the fabric of his newly-fashioned personality, which is animated by a different set of laws of cause and effect.” (On Repentance, 174)

In other places, Rav Soloveitchik describes this type of teshuva as one that engages in a thorough spiritual self-examination with the purpose of enriching one’s spiritual life in a broad and overarching way.

It is one thing to tell us that teshuva, confessing our sins by saying vidui and committing not to return to previous ways, will enrich our new path forward.  Reish Lakish, however, seems to promise more. He said that our zdonot will become zchuyot. How is it possible that teshuva can actually change and undo things that happened in the past?

I would like to suggest one idea of what changing the past can mean. In the field of psychology, there is a concept of “memory reconsolidation” which stands at the center of various therapeutic approaches. 

Psychotherapist Bruce Ecker writes: “The vast majority of the unwanted moods, emotions, behaviors, and thoughts that people seek to change in psychotherapy are found to arise from implicit emotional learnings, not in awareness.”  There are often concrete emotional learnings we have internalized into our memory (even if not conscious) that underlie unwanted negative feelings (such as anger, jealousy, anxiety or sadness) and which lead to negative behaviors that prevent us from being the best version of ourselves. The idea of memory reconsolidation is that these memories can be unlocked, revisited and reprocessed by introducing some kind of mismatch experience to the memory that can then cause it to be stored, thought of and experienced differently. Research shows that there are real mechanisms, proven neurologically, that allow us to go back to past events and reprocess them in ways that erase and dissolve many of the effects they had on us so that we can move forward in new positive directions.

Perhaps this is what Reish Lakish refers to when discussing the teshuva m’ahava process. So often we have habits, behaviors or thought patterns that are affecting our personal functioning and our interactions with others. Underlying barriers can at times prevent us from effectuating desired changes even when we are ready to take responsibility and have motivation to grow.  Sometimes real teshuva entails more than just a קבלה על העתיד and a willingness to act differently in the future. Teshuva m’ahava requires deep reflection and examination of underlying and core aspects of how we got to be who we are. This type of teshuva seeks not only to write a new ending but also to transform our very beginnings.

When we stand before Hashem and we say vidui this coming Yom Kippur, let us hope that we can return to Him through first returning to ourselves and re-examining the basic assumptions and central qualities that define who we are. In this way, instead of merely reciting words and attempting to chart new trajectories, we can hopefully be successful at revisiting our pasts, changing our sins into merits and indeed emerging even ahead of where we were before we stumbled.

May we be blessed to partake in an uplifting and transformative teshuva m’ahava process. 

Ketiva v’chatima tova.