Torah Modiin | Transforming The Past | Rabbanit Shayna Goldberg

Welcome everyone. For those of you who weren't here for the first uh year down here, my name is Miraki and I'm the director of the women's division and it is my pleasure and honor to um welcome and introduce Raven Shaina Goldberg. So I'll do the formal bio first and then I'll do the personal one. Um so Rabani Shaina Goldberg serves as Mashkahanit in the Stella K. Abraham Bash for women in migdalos. She's the author of the book What do you really want? Trust in fear and decision making at life's crossroads and in everyday living. That's a long title. Um she's a nishma, a contributing editor for DA and a frequent blogger for Times of Israel. She lives in Albu with her husband Judah and their five children. On a personal note, I wanted to say that um Shane and I go back a long time from days of Stern. We studied together in Nishmat. I remember um we both had our firstborn sons while we were studying in Ishma and I was always so jealous of her because her son would just sit there and let her learn all day long. He wouldn't make a sound and my son I I couldn't learn at all there. I was >> that lasted six months. That's it. >> A long time to watch and be like why is he letting her learn when I can't um and um it's it's really been a lot of um not really to to to w to know her as a young woman and watch her. Not that it's anything to do with me, but just to watch her. Um, and um, I've been learning so much from her virtually, reading her articles, listening to her in the car when I'm driving. Um, I feel like Shaina has really a voice of clarity in very confusing times and a lot of times says things that just really put things into perspective. So, you really all have um, the privilege of hearing from her today. So, thank you so much, Aina. >> Thank you, Samira. First of all, I just feel the need to say that when my son was very quiet in the nish bjas, someone told me quiet babies usually mean very active toddlers and and he hasn't slowed down ever since. So, just a reminder not to look at, you know, other people and wonder. It's always more complex than what uh it seems. But uh it's really a pleasure uh and a scoot to be here in Modí. It's like a second home for us. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law are here and my in-laws. And uh thank you for coming out on a very busy night in the middle of a Yamicha couple days before Yum Kipur to learn a little bit of Torah together. Um, I want to start by talking about that are favorites of mine that we read the Shabbat before Rosh and that we read every year heading into the from and those are the tell us didn't put it on the source sheet just an opening. We're told that this mitzvah, which the Ramban says is referring to chuva, that chuva is something that is not hidden from us. It's not something that's far, but rather we're told that it's not up in the heavens and it's not the yam. It's not on the other side of the ocean for us to think that it's impossibly out of reach. Even those of us who are like, "No, but you really don't understand. I've really messed up. I'm really really far from where I want to be. We're told words made even more popular by Eton Kat's beautiful song that this matter is close to you. It's near to you. It's in your mouths and it's in your hearts to be able to do. And I've always been incredibly moved by that both for myself and in the work I do with a lot of young people who sometimes make poor decisions and then feel like there is no return to be able to say no the Torah really really really believes in chuba really believes that it's possible really believes that we are able to turn ourselves around and yet at the same time on a very concrete level I have wondered like, but how does it actually work? Meaning, when we talk about chuba, we're told that we can really undo things that happened in the past. We could really uh do a tikun, like we could really fix them. And that is something pretty incredible. Moving forward, leaving something behind and continuing on, I understand. But being able somehow to undo like chuba means in a way like to return to where we were beforehand and like undo that and move forward from there. That is very difficult to understand. And yet indeed we are we're told that that's the case. In source number one in Yuma, we're told that teaches us that that chuva is so great that intentional sins that someone did on purpose with intention will be turned into will be turned into like careless mistakes that you didn't uh intend to do. And then the gumar goes on to say, but there's another statement of in the end of the second line where he said that is so great that not only will your intentional sins become like errors, they'll become like they'll become like merits. And here it's not even just saying that like we're lessening the severity of the sin. It's telling us that we could actually take the sins that we did and we could turn them into something positive. Now the garra says how could it be that he made these two statements and it resolves it by saying it's not a question because and it's talking about two different kinds of repentance. If we repent from a place of fear if we repent from a place of so then that's pretty amazing. The chuva that we do then will turn our intentional sins into misdeeds into careless errors. But if somehow we're able to do chuva to repent from a place of love from to repent from a place of real and earnest desire then our sins will actually become merits. And this is an idea that runs throughout the and throughout the navi. I just brought for people who are interested the sources. I'm not going to go into all of them, but for example, source number two in from is talking about classic chuva that's done from a place of fear. It says those who are left after massive punishments and destruction. Those of you who are left in the countries of enemies in far-flung places, you'll be so scared by the potential of what could happen to you that you will run, you know, to do chuva and to confess your misdeeds. Whereas inimicid source number three the same para we read about a very different kind of chuva orb the shaft a chuva from love a chuva from desire a chuva from wanting a relationship with hashem so both in the kum and I also brought examples in na'vi in yahu perk gimmel there's two contradicting places where we're called like we were children and without going into detail also Rashi resolves it in source number six by saying one of them's talking about Chuva Miraa one of them's talking about Chuva Miyava so we see that this is a running theme throughout our text throughout our sources that there's different ways of repenting there's different ways of returning and yet what is so surprising is that the Rambam in his monumental work which is a favorite you know and to learn during this time or during because there's 10. He never once mentions these terms. The Rambam we know wrote a work on Chuva that in it he sought to basically take everything that the Torah has both in the Kumash and in the Gumarra and in you know like earlier Rishonim that refer to Chuva and to write a very comprehensive work that synthesized all these different references and examined Chuva like you know in a very kind of global and thorough way and it's glaring therefore that the Ramban And in the entire hill never uses these phrases of chuva and chuva mira. They seem very basic to the way that we conceive what it means to repent. He does go through all kinds of details about chuva. Just to remind ourselves in the first four praim of hiluva the rambom gives us a basic overview of how chuva works. So in perk olive he discusses different forms of kapara different forms of um like forgiveness and atonement. In pericbet the Rambam describes the process of chuva itself and how you know you completed it. In source number seven he says how do you know that you've actually done chuva and I think some of us are familiar with this idea. He says the p somebody who has the opportunity to find himself in the exact same place where another time he made a mistake. You know, he's sitting with a group of friends and they're all gossiping and the other time he let himself just go and listen or, you know, she was careless about something on Shabbat and now she she's something's, you know, really enticing her to do that thing again. And yet not from a place of fear or not from a place of weakness he doesn't do it. He says that is how we know that this person is a balu that this person has succeeded in doing real chuba. So perbat talks about the process in peric giml he discusses in peralid he talks about approaches that don't work such as you can't say oh I'll sin and then I'll do chuva afterwards. that's not considered a legitimate form of chuva. So those are the first four pim a lot of details about chuva. And then in praim pay and vav in the fifth and sixth chapters we encounter the most beautiful praim about the central role of kashid in our lives about the role that free will plays in our lives that god created us as humans and we're not robots and he believes in our ability to make good decisions and there's two full prim that talk about that. So if you look at source number eight just to give us a little bit of a taste in the beginning of parake he writes this is how the fifth chapter opens the each one of us has the ability to decide who we want to be in life. If we want to go on the you know on the good path and we want to be at sadik we have that ability and so too if we want to take the less good path if we want to do evil things meaning we are the singular creation that was created with the ability to choose, with the ability to decide who we want to be, with the ability to control our actions. Rav Salvichek in his work al-Hacha, which talks a lot about the Rambam's hiluva, he points out that at first glance, it seems totally reasonable that the Rambam has moved on from his discussion about chuva and repentance to talk about free will. Because in order to do repent to repent you need to be um aware of the fact that we have the ability to make good decisions and he says you know that that makes a lot a lot of sense. What's pecular however he notes is that the Rambam has not concluded his discussion about chuva. Meaning there are these four chapters about chuva. Then there's this break where all of a sudden in chapters five and six he's talking about and free will and our ability as humans to make decisions. And then all of a sudden in chapter 7 in paragion he returns to talking about cha. So if you look at the beginning of paragion which I have in source 9 the Rambam starts. Now that we know that there is such a thing as free will and that every person has the ability to make decisions, now we could understand that how much a person should make an effort to do and to confess his sins with his mouth. So after discussing discussing free will the Rambam returns to talk about chuva and how life-changing it could be. And so too in uh you know the rest of paragion uh he continues in source 10. How amazing is chuba? How um it could totally change who we are. meaning yesterday you were far from Hashem and you felt removed and you felt distant and now all of a sudden you do chuva and you feel close again and you feel connected. So it's not that the Rambam finished his discussion about Shiva and said, "Okay, I'm done with that. I, you know, tied it up with a nice little bow and now I'm moving on to a related important topic of he's smack in the middle of talking about repentance and there's like this break where all of a sudden he discusses the topic of free will. Rav Salvichuk looks at this and in a beautiful essay in his say for alahhuva he says that even though the Rambam never explicitly uses the terms chuba mier and chuva myava he uses his entire work on chuba to illustrate the difference and he says that the first four praim in the Rambam the Rambam is talking about chuva miierra the type of chuva that most of us engage in Yum Kipper is coming. It's a few days away. I'm scared. I'm scared for my family. I'm scared for my country. I'm scared for my nation. I'm scared for the world. Honestly, we need to repent. We need to do chuva. We're scared. And inimalid he presents you know like the things we need to do in order to turn those premeditated sins that we did into because that will indeed bring us kapar that will bring us atonement and that will bring a lightning of the severity of the mistakes and hopefully of the punishments. But in perag Zion after he talks about Kafit the Rambam is already addressing something very very very different and Rav Salvich writes about it on the next page in source 11 he says the chuva in Peric Zion after those two praim he and Vav is a completely different kind of chuva. He writes, "Whoever delves deeply into chapter seven of the laws of repentance will immediately understand that myity speaks in it of the repentance of redemption and not of the repentance of expeation, not of the repentance of making amends or you know um repenting for the guilt that we feel or the wrongdoing which he had dealt with in the first chapters of the book before introducing the discussion of free choice. The sinner who repents in this manner meaning in the manner discussed in parag Zion becomes his own redeemer and releases himself from captivity in the pit of sin meaning says the chuva that comes after praimv is chuva mahava it's a very different kind of chuva in source 12 he says we've already said that the hallmark of the repentance of redemption is that it stems from love and that the hallmark of the repentance sentence of experation is that it is motivated by fear. Meaning is telling us how to clap and how to talk about the specific wrongdoings that we've done and the places that we've messed up and the punishments that we've feared. And that's something that it's not that you don't need free will with it for it. But free will is not the big motivator. The big motivator is the punishment is the fear that we have of what's going to be. Whereas the chuva that's discussed in the rest of hiluva is a chuva from that comes not from a person who's in fear of punishment or in fear of what will be but from a person who feels that he wants to approach life from a different perspective that he wants to harness his free will to build a different kind of life for himself. himself. Raf Salvich writes in source 13, "If the penitant 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's 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. Meaning, the regular chuva that we all think of is to think about the specific deeds that we did wrong and how we're going to try not to do them again. But it doesn't necessarily cut to the core of someone who's like, I want to be a different person. I want to approach life in a different way. I want to let go of resentment or I want to let go of bad habits. I want a different way of doing things. This person in order to really get to that place needs to take their destiny into their own hands. They need to stop blaming their circumstances and their environment and everybody around them and stop using excuses and stop saying, you know, yeah, I'm a great person. It's just this thing or this thing or this thing. They need to be able to say, actually, there's a core thing that I really want to take responsibility for and I really want to change that. Chuva miraa could happen without that kind of deep realization. But true chuva is dependent very dependent because it means that someone has to literally harness the free will that we're given and say that I want something different for myself. The way that the gumar describes in source 14 rabbi um alazar binia it's a not a very pleasant story of a man who uh enjoyed and uh treated himself to it says he made sure that he had visited every single prostitute in the world and then he heard that there was one zona one prostitute many many many many you know miles away across oceans that he that also charged a lot of money that he had not had the pleasure of her company. So it says he took a huge sack of money and he crossed seven rivers until he got there and there he is with her and the Gumarian graphic detail tells us he's engaged in this encounter Bishad Hargal Bashad Hargal Devar Hipha she let out you know a little bit of uh gas and it's a really interesting story that we're not going to analyze now of like what's going on what are they trying to tell us even the gorgeous most you know soughtafter woman at the end of the day is a human and why did this so shake him up? But basically the garra tells us that she said to him just like I can't take that back in. So too you can't repent. So too you can't go back. You can't take back everything that you did. And something about this experience shook him to the core. And the Gomorrah goes on to say that he went and he tried to beg everybody to help him repent including he turned to the harim to the mountains and to the valleys and to the shamim and the arids and the sun and the moon and the stars and he basically saidim like she told me I'm hopeless ask for mercy on my behalf and nobody was able to help him until the final line of the garra amar inhab All of a sudden he realizes only he can make this change. Only he can take responsibility for himself. He puts his head between his knees. He cries from the depths of his heart and until he passed away. And the gamarra tells us that a heavenly voice came out and says that that it was such a sincere chuva that it was so deep and it was so real. He was so able to access that place of wanting to change himself that he was indeed uh granted entrance into reminds me of Victor Franco in man's search for meaning. Victor Franco was a survivor of Alritz. He's an author, a psychologist, a therapist. who writes a lot about local therapy and the power of choice and the in essence the ability to choose how we want to respond to things. And he writes, "For what matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best in source 15, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph. to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation, we're challenged to change ourselves. It's as if he read the Gamarra like he can't take back what happened. He can't rely on anyone else. He can't change the situation, but he can change himself. And Rav Salvich also talks about that with free will we really have the power to make a choice to break with behaviors to change attitudes from our past to remake ourselves and uh and it's strong but still it leaves me with a question because still the gamari here about revelar is saying the past is the past And yes, he did chuva and he's breaking with that and he's leaving that behind. But the opening source that we saw goes further than that. It doesn't say break with the past. It says you could actually change the past. You could change the past into how can you change the past into how can we rewrite the past? There's so many things that I'm sure each of us sitting here would love to redo, to rewrite, mistakes we made in raising our kids, things we would do different in our marriages, ways we would talk differently, you know, even with the person in the store that we wish we didn't lose it on. How are we able to do that? So Rab Salvich and in each in surah 16 first of all just gives us an insight a little bit that's going to help us I think understand this but he writes that the past by itself is indeterminate a closed book right what happened happened but he said it's indeterminate in the sense that it's only the present and the future that could pry it open and read its meaning. There are many different paths according to this perspective along which the cause could travel. It's the future that determines the direction and points the way. There could be a certain sequence of events that starts out with sin and inequity but ends up with mitzvot and good deeds and vice versa. The future transforms the thrust of the past. So already Rav Salvich is giving insight because he's saying we think of the past as something closed. We can't go back there. And yet in so many ways we actually already could say that the past isn't as closed as we think because we have some control over how we allow the past to affect our future. In a similar vein, Rabvich talks about how the cifim and mitim are open before hashem and yum kipur. My father would always quote this from the pulpit. so meaningful because he you know yung kipur is also a day that we say yiskar and it's a time that we think of loved ones who has passed away and he said what does it mean that the cifree mim are open like the mim are gone why are they being judged and salvich said because the actions of people who are gone continue to have major effects on our world for the good and for the bad so all the kaleim who have passed who have impacted all of us so deeply who we continue to do so many good deeds in their memory. That is all going on their sheet of judgment. And every year they're being judged for the facts that they continue to have long after they're actually in this world. And therefore also our past deeds are still actually alive and are still actually affecting us. But is this actually possible? And how can we understand this in a very concrete human way? Can we really transform the past? So I want to share with you a suggestion of one idea of what changing the past can mean. It's very personal for me because uh over the last few years I've encountered through my own therapy process and those of my children students a very very powerful idea called memory reconsolidation. And memory reconsolidation is the idea that what stands at the center of this is something that actually is being used today in many many many different therapeutic approaches. And the article that I brought you here in source number 17, write suggests that the vast majority of the unwanted things in our lives like our unwanted moods, our unwanted emotions, behaviors that we're not proud of, thoughts that we don't like, that are intrusive. The vast majority of all those things that we really seek to change are found to arise from implicit emotional learnings. Things we've absorbed at different points in our life that are not in our awareness. Meaning if I'm bothered that I get angry and why does that make me so angry or why am I jealous or why do I feel anxious? Like cognitively intellectually I know I shouldn't feel anxious. I see the people around me, they're not bothered by that. Why does that make me so uptight? If I get down, you know, from things that other people don't get down, often these underlying feelings uh which then a lot of times lead to negative behaviors and that prevent us from being the best version of ourselves. They are often uh based in different emotional learnings that we've internalized along the way that had been locked into our memory even if it's not conscious. If any of you are familiar with the book The Body Keeps the Score, it's a amazing book. A lot of it touches on these kinds of ideas. The idea of memory reconsolidation is that these memories actually could be unlocked. These memories could be revisited and could be actually reprocessed by introducing some kinds of what's called a mismatch experience to the memory. We have a memory that's somewhere in our unconsciousness that's really affecting us and it's causing us to act in certain ways, to think in certain ways. But if we could access that memory and we could kind of show that memory that it's not it's not true, it's not accurate, we could actually reprocess that differently. Okay. Now, for years, these kind of methods had been used to deal with hardcore trauma. Like people who deal with PTSD with our soldiers, whatever, they're they're utilizing these methods. Because when a soldier comes back, let's say from Gaza or from Lebanon, and he hears a boom and he's under the table, cognitively he knows that he's not in a place of war, but the body keeps the score, meaning the memory has been internalized that boom means fear or boom means, you know, danger and you have to whatever. And the way to reprocess that is to somehow open up, which is not easy to do. You have to go back to those memories and reprocess those. association that the brain made where it said, "Oh, boom means danger." No, boom meant danger in Gaza, but it doesn't mean danger in Bodí necessarily. Okay? And what they've discovered now is that you don't have to have gone through hardcore trauma to have internalized all different kinds of emotional learnings that affect the way that we live life and that hamper the way that we want to be often. So, in a continuation of the article, Bruce Ecker, the author here, brings a case vignette that I'm going to share with you. I just chose this because it's a very concrete, specific example that was written out nicely to illustrate how memory reconsolidation works. Okay? I didn't choose it because of this specific case or whatever. Just was looking for a case that could really uh, you know, make the point. And he's going to show here how the way that we uh deal with memory reconsolidation is not by targeting the emotion. You know, people think, "Gh, I'm an angry person. I'm a jealous person. Let me get rid of the anger. Let me get rid of the jealousy. Let me get rid of the laziness." And what they've discovered is like, "No, no, no. You have to figure out what you've internalized that's causing you to get angry, that's causing you to get anxious. What is the underlying learn thing that's generating that emotion?" Okay. So, here's the example that he brings. He brings the case of a client. I'm going to start in the middle of line four. A married woman who he treated age 50 and the mother of one child who sought therapy to dispel her aversion to sexuality with her husband, her depression, and her panic attacks. All of which had been afflicting her for at least a decade. Okay, pretty pretty like intense, you know, um pretty intense case. He then focuses a line later on one particular emotional learning that she at some point had internalized which was formed when she was 18 years of age and she had become pregnant by her boyfriend while living with her parents in a very conservative town in America and she was living in shame and desperate loneliness. She did not want the baby or the boyfriend and she was struggling to decide about having an abortion when she had a miscarriage. And the therapist goes on to say that he wants to get to the emotional learning, not the event that happened. We understand the event was difficult, but what thing did she internalize from that? And he says the way that he does that, and this is what they do in therapy, they bring you back to that to like she had to go back to being 18, you know, wow, what did you wear when you were a teen? like you have to really go back there to like to see if we could access what it is that she internalized. I'm skipping to the bull part. She seems absorbed in the subjective reality of this material and her voice was soft but somber. He brought her back there like she's really there as she starts to talk and she's like in this town a girl who's been pregnant outside of marriage is just ruined completely ruined. Now he's hearing her say this and he wants to really you know get to the learning that she formed. So he asked her, "What does ruin really mean? What does that mean to you? What's going to happen to you?" And after a silence in an even quieter voice, she says, "The rest of my life as a woman is ruined. I'm never going to get married and I'm never going to have children." That was the learned thing that had formed. Now he hears this and he says once he understood that this is what she had internalized, of course she's depressed. Of course, she has an aversion to intimacy with her husband. And he writes, "With this clarity about the makeup of this target learning, I saw a possible way to create a contradictory experience. Use of the brain's automatic detection of mismatches, a background process that's always scanning current conscious experience." So, in reply to her words, I said, "Please say that again." Remember, she's like back in that experience. So, she's really feeling it. And she's somberly and carefully, right? She says again, "The rest of my life as a woman is ruined. I'll never marry. I'll never have children." As soon as she spoke the words this time, her wider conscious knowledge networks register this information which was new to her conscious networks, though it was old to her implicit memory system, right? The body keeps descri She wasn't conscious even though this is what her body was feeling. her head in an abrupt movement and in a sharper louder voice she said with obvious surprise ut that's not true I did marry I did have a child this first encounter between the target learning and the vivid contradictory knowledge was the mismatch experience or prediction error needed for deconsolidating the target learning meaning she knew cognitively that she married she didn't find that out now at the age 50 she knew she had a child but The part of her that had internalized that she's going to live in shame for the rest of her life and she's going to be depressed and she's not going to make anything of herself and nobody's going to want her. That has nothing to do the same way when you hear a boom. It has nothing to do with what you know cognitively. It's something that has been deeply deeply deeply ingrained. And he writes that that mismatch is what makes the neural encoding maintaining my life as a woman is ruined. I'll never marry. I'll never have children. Begin to rapidly destabilize. Opening that set of learned messages to be rewritten and erased by the knowledge. I did marry. I did have a child. My life isn't ruined. She said it almost a whisper that just feels huge. And then he goes on to say that he went on he wanted to really like, you know, make sure that she internalized this thing. So, for good measure, I soon created an explicit outlied repetition by jokingly saying, "I'm seeing an image of you running down the street, waving your arms, and chatting, I did get married. I did have a child. My wife wasn't ruined." She laughed hardily at that, but even before I said it, her mood had shifted into a happy tilt like I had never seen it before. After that session, her long-standing depressed mood was gone and did not return. This confirmed that the targeted learning had been to had been produced in that mood and that eraser or dissolution of that learning had been accomplished. Meaning that I'll never marry or I'll never had children no longer felt real or true in any memory network. Now I didn't again I didn't bring this because of this specific case. I brought this because through understanding more and more about this process, I have seen how indeed it is actually really possible to change the past. I people can go back and they could have conversations, you know, that they wish that they had had and they could open that up and they could and they don't need to have the conversation with the real person. they could replay things out or tragic events that happened to them that you know that they always interpreted one way that now they could see well actually that was the beginning of also something wonderful and beautiful or me dis you know discovering different parts of myselves those shed lights as Rav Salvich says they give new meanings to things in the past and I think when we see these kind of examples um in like our modern day you know, psychology and science and whatever and you and you understand that actually one second here. This is a concrete example where something really difficult in the past could actually be used to propel us forward in a positive direction. In my mind that is and I think that this is a concept that we can harness and could be really instrumental in a chuva process because so often I feel this way with myself and I encountered often in conversations with others. We have habits or we have behaviors or we have thought patterns or we have yeah ways in which we act that for years we've tried to change you know things about myself I'm like why am I like that you know and it's like well cuz maybe I'm an oldest and that's why I'm you know a little bit more controlling than my sisters or like we have a kind of but you're like okay so I'm going to try to change that and you try this and you try that and you take responsibility and you face the fact that there is something that's really an issue here. And it's not that you're not facing it, but like every single thing that you've tried isn't working because a lot of times the things that we're trying are more on that surface level. You know, they're the cognitive behavior. I'm going to tweak that behavior. I'm going to change that thing. And what it's saying here is that a lot of times real real real chuva miyava not the chuva mira like yeah I'll try not to yell at you again but no I don't want to be a person who even feels like they want to yell you know that is something that requires a much deeper process of it's not going to be this little thing or that little thing. is going to have to be something much deeper. And I feel like it's amazing that our sources like our ancient sources like the Rambam, they already knew these things, these things that were always, you know, coming up with or we're talking about in our terms, they knew them. So the Rambam in source number 18 he says don't think that is only about repending from specific acts like or gzle or right like promiscuous behavior or or stealing He says actually cha is not only about this act or that act or that act. It's about changing who we are at our core. What's the root of our anger of our hatred of our jealousy of our you know misplaced passions. and he says it's actually easier to do chuva from things that have concrete actions because it's like okay that action I'll try not to do again but the patterns of behavior that we find ourselves falling into over and over that he says a lot is a lot more difficult that's a lot harder to separate from Ram Salvichek says that this is what this time of year is out cuz we know that we're not supposed to wait for Chiva to do cha all year. We're supposed to be examining our deeds and trying to be better. But writes in verse 19 brings him in his book. He says that just like Pes no is supposed to be found in someone's home. But it's not enough to simply throw away the bread in the pantry. We actually do aika. we go looking and we're thorough and we try to like really cleanse out our house and we go to crazy you know extremes of getting rid of the he said that is the difference between chuva throughout the year and chuva during the 10 days of repentance and yum kipur all year if one realizes that he sinned he's obligated to repent but that's the narrow specific obligation whose goal is to remedy an immediate spiritual crisis yeah I wasn't careful with that I should be better with that this truth is not meant to advance an arbitrance spiritual life in any broad overarching way. It does not entail an obligation to wake up each morning and give oneself a thorough spiritual self-examination. But during that's precisely what we're supposed to be doing. Not just making the list of that, but trying to dig deeper. What's at the root of this? Why are these the patterns of behavior that I'm falling into? And I'd like to close by suggesting that perhaps this is what the Ramba meant when he said that Shuva Gamura is going back to the same place where we were and not falling into that trap because it can't be right. Students say, "So, I'm supposed to put myself in that very risky situation, you know, walk back into that bar with that person and whatever and see if I could pass the test." Of course not. Of course, we are not supposed to subject ourselves to risky situations just to see if we're strong enough to pass the test. So, what could it be? So, yes, you could say, "So, the Ramba meant if you happen to find yourself and you pass the test, then you'll know you did chua." But I would like to suggest that maybe when a person revisits a tough thing that they did in the past that or tough ways that they've acted and they are able to approach it from a different perspective they can't change what happened but they know that if I would be back there now I would approach it differently because I'm not the same person and I don't react the same ways anymore and I don't have the same trigger. and the same things don't set me off. Then that is a way of going back to the past and showing that we've actually done a real tikun. This kind of chuva is extremely extremely powerful. The field of psychology understands it deeply. Barak hashem it is helping many many many of our soldiers. We need more help but many of them. And what I find beautiful and that so connects into our understanding of chuva is that in this quote from the founder Diana Foscher who's the founder of AADP which is one of these kinds of therapies. She writes that it's at the core of who we are as humans that we have a funal need for transformation. We are wired for growth for healing and self-righting. We have a need for the expansion and liberation of the self, the letting down of defensive barriers and the dismantling of the false self. We are shaped by a deep desire to be known, seen, and recognized as we strive to come into contact with parts of ourselves that we could feel like are frozen. And then she writes, "In ADP, we don't just seek a new ending, but and this is crucial, also a new beginning." How powerful is that? That is not just like I'm making a break with my past and I'm continuing forward from here and there's going to be a new ending. She's like, "No, actually, you could have a new beginning. It's possible to stop and take stock and go back and actually think differently about the beginning and how we got here." And I'd like to close by saying that I think that Chuva is not only about returning to Hashem. Chuva first and foremost is about returning to ourselves. By no means do you have to go for therapy to get there. We have an amazing opportunity in our tradition every year to re-examine our basic assumptions, our core qualities, our core hold beliefs about who we are and this is just who I am and have who I am always going to be. And we have the opportunity to say actually this part of myself, I don't want to be like that anymore. It takes tremendous work. As the Rambam says, it's much harder than stopping and changing specific actions. But if we are successful, we could change our into we could change our sins into merits to have an uplifting and transformative chuva experience.