Healing and Teshuvah
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Rabbi Jan Uhrbach, Director of the Block / Kolker Center for Spiritual Arts
The Talmud in Masekhet Yoma 86a makes an extraordinary statement:
讗指诪址专 专址讘执旨讬 讞指诪指讗 (讘址旨专) 讞植谞执讬谞指讗: 讙职旨讚讜止诇指讛 转职旨砖讈讜旨讘指讛 砖侄讈诪职旨讘执讬讗指讛 专执驻职讗讜旨转 诇职注讜止诇指诐, 砖侄讈谞侄旨讗直诪址专: “讗侄专职驻指旨讗 诪职砖讈讜旨讘指转指诐 讗讜止讛植讘值诐 谞职讚指讘指讛
Rabbi Hama bar Hanina said: Great is teshuvah, as it brings healing to the world, as it is stated: 鈥淚 will heal their backsliding. I will love them freely鈥� (Hosea 14:5).
While possibly an example of rabbinic hyperbole intended simply to emphasize the significance of teshuvah, nevertheless the connection of teshuvah (the central spiritual task of the High Holy Days) with refuah (healing) is intriguing and inviting of inquiry.
For one thing, what kind of healing is being referred to? Perhaps it is spiritual healing only, and specifically the costly residue of sin. But the text itself neither defines nor limits healing, and the reference seems quite broad. Commentators have understood it to encompass healing of bodily illness or injury, as well as emotional or spiritual woundedness and, indeed, suffering or brokenness of all kinds: whether personal or societal, in the world as we know it, and in mystical realms regarding which we may only sense an inkling.
If so, what exactly is the connection that the Talmud is making here between the spiritual work of teshuvah and such a broad understanding of healing?
The Rabbis may be imagining healing as a Divine reward for the spiritual work of teshuvah. Personally, that鈥檚 not a theology I can accept, and it doesn鈥檛 ring true to experience. I do not believe that illness or suffering is a punishment for wrongdoing, and I do not believe that health or healing is a reward for goodness.
Alternatively, the Rabbis may be suggesting a direct causal connection: healing comes simply as a consequence of improved character and behavior arising out of teshuvah. Certainly we can identify circumstances in which this seems true. There are clear and direct causational links between many of the world鈥檚 woes and human evil or overreach. If we turned from evil and began doing good, many of those woes would resolve, society would function better, and much pain and suffering would be healed. On a personal level, too, this makes sense. Our teshuvah may involve changing ways of living that have been harming our bodies. And holding onto guilt, shame, anger, or regret may sometimes manifest in emotional stress and disease and physical symptoms. As we do teshuvah, we may experience healing as a result. But it鈥檚 equally clear that not everything would be healed, because not all pain and suffering鈥攃ollective or individual, physical or emotional鈥攁re directly caused by human behavior in this way.
So I want to suggest that the Rabbis may be suggesting a more intimate connection between teshuvah and refuah: not that healing comes as a result of teshuvah, but that teshuvah is itself a healing, and teshuvah and refuah describe significantly overlapping processes or experiences involving the whole person.
This reading, I believe, opens a more generative and profound understanding of the nature of both teshuvah and refuah.
There are many translations and connotations of the word teshuvah. Translated as 鈥渞epentance鈥� or 鈥減enitence,鈥� it may conjure something judgmental and punitive: We have sinned, and we must repent, making amends concretely, verbally, and relationally. We must pay the price of error, failure, and wrongdoing.
The teshuvah the Rabbis envisioned as healing certainly includes taking responsibility for harm we鈥檝e caused. But more than that, it is, by definition, the process that responds to the injurious experience of lost or compromised integrity鈥攏ot only from specific wrongful actions, but the larger ways in which we are not living in accordance with our deepest held values or perhaps not even aware of them. It involves shedding ways of being or self-images that have never been truly who we are and reclaiming aspects of the self we have lost touch with or banished. This is less about self-flagellating recounting of sin and more about relocating inner truth, inviting us into gentler, more forward-looking understandings of teshuvah. Instead of 鈥渞epentance,鈥� teshuvah may refer to an 鈥渁nswer鈥� or 鈥渞esponse鈥� (as to respond to a sense of call or mission, something God or the moment demands of us), or to a process of turning or returning (changing our ways and our direction, turning away from one path toward a new one).
Similarly, envisioning refuah as intertwined with this work of teshuvah moves us to expand our conception of what healing might entail and especially to distinguish healing from cure. The spiritual work of teshuvah may or may not have the power to change the concrete life challenges we face, whether it be a devastating illness, heartbreaking loss, or shocking violation of our values or trust. But teshuvah always has the potential to change the meaning we make of those challenges; it can alter our suffering, if not our circumstances. The recently published Siddur Lev Shalem for Weekdays includes the following note by John Clayton next to our daily prayer for healing:
What does it mean to speak of healing? Simply to ask the question, to struggle with the question, is to step beyond the curing of disease or undoing of incapacity. Suppose the self that prays simply for healing of flesh finds something different, more important: an opportunity for deepening. A wholeness. May it be so with me. Open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise.
The same can be said of teshuvah鈥攕tepping beyond atonement for specific sins and asking and receiving forgiveness, the self that engages in teshuvah may also find something different and more important: that very same opportunity for deepening. A wholeness.
This is so because both teshuvah and refuah demand an honest reckoning with what is true鈥攂y their very nature they demand that we abandon fantasies of human invulnerability, immortality, immutability, or perfection. They move us toward a wholeness that does not need to deny failure, deterioration, loss, pain, and even sin, but which instead allows all of us to be the full human beings we are.
In this sense, both teshuvah and refuah partake of a certain paradox: both are processes of returning not back but forward鈥攏ot to who we used to be, but to an integral, truer and more whole self we have always and never yet been.
In times of illness, loss, or brokenness, it鈥檚 only natural to wish for a restoration of what was, a return to who we once were, or to the life or world we once knew. But, except in the most trivial situations (like the common cold), that return is impossible, and from a spiritual perspective, it is undesirable.
Healing changes us. So does teshuvah. Learning to live with serious illness or significant loss, confronting our own inadequacies, failures, and wrongdoing, we will likely encounter previously unknown depths of our vulnerability, as well as our strength and resilience. We may attain new clarity about what matters to us鈥攑rioritizing certain values whose significance we previously underrated and freeing ourselves of pressures and stresses once seemingly important but now revealed to be trivial. Often, our capacity for compassion and connection grows wider and deeper. Inevitably, we emerge with an altered sense of self. This is not to say there aren鈥檛 losses to be grieved鈥攖here are, including the loss of who we used to be. But in both teshuvah and refuah, we鈥檙e likely to discover that the self we have become is truer and more whole than the one we used to be. The Talmud (Berakhot 34b) famously quotes Rabbi Abbahu:
讚职旨讗指诪址专 专址讘执旨讬 讗植讘指讛讜旨: 诪指拽讜止诐 砖侄讈讘址旨注植诇值讬 转职砖讈讜旨讘指讛 注讜止诪职讚执讬谉 – 爪址讚执旨讬拽执讬诐 讙职旨诪讜旨专执讬诐 讗值讬谞指诐 注讜止诪职讚执讬谉
鈥淚n the place where those who engage in teshuvah stand, even the fully righteous do not stand鈥�
Great is teshuvah, as it brings healing to the world. Teshuvah and refuah on the personal level are microcosms of what can happen societally and globally. There is no going back to what was鈥攆or a people, a country, or humanity鈥攅ver. But if a critical mass of humans have the courage to do the deep work of teshuvah, we can be healed forward into a societal vision that is more whole, more conducive to the flourishing of all of us, and truer to the fullness of the human condition.
