"Great Is Penitence, for It Brings Healing to the World"

Great Is Penitence, for It Brings Healing to the World  (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 86a)

Judah now approached him and said, "By your leave, my lord, please give your servant a hearing, and do not let your anger flare up at your servant-for you are like Pharaoh. . . ." (Genesis 44:18)

• "And now, if I go to your servant my father and the lad-whose whole being is bound up in his-is not with us, and he sees that the lad is not there, he will die, and your servants will have lowered your servant our father's gray head in anguish to Sheol. For your servant made himself responsible for the lad to my father, saying, 'If I don't bring him back to you, I will stand guilty before my father for all time.' So now, please let your servant remain as my lord's slave in place of the lad, and let the lad go home with his brothers; for how can I go home to my father without the lad, and thus see the harm my father will suffer?" (Genesis 44:30-34)

D'var Torah

It happens every year: A bar or bat mitzvah student walks into my office and opens up his or her notebook. He or she begins chanting and suddenly I am transported into the chamber where Joseph and his brothers are standing. No matter how many times I hear it, this story always brings tears to my eyes, and I am once again awed by the purity of the brothers' emotional interaction and by the skill of the storyteller.

"Judah now approached him and said . . ."

How much courage does it take for Judah to approach the grand vizier of Egypt? How much does Judah sacrifice when he offers to put himself in his little brother's place? How much love for his father is expressed in Judah's words? Judah seems to be the very model of a loving son and brother.

The power of the story comes not, however, from Judah's courage, self-sacrifice, and love for Jacob at this moment. The power comes from knowing that Judah was not always so.

Years before this confrontation between older brother and grand vizier, we are introduced to Joseph's family-a family full of hatred, dysfunction, and strife. Jacob favors Joseph over all of his other sons and makes no secret of it. Joseph has, literally, dreams of grandeur, and he lords this over his brothers. The brothers are angry at their father's favoritism, and they direct all of their anger at Joseph. When the opportunity arises to do away with Joseph, only one brother, Reuben, hesitates. At a moment when Reuben is not present, it is Judah who convinces the brothers to take advantage of a passing caravan and sell Joseph into slavery (see Genesis 37). In this way, the brothers avoid bloodshed, although undoubtedly, they know that the life of a slave is difficult. Their hatred of Joseph is vicious and real.

Returning home, Judah and his remaining brothers are confronted with their father's grief. Jacob believes that Joseph is dead, and like any parent who has lost a child, he is inconsolable. "All his sons and daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, saying, 'No, in mourning shall I go down to my son to Sheol!'" (Genesis 37:35). Thus Judah and his brothers begin to understand the results of their action.

The years pass. Judah marries and has three sons of his own. The oldest, Er, grows into a young man and marries a woman named Tamar. Then, suddenly, Er dies. Since Tamar and Er have no children together, Judah sends his next oldest son, Onan, to act as husband to Tamar, as custom demands. Onan too dies, and Judah is left with only one son. The custom of levirate marriage demands that Judah send his remaining son to Tamar, but Judah cannot bring himself to do so, "'lest he too die like his brothers'" (Genesis 38:11).

The Judah who confronts the grand vizier of Egypt is a very different man from the Judah who sells his little brother into slavery. He knows what the loss of a child feels like. He has seen his father mourn the loss of Joseph for these many years, and he knows that his own mourning will not abate either. His anger now gone, he has in its place a profound empathy for his father's pain and an unwillingness to inflict more pain upon him.

We are taught in the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 6b, that true t'shuvah, "repentance," is having the opportunity to commit the same sin again and refraining from doing so. It is clear that Judah performs true t'shuvah when he is once more given the opportunity to send the favored brother into slavery and refuses to do so. But we might ask the question: Is Judah's t'shuvah lessened by what it took for him to get there? Doesn't real t'shuvah involve refusing to sin again "cold turkey," so to speak?

In the Babylonian Talmud, B'rachot 12b, we read, "Bar Hinena the Elder said in the name of Rav: When a man commits a transgression and then is ashamed of it, all his iniquities are forgiven him." We do not know if Judah feels shame after selling Joseph into slavery, but we can well imagine that he begins to feel shame upon returning home and confronting his father's grief. As the years go by and Judah loses his own sons, his sense of shame must have increased. Only a man who has faced his own shame could act so bravely and selflessly before the second-most powerful man in Egypt.

We are not so different from Judah. For most of us, shame comes when we begin to realize the consequences of what we have done-the harsh word spoken to our life partner, the quick reaction when our child annoys us, the insulting response to our coworker. Their injury becomes our shame. Unlike Judah, however, many of us find it difficult to own what we have to do-to apologize, to try to make things right, to refuse to commit the same sin when given an opportunity to do so again.

At a time of year when-at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere-the days are short and the earth seems dark, this story offers us the hope that even in the darkest times of our lives there can be reconciliation and healing. It reminds us that we should not wait to experience our own pain before we empathize with the pain of those around us. Every day brings a new opportunity to apologize to those whom we have hurt, to right our wrongs, to change and become better people than we were before.

We are Y'hudim, a word that comes from the name Y'hudah, Judah. Inside each of us is the ability to turn our lives around for the better. Each of us has the power to learn and grow from our mistakes and our life experiences. Each of us has the power to be forgiven.

By the Way

• The truth is that the people who walk around feeling invulnerable are the ones who are fooling themselves. Of course, it is terrifying to learn that we are helpless to prevent bad things from happening to us. But the wisdom we gain . . . can enable us to appreciate life in a way we have never before known. . . . When we meet someone who needs our help, the pity we would have shown is replaced with empathy. Distance is replaced with understanding. . . . Suddenly we know exactly how to offer help. We are no longer tongue-tied or uncomfortable. We can look a person who is in agony right in the eye and say, "I know, I've been there." (Naomi Levy, To Begin Again [New York: Balantine Books, 1998], p. 130)
• Kaddish

  Look around us, search above us, below, behind.
  We stand in a great web of being joined together.
  Let us praise, let us love the life we are lent
  passing through us in the body of Israel
  and our own bodies, let's say amein.

  Time flows through us like water.
  The past and the dead speak through us.
  We breathe out our children's children, blessing.

  Blessed is the earth from which we grow,
  blessed the life we are lent,
  blessed the ones who teach us,
  blessed the ones we teach,
  blessed is the word that cannot say the glory
  that shines through us and remains to shine
  flowing past distant suns on the way to forever,
  Let's say amein. . .

  (Marge Piercy, The Art of Blessing the Day [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999], p. 138)

• R. Y'hudah said: If Israel do not vow penitence, they will not be redeemed. Yet Israel vow penitence only out of distress and out of wandering hither and yon, and because they have no livelihood. However, they will not vow spontaneous repentance until Elijah, ever remembered on good occasions, comes, as is said, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the Prophet . . . and he shall turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers" (Malachi 3:23-24). (Pirkei D'Rabbi Eliezer 43 quoted in The Book of Legends: Sefer Ha-Aggadah, ed. Hayim Nahman Bialik and Yehoshua Hana Ravnitzky [New York: Schocken Books Inc., 1992], p. 559)

Your Guide 

1. Both Jacob and Judah experience great loss, but each of them handles that loss differently. Jacob does not change his ways-he continues to favor one son over all of the others. Judah, however, gains empathy, understanding, and even courage from his loss. What experiences in your life have transformed you or perhaps inspired you to take a new life path? What in your life has enabled you to look someone right in the eye and say, "I know, I've been there"? Have opportunities like these brought any kind of healing or peace, perhaps despite the pain the transformative experience might have caused?

2. Do you think it is possible to vow spontaneous repentance, or is spontaneous repentance indeed something that can happen only when we reach the messianic age? Do we need to experience pain-be it a loss, or just the shame we feel when we realize we have hurt someone else-in order to truly repent?

Cantor Kay Greenwald is the cantor of Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, California, and a member of the Executive Board of the American Conference of Cantors (ACC). She serves as chair of the Committee for Continuing Professional Education for the ACC.