Weekly Dvar Torah: The Jewish Time Machine

Science fiction has always dreamed of traveling back in time.

Novelists have imagined it. Physicists have debated it. Entire movies have been built around it.

Judaism doesn’t tell us how to travel back in time.

It tells us something even more astonishing.

It teaches us that through Teshuvah, even the past can be transformed.

Impossible?

Of course it is.

The past is the one thing no human being can ever change. Yesterday is history. A word once spoken cannot be withdrawn. A deed once done cannot be undone. We may regret it, apologize for it, or learn from it, but we cannot relive it.

Unless…

Unless the Creator of time decides otherwise.

That is the extraordinary gift Hashem gives us every year during the month of Elul.

Before Rosh Hashanah, before the Day of Judgment, before we stand before the King of Kings, Hashem gives us an entire month unlike any other.

Why?

If Rosh Hashanah is the Day of Judgment, why not simply judge us? Why dedicate thirty precious days beforehand?

Perhaps because Hashem wanted us to understand a fundamental truth.

Judgment is not where our relationship with Him begins.

Mercy is.

Elul is not merely a month of preparation. It is the month in which Hashem awakens His attribute of mercy, making possible the greatest miracle He ever bestowed upon mankind: Teshuvah.

Most people translate Teshuvah as “repentance.”

The Torah means something far deeper.

Teshuvah means return.

But return to where?

Not merely to better behavior.

Not merely to greater observance.

Return to ourselves.

Every Jew possesses a Neshamah that is literally a spark of G-dliness. Before descending into this world, that soul knew nothing but closeness to Hashem. Then it entered a physical body and a physical world, where survival, success, worries, responsibilities, and countless distractions often conceal its true identity.

The soul never changes.

We do.

Or more accurately, we lose sight of who we really are.

Teshuvah is the journey back.

Not becoming someone new.

Returning to the person we always were.

But here we encounter another question.

If Teshuvah is such a precious gift, why don’t we naturally do it? Why doesn’t every Jew immediately seize the opportunity to return?

Here the Alter Rebbe introduces a remarkable insight.

The beginning of Teshuvah is not regret.

It is mercy.

The Alter Rebbe explains that before a Jew can truly return, he arouses Rachamim Rabim—great Divine mercy.

Why?

He reflects upon the journey of his own Neshamah.

A soul that was once completely united with its Creator has descended into a world that often obscures its own identity. It becomes occupied with earning a livelihood, raising a family, paying bills, pursuing comfort, and coping with the endless demands of life. These are all necessary parts of our mission, yet they can also make us forget who we truly are.

When we contemplate the extraordinary descent of the Neshamah, we ask Hashem to have mercy.

Not merely to forgive us.

But to illuminate the Neshamah itself.

And when Hashem’s mercy shines upon the Neshamah, something remarkable happens.

That awakening is felt here below as well.

Suddenly the heart begins to long for what it may have ignored only days before.

Another Kapitel of Tehillim.

A more heartfelt Shemoneh Esrei.

An extra act of Tzedakah.

A repaired relationship.

A stronger commitment to Torah and Mitzvos.

The yearning to return is itself Hashem’s gift.

We often imagine that first we do Teshuvah, and only then Hashem has mercy upon us.

Perhaps Elul teaches the opposite.

Hashem first showers us with mercy.

That mercy awakens the Neshamah.

The awakened Neshamah awakens the Jew.

And the awakened Jew returns to Hashem.

Now we can understand why Chazal teach that Teshuvah was created before the world itself.

Without Teshuvah, a mistake would remain forever.

Without mercy, Teshuvah would remain forever beyond our reach.

So before creating a world in which people would inevitably stumble, Hashem first created the possibility of returning home.

That is why Elul precedes Rosh Hashanah.

Before judgment comes mercy.

Before accountability comes compassion.

Before Hashem asks us where we have been, He reminds us where we belong.

Perhaps that is the greatest miracle of all.

The Jewish time machine does not take us back to yesterday.

It lifts us above yesterday.

It reconnects us with the Creator Who stands above time itself, and from that place, the past no longer imprisons the future.

That is the miracle of Teshuvah.

That is the gift of Elul.

As we bless the month of Elul, may Hashem shower each of us with His infinite mercy, awaken the deepest yearning of our Neshamos to return to Him, and inscribe every one of us for a Kesivah Vachasimah Tovah—a year of revealed goodness, health, joy, and peace.

Have a Merciful Shabbos,
Gut Shabbos

Rabbi Yosef Katzman