With the Jewish High Holidays upon us, I’ve been busy wrangling family, cooking up a storm (including brisket two ways [one traditional, one Italian style], Hungarian stuffed chicken, apple-honey challah, potato kugel, honey-roasted root vegetables, etc.) and praying it up in synagogue.

By tradition, God passes judgment on each person on Rosh Hashanah, though the decree isn’t made absolute until Yom Kippur. The liturgy for both holidays includes the poem “Unetaneh Tokef,” which contains this rather graphic passage:

On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed.
How many will pass and how many will be created?
Who will live and who will die?
Who in their time, and who not their time?
Who by fire and who by water?
Who by sword and who by beast?
Who by hunger and who by thirst?
Who by earthquake and who by drowning?
Who by strangling and who by stoning?
Who will rest and who will wander?
Who will be safe and who will be torn?
Who will be calm and who will be tormented?
Who will become poor and who will get rich?
Who will be made humble and who will be raised up?
But teshuvah and tefillah and tzedakah (return and prayer and righteous acts)
deflect the evil of the decree.

The whole stretch from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur is known as Yamim Noraim, “the days of awe”, during which time Jews think about where they stand (a Chesbhon haNefesh, or “accounting of the soul”), and try to improve themselves, their relationships with others, and their place in the world (and, by extension for those who believe things more literally, their fate in the year to come).

As I have plenty to think about from the past year, I’ve been reading far and wide, and came across this great passage from a talk by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, on teshuvah, repentance, and the space between the two:

“Repentance” in Hebrew is not teshuvah but charatah. Not only are these two terms not synonymous, they are opposites.

Charatah implies remorse or a feeling of guilt about the past and an intention to behave in a completely new way in the future. The person decides to become “a new man.” But teshuvah means “returning” to the old, to one’s original nature.

Underlying the concept of teshuvah is the fact that the Jew is, in essence, good. Desires or temptations may deflect him temporarily from being himself, being true to his essence.

But the bad that he does is not part of, nor does it affect, his real nature. Teshuvah is a return to the self.

While repentance involves dismissing the past and starting anew, teshuvah means going back to one’s roots in G-d and exposing them as one’s true character.

For this reason, while the righteous have no need to repent, and the wicked may be unable to, both may do teshuvah.

The righteous, though they have never sinned, have constantly to strive to return to their innermost. And the wicked, however distant they are from G-d, can always return, for teshuvah does not involve creating anything new, only rediscovering the good that was always within them.

To all my readers, Jewish and not, best wishes for a shana tova umetukah, “a good and sweet year.” Ketiva ve-chatima tovah, “may you be written and sealed for a good year,” indeed.