In the fall, we offer an Introduction to Judaism class, which meets on Wednesday nights. Invariably, the class begins just a week or two before the High Holy Days. It is my job, then, to teach students who are exploring Judaism about the depth and breadth of our holiest season. When teaching about teshuva, I focus on this text, adapted from the Talmud:

“For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonements atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.” It is familiar to us, as it is an introduction read before our communal confessional, known as the Vidui.

I like basing my lecture on this text because it clearly outlines two parts of our sacred assignment during the High Holy Days: to repent for our transgressions against God, and our offenses against each other.

To teach this rabbinic proverb, it makes sense to divide it into two sections. First we'll consider the phrase, “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonements atones”.

We should be careful how we interpret this line. Perhaps if we realize that it is rabbinic shorthand, it will help. It's not the day itself that atones-but what happens on that day that atones. I believe that we effect atonement with God by what we do while in this sacred space: our heartfelt teshuva and meaningful prayers effect atonement. One must be, as our Torah portion teaches, nitzavim, totally present and in the moment, openly acknowledging our sins, and experiencing our prayers. No, the day itself does not atone: but our prayers on that day, our true presence in the Sanctuary that, surely, atones. The prophet Hosea said, “Come with your words ready, come back to God.” This is not easy. The words that we bring before God today, in heartfelt repentance, bring us back to God. It's hard to admit that we didn't live up to our own high expectations before God. It's humbling to reflect on the talents and gifts that have not been appropriately developed. It is so hard to do this work, we learn, that who has engaged in successful repentance deserves extraordinary validation for the effort exerted. In fact, as Maimonides teaches: “The merit of a truly repentant person is superior even to a person who never committed a sin, because the penitent had to exert greater effort in suppressing his evil impulse.”

And if this repentance before God is not hard enough, we now look to the second: “but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another”. We must not only make atonement to God, but to the people around us whom we may have hurt. On the surface, the teaching is pretty obvious: your grandmother can't know you are sorry for not returning her phone call unless you tell her that you're sorry.

God does not play messenger for us, moving from one soul to the next, letting us know of all of the prayers of apologies from our loved ones. Our spouses will not know how badly we feel if we don't tell them we're sorry, whether it's for yelling about a chore not done, or for not saying thank you for a special favor. God doesn't do that work: we do.

The psychology behind this commandment is also important. In the book, Forgiving the Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection, Dr. Robert Karen teaches that the process of forgiving is very healthy. By engaging in the process that Yom Kippur requires, we resist the danger of unexpressed anger. “It's really tragic” he writes, “when anger is replaced by silence. That's when you get the festering resentments, the subjects that are being avoided.”

When we don't direct our apologies to the source, our relationships suffer. Dr. Karen, as a psychologist, wrote about the necessity of the process of asking for forgiveness, to avoid lingering anger, leading toward bitterness. But the confrontation, taking the actual step toward apologizing and making teshuva, repentance, is very hard. We shy away from it.

The ancient rabbis, it seems, had an intuitive understanding of the need for encouragement, for direction, when it came to asking for forgiveness. They knew that without direction and encouragement that our natural human tendency to avoid confrontation would emerge.

The rabbis even outlined the steps of asking for forgiveness. First, we must acknowledge the wrong, specifically, to the person who was hurt. Then, we are commanded to try to undo, to whatever level appropriate, the damage caused. Then, if those steps weren't hard enough, we're challenged: Don't do it again.

When my sister and I were younger, we had a pretty strict rule about saying “I'm sorry”: we could only say it if we sincerely meant it, and we'd not do it again. Saying I'm sorry didn't fix it. Saying I'm sorry meant that we acknowledged our mistake, we felt bad about it, and we'd try never to do it again.

I have to tell you-it made saying I'm sorry pretty serious in our house.

As human beings, we are flawed. We are prone to transgression. In fact, we learn from the midrash that God created repentance even before God created the world: “Because we have free will,” the midrash teaches, “God needed to provide humankind with a way to atone for the sins we would naturally make.”

During the High Holy Days, we are required to openly, honestly, take an accounting of our sins. This is called cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. We know we must face our fears, and plunge in, working to honestly admit our failures and move forward to find our best selves. We work to atone for our sins before God, and admit our failures to others. This is the process required of us. Today, we live in a society of instant gratification and self-indulgence. On Yom Kippur we are all “brought down to size”. On Yom Kippur, we must face God and take into account all of our personal flaws, including the times we have hurt others.

In my Introduction to Judiasm class, I like basing my lecture on the Talmudic passage “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonements atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another,” because it clearly outlines two parts of our sacred assignment during the High Holy Days: to repent for our transgressions against God, and our offenses against each other. What this text doesn't outline is what I consider to be the third part of the holy mission during the High Holy Days: seeking forgiveness from ourselves.

As we seek atonement from God, and pardon from others, we cannot forget ourselves. When we reflect on our sins of our past year, we often become burdened by “could have-should haves”. We second guess ourselves; blame ourselves, wish we'd chosen a different path. Why do we allow guilt over our transgressions to eat at us even when others have easily and gladly pardoned? Are we setting such high expectations for ourselves that we create our own prison-a prison of inability to forgive ourselves for our mistakes? Think of the energy we usurp when we allow our self-blame and guilt to weigh us down!

The Baal Shem Tov taught that a sin in itself is only the bite of the snake. The real damage comes from the poison that spreads afterwards, saying, "What a worthless thing you are. Look what you've done!" With those few words, the Hasidic teacher explains, all the gates of hell are opened. How often we opened our own gates of torment-surrounded by “if only's” and “I wish I had's. . . !

Many of us, for example, are perfectionists. Be it at work, or with our home, we strive to be perfect. And we never get there. “Perfectionism,” Anne Lamott wrote, "is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped your whole life.” And so, we, with “type A” personalities continue to beat ourselves up with our inability to achieve our ideal.

We read in our High Holy Day Prayer book: “We sin against you when we sin against ourselves.” When we continue to berate ourselves for decisions long since made; for mistakes when forgiveness has long since been received we are sinning against ourselves, and God. Therefore, I add this phrase to this mornings' passage, which is our third sacred mission: “For the transgression of lack of self-forgiveness, the Day of Atonement does not pardon, until one has forgiven oneself.”

Rabbi Karyn Kedar, in her book, God Whispers: Stories of the Soul, Lessons of the Heart, writes, “The 'good' decisions and the 'bad' decisions were all the 'right decisions' because they led us down a path that was filled with meaning. There were so many lessons learned from the mistakes, so much growth from the bad experiences that we honestly wouldn't change a moment.” Forgive yourself: at the time that you made the decision, you were doing the best you could at that time. As Rabbi Kedar writes, “Everything I have done and seen has made me who I am in this moment. It's Ok to have been me. I forgive.”

Rabbi Kedar challenges us in her book to turn from accusation toward understanding. As she reminds us, the word teshuva, repentance, comes from the word 'turn'.

We can, as Rabbi Kedar teaches, turn away from self-blame and toward self-forgiveness. We learn in Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Typically, we understand this phrase as our mandate to care for others. But it makes an assumption: that we love ourselves as well. We must love ourselves enough to grant ourselves pardon. We cannot complete the work of the high holy days if we continue to turn away from ourselves, punishing our honest efforts at self-renewal.

Let us work, today, and forward, to remove ourselves from the prison of self-criticism and blame. Today, let us pray as we did on Selihot: “Master of the Universe-the Universe beyond me and the Universe within me-I want to learn how to cease punishing myself and torturing myself with unhappy memories that stab me when I wake and when I sleep; with self-accusation that comes back to me brazenly or in disguise. . . . If I could learn to forgive myself, I might learn and others might learn to forgive each other. Help me unlock the gates of self-forgiveness, the gates of salvation, even as the prisoner goes forth when the time of punishment is past.”

“For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonements atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another. For the transgression of lack of self-forgiveness, the Day of Atonement does not pardon, until one has forgiven oneself.” Today, may our prayers to God for atonement be heartfelt. May our requests for forgiveness from our loved ones be humble and direct. May we free ourselves from our personal prisons of self-criticism, seeking forgiveness from ourselves.

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