'Teshuva': How can one atone for their sins and get God's forgiveness?

The 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a special time on the Jewish calendar, known as the Aseret Yemei Teshuva, “The 10 Days of ‘Teshuva.’” Usually translated as “repentance,” the word teshuva really means “return.” 

Through the act of teshuva, we return to who we really are and to who we are meant to be. Through teshuva, we return to God and self-actualize by “reverting back” to the divine image in which we were created. 

Teshuva does that by wiping the slate clean. When one does teshuva, it quite literally means that the sin no longer exists. It did not happen.

How does one ‘do’ teshuva?

Teshuva is defined by the sages as a three-step process. The first is to regret the sin, the second is to confess the sin, and the third is to promise to not do the sin again. Let’s take a minute to unpack that.

You do not have to regret the sin itself. Some sins are perfectly normal human behavior, even if they are in fact against the special covenant we have with God. What is required is to regret the violation of that covenant. I do not think there is anything objectively wrong with a cheeseburger and I am sure they taste wonderful, even if they are forbidden by the laws of kashrut. Therefore, one who has consumed a cheeseburger, a staple of the Western diet, does not need to regret the cheeseburger itself. Cheeseburgers are good; the “sinner” needs to regret the transgression of the strict separation between meat and dairy that keeping the laws of kashrut demands.

As for confession, one does not confess to a rabbi. Rabbis are not Catholic priests with the power of absolution. One needs to confess to God Himself. People could and should feel comfortable to speak with a rabbi about any sin they are grappling with. But they can also speak with a friend, mentor, or therapist as well. And after talking it out, they should then turn to God to confess their sin.

The next step is to take it upon oneself to leave the sin behind. This is, of course, easier said than done. 

But what is important at this point in the teshuva process is the “saying.” If your intention is real, then teshuva is effected. And if just a few months, weeks, or even hours later you sin again, you now have just that one sin on your “record” and not the previous ones that were committed beforehand.

If what I wrote sounds simple, it’s because it is. 

The hard part is getting to the mindset of wanting to do teshuva. The regret needs to be real, and the road to the realization that you need to do teshuva can be long. Adding to that is the real acceptance upon yourself that not to return to the sin is hard. But if the mindset is there, the necessary actions that follow are simple.

The most fascinating part of teshuva, though, is the very possibility of it.

Where else in the world can you find something that you can do that has an effect on the past? Almost everything we do has repercussions for the future. The very laws of modern physics are built on that assumption. But teshuva breaks that paradigm and insists that you have the power to rectify the past.

The sages themselves were wowed by the possibility and power of teshuva to such an extent that when discussing the different things that were created even before the creation of the world, they included teshuva. They did so because it doesn’t belong in this world. It is not “how the world works.” If you were to sin against me personally, I may forgive you wholeheartedly, but I doubt that I would forget. The scar does not need to be physical to remain after an injury.

God’s forgiveness, though, makes it so that the sin never happened. Gone! A complete rewrite of the past! So strong is the power of teshuva and so simple is its effect that if a man betroths a woman on the condition that he is perfectly righteous, she is considered married to him because we fear that at the same second of betrothal, he really did have in mind to do teshuva, in which case he was in fact perfectly righteous.

But while people should in fact do teshuva for all their sins, they should not be paralyzed by the enormity of the work that needs to be done. 

It is okay to concentrate on the teshuva for one particular sin while leaving the other sins aside for a later time. Teshuva need not be a package deal. In other words, people are not hypocrites for doing teshuva about kashrut if they still do not yet keep Shabbat. Think of the mitzvot as different channels or tools with which to create a relationship with God. The more the merrier, but the few have great value as well.

All this, of course, concerns sins against God. When it comes to sins against our fellow human beings, we need to approach the people we hurt and ask for their forgiveness personally. In these cases, only the injured party has the power to forgive. It is our hope that just as God forgives us even if we are undeserving of it, those we hurt will take a lesson from God and forgive us as well. 

The writer holds a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.