Now is the time when Jews around the world prepare for the
new year by examining their conduct and “making teshuvah.” Teshuvah means
“return,” as in returning to our source, re-turning to our best selves. It’s often
practiced by saying, publically and privately, “If in the past year I have done
anything to harm or offend you, I am truly sorry and I ask your forgiveness.”
(Can you imagine a world in which the leaders of the most powerful nations said
that to the peoples of the least powerful?) It is considered a mitzvah to do this. Mitzvah means commandment, but it also means blessing and
declaration. We offer ourselves in blessing to one another (and, if you are a
theist, to the Eternal) in our willingness to admit our shortcomings and our
renewed determination to make the world a better, less broken place (“tikkum olam,” or “repairing the world”).
So I say this to you, who are reading my words: It has never
been my intention to harm you but if I have done so, by anything I have said or
done, or failed to say or do, I am truly sorry.
My personal focus during this season of renewal is different
from what it has been in the past. The
world is full of sorrows, as so many traditions point out, sorrows that cannot
be mended by human means. There is absolutely nothing I can do to alter the course
of my friend’s disease (ovarian cancer).
There is much I can do to ease her final weeks.
