Chapter 11: The Door That Never Closes, Teshuvah

No one is ever too far to come back.

The Source

Great is teshuvah, for through it, deliberate sins are made into merits.

Reish Lakish, Yoma 86b

In the place where those who return stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand.

Rabbi Abbahu, Berachos 34b

The Teaching

Created before the world

The Talmud lists seven things that were created before the world itself (Pesachim 54a). Among them are the Torah, the Garden of Eden, and the throne of glory. And among them is teshuvah.

Teshuvah is usually translated as “repentance,” but the word means return. It is the power to come back: back to G-d, back to the good, back to who you were meant to be.

Why would it be created before the world? Because G-d knew, before making a single human being, that people would stumble. And so, before building the house, G-d made sure there was a door. No one would ever be locked out.

That is the title of this book, and its promise: the door never closes. Maimonides wrote that nothing can stand in the way of teshuvah (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 3:14), and the Midrash says its gates are always open (Devarim Rabbah 2:12).

How a person returns

Maimonides, in his laws of teshuvah, describes what returning involves (Laws of Repentance 2:2). In plain language, it comes to five steps, simple to say and deep to do.

1. Recognize what you did, honestly, without excuses.
2. Regret it, truly, in your heart.
3. Stop: leave the wrong behind.
4. Say it: put it into words, before G-d.
5. Resolve not to return to it.

And he describes what complete teshuvah looks like: when the same situation comes again, with the same temptation, and the person, with full freedom to repeat what they did, chooses differently (Laws of Repentance 2:1). That is the proof that the person has truly changed.

First, with each other

The tradition adds one condition that it will not bend. The Mishnah teaches that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, atones for wrongs between a person and G-d. But for wrongs between one person and another, Yom Kippur does not atone until the person has made it right with the one they hurt (Mishnah Yoma 8:9).

In other words: you cannot skip the apology. If you hurt someone, teshuvah begins with them.

And the tradition protects the hurt person too. The one who caused harm must make it right, repaying what is owed and asking forgiveness (Laws of Repentance 2:9). When that request is sincere, Maimonides asks the one who was hurt not to be cruel, but to be easy to appease and to forgive with a whole heart and a willing spirit (Laws of Repentance 2:10). And forgiving never requires anyone to put themselves back in harm’s way.

Sins made into merits

Reish Lakish taught that teshuvah turns deliberate sins into mistakes, and he also taught that it turns them into merits. The Talmud explains that both are true. When a person returns out of fear, their deliberate sins are counted as if they were mistakes. But when a person returns out of love, their sins are made into merits (Yoma 86b).

How can a wrong become a merit? Because the person who has truly returned carries their past differently. The very things that once pulled them down now become the reasons they reach up. Their knowledge of how far they fell becomes the measure of how far they climbed. The wound becomes a source of compassion. The mistake becomes wisdom they can offer someone else.

And Rabbi Abbahu taught: “In the place where those who return stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand” (Berachos 34b). The one who fell and came back reaches a place that the one who never fell cannot reach. Not every sage agreed: on the same page, Rabbi Yochanan held that the perfectly righteous stand higher still. Maimonides follows Rabbi Abbahu (Laws of Repentance 7:4).

Descent for the sake of ascent

The Kabbalists and the Chassidic masters had a phrase for this: yeridah l’tzorech aliyah, a descent for the sake of an ascent. Sometimes a person falls so that they can rise higher than they could have risen without the fall.

The Zohar found this in a verse from Ecclesiastes: “the advantage of light over darkness” (Ecclesiastes 2:13). It read the words as the advantage of light that comes out of darkness. Light that has passed through darkness is a deeper light than light that has never known it.

This is not a reason to fall on purpose. No one is asked to choose darkness in order to learn. It is a promise to everyone who has already fallen: nothing is wasted. The descent itself can become the path of the ascent.

Near and far

The prophet Isaiah says, “Peace, peace, to the far and to the near” (Isaiah 57:19). Rabbi Abbahu noticed the order. The far comes first. The one who was far away, and came back, is greeted first.

That is how G-d waits for anyone who is returning. Not with a lecture, and not at the door with arms crossed. With peace, and with the first greeting.

Two Tales

The bandit at the river

One day the sage Rabbi Yochanan was bathing in the Jordan River (Bava Metzia 84a). A man came leaping across the water toward him. It was Reish Lakish, a famous bandit and gladiator, a man of enormous strength who lived by violence.

Rabbi Yochanan looked at him and said: “Your strength should be for Torah.”

Reish Lakish, who was struck by Rabbi Yochanan’s beauty, answered with a joke. But Rabbi Yochanan made him an offer: “If you return, I will give you my sister, who is more beautiful than I am, to be your wife.”

Reish Lakish agreed. He wanted to leap back across the river to fetch his clothes, and he could not. The strength that had carried him over had left him. He was a different man already.

Rabbi Yochanan taught him Torah. And Reish Lakish became one of the greatest sages of the Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan’s partner in study for many years. The same man who taught that sins can be made into merits was the man who had come back across the river.

As far as you can

A parable from the Midrash (Pesikta Rabbasi 44).

A king’s son went far away from his father, a journey of a hundred days. His friends said to him, “Go back to your father.” He said, “I cannot. It is too far.”

His father heard, and sent a message: “Come back as far as you are able, and I will come the rest of the way to you.”

So G-d says to every person who is far away: Return to Me, and I will return to you.

You do not need to make the whole journey. You only need to begin walking. The One who waits for you is already coming toward you.

Light for the Week

One apology, or one forgiveness.

This week, choose one relationship where something is unfinished. If you hurt someone, make it right: an honest apology, with no excuses. If someone hurt you, and it is safe to do so, consider letting go of what you are holding against them, for your own sake as much as theirs.

Then take one step, however small, back toward the person you want to be. The door is open. It was open before the world began.