As Jewish as a Ham Sandwich
"You shall return to Hashem, your God, with all your heart and all your soul." (Devarim 30:10)
The phone rings at 3 AM. Your child—now grown, living hundreds of miles away—whispers through tears: "Can I come home?"
"Of course," you say without hesitation. "I'll leave the light on."
Twenty-four hours later, when she finally walks through your door—exhausted, broken, but safe—you don't ask what happened. You simply wrap her in your arms and whisper, "Welcome home."
This scene captures something profound that Judaism has understood for millennia: the deepest healing doesn't come from punishment or shame, but from remembering you always have a place where you belong.
Judaism maps the year like a spiral staircase—we ascend higher each cycle, but we always encounter the same essential opportunities for growth. Each month offers its own spiritual theme, a recurring doorway that opens year after year, inviting us to enter more deeply than we did before.
Take three examples: Nissan, the month of Passover, holds the potential for liberation—freedom from whatever holds us back. Adar, the month of Purim, offers joy—finding meaning in life's chaos. But Elul, the month when we read this week’s Torah portion, presents perhaps the most precious opportunity: the chance for teshuva, repentance.
For centuries, we've mistranslated this word as "repentance,"1 conjuring images of sackcloth and ashes, of 40 days2 spent cataloguing our failures and wallowing in religious guilt. But the Hebrew tells a different story entirely.
Teshuva (תשובה) stems from the root "Shav" (שב)—to return. The same root gives us Shabbat (שבת), our weekly homecoming from chaos to peace, and Yeshiva (ישיבה), where we return from life's distractions to discover and fulfill our life’s purpose. When we engage in Teshuva, we don't grovel before an angry deity. We return to three magnificent realities that have been waiting for us all along:
The Talmudic Sages embedded this truth into the very letters of Elul (אֱלוּל), which form the acronym: (אֱ) Ani (ל) L'Dodi (וּ) V'Dodi (ל) Li—"I am to my Beloved and my Beloved is to me." The moment we turn toward our Source, He rushes to meet us halfway.
Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi3 paints this beautifully: throughout the year, God dwells like a king in his palace—formal, distant, requiring elaborate protocols to approach. But during Elul, He walks in the field, ready to embrace any wanderer who stumbles toward Him.
Here lies Christianity's fundamental error and Judaism's revolutionary insight: we don't believe in original sin. We believe in original perfection.
The very concept of "return" assumes you've been somewhere before. You can't return to a place you've never been. The magnificence you seek—connection to God, authenticity, purpose—these aren't foreign territories to conquer. They're your true home, and deep in your soul, you've never forgotten the way.
Moses makes this explicit in this week’s Torah portion:
"Surely, this Teaching which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens... Neither is it beyond the sea... No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it." (Devarim 30:11-14)
The Ramban reveals that this "Teaching" refers to the preceding verse: "You shall return (תָשׁוּב) to Hashem, your God, with all your heart and all your soul."
Teshuva isn't an advanced spiritual practice reserved for the enlightened few. It's as natural as breathing, as close as your next heartbeat. You need only stop running from yourself long enough to remember who you've always been.
This understanding transforms how we view our mistakes and failures. Think of sin not as a moral stain but as spiritual amnesia—forgetting your true identity and chasing mirages that promise but never deliver. The Hebrew word for sin, "chet," literally means "missing the target"—like an archer whose arrow veers off course. There's nothing wrong with the archer; he simply needs recalibration. Getting back on target means remembering who you really are and realigning your life with that truth.
As you move through the month of Elul, make a practice of returning. Once a week, I suggest finding solitude and asking the questions that matter:
To shift from self-reflection to divine alignment, ask:
Write down your discoveries. Then, with compassion rather than judgment, examine the gap between your ideals and your reality: what specific actions or patterns have pulled you away from these truths? Once you've identified the behaviors that need changing, the Rambam offers a three-step process:
The goal isn't perfection but transformation—becoming so aligned with your authentic self that your past mistakes feel like someone else's story.
This Elul, don't repent. Return. The door to your truest self has never been locked.
Shana Tova!
Avraham
This was excellent ❤️