Greetings!
There is an old story (I am not sure if it is true) about the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Someone once wondered when they start preparing for the next one, thinking that a few days off after a blockbuster celebration was in order. The convener of the parade promptly replied to the inquisitor that the preparation begins the next day. There is no rest for the weary! The same is true for my work with the High Holy Days. When they conclude in the fall, as relieved I am to have made it through, I anticipate the next year by setting up a note in my Evernote app to begin pulling articles, texts, and ideas for sermons.
Though the official preparation does not begin until Tisha B’av, which takes place in the middle of the summer, we now have an opportunity to begin our own soulful preparation. While I was away on my sabbatical this winter, I read several books. One of those books was entitled On Repentance and Repair by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. On her website, the book is described as follows:
“American culture focuses on letting go of grudges and redemption narratives instead of the perpetrator’s obligations or recompense for harmed parties. As survivor communities have pointed out, these emphases have too often only caused more harm. But Danya Ruttenberg knew there was a better model, rooted in the work of the medieval philosopher Maimonides."
“For Maimonides, upon whose work Ruttenberg elaborates, forgiveness is much less important than the repair work to which the person who caused harm is obligated. The word traditionally translated as repentance really means something more like return, and in this book, returning is a restoration, as much as is possible, to the victim, and, for the perpetrator of harm, a coming back, in humility and intentionality, to behaving as the person we might like to believe we are.”
The last few summers, I have offered opportunities to engage with a recently published important book. This year, I have chosen Ruttenberg’s work on repentance. We will gather three times during the summer to engage with the text of Ruttenberg’s work. As we dive into this work, we will take a hard look into Maimonides’ insights into teshuvah, which will frame conversations around repairing personal relationships.
The book, however, is not limited to personal relationships. In a post #MeToo world, in a world that has awakened to the racism that still exists, in a world we people sit on death row who are wrongly convicted, questions arise about teshuvah on a grander scale. How do we repair a society or a history that is broken? Ruttenberg encourages us to use Maimonidean thinking to frame the dialogue around these challenging topics.
I do hope you will join me for one, two, or all three sessions. You will need access to the book. In our opening session, we will likely dive into chapters 1 and 2. We will begin with the foundation, a study of Maimonides and repairing personal relationships and then move into some of more complex issues relating to harm in the public square, institutional obligations and more.
For more information on how to order and when we are meeting, please see the information in the ad below.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Rick Kellner
