Shifting Paradigms: Repentance Paradigmatix II

Program’s Mission: Stimulate critical thought in order to realistically redefine our narrative and positively reshape our reality through dialogue and with self-determination.

Correction – Dietary Law is Leviticus 11 not 13

Dedication: Rabbi Bachya ibn Pakuda –(1050-1120) was a Moorish Spaniard rabbi, philosopher and moralist who lived in Saragossa, where he was a judge/dayyan. In addition to a comprehensive knowledge of Torah literature, he had a wide knowledge of secular literature, and frequently quoted non-Jewish moral philosophers. He wrote his great work, Duties of the Heart/Chovot Halevavot, to fill what he perceived as a crying need for bringing together the many ethical teachings scattered throughout Israelite literature in a systematic work. He argued forcefully for investing in the inner content of Israellite practice, as opposed to singularly focusing on outward observance. His works displayed the rare combination of tremendous emotion, vivid poetic imagination, powerful eloquence and a penetrating intellect.

Sefaria

Perspective: Wake up my brother from the slumber of your simplemindedness. Have mercy on your soul, which is the most important deposit of all the deposits the Creator entrusted by you. How long, and how much longer will you procrastinate in this? You have already consumed your days gratifying your selfish desires, like a base slave, now return and finish your remaining days following the desire of your Creator. You already know that the lifetime of a man is brief, and what remains of your life is still briefer, as our sages said: “the day is short and the workload is great” (Avos 2:15). You have, my brother, a precious and exalted spirit. With it, you honored this fleeting and lowly world and you abandoned your end that you will be left with. Should you not lift up your spirit to think of that exalted place, the high abode, the place where the spirits which ascend to there will not be lowered from their exaltedness forever. Hurry, while the gates of repentance are open and the acceptance and atonement are still available, as written “Seek YaH while He is found, call to Him while He is still near” (Yeshaya 55:6). Hurry my brother, hurry before the horror you dread comes, because you are not assured that you will live for even one more day. Examine yourself with a careful and weighed examination according to what is proper and possible for one like you. And he who wants to obtain the favor of his Creator will enter through the narrow opening through which the pious who bear in this world (in the service of Elohim). All of us hope for the good. But only those who hasten towards it will reach it, who run towards it, as our sages said: “Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer and mighty as a lion to do the will of your Father in Heaven” (Avos 5:23), and David said: “I hastened and delayed not to keep Your commandments” (Tehilim 119:60). Take counsel with your soul. Be ashamed to act with your Creator in a way that you would be ashamed to act with even a human being like yourself. For, you know that if you angered even a low ranking official of the king, you would not delay to humble yourself to him, and to plea to him to forgive you, so that he will not punish you, even though he has little power in this. All the more so if a high ranking officer were to be angry at you, and even more so if it was the king himself, that you would hasten to seek forgiveness from him, show remorse to him, and try to appease him out of your fear of being swiftly punished.

Excerpted from Duties of the Heart: The Gate of Repentance/Sha’ar h’Teshuvah: Chapter 10-Final Words

What is sin: Everyone who keeps sinning is violating Torah — indeed, sin is violation of Torah. 1 John 3.4

Five Stages of Repentance Review

1. Acknowledgement: For I know my crimes, my sin confronts me all the time. Psalm 51.3

2. Remorse: See, Adonai, how distressed I am! Everything in me is churning! My heart turns over inside me, because I have been so rebellious. Lamentations 1.20

3. Confession: When I acknowledged my sin to you, when I stopped concealing my guilt, and said, “I will confess my offenses to Adonai”; then you, you forgave the guilt of my sin. Psalm 32.5

4. Turn away from sin: He who conceals his sins will not succeed; he who confesses and abandons them will gain mercy.  Proverbs 28.13

5. Keeping the commandments: He raised up a testimony in Ya‘akov and established a Torah in Isra’el. He commanded our ancestors to make this known to their children, so that the next generation would know it, the children not yet born, who would themselves arise and tell their own children, who could then put their confidence in God, not forgetting God’s deeds, but obeying his mitzvot. Psalm 78.5-7

> Thesis: Our liberation and deliverance, or salvation, from oppression and immorality for the establishment of a self-determined reality is based on our national collective repentance,

• Attempts have been made politically (i.e., voting, activism, elected officials, joining or creating political parties), economically (i.e., boycotts, economic initiatives for empowerment, entrepreneurialism, establishment of institutions), and socially (civic clubs, fraternal orders, various movements, assimilation, etc.).

• None of these efforts have brought forth a qualitative change in our socio-economic and political milieu.

• What remains is a return to our cultural consciousness which serves a cohesive bond that unifies our ideology, provides us with an egalitarian social structure, collective consciousness, and sets objective standards and principles by which we are to apply to pragmatically. 

Repentance is prerequisite of atonement

“A life of teshuvah requires a sober commitment to self-control and periodic self-analysis, a determination to be cheerful in the face of adversity and courageous in the presence of threat…Teshuvah is the prerequisite for the promised redemption. A general hermeneutic rule of Hebrew prophecy is that negative pronouncements are essentially conditional, and may be altered by teshuvah. For example, Jonah received the prophecy that Nineveh was to be destroyed, and was commanded to relay his prophecy to the inhabitants of that great city. The people of Nineveh responded immediately with teshuvah, and the prophecy was reversed (much to Jonah’s chagrin). On the other hand, prophecies that are positive in nature, promising reward, are never conditional, and will absolutely come to pass. Maimonides’ citation of this Biblical passage indicates his conviction that the Jewish people will ultimately do national teshuvah and earn the promised redemption. The role of the prophet as rebuker is echoed in an interesting passage of Rabenu Bachya’s Duties of the Heart. He catalogs several types of teshuvah. The purest form is represented in a person who comes to the realization that his or her behavior is wrong, and independently resolves to change. Paraphrasing his words slightly, the first level is like a runaway who realizes how he was once part of a home where he was loved and cherished, and therefore turns back. The second level, less exalted, is a person who grasps this truth by hearing the speech of a prophet or the words of the Torah. Rabenu Bachya compares this person to a runaway who meets someone else from his home, who convinces the runaway to return. 184 The third level occurs when the runaway observes how other runaways are harmed and abused, and decides based on this experience to return to the safety of home. The fourth and lowest level is a runaway who falls into bad company and endures those abuses first hand. Ultimately he is rescued and returned to his home, for his benefit but against his will. In the end, we all come home. Ideally, we will recognize the value of home on our own accord. 

HW Abraham

Isaiah 55.6-11

Malaki 3.19-24

Matthew 3.1-12

Revelation 2.1-7

Revelation 19.6-9