High Holidays · Elul
What is teshuvah?
Teshuvah, תשובה, means return — not simply feeling sorry, but turning your whole self back toward the good and toward Hashem. It is the way a person who has done wrong becomes, truly, someone new.
Return, in real steps
The Rambam lays teshuvah out as a path you can actually walk. First, recognize the wrong for what it is and take it to heart. Then leave it — stop the act, and put distance between yourself and it. Then confess it in words, the vidui (spoken confession), saying plainly before Hashem what you did. And finally resolve, wholeheartedly, not to return to it. The Rambam even describes the fullest teshuvah as this: to stand again in the very situation where you once stumbled, and this time to choose differently.
Where this comes from
These steps are set out by the Rambam in the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2, where he defines what teshuvah is and what it asks of a person. His gift is to make it concrete: not a mood that visits us, but a sequence we can take up deliberately, again and again.
What to do
Choose one wrong you can name, and walk it through: admit it honestly, stop it, say it aloud before Hashem, and decide firmly on a different way. And note the crucial line the Rambam draws — what is between you and Hashem is repaired by teshuvah, but a wrong done to another person is not forgiven until you go to that person directly and make it right. For a weighty or complicated matter, bring it to your own rabbi rather than carrying it alone.
Source: Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2.
When you are ready to make teshuvah part of the shape of your days, let My Jewish Day (siddur, zmanim, the Hebrew calendar) hold the season of return and its prayers alongside you.
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