Personal change is a central theme of Judaism. As I said many times on my recent tour (always with apologies to the rabbi), if you don’t see personal change as a major aspect of your engagement with Judaism, then don’t bother going to synagogue on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Those two holy days are explicitly devoted to assessing where we have gone in our lives and taking steps to put ourselves on a better path so we can grow into our potential as human beings.
This is the central thrust of these days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur where we find ourselves right now, which are universally referred to as the Aseret Yemei Teshuva – the Ten Days of Return, whether we understand that to be a return from wrong turns we have taken in our lives, or a return to a closer relationship with the divine, or a return to our true personal nature.
Rambam[1] underlines the focus on teshuva at this time of year, saying: “Although teshuva and crying out to God are always appropriate, during the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur they are especially appropriate and are accepted immediately.”
The Talmud[2] comments on the verse from Isaiah (55:6) — “Seek the Lord while God may be found” – saying, “These are the ten days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.”
And in the prayers, we repeatedly come back to the phrase from the Book of Lamentations (5:21): “Hashivenu Adonai elecha vena’shuvah; chadesh yameinu k’kedem” – “Restore us to Yourself, O God, so we may return; renew our days as of old.”
But here’s the question: If correcting our behaviour and our path is so central to the High Holy Days, where does prayer come in? Why does each day of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur laden us with a 700-page book? Shouldn’t the facts about our behaviour speak for themselves? What benefit can come from the advocacy we might do for ourselves in prayer?
The answer I would offer begins in 1936, when Rav Yerucham Levovitz died and the Mir yeshiva in Belarus lost its guiding spiritual light. Rav Yerucham had served as the mashgiach ruchani – the spiritual supervisor and educator – and was the person who defined the inner character of the Mir from the day he arrived in 1908 until his death. It was Rav Yerucham who had established a serious program of character development and spiritual growth at the Mir and transformed it into a Mussar-oriented institution.
And then he died. The Mir’s leadership, headed by Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, the son of the Alter of Slabodka, sought someone who could continue to guide the yeshiva in the spirit of the previous mashgiach. They turned to Rav Yechezkel (Chatzkel) Levenstein, who at the time was serving as mashgiach of the Lomza Yeshiva in Petach Tikvah in pre-state Israel.
Rav Chatzkel had been a student of Rav Yerucham and had been deeply influenced by him. Like Rav Yerucham, he was a product of the Kelm tradition of Mussar. The graft took, and Rav Chatzkel provided spiritual leadership through the period of the Mir’s legendary escape from Europe and its reestablishment in Israel, leaving the post in 1949.
I mention this history to put in context Rav Chazkel’s teaching about prayer and teshuva that I want to share with you. I make what I think is a reasonable assumption that you, like me, grew up orphaned from our Jewish spiritual traditions like Mussar, and so delving into one specific teaching brings with it the additional dimension of forging connections to our own spiritual lineage, in the form of the teachers and also the teachings. Like this, we overcome our orphan status.
Rav Chatzkel gave a talk titled, “Prayer as a way to Teshuva”[3] at the Ponevezh yeshiva in Israel where he filled the position of mashgiach (spiritual advisor) from 1949 until his passing in 1974. In his talk, he opens up the question of how and why the process of teshuva that is so focal at this time of year is linked to and supported by prayer.
Rav Chatzkel’s says clearly: “Davening [prayer] does not take the place of doing teshuva.” He is cautioning us not to think we can pray away our transgressions or misdirection. Why not? Because “one must have regret and feel remorse for their wrongdoings.” Here he is referring to the second stage of the traditional teshuva process. Having recognized that we have gone off course, the next step is to embrace sincere regret, which is not a matter of prayer but of cultivating a mindset and emotion in ourselves.
Rav Chatzkel continues, “but proper tefillah [prayer] can be an essential part of the teshuva process.” Prayer does not replace teshuva, but it can play a significant role as an adjunct to the main process.
What he goes on to say about prayer is significant in and of itself, but it also begins to answer the question of what prayer can do for us in the process of returning to the straight path after our slips and failures. “The first and foremost requirement of tefillah,” he says, “is that the heart must hear what the lips are saying.”
Prayers are words. Words are susceptible to being said without feeling, thought or intention. In Rav Chatzkel’s view, that would be vocalization but not prayer because the meaning of words of prayer needs to penetrate the heart of the person saying them. In essence, we don’t only need to say the words, we need to understand them, and then we need to go even beyond that to feel the meaning of the words with our emotions.
When we race through the prayers, thinking about lunch or work or somebody, we can’t expect the performance to have much of an impact on ourselves. As Rav Soloveitchik said once, “People today don’t like to daven; they like to have davened.”
Yet when we invest ourselves in saying the words with meaning and opening our hearts to feel the messages the words convey, then, Rav Chatzkel says, “At the time of tefillah, the person purifies their soul from whatever occurred until then and corrects it for the future.”
Prayer purifies the soul by drawing our attention, our words and thoughts into the orbit of our higher nature. The teshuva process aims for the same effect: focusing on clearing away all the detritus and accretions that have accumulated and obstruct that same higher nature.
Prayer then helps fulfill the deepest purpose of teshuva, which is not so much looking back into the past but working on inner change that will be effective in the next stretch of life that lies ahead.
Rav Chatzkel cites his teacher, the Alter of Kelm, who underlined the transformative power of prayer. The Alter would often say, “Tefillah is like Mussar, as it trains and corrects the person’s ways.”
When you pray with sincerity, it takes you away from ordinary life and back into honest dialogue with your deepest self. Its repetition strengthens and clarifies connection to that essence. This process replicates the aim of teshuva – purifying and elevating the inner self – and, indeed, Rav Chatzkel says in this essay, “The purpose of a human life is to purify and elevate the soul.” Both prayer and the process of “returning” contribute to that goal.
[1] Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance (Hilchot Teshuvah) 2:6.
[2] Rosh Hashana 18a.
[3] Sichos Mussar: Chodosh Elul and Yomim Noraim. Brooklyn, NY: Israel Bookshop Publications, n.d.