As Americans have become increasingly psychologically sophisticated, it becomes much easier for people, Jews and non-Jews, to say, “I’m sorry.” But Teshuva requires more than recognizing that we may have hurt someone – it requires an actual change in behavior, not just as individuals but as a community. The brilliance of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is that we can challenge the individualism of American society with the Jewish focus on our collective responsibility for each other. Hence, we repent not just for our personal sins but for the sins of the entire community of which we are part. Many people in my congregation have come to the recognition that as American Jews, we have some real collective responsibility for the role that some Jews have played in encouraging an ethos of materialism and selfishness, not only in the obvious case of Bernie Madoff, but in the design of misguided policies that led to the economic meltdown. Similarly, the recovery plan targeted the needs of banks and investment companies while short-changing the unemployed and people made homeless by the mortgage crisis. Western societies remain committed to unlimited (and, inevitably, environmentally destructive) “growth” – and too many in our community remain transfixed by the desire to accumulate wealth and power without regard to social and environmental consequences.
These challenges, to heed God’s call to return to our mission of healing and repair (Tikkun), make this season not only personally important, but important to the future of humanity.
Rabbi Michael Lerner is Editor of Tikkun and Rabbi of Beyt Tikkun Synagogue in San Francisco and Berkeley, CA. www.beyttikkun.org.
