What is teshuva?

Dondi · 09-07-2005, 03:38 PM

What is teshuva? I have a basic gist of teshuva to mean repentance or return to God and that it has significance during the periods of Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur. Can you expound on this?

bananabrain · 09-07-2005, 04:16 PM

start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teshuvah

then read a little about the official "teshuvah" period (which we happen to be in right now)

http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday3.htm

then come back and ask more.

b'shalom

bananabrain

Dondi · 09-07-2005, 04:34 PM

Thanks for the links, bananabrain. Doesn't Rosh Hashanah begin on Oct. 4, 2005, which starts the Days of Awe to Yom Kippur?? Isn't that the teshuvah period?

What if we wronged people in the past, but cannot find them to seek reconciliation? Like, their either moved away or they are dead?

pohaikawahine · 09-07-2005, 04:59 PM

if "teshuva" means "return" in hebrew, i wonder if it could also relate to a return to wholeness or goodness .... this all ties in with the part of deuteronomy that dauer is using now related to sanctuaries, etc .... there is also the section of an "eye for and eye" which speaks to sacrafice .... "if we perform an action of which we are ashamed, it is better to "cut it off" or forget it completely rather than let its memory disrupt and corrput our whole body for our entire life " (this was from an interpretation of the parables of gibran related to the blessed city) and this speaks to sacraficing our own eye, life, hand etc. (symbolically not literally) in order to finally let-it-go and return to a sense of wholeness .... so if we do something to another, such as steal, we must return it and be able to return ourselves back to a state of wholeness .... once this is done we have atoned (as in yom kipper) it is sealed or forgotten ....

these things always, in my mind, return to several levels of meaning .... when i was a young girl my mother use to tell me "never let the sun set on your anger" or "never go to bed angry" .... always resolve issues before the day ends and you will make for a happier relationship and life.... i guess this is also 'teshuva' .... me ke aloha pumehana, pohaikawahine