These ten days of teshuvah are a time set aside for wringing ourselves out like laundry. In fact, the original tashlich was not about throwing crumbs into the water. Rather, we were supposed to shake the lint out of our own pockets. In turning our pockets inside out, we were supposed to empty ourselves of all of our transgressions.
All those bits of life that cling to us, slow us down, distract us.
We are used to thinking of all those things that weigh us down in negative terms. In fact, that bit of figurative language itself, “weighing us down,” is negative. No one wants to be weighed down. Of course, we can easily see ourselves casting off and away all those troublesome habits and words that clearly impact our lives for the worse. And we should do just that!
But what of the habits and words, the stories and slogans, that make us feel strong and safe? The ones that make our hearts lighter, not heavier. The ones that bring relief, not struggle. Are we able to cast them away?
Those messages in our head that sound like AI chatbots, flattering us. “Astute insight! Great question! You’re so right to catch me on that.” Are we strong enough to toss that aside?
Those messages in our head that sound like our own personal news channels, relaying only headlines that reinforce our sense of the world. They confirm our fears, celebrate our wins, and make us feel right. “You, the victim, who have done nothing wrong, were attacked by the enemy, that has no grounds to be aggrieved with you.”
When these narratives are false, when they block off any possibility of teshuvah and growth, they are not only difficult to throw away; they are difficult to detect in the first place. Because things that make us feel good and right and affirmed also tend to feel true. Because we want them to be true.
Even when they are not.
Sometimes it is necessary to destroy in order to rebuild. Like microtears in muscles that trigger repair and growth, we must be able to break down even what seems core to us in order to construct something better.
And perhaps, by the end of the process, we might even come to realize that there are things we once thought were core to ourselves that were only ever lint in our pockets.
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The Talmud in Makkot tells a story. Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva were ascending the climb to Jerusalem after the destruction of the Temple. When they reached Mt. Scopus, they tore their garments as they saw what had become of the Temple.
When they reached the ruins of the Temple itself, they saw a fox leaving what had once been the Holy of Holies. The equivalent today would be seeing rats making their home the ruins of our own most sacred spaces.
All the rabbis began to weep. All but one. Rabbi Akiva began to laugh.
They said to him, “Why are you laughing?”
Rabbi Akiva responded, quoting the prophet Micah, “Therefore because of you Zion will be ploughed as a field, Jerusalem will become rubble, and the Temple Mount will be like an altar in the woods.”
And then he quoted the prophet Zechariah:
Zechariah says that God says: One day I will come back and make Zion my home. Jerusalem will be called a city of truth and there the hills will be holy again.
People of all ages will be safe and free there. Elderly people with their mobility aids and small children playing won’t be afraid to gather in crowds.
So Akiva said, if one prophecy of destruction was fulfilled, as was proven by the fox making its home in the Holy of Holies, so too will the prophecy of rebuilding be fulfilled. But one was necessary for the other.
Akiva, you have comforted us, Akiva you have comforted us! (Makkot 24b)
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I wonder about the character of a man who is able to let go of the center of everything he held dear, the Temple, Jerusalem, all of the structure and holiness implied in those words, let go because he has faith, or at least hope, that in letting go, he may be able to reach for something better.
I imagine it must feel like when you’re rock climbing, or scrambling over rocks on a hike, and the moment comes where you must loosen your grip on the rock or dislodge your foot, so that you can find a new handle above and climb higher.
That moment is terrifying. Even in a harness with a belay, there is a part of your mind and body going, don’t let go, stay still, if you try to move you’ll fall.
But then, of course, you’re stuck.
And I do not believe Akiva was willing to let go only because the Romans had peeled his fingers back from the stone. The quote from Micah, about Jerusalem being destroyed, follows a list of reasons why:
Hear this, you rulers of the House of Jacob, you generals of the House of Israel, who despise justice and make crooked all that is upright and lawful! You build Zion with blood and Jerusalem with injustice.
Her rulers judge according to bribes and her priests make money off their rulings. Her prophets divine for pay and yet they rely on God saying, “Isn’t God in our midst? No evil can overcome us!” (Micah 3:10-11)
And this is why, says the prophet, Jerusalem is destroyed on our account. Why the temple becomes a place for foxes.
Which means that Akiva not only let go of his dream of Jerusalem in order to leave room for a better one. He also had to give up a narrative that would have been quite popular among the Jewish people — a narrative that is popular to this day — that we are always just and we are always right.
Surely we could never despise justice! Surely we could never pervert justice! Surely it couldn’t be us taking bribes, us claiming God for ourselves even in acts of cruelty! Yet if we are always just and we are always right, we become the people who cannot lift our hands off one handhold to reach higher.
Akiva had to do the terrifying work of giving up that narrative for a newer, truer one: We are sometimes unjust, and we are sometimes wrong.
And if we are sometimes unjust and we are sometimes wrong, if we do teshuvah and grow, we can become more just. We can reach new footholds and climb ever higher, and knowing that, we can laugh! We can laugh because in the acknowledgment of our flaws we can hold hopes for something so much better, even if while we are laughing, sometimes we’re crying too.
But in order to reach this place, we must be flexible like Rabbi Akiva. We must be permeable and soft. We must be able to examine ourselves and say, this thing I thought was core to me is actually doing me harm. It is doing others harm.
It means saying, as we do today, “We are not so brazen-faced and stiff necked to claim before you, God, and God of our ancestors, that we are righteous and have not sinned. But we and our ancestors have sinned.”
This is a time when we release ourselves from vows. We relinquish versions of ourselves that maybe we once wanted desperately to be and now we realize we simply aren’t. This is a time when we let go of our handholds, and we know that might mean falling, but we also know that we can’t climb higher without first letting go.
We read, on Yom Kippur, God saying, “Build up, build up a pathway, clear away all obstacles from the pathway of my people!”
Sometimes those obstacles are things we cling to until our knuckles are white. But all the more so, we must clear them from our paths.
Luckily for us, God continues: “I have seen their ways, and I will heal them. I will guide them, and I will repay them and the mourners among them with consolation.
Peace, peace to those far and near, says God. For I will heal them.”
Rabbi Amelia Wolf is the rabbi of Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, VA, and a former T’ruah Israel Fellow.