Tonight, Friday, September 15th, marks the beginning of Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year. Rosh HaShanah is a day of celebration and reflection. On this day, we begin the process of Teshuba, which means “repentance and change,” starting with the sounding of the Shofar.
Maimonides states that Teshuba consists of three steps:
HAKARAT HACHET, the acknowledgment of personal responsibility for what we’ve done wrong
VIDUY, confession, and verbalization of our bad habits and wrong deeds.
AZIBAT HACHET, the decision to leave our bad habits behind and correct our actions.
Hakarat hachet, admitting our mistakes, is the first step and is probably the most challenging hurdle we have to overcome to achieve Teshuba. Because naturally, we tend to justify and rationalize all the bad things we’ve done. Or perhaps because we fall into the oldest psychological trap in human history: “blaming others,” also known as “the blame transference syndrome”.
We all know that HaShem punished Adam and Eve by expelling them from paradise. But what sin did they commit? Was God punishing them because they ate from the forbidden fruit, as it is conventionally believed?
Try the following experiment. Place all kinds of treats, candies, and pastries on a table. In the center of the table, on a special and visible plate, put a fruit or a vegetable (It doesn’t have to be an apple; the Tora, actually, never mentioned the apple). It could be a tomato or something that generally doesn’t tempt children. Now, call a 5 or 6-year-old and tell them, “You can eat whatever you want, except for that tomato in the center of the table.” I assure you it’s only a matter of time until the child disobeys, abandons all the sweets and treats, and grabs the tomato. The forbidden fruit, just because it’s forbidden, awakens curiosity and an irresistible desire.
According to Rabbi Yosef Albo (Spain, 1480-44), the original sin of Adam and Eve was not that they ate from the forbidden fruit. In his opinion, HaShem knew that sooner or later, they would succumb to temptation. According to Rabbi Yosef Albo in his sefer haIqarim, HaShem, like a loving parent with their children, wanted to teach the first humans the important lessons for life. In this case, the path of Teshuba, that is, what to do when one makes a mistake. In this case, disobeying the single command. The Creator knows that humans have temptations and desires and make mistakes. And that’s why He created the scenario for Adam and Eve to “fall”, and in doing so, train them to recognize their mistakes, correct themselves, and thereby grow in experience and maturity! God knows that making mistakes is part of human nature; otherwise, there would be no “Mitsva” (commandment) to do Teshuba, to repent and correct oneself. HaShem gave the first man the opportunity to learn how to repair his relationship with Him through Teshuba.
For Rabbi Albo, therefore, the original sin was not Adam’s disobedience: but his denial, and refusal of taking responsibility for his mistakes. Instead of admitting personal responsibility, apologizing for disobeying God, and learning a valuable lesson, Adam shifted the blame to Eve, telling God, “The woman that YOU gave me” (“You”, referring to HaShem. In other words, Adam not only blamed Eve but indirectly he also blamed God!), “she tempted me to eat the fruit, and I ate.”
HaShem then asked Eve, but she also avoided personal accountability by blame-transference: “I didn’t do it,” she said, “it was the serpent.”
Blaming others for our mistakes is one of the main obstacles to Teshuba – repentance – and is the oldest excuse in history.
