Teshuvah is the foundation of the world. In order to do Teshuvah, we have to do much more than "merely" to make right the wrongs we have done – we have to get to the roots of ourselves. Yet in doing Teshuvah, we touch the roots of all creation. This notion is stated both implicitly and explicitly in many places in our tradition. The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 1) declares that “Teshuvah is awesome, for it preceded the creation of the world.” (This is why we work on Teshuvah especially during Elul, the month before the world’s “birthday” on Rosh Hashanah.) The Gemara contains many statements about the awesome power of Teshuvah: it can convert sins to be merits, reach the depths of God, it will bring the Moshiach, etc.! Teshuvah brings us to the true foundation of the world and its rules, though, if we are stuck in the world and its rules, we cannot understand Teshuvah - it may even be very hard to believe in it. . The truth is, we cannot understand the world - or life itself - from within that world. Only from the place of Teshuvah, at the very foundation of the world, can we see the world as it truly is.
For the world puts on a very good bluff – it sometimes appears to block our efforts to return to God, to exist only to oppose our spiritual strivings. The Lubavitcher Rebbe said that most of us think that first there was the world, and then God wrote the Torah to try to help us make the best of getting through this difficult place. But, in fact, Chazal tell us just the opposite: that God “gazed into the Torah and created the world.” The Torah is the blueprint for all of creation. The fact is, the Rebbe concluded, that the world is literally the perfect context in which to bring out the fullness and depth of Torah. So too, Teshuvah – as much as we sometimes experience it as a struggle with reality, as much as it seems to oppose all that we know as reality – is in fact the perfect tool to manifest our deepest, truest selves – the Tzaddik within.
Rebbe Nachman, in Torah 34 in Likutei Moharan, emphasizes that each person has an aspect of “Tzaddik”, a “holy point” within himself or herself. Each person, the Rebbe declares, has “something precious which no one else has.” But it is not enough just to acknowledge this as a sort of theoretical, feel-good compliment. Rather, since the other person has a unique point, which is an aspect of Tzaddik, I need to strive to receive from that Tzaddik in each person I speak to. I need to listen with that kind of humility and awareness – and depth, because sometimes the point disguises itself in words that seem mundane. I also need to try to help my own Tzaddik point arouse others, and myself, to God.
The way to allow my Tzaddik point to arouse my own heart towards God, says Rebbe Nachman, is through hisboddedus, speaking privately with God in my own words. When I engage in hisboddedus, then I can fulfill the verse “My mouth is speaking wisdom, and my heart is meditating on understanding.” This means that my mouth, when it is allowed to voice the words of the Tzaddik point within my soul, can give to the heart a great arousal towards God.
When I was learning this Torah recently with a friend, we were struck by the way Rebbe Nachman speaks of the avodah of hisboddedus here. I had often heard it emphasized that in hisboddedus one can “say anything” to God, and in fact that is more or less true. In many places, the Rebbe emphasizes the element of spontaneity and sincerity in this practice, as liberating the true heart of prayer. Yet from the passage in Torah 34 presented above, there is another description of hisboddedus, one in which I am trying to create a space in which my inner Tzaddik can truly come out and express itself, and be a “Rebbe” to my heart, to all the rest of me. This implies an intention to allow that inner spark to come out, to speak, to pray. We should all be blessed to find our deepest selves at last allowed to speak in hisboddedus!
And when this happens, suddenly there is an amazing shift, because beneath and within all of the jumble of thoughts and parts which make up a human being, the point of Tzaddik, of Teshuvah, has revealed itself. Suddenly I begin to see myself as I truly am, with the Tzaddik point as the foundation of all else. When this happens, I begin to see the famous statement “Tzaddik Yesod Olam” (the Tzaddik is the foundation of the world) in a new light. I understand that these three words mean precisely what they say:– not simply that the Tzaddik is the most important element of creation, but rather, the Tzaddik, like Teshuvah, is not simply another element in creation, rather he is bound up with the very roots of creation. Every element of creation is rooted in Torah, Teshuvah, the Tzaddik, and can only be truly seen for what it is in relation to that root…
Hisboddedus effects yet another transformation: through it, that inner, unique point is being connected to God. Reb Shlomo Carlebach was once speaking about this same idea of the unique point in each person – “every Moishele Water Carrier has within him something Moshe Rabbeinu doesn’t have” – and finally he said “do you know what Teshuvah is? The deepest definition of Teshuvah is, when that unique point which is only mine, gets connected to God.” May we all merit to fulfill more superficial definitions of Teshuvah, but never to be satisfied with them, until we touch this holy place Reb Shlomo taught so beautifully.
A final word: The Torah tells us to love Hashem “b’chol levav’chah, b’chol nafsh’chah, u’vchol meodechah.” We are to love God with all of our hearts, all of our souls, and all of our “me’od.” Rav Shimon Schwab explains this last phrase as exhorting each of us to serve God with our “very-muchness,” that is with the extra and unique gifts which were given to our neshamah. I would just like to add that it is significant that this idea comes after that of serving God with all of our soul – which the Rabbis interpreted as saying we are to love God even to the point of giving our life for His sake. Yet in some ways to truly live for God – allowing all of our holy potential and uniqueness to flourish – is harder and more frightening than even to die for God. Therefore there is a mitzvah to “choose life!” which in its depths can sometimes be the hardest mitzvah of the Torah. Nonetheless, I ask God to bless you and me at this time to lead towards being truly inscribed in the Book of Life – of full, holy, and joyous Life, rooted in our deepest selves and the deepest reality of the world: Teshuvah.