For Vidui

The scholar Adin Steinsaltz said this Teshuvah- repentance and return.

“Teshuvah is a manifestation of the divine within us. Through teshuvah, we can extricate ourselves from the binding web of our lives, from the chain of causality that otherwise compels us to follow a path of no return.”

It is a manifestation of the Divine with in us -

Because this very process of doing Teshuvah - the work of return

Is the work of soul seeking-

We use the language that our tradition give us of Vidui, confession -

Which uses words like sin - and guilt.

But I prefer the word distance -

When we struggle, evade, ignore - Fail to live up to the expectations of our covenant -

We create a gap, a distance between us and our souls.

And the journey of this day is to seek our souls -

To bring them closer to us, to bring us closer to them.

Today on this day, we ask ourselves and God to open our hearts-

To allow us to search them- to identify what is maintaining that distance

We do this through communal confession -

Not so that we can berate ourselves-

I did this, and this, and this, and this, and this, and this…

I am not worthy of being forgiven at all-

But rather,

So that we can do a full and honest accounting.

It is not so we can isolate ourselves in the shame of sin - But so we can return to whole

We speak in one voice-

Because this is the covenantal work-

All of us can be better-

All of us come seeking -

And so we list all the ways we’ve created distance between us and our souls -

One for each letter of the alphabet -

So that we know we have done a full accounting

So we can see what we have pushed aside or unseen, unacknowledged

We say them aloud, together.