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are seven distinct steps to teshuvah: culpability,
remorse, confession, apology, restitution, soul
reckoning — a spiritual accounting — and
transformation. If confronted with the same situation again, we would not behave the same
way. His use of three words panah, sur, and
shuv to describe turning is very evocative.
Panah is related to the word face and suggests
turning our gaze in a certain direction. Sur
For Our Sins
DANIEL WEISS
“Ashamnu, bagadnu, gazalnu, dibarnu dofi...” The familiar refrain of the Vidui, upon closer inspection, may
give rise to a fair bit of puzzlement. Like much
(though not all) of the High Holiday liturgy, it
is formulated in the first-person plural. This use
of “we” may seem strange, in part, because we
have largely been conditioned to think of “sin”
as something committed by an individual.
Thus, “I have sinned” sounds perfectly natural,
but what can it mean to say “We have sinned”?
Each member of Israel therefore bears responsibility
not only for sins committed in his or her own name, and
not only for sins committed in the name of other
individual members of Israel, but also for sins
committed in the name of Israel as a whole.
Daniel H. Weiss, who received
his doctorate from the
University of Virginia in 2009,
currently teaches in the faculty
of divinity at the University of
Cambridge, where he holds the
Polonsky-Coexist Lectureship in
Jewish Studies. His research
examines the intersection
between philosophical thought
and classical Jewish texts.
One of the more common explanations of
the liturgy’s use of “we” actually ends up reinforcing the assumption that sin is to be understood in individual terms. That is, the liturgy
says “we” because, while each individual
person may not be personally guilty of each
component in the litany of sins, we are each
nonetheless responsible, as members of the
community, for the sins committed by other
members of the community. In this account,
the sinful act is still an individual matter, and
the collective element comes in specifically
with regard to responsibility. Abraham Joshua
Heschel’s famous dictum — “Some are guilty,
but all are responsible” — encapsulates this
idea well.
Without detracting from this insight, I suggest that the classical rabbinic use of “we” in
the liturgy may point to an even more radical
conception of what counts as sin in the first
place. One category of actions, most commonly
evokes turning aside; a person moving in a certain direction wavers or strays off course. Sur,
he says, is neutral while panah has a negative
connotation. Shuv refers to returning — back to
our origins or to our proper natural place, to
righteousness. This book is a spiritual GPS that
reminds us where we might have made a wrong
turn and how we can recalculate and get back
on the right path — returning to our home.
associated with the term “sin,” consists of actions performed by a person out of an individual form of desire; for instance, I might act from
a desire to manipulate or have control over another person, or out of a disregard for others.
We could describe all of these actions as stemming from an individual-centered form of the
yetzer hara, the inclination to evil. Perhaps,
however, the “we have sinned” of the liturgy is
not limited to such actions, but also includes
another category of actions that does not involve individual desire or egoism.
For instance, we can find countless historical instances where people who would never
dream of killing another person out of personal
greed or anger end up participating willingly or
even eagerly in riots, pogroms, or military actions in which many are killed. Such actions, far
from involving self-centeredness, may involve
great selflessness — one is acting not in the
name of one’s own individual desires but in the
name of tribe, party, or state. If one conceives of
sin primarily in individual terms, these “
collective” actions (even if technically performed by
individuals) would not likely be placed in the
category of “we have sinned.” Likewise, in the
case of institutions or corporations, certain actions may come about as a result of a coordinated yet diffused group activity, such that no
individual can be singled out as the agent responsible for the action. And again, even if the
effects of such actions may be harmful or invidious, they would not be considered as “sin”
within an individually-oriented framework.
This limited understanding of sin, furthermore, can easily lead us to ignore or even condone collective actions that we would be quick
to condemn if committed by individuals. While
there may be numerous factors in today’s culture that nurture such habits of thought, the
