Chapter 2 is, I humbly suggest, the very greatest statement on Teshuvah in the Jewish tradition.
Confession is necessary, says Rambam, “Anyone who, out of pride, conceals their sins does not achieve complete Teshuvah.” To prove his point, Rambam cites Proverbs 28:13 which suggests, “One who conceals their sins will not succeed”. It’s a subtle and brilliant re-appropriation of the original theological meaning of the verse. The verse suggests you can’t hide sins from God. But Rambam adopts the verse to make a psychological point, understanding the embarrassment we feel when, already wishing to change, we shy away from approaching those we have wronged to apologise. His point is that if we can’t get the articulation of what we have done wrong out of our mouths, we can’t get the sin out of our souls. It’s a staggeringly prescient articulation of ideas that Sigmund Freud explores a thousand years later, “the function of speech,” wrote Freud in 1940, “brings material in the ego into a firm connection with the residue of perception.”
Then there is the magisterial statement of Teshuvah Gemorah – complete Teshuvah. Rambam adopts a statement of Rabbi Yehudah from Yoma 86. The greatest test of Teshuvah is when an opportunity to repeat a previous sin comes to a person, and they are saved from repeating. Rabbi Yehudah is also responsible for the example of this first committed, subsequently sin adopted in the Mishneh Torah; a previous illicit sexual relationship, subsequently avoided even though it’s the same partner, the same place and same time (I imagine Rabbi Yehudah has in mind a golden sunset, overlooking a stunning view with a cocktail in hand).
To this Rambam adds his own twist. In order for avoiding the re-falling into the same sinful behaviour to count as Teshuvah Gemorah, Rambam insists that that once-sinner-now-master-of-Teshuvah must still have sexual desire and must still desire this explicit illicit partner and still resist. For sure, simply avoiding sin is ‘effective’ but to be a true master of penitence, every temptation needs to be the same as when a person first sinned and the only difference the second time round is within the soul of the now transformed sinner.
The hero of Teshuvah becomes, in Rambam’s articulation, a successful counter-model to the anti-hero of the Yom Kippur afternoon Haftarah, Jonah. The driving force of the Book of Jonah is to show the power of change. Seas change, fish change, even the people of Ninevah change, even the gourd changes. But Jonah stays the same, a grump at the beginning of the book and a grump at its end.
Change, internal, life-transforming change, is possible. It’s hard, we will avoid doing the hard work required, but it is possible. And, ultimately, there is nowhere else to look, to be rid of the patterns of behaviour that weigh down our souls than our willingness of be a force of change in ourselves.
