The main theme of this day is expressed in one word, the word תשובה. This word means “repentance,” or, literally, “return,” for repentance does mean that Man returns to G-d. He leaves behind his weaknesses and frailties and sins and transgressions, and he returns to G-d. But today our hearts and minds and souls are focused on more than the return of Man to G-d, more than the תשובה of Man. We also hope and pray and look forward to the return of G-d to Man; we hope and pray that G-d too will do תשובה. The promise that G-d will do תשובה, that He will return to His people and no longer leave them to the wiles of a capricious fate, this promise is held out to us by our prophets as one of the greatest goals of human history. G-d will indeed some day return from His Divine exile, He will return to Israel along the road of charity and benevolence and loving-kindness and pardon.

The only question is: how are we mortals going to get G-d to do תשובה? How can we bring about this wonderful return of G-d? Listen closely to the Prophet Malachi as he gives the Israelites new hope: שובו אלי ואשובה אליכם אמר ה׳ צבקות. “Return to Me, and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts.” Do you know what that means? That means that G-d is willing to meet you halfway. Certainly G-d is willing to do תשובה, to return to Man – but Man must have the courtesy to go towards his G-d and greet Him. First Man must attempt to return to G-d, then G-d will surely return to him. שובו אלי ואשובה אליכם אמר ה׳ צבקות. First Man does תשובה, and then his reward is – the תשובה of G-d.

So, then, if Man is to take the first step on the road of return, if we are to repent first, the problem of our redemption as individuals, as members of a people and as citizens of humanity, resolves itself into: How can we best repent? How shall we go about this business of תשובה? Once we have learned the techniques of תשובה and applied them, once we have read the sign-posts on the road of return and followed their directions, G-d, Blessed be He, will also return; Man and G-d will meet halfway.

There are 3 sign-posts on the road of return to G-d that I want to talk to you about today. The first sign-post which will tell us if we are on the right path and going in the right direction is our resistance to the same temptation to which we succumbed when we sinned.

The uniquely Jewish character of תשובה is the fact that we are not to dodge temptation; we must not shun provocation. Oh no! On the contrary, it means that we are to dare temptation and defy it to its face. It means that we are to stand up to sin and look it straight in the eye. We are not to run away from life and all its entangled relationships – rather, we are to correct ourselves in the midst of living. The highest proof of successful תשובה is when we can retrace our steps, enter into the same conditions and the same circumstances under which we sinned – and then exhibit the moral spunk to do good and not evil. It means that the man who drinks his daily orange juice and milk in the Automat, and who once was tempted to include a non-kosher meat sandwich in his menu, is not to avoid the Automat, or avoid breakfasts altogether in the future. It means that he is from now on to go into that Automat, get his juice and milk, stop in front of the box containing the forbidden meat, contemplate it, and pass on without it. It means not retiring to a sheltered monasticism, but striking out and accepting the challenge with your fists up.

When Rabbi Yehudah was asked, the Talmud tells us, היכן דמי בעל תשובה, how would you describe the highest course of a man who wishes to repent from the sin of immorality, he answered באותה אשה, באותו פרק, באותו מקום. A man of this sort has successfully repented if he keeps clean upon again meeting with the same object of his immoral degradation, at the same time of the day and year, and in the very same place. This, my friends, is the authoritative view of Judaism – and it is a far cry from those religions which would prescribe, in such cases, a vow of celibacy. באותה אשה, באותו פרק, באותו מקום. Confront the facts of life with yourself – and beat them!

“Well,” somebody in this congregation is probably saying to himself right now, “the Rabbi has set the conditions for proper תשובה - but what are the mechanics of repentance, what are the inside workings of this process called תשובה?” A good question that is. And that brings us to the second great fact of תשובה, the second sign-post on the road of return.

If you have ever been ordered by your physician to stop smoking, you will know how difficult that task is. You experience a terrible emptiness in your mouth, you feel shaky and uncomfortable, and the nervousness will express itself in manifold ways. Your doctor will then advise you to chew gum in order to harmlessly release the pressure built up in you by the desire to smoke. He is thus allowing a harmful drive to be released through harmless channels. The psychologists have a fancy term for this, and an even fancier explanation. They call it “sublimation.” And they explain that every human being is endowed with a certain amount of primal energy which expresses itself in the varied drives, passions, likes and dislikes, loves and hates which characterize the emotional life of man. This energy they call the Id or the Libido, and they have found that it can be expressed in many different ways. It is man who determines how it shall be spent. The water pressure is built up in the sink pipes; man determines which faucet he will turn on. A man can spend the energy with which he was endowed in drives and passions of a sinful and anti-social nature. If he learns to release this energy through better and approved channels, he is said to have “sublimated” his drives and energy.

Here, my friends, we have the mechanics of תשובה. Don’t just rub out part of your natural self, don’t deny yourself and completely squelch your drives and passions and desires and strivings. On the contrary, says Judaism accelerate them – but sublimate them. The same powers which you put into the great striving for uncleanliness – translate them into a powerful and vigorous aspiration for cleanliness.

Writes Job: מי יתן טהור מטמא, “who can bring forth clean out of unclean!” And the Rabbis add, in explanation, אברהם מתרח, חזקיה מאחז, מרדכי משמעי.

Abraham from his father Terah – here is a shining example of the טהור מטמא, the sublimation of unclean to clean, of impure to pure. We are mistaken, the Rabbis mean to tell us, if we think that Abraham was original in his passion for principles; we are wrong if we think that Abraham was the first to sacrifice a son for his religion. Indeed not! It was his father Terah who first taught the world that an ideal was worth all you had; he was the first to cling to an idea with the tenacity and faith which led him to cast his son Abraham into the כבשן של אש, the burning furnace. Abraham inherited it from Terah; only he sublimated it. While Terah spent this passion for principles in the service of an idol, Abraham channeled it into an עקדת יצחק, the service of G-d.

חזקיה מאחז, the Talmud says, is another example of טהור מטמא, of the channelization from unclean to clean. King Hezekiah was, history tells us, an outstandingly successful educator. בדקו מדן ועד באר שבע ולא מצאו תינוק או תינוקת שלא היה בקי בהלכות טומאה וטהרה. In the days of Hezekiah, young boys and girls from Dan to Beersheba were examined and not one could be found who was not thoroughly familiar with the most complicated laws in the Torah. What a colossal educational success resulted from King Hezekiah’s efforts. Yet was Hezekiah’s passion for education and his proper evaluation of its effect and influence his own brilliant idea? Nay! It was not! He really got that from his father, the wicked King Ahaz, who so well understood the value of universal Jewish education. Only Ahaz, being aligned with the idol worshippers against the G-d of Israel, uprooted the yeshivas, extirpated the academies of learning and substituted, in their place, houses of worship for the various idols which then infested Judea. Hezekiah inherited his understanding of the value of education from Ahaz – only Ahaz used it for evil, whilst Hezekiah sublimated this passion for spreading knowledge to do good.

מרדכי משמעי. How many of us have marveled at the terrific stamina which Mordecai displayed in unbendingly sticking by his principles even at the expense of igniting an explosive international situation. Yet Mordecai was not the first to manifest such personal bravery and political courage in refusing to bow to a state official and virtually slapping the face of an autocratic potentate. His grandfather Shimi showed the same fortitude when he faced King David squarely, and fearlessly told him, צא צא איש הדמים ואיש הבליעל… כי איש דמים אתה. “Get out of here, go away, O Man of Blood, O Unprincipled Villain, for thou art a murderer!” Shimi showed unbounded daring and intrepidity in speaking to a king in this manner. Only Shimi utilized this daring for the rebellious Absalom against the saintly David, while his descendant Mordecai sublimated this political initiative for his people against the wicked Haman.

To summarize, then, the second sign-post on the Road of Return does not read כיבוש יצר הרע, but קידוש יצר הרע – not the repression of the Evil Urge, but the sanctification or sublimation of the Evil Urge.

The third sign-post of תשובה points to the correction of what can be corrected of an unwholesome past. It is not sufficient to only meet temptation on the same grounds on which it once vanquished us and to beat it now, it is not even sufficient to sublimate the energy with which we once undertook the pleasurable pursuit of sin. We must also be ready to mend our past. For תשובה is more than a pact between Man and G-d. It includes, willy nilly, your injured fellow-man.

Let me give you an example. Joseph’s brothers, as you know, threw him into a pit and then sold him as a slave to a band of Midianite merchantmen bound for Egypt. They dipped his כתונת הפסים, his beautiful cloak, in the blood of a goat and carried it back to their father Jacob, trying to persuade him that Joseph was dead. Now suppose they had grown conscience-stricken, remorseful and, unable to stand it any longer, had gone to Jacob, confessing their sin and asking his pardon. Can you not feel what would have been the first question that would have risen in Jacob’s heart in a storm of anxious and indignant grief – “But where is Joseph? – what then became of Joseph? You ask me to forgive you, but your sin is not simply between you and me. Where is Joseph? He may be somewhere in a distant land today, in miserable slavery. How can I forgive you until I know that all is well with him?”

Joseph was the skeleton in the closet of his brothers. Had they done תשובה, their repentance, their attempts at return, would have been vain and futile and ridiculous as long as Joseph was away from his father and in the miserable condition into which they sold him. We too must search every nook and corner of our memories with the light-beam of our conscience until we find the skeletons in our closets, the skeletons which can yet be resurrected. Each of us has a Joseph in his history, someone whom, perhaps, we figuratively sold down the river. When are we going to bring him back? How, in these Ten Days of Penitence, can we face our Divine Father, when we know that sometime in the course of the past year we insulted a friend so that he cried in secret? How can we ask our Heavenly Father to give us honor, ובכן תן כבוד if during this past year there was someone whose reputation and honor we maliciously maligned? There are sins which we sinned against our fellow men which can yet be atoned for, but only by approaching these same fellow men and making amends, doing something concrete to make up for these sins.

My friends, no amount of prayer is going to help us until each and every one of us supplies his “Joseph.” Somewhere in the past of each of us there is this “Joseph,” this someone who was wronged, a wrong which can still be righted. And while G-d may lovingly sympathize with our beautiful prayers and penitence, He still has His ear open for the cry of that injured person. And G-d tells us, “You ask Me to return to you; you ask Me to forgive you. But your sin isn not simply between Me and you. WHERE IS JOSEPH?”