Q&A: What Does It Mean to Repent?
What Does It Mean to Repent?
Question
According to Maimonides, repentance seems, at least on the face of it, pretty simple: yesterday he was one way, and today he is another way.
In other sources too, it seems that this is not the most complicated thing in the world. Maybe a year or two of work, maybe even intense work, maybe even very hard work—but that’s it. Maybe even 3 years, maybe 5 years, roughly speaking, and that’s it, the story is over: the person has more or less repented.
But from my experience working in psychology and psychiatry, the various problems people have (anger, anxiety, different kinds of social problems, self-confidence / self-belief, connection to the soul/self, and the like), in cases that are not relatively “easy” / “simple,” often rest on difficult things from childhood and so on, which in the best-case scenario might take 10–15 years of therapy to change, and in a less good scenario will not change until the day one dies.
So why does it seem from the sources (at least the ones I know) that relatively speaking it’s not such a big deal? Meaning—that you need to do A, B, C, pray, change a few things, a few more things that need to be done, and that’s it?
Answer
It really does not look that way from the sources. In an article I divided repentance into two types: formal repentance, which includes the four components: abandoning the sin, regret, confession, and resolving for the future. That is not so hard to do. And there is essential repentance, which is a genuine inner reversal, and that is very hard to do. Of course, between these two there is a whole spectrum of levels of regret and inner reversal:
In the world of psychology and psychiatry, you encounter difficult cases. Not every inner reversal is long and accompanied by psychological trauma. It’s like when I heard a class from Rabbi Burshtein (Puah Institute) before my wedding, and innocently thought that there is no woman without fertility problems / staining, etc.—it’s just that this is what he deals with all day, so from his perspective that’s what he knows…
There are people who undergo an inner transformation and they’re calm and at peace and everything is fine. It depends on the personality.