It was just over two weeks ago when we began our intensive preparation for the Holy Days this year with our midnight service at Selichot. It was a very memorable evening in the synagogue — as we arrived, congregants met us in the parking lot with flashlights and we entered a darkened sanctuary. Unfortunately this wasn't scheduled as a preview of last night, when our lights were dimmed so that we could concentrate on Kol Nidrei. It was dark because like many of you, the temple was without electricity — though we were far from powerless, as Rabbi Feshbach reminded us last week on Rosh Hashanah.

Among the prayers we recited that night was a contemporary prayer written by Rabbi Jack Riemer called, "Now is the Time for Turning." You may remember that this was a prayer that brought some comfort and inspiration to President Clinton at a point where he had much to atone for in his personal life. (It is also found in our machzor.) The prayer begins with observing that processes in nature happening around us, turning and changing, the weather itself, the color of the leaves, the behavior of migratory birds and animals that store food, etc. All this is proceeding inexorably, naturally, all around us. But our ability to change and turn, in contrast to the animal, is not so natural. It requires doing things that can be quite difficult, like saying "I'm sorry." It requires an act of will. We call it teshuvah.

But there is also a contrary view within Judaism, one that declares that teshuvah is also a natural process in the universe, even if it takes some effort to align with it. This approach reflects the concept or category within Judaism that I want to explore a bit with you today — we call this becoming a baal teshuvah: i.e., one who masters the action of repenting, or a fuller translation — the art of "turning-in-response." (This is sometimes misconstrued in Orthodox circles to refer only to someone who becomes more ritually observant.)

I believe that for practicing Jews of whatever flavor, the anticipation of the New Jewish Year (since we're never quite sure when it will be on the conventional calendar) does begin an emotional process at a very deep level for us. I may be wrong, but I have the feeling that some time after Labor Day most of us begin to sense more intensely, our possibilities and our failures, our power and our weakness, our mortality itself.

Whereas January 1 is a holiday for us, a time to let go, to escape from our cares and daily woes, to blow toy horns, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are really holy days. On these holy days we sound a different kind of horn, we don't try to escape our cares and woes, we don't let go. We make New Year's resolutions not only to eat less or better and exercise our bodies, but also to do better things for others in the world and to exercise our souls.

The Western Christian world had a little taste of our annual spiritual exercise a few years ago at the turning of the millennium in the year 2000. (We, of course, had 240 years to go to our next millennium, our seventh, now that's taka , a real millennium!) You will remember all those folks with dire predictions about the end of the world as we know it, the signs warning people to repent-or-be-saved-now-before-it's-too-late. The scary thing is that 9/11 and subsequent events sometimes make it seem like those folks had a piece of the truth.

There is a Jewish version of these doom-predictors, the guy who pickets Shabbat services every week, carrying a sign that reads: "Repent Now, Avoid the Yom Kippur Rush!" I know it sounds like a joke, but that message is exactly what Jewish tradition teaches — and the High Holy Day liturgy reminds us. Basically we are commanded to "repent one day before you die," and to consider our potential mortality every day of our lives. From this teaching we get the ironic title (credit to humorist, Rabbi Moshe Waldoks from the Second Jewish Catalogue in an article on Teshuvah ) for a Jewish soap opera, "As the Jew Turns."

One of our higher, if not our highest, aspiration as Jewish human beings is to become baalei teshuvah. If there is a concept within Judaism that parallels the Eastern religious term, spiritual master, this is it, Baal Teshuvah, that is, a master of "turning-in-response." The difference is that we are all expected to become this type of spiritual master.

One of the clearest expressions of the behavior required of a baal teshuvah is the custom in many synagogues to follow the sounding of the Shofar and Havdalah at the end of Yom Kippur with what? With a break fast? No, with praying the evening Maariv service which contains (as does every daily service) a prayer which reads "S'lach Lanu Avinu Kee Chatanu, Forgive us, God, for we have sinned." When did we have time to sin between being completely forgiven on Yom Kippur and praying the evening service immediately after Neilah? But just this sensitivity is what we are to cultivate as a baal teshuvah.

The spiritual circumstances of the baal teshuvah , the one who turns in response, is compared in the Talmud with those whose entire life is so blameless so they never experience this process (the Tzaddik Gamur). We read in Tractate Brachot (34b):

"Now every year when we pass Labor Day in this country and we begin to feel some anxiety about the approaching Holy Days we wonder if the days themselves will help us cope with our personal worries as well as our concerns for our people and the world. Of the three processes open to us, one is a clear, but not easy path, the second is always a challenge, and some of us never achieve it, and the third is the most mysterious but essentially the most natural. I refer again to the three themes of the U'netanah Tokef prayer. Our lives and our fate can be changed by three things: tzedakah, tefilah, and teshuvah.

Last week we focused on the first of these themes, becoming a baal tzedek or baal tzedakah. If we study the torah and the prophets we know what this means and nowhere is this clearer than in the haftarah we read this morning. This is what the Eternal God requires of you, to feed the poor, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless. That is the purpose of our fasting on Yom Kippur — to voluntarily afflict and oppress ourselves so that we will understand that others suffer affliction and oppression involuntarily every day of our lives. That path is clear, though certainly never easy.

The other two paths, Prayer and Teshuvah , are contrasted in a Rabbinic comment on the Book of Lamentations, Eichah Rabbati (3:43): R. Chelbo asked R. Samuel bar Nachman, since I have heard of you as a master of Midrash, tell me what is meant by the verse in Eichah (3:44): "Sakota be-anan Lach mei-avor tefillah,You have covered Yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can pass through." R. Samuel answered, "Prayer is like an immersion pool (mikvah), but teshuvah is like the sea. Just as a mikvah is at times open and other times locked, so the gates of prayer are at times open and at other times locked. But the sea is always open, even as the gates of teshuvah are always open.

This midrash complements the ideas within the prayer of Rabbi Riemer, "Now is the Time for Turning." Yes, it is challenging, but unlike prayer which depends upon us and God, Teshuvah is in our hands — we can learn to swim in that sea.

Yet among the things that we cannot control in our lives, according to the Midrash, is the time of our birth and the time of our death. And all of us here have been born into very perilous times for humanity. Sadly we Jews have too many and too direct experience with such times as these even in the recent past. At times like these the most traditional response of our people as a collectivity was precisely to seek answers related specifically to this primordial element of creation, the power of teshuvah. For teshuvah, according to Rabbinic tradition, was one of ten things God created before the world we know came into existence. Like gravity, teshuvah is a law of nature — human existence depends on it, just as the universe depends on other unseen forces. Perhaps we can help humanity discover this law.

I recently came across two texts which I feel teach this lesson powerfully and I want to share them with you today: one from a sermon by a newly ordained Orthodox Rabbi speaking to his congregation in New England on Yom Kippur 1944, another from the daughter of a twentieth century rabbi, some would call him a prophet, whose words we heard last night.

Rabbi Walter Wurzberger, zecher tzadik livracha (he passed away just last year), was born in Munich in 1920, came to this country in 1938, and eventually became one of the greatest intellectuals and voices for pluralism and ethics within modern Orthodoxy. These are some of his words at a terrible time, almost 60 years ago, commenting on the traditional torah reading for Yom Kippur when the High Priest would approach the Holy of Holies in ancient Israel at an earlier time of distress for the Israelites and the world:

Upon whose shoulders rested the responsibility for the chaos that put man against man, nation against nation? The militaristic Romans? The idolatrous Babylonians? The Godless Assyrians? The faithless Egyptians? Did the High Priest blame the internal enemies of Israel, the profiteers, the politicians, the criminals? Nay, this is what he said: "Ana Hashem, Chatati, Aviti, Pashati l'fanecha, ani u'veiti," O Eternal One, I have sinned, I have failed! I am guilty. I am responsible for the suffering of man. I caused all the agony, misery, and injustice that shakes the structure of our ailing society.

Who utters these terrible words? A traitor to the cause of God? A criminal? A social outcast?

Nay, it is the cohen gadol, the High Priest, the chosen representative of the chosen tribe of a chosen people; he who represented the best, the highest, the noblest of Israel realized his responsibility. He began with a process of personal cleansing and repentance. Before he spoke of the sins of his people, he thought of his own. Before he blamed the world he blamed himself.

"My friends," Rabbi Wurzberger continues, "how willing we are to blame the Nazi and Fascists for the chaos that engulfs our civilization! How gladly we accuse England and America for their failure to save the Jews who are being exterminated in war-torn Europe.

O yes, it is a degenerate world, a world that kills the innocent and the weak, that desecrates everything that is holy — a world of master-races and of slaves. But we in America have also failed miserably. Do we have to travel to Europe in order to discover racial persecution. And so we behold a world of agony, misery, cruelty, injustices, brutality, and tyranny. We are responsible for it. It is our world. No complaints! No defense mechanisms! No passing of the buck!

'Chatatti, Aviti, Pashati,' I and my family, we sinned, we failed, we are guilty, we are responsible. Once we have taken this bold step we may venture to blame others, we may say 'Chat'u, avu, pash'u,' they sinned, they failed, they are guilt."

(And need I remind you today who it was closer to our own day whose support created the Taliban in Afghanistan, who looked the other way in the 1980's when Saddam Hussein used poison gas against his people? Who was it that encouraged the emergence of Hamas as a counterweight to secular Palestinian nationalists?)

Wurzberger's contemporary and fellow European refugee, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in the same vein in the very same year 1944, "Let Fascism not serve as an alibi for our conscience. We have failed to fight for right, for justice, for goodness; as a result we must fight against wrong, against injustice, against evil. We have failed to offer sacrifices on the altar of peace, now we must offer sacrifices on the altar of war" (Liberal Judaism, February, 1944)

And this year, 2003, Heschel's daughter, Dr. Susannah Heschel, writes the following:

"Jews stand before God asking for another year of life and promising to turn around our lives and cease our sinning. God looks at this human world, and sees the war, suffering, and violence, especially in Israel and Palestine, and we are ashamed. We have betrayed our own humanity. On these holy days, Jews engage in cheshbon hanefesh, taking moral stock of our lives, and we ask Palestinians to join us.

Each of us must ask, what have I done to stop the killing and violence? Each of us must repent for the failure of humankind to create peace. Both sides have sinned, both sides must repent."

Al Cheyt, for the sin of failing to support seekers of peace on both sides of the conflict Al Cheyt, for choosing violence over dialogue Al Cheyt, for seeking revenge Al Cheyt, for rationalizing the oppression of others Al Cheyt, for losing hope and succumbing to despair.

This repentance should and can be built into our lives as a daily response to the jeopardy of the world in which we live. Most of the year Jeopardy is a TV quiz show with a unique format — start with the answer, (the teshuvah), then look for the question. Let us look carefully at the questions on the High Holy Days by starting with the answer.

If human beings are the Answer, what is the question?

If the Jewish people are the Answer, what is the question?

When we encounter the suffering of the images of God throughout our world, the horrific plagues of illness like AIDS, and social diseases like poverty, terrorism and institutional violence that impact our world, let the question be what is my responsibility. "Respons-ibility" in other words,"Teshuv -ability" is the freedom to respond wisely rather than be enslaved by patterns of reaction.

Let us learn to align ourselves with the forces of teshuvah that exist in our universe. Let us learn to swim in that great sea of turning-in-response.

The Gates of Repentance (Shaarei Teshuvah) are never closed. Here they are — they are in our own hands.