When did I stop being the person I wanted to be?

Sometimes repentance is not about becoming a new person. Sometimes it is about remembering the person we once wanted to be.

Imagine finding a letter you wrote to yourself when you were young. You did not ask to become famous or wealthy. You wanted a good home, time for your children, daily Torah, less anger and more presence. Years later you read the words and realize that you did not become a bad person - only a busy and tired one who left some important things behind.

Haazinu says: “Remember the days of old” (Deuteronomy 32:7). Memory is not only nostalgia. Sometimes it is an instrument of teshuvah. It returns us to points of truth that routine covered over.

The question is not only: where did I go wrong? It is also: what good and true thing once lived in me that I can still recover?

“Renew our days as of old” does not mean becoming who we were. It means bringing back into who we are now the good things we should never have abandoned.

What good and genuine quality that once lived in you would you like to bring home again?

Read in depth

I once heard about a man who, while clearing out his parents’ home after many years, found an old envelope in one of the drawers. The handwriting on the envelope was his own, but he could barely recognize it. Inside was a letter he had written to himself as a teenager. It had been an assignment from one of his teachers: “Write a letter to yourself thirty years from now. What kind of person do you want to meet when you open it?”

He began reading and smiled. There were the dreams of a teenager: to build a good home, study Torah every day, be a father who has time for his children, not spend his whole life chasing money, not become a person who gets angry over every small thing, remain close to his parents, and be someone people can rely on. Simple things. Almost innocent.

But as he continued reading, the smile disappeared.

Not because he had become a bad person. On the contrary. He had built a family, worked hard, succeeded, and done many good things. But suddenly he felt as though the boy he once was were sitting across from him and asking: what happened to us along the way?

When exactly did you stop learning the way you wanted to? When did you become so busy that you no longer have time to speak calmly with your children? When did you begin getting angry over things you once promised yourself would never matter to you? When did your parents become people you call “when there is time”? When did the life you built begin to distance you from the person you wanted to become?

The most unsettling part was that he had no answer.

There was no one day on which he decided: from today I am changing. There was no morning on which he woke up and said: I give up everything that once mattered to me. It happened slowly. Another burden, another postponement, another small concession, another “tomorrow,” another “I don’t have time now.” No single decision looked dramatic. But after thirty years he discovered that many small steps can create a very great distance.

Perhaps this is one of the questions Shabbat Shuvah places before us: is repentance always about becoming a new person, or is the deepest repentance sometimes about remembering the person I had already wanted to be?

In the Song of Haazinu, Moses says: “Remember the days of old; understand the years of generation after generation; ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will say to you” (Deuteronomy 32:7).

Notice the setting. Moses is at the end of his life. He is speaking to a generation that stands moments before entering the Land, before an entirely new future. And what does he tell them? Remember.

Before you run forward, look backward.

Rashi explains “Remember the days of old” as a call to remember what the Holy One, blessed be He, did in the earlier generations; and on “understand the years of generation after generation,” he adds another explanation: “You did not set your heart upon what passed” (Deuteronomy 32:7).

There is a phrase here worth stopping over: “You did not set your heart upon what passed.” A person can know what happened and still fail to set his heart upon it. One can remember facts without allowing memory to change him. Moses is not asking Israel for nostalgia. He is asking them to turn the past into a mirror.

That is exactly what Shabbat Shuvah can do for a person.

We are accustomed to thinking that self-examination begins with questions such as: what did I do this year? Where did I fail? What do I need to ask forgiveness for? Those questions are necessary. But sometimes there is a question that comes before them: who was I before I became so accustomed to being who I am today?

I do not mean that once we were perfect. Certainly not. There were weaknesses and failures in the past too. But almost every person has had periods when certain things were more alive inside him. There was a prayer that once touched him. There was a commitment he once took seriously. There was a lesson he would not miss. There was a certain sensitivity at home. There was a relationship with father or mother. There was the excitement of a beginning. There were things he told himself: on this I will not compromise.

Then life happened.

Not necessarily a major sin. Sometimes simply layers.

Work. Worries. Phones. Money. Status. Fatigue. Disappointments. Habits. Over the years a person may continue observing many things, yet something of the inner fire grows weaker.

Then Moses comes and says: “Remember.”

Do not ask only where you want to go. Also ask: what was once inside me that I was never meant to lose?

Perhaps that is why one of the most moving requests we say is: “Return us, Lord, to You and we will return; renew our days as of old” (Lamentations 5:21).

At first glance, there is a difficulty. We ask “renew,” and immediately say “as of old.” If we want renewal, why return to the old? And if we want what once was, what is new about it?

Perhaps because in the world of repentance, renewal and return are not opposites.

Sometimes the newest thing a person can do is return to an authentic truth he has forgotten.

He is not returning to being a child. He is not erasing thirty years of life. He is returning to that clean point, but now with all the maturity, experience, falls, and understanding he has acquired along the way. “Renew our days as of old” is not a request to turn the clock backward. It is a request to take from the past something we lost and bring it anew into the life we live today.

That is, in my eyes, one of the deep meanings of the word teshuvah. We do not say only “change.” We say “return.” There is somewhere to return to.

The prophet Malachi says: “Return to Me and I will return to you” (Malachi 3:7). The verse does not say: invent yourselves anew. It says: there was a relationship; there was closeness; it can be returned to.

I would therefore suggest that each person do a difficult exercise on this Shabbat. Do not begin immediately with a list of sins. Close your eyes for a moment and return to one point in your past when you were closer to something you want to be.

Perhaps when you were a yeshivah student. Perhaps in the first year of marriage. Perhaps when your first child was born and you promised yourself what kind of father you would be. Perhaps after a difficult period when you accepted something upon yourself. Perhaps there was a year when your prayer looked different. Perhaps there was a time when guarding your speech was a real battle. Perhaps when your parents were younger and you were sure you would always have time for them.

Now ask one question: what was there then that is not here now?

Not in order to long for the past. In order to bring something back.

There is a tremendous difference between nostalgia and repentance. Nostalgia says: “How beautiful it was once.” Repentance says: “If it was real then, something of it can live in me now.”

Perhaps this is one of the most difficult parts of self-examination. It is relatively easy to compare ourselves with others. We will always find someone we are better than and someone better than us. But there is one comparison we cannot escape: me against myself.

Not whether I am like someone else. Whether I am closer to or farther from the person I myself once knew I could become.

Do I pray today the way I once prayed? Do I speak at home the way I once imagined I would? Do I still have the same respect for Torah? The same sensitivity to another person? The same shame before wrongdoing? The same joy in a mitzvah? The same ability to be moved by something holy?

Sometimes the answer hurts.

But Shabbat Shuvah does not come only to cause pain. It comes to say: if you are capable of remembering, you are still capable of returning.

The past is not only an indictment. It is also evidence.

If you once managed to set a fixed time for Torah, that means it belongs to you. If you once knew how to pray differently, that heart is not foreign to you. If you once knew how to yield, forgive, restrain yourself, honor, guard, and make an effort, then there is within you a person who already knows that road.

Perhaps he is covered over. But he is not foreign.

That turns repentance from a frightening project into an entirely different movement. I do not need to build a human being from zero. I need to remove layers and return to a point I already know.

The sages describe in the Midrash a remarkable dialogue over the verse “Return us, Lord, to You and we will return.” The congregation of Israel says to the Holy One, blessed be He: Master of the universe, the beginning must come from You, “return us.” And the Holy One, blessed be He, responds: you too have a role, as it says, “Return to Me and I will return to you” (Eikhah Rabbah 5:21).

There is a meeting here. A person takes a step, and the Holy One, blessed be He, opens a path before him. We are not required to cross in one night the entire distance that accumulated over years. We are required to turn in the right direction.

That is why I would not leave Shabbat Shuvah with twenty resolutions. I would choose one thing that was lost along the way.

One thing that once lived in me and that I want to bring home again.

Perhaps a chavruta that disappeared. Perhaps a fixed phone call to a parent. Perhaps a few minutes of prayer without a phone and without rushing. Perhaps a way of speaking at home that once existed and was lost. Perhaps an old commitment that somewhere along the road I stopped fighting for.

Do not ask: how do I change my whole life now?

Ask: what do I bring back?

This can give new meaning to the words “Remember the days of old.” Moses tells us: a person without memory starts every day from zero. But a person who remembers can use his past to find the road again.

Perhaps this is what Shabbat Shuvah asks of us just before Yom Kippur. Do not open only the book of sins. Open also the inner album of the soul. Remember the moments when we were closer, cleaner, more willing.

Then ask ourselves the question that old letter asked the man with whom we began: what happened to us along the way?

But do not stop there.

The more important question is: what from what was lost along the road can I still take with me from here onward?

Repentance is not an attempt to erase everything that happened.

Sometimes repentance is precisely to remember.

To remember who I wanted to be. To remember what mattered to me before I became accustomed to other things. To remember prayers, promises, moments of truth. And from within that memory to say to the Holy One, blessed be He: “Return us, Lord, to You and we will return; renew our days as of old.”

Do not return me to being who I once was.

Help me return to who I am today the good things I was never meant to leave behind.