Maybe you are asking forgiveness for the wrong thing

You can repaint a stain on the ceiling again and again. If the pipe above it keeps leaking, the stain will always return.

The same is true of repentance. We confess, regret and ask forgiveness - yet sometimes return year after year with the same list: the same anger, jealousy, hurt or habit.

Perhaps the action is real and needs repair, but it may also be a symptom. What keeps producing it? Under the anger, is there a need for control? Under the gossip, envy? Under procrastination, fear? Under the hurt, a hunger for honor?

If we treat only the stain, we can leave Yom Kippur with a white ceiling and the same leaking pipe.

When we reach a sin we have named for years, perhaps we need to ask: why am I here again? What root have I still not repaired?

Complete teshuvah is not only erasing the mark a problem left behind. It is finding the source that keeps feeding it.

What recurring mistake in your life might be a symptom of something deeper?

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One day a man discovered a large damp stain on the ceiling of his living room. He called a professional, who scraped the wall, dried it, applied material, repainted it, and the room looked excellent. A month later the stain returned. He called another professional, and again they repaired and painted. A few weeks later the stain appeared for the third time. This time a different professional came, looked at the ceiling for two minutes and said: “I can paint this ceiling ten more times, but your problem is not in the ceiling at all. There is a pipe on the floor above that keeps dripping. As long as you do not stop the leak, you are not fixing the problem. Each time, you are only erasing the mark it leaves behind.”

Think how frightening that sentence becomes when we bring it into the work of teshuvah. Perhaps there are sins whose stains we have been wiping away for years, while never shutting off the pipe that keeps producing them.

We arrive at Yom Kippur and say, “We have been guilty, we have betrayed, we have robbed, we have spoken slander.” We truly regret, truly ask forgiveness, and sometimes even truly cry. But another year passes and we arrive again with almost the same list. The same anger. The same lashon hara. The same jealousy. The same hurt. The same weakness. The same place where we promise ourselves that this year will be different.

And then we have to ask a question we may not enjoy asking: perhaps we are asking forgiveness for the wrong thing?

Not because the act is unimportant. Of course it must be confessed and repaired. But sometimes the act is only the stain on the ceiling. The real question is: where is the water coming from?

In Haazinu, Moses says: “They have corrupted themselves; the blemish is His children’s, a crooked and twisted generation” (Deuteronomy 32:5). The wording is difficult, but the verse contains a basic point. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra explains that the corruption and blemish are not in God, but in the children, in Israel themselves (Deuteronomy 32:5). Rabbi Ovadia Sforno similarly stresses that the damage comes from human beings who corrupted their own way (Deuteronomy 32:5).

The Torah does not stop with the description of a particular act. It says “their blemish,” and immediately afterward, “a crooked and twisted generation.” There is a damaged act, but sometimes behind the act lies a deeper distortion that also needs examination.

That is the difference between regret for an act and teshuvah that reaches the root.

A man shouted at his wife. An hour later he calms down, regrets it, apologizes and says, “I should not have spoken that way.” He is right. But perhaps that is only the first floor of teshuvah. The next question should be: why do I shout specifically when people do not do what I want? Maybe the deeper problem is not the volume of my voice but my need to control. Maybe it is difficult for me to accept that someone in my home thinks differently from me. Maybe I experience every disagreement as an injury to my honor.

If we do not touch that place, we can apologize for the shouting today and shout again next week.

A person spoke lashon hara. He studied the laws, regretted it, and resolved to be more careful. Excellent. But perhaps he must also ask: why did I enjoy telling that story so much? What did I get from it? When I lower another person, do I feel taller for a moment? Is there jealousy there? Competition? A need to prove that I am better?

Because if the jealousy remains, the mouth will have to fight it all over again every day.

A person is offended by everything. He tells himself that he has to work on anger. But perhaps anger is only the guard standing at the entrance to pride. As long as I am convinced that I deserve a certain kind of treatment, that everyone must speak to me in a certain way, and that no one is allowed to ignore me, every day will produce fresh reasons to become angry.

And this may be the punch-in-the-soul question of Shabbat Shuvah: for which sin have I already asked the Holy One, blessed be He, for forgiveness five, ten or twenty times because I never asked what inside me keeps producing it?

Maimonides defines teshuvah this way: “What is repentance? It is that the sinner abandon his sin, remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart never to do it again” (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:2). Notice that Maimonides is not satisfied with sorrow over the past. He speaks about directing oneself toward a future in which the act does not recur.

To get there, sometimes we have to go down to the root.

There is a person who accepts upon himself every year “not to get angry.” But what does that mean? What will he do the next time someone wounds his honor? What will he do when his child does not listen? What will he do when his plan falls apart? If he has never clarified what activates him, the resolution remains beautiful until the exact moment he truly needs it.

Rabbeinu Yonah of Gerona, when he lays out the foundations of teshuvah, speaks about regret, abandoning the sin and accepting change for the future, but he also demands that a person examine his ways and search for the damaged places within himself (Shaarei Teshuvah, Gate One). Real teshuvah is not only a sentence: “I will not do this again.” It is an investigation: why did I do it in the first place, and what has to change in me so that next time I will choose differently?

Here things become much more personal.

Sometimes a person thinks his problem is that he works too much. Maybe. But why does he work too much? Is everything truly necessary, or does he need to feel successful? Perhaps his sense of worth depends on people seeing how important he is and how much they need him.

A person thinks his problem is that he is constantly on his phone. But why can he not sit for five minutes without checking it? Maybe silence is difficult for him. Maybe the moment there is no outside stimulation, he meets thoughts he would rather avoid.

A person says his problem is that he does not pray with enough concentration. But perhaps the deeper question is: during the entire day, is the Holy One, blessed be He, present in his awareness? It is very difficult to spend a whole day as though I am managing everything alone and then enter the synagogue and press a button called “kavanah.”

A person says, “I need to be more patient with my children.” True. But perhaps the question is why every request from them feels to him like an interruption. Maybe because inside his head there is a plan according to which his time belongs to him, and the child enters into “his” time. If he understands that the child is not an interruption to life but part of life itself, patience will look different as well.

We like dealing with behavior because behavior is visible. But the Holy One, blessed be He, asks for the heart too. King Solomon says: “More than all that you guard, guard your heart, for from it flow the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). He does not say only “guard your actions,” but “guard your heart,” because “from it flow the issues of life.” Actions are not born in a vacuum. They have a source.

Perhaps that is one reason the confession on Yom Kippur is repeated again and again. Not because God did not hear us the first time. Perhaps we need to hear ourselves.

“For the sin we have sinned before You deliberately and unintentionally.”

“For the sin we have sinned before You through denial and falsehood.”

“For the sin we have sinned before You through lashon hara.”

Do not rush over the words.

When you reach a sin you know very well, do not ask only: did I do it?

Ask: what does it tell me about myself?

If again and again I hurt in the same place, perhaps there is something here I need to understand.

If I repeatedly fall when my honor is wounded, perhaps honor is the story.

If I repeatedly speak about other people, perhaps jealousy is the story.

If I repeatedly promise things and do not keep them, perhaps the problem is not memory but that I need everyone to like me and cannot say “no.”

If I repeatedly postpone important things, perhaps the problem is not that I have no time. Maybe I am escaping things that demand effort, responsibility or confrontation.

That is an entirely different kind of teshuvah.

Instead of saying only, “Master of the universe, forgive me for becoming angry,” a person can say: Master of the universe, help me understand why I need so badly for everything to go according to my will.

Instead of only, “Forgive me for speaking lashon hara,” one can ask: why does another person’s failure make me feel good? What is missing inside me that I fill by diminishing him?

Instead of only, “Forgive me for not being home enough,” one can ask: why does the whole world receive my patient and pleasant version, while precisely the people I love receive whatever is left of me at the end of the day?

That question strikes deep into the soul.

Why do the people I love most sometimes receive the least good version of me?

Perhaps because outside I am afraid of losing people, while at home I assume they will stay.

And if that is true, perhaps my teshuvah is not only to speak more gently. Perhaps I need to repair something deeper in my gratitude toward those who are always there for me.

This is what Shabbat Shuvah can do. Not merely add another list of transgressions we already know, but give us the courage to open the cover and ask where they are coming from.

There is a difference between a person who cleans a stain and a person who repairs a leak.

The first may work very hard.

The second may work less, but he changes the situation.

So before Yom Kippur I would suggest choosing only one recurring sin. Not ten. One. Something you are already tired of apologizing for.

Then do not ask only, “How do I stop?”

Sit with yourself and ask: what do I get from this behavior? What triggers it? When does it happen? What am I trying to protect? What trait lies underneath it? What fear? What pride? What jealousy? What need for honor?

The answer may not be pleasant.

But perhaps for the first time it will be an answer that reaches the right place.

On Yom Kippur we ask: “Our Father, our King, bring us back before You in complete teshuvah.”

Why do we say “complete teshuvah”?

One can hear in those words a prayer that teshuvah should not remain only at the edge. That we should not treat only the result and leave the source untouched. That we should not cry over the fruit while continuing to water the root that grows it.

Complete teshuvah is when a person is not satisfied with the question, what did I do?

He dares to ask: what in me did it?

Then he does not say only, “I regret the person I was yesterday.”

He begins building the person he wants to be tomorrow.

The man from the beginning could have painted the ceiling for the twentieth time. It would have looked white and clean for a few weeks. But behind the paint, the water would have continued to drip.

Perhaps that is the greatest danger on Yom Kippur: to leave with a white ceiling and the same leaking pipe.

To feel clean, become emotional, accept resolutions, and then discover the same stain again a month later.

This year, perhaps we should do something different.

When we reach an “Al Chet” we have known for years, we should not hurry on.

We should stop and ask:

Master of the universe, why am I here again?

Not why You have not forgiven me.

Why do I keep bringing You the same thing?

What have I not repaired?

What have I not touched?

Which root did I leave in the ground?

Perhaps precisely there begins the teshuvah we are looking for.

Because the Holy One, blessed be He, does not ask us only to repaint the places where our lives have been stained.

He gives us the opportunity to open the wall, reach the source of the leak and repair it.

On Yom Kippur, do not ask only for forgiveness for the stain.

Ask for the courage to find the pipe.