Day 10 - Back In Time

When I was a kid, I loved the movie Back to the Future. For those who don't know, the movie is about an adult scientist (Dr. Emett Brown) played by Christopher Lloyd, and a young high school student named Marty McFly played by Micahel J. Fox, who invents a time machine in the form of a De Lorean. Why a DeLorean?  As Doc Brown puts it in the movie: "The way I see it, if you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?" 

During the movie, they learn about the pitfalls of changing the past. It works out for them in the end, but it got me thinking; if Doc Brown came to me in a DeLorean, would I go back in time? What would I change? Would I go back and change all the times I was hurt, and/or when I hurt others? Would I change the past to avoid tragedy and heartbreak? 

The idea of returning, Shuv, is a key theme of the High Holy Days. 

There is a debate in the Jewish world as to when the High Holy day season actually begins. Most say it begins with Elul, but others argue that it begins in the previous month: Av, but more specifically, the ninth day of Av or Tisha B'av. The holiday of Tisha B'av is an international day of mourning for the Jewish people. On this day, we recall our greatest losses, losing Jews to antisemitic acts throughout our history in exile, but the greatest tragedy is the destruction of the two Holy Temples which, our tradition says, happened on the 9th of Av. In his book, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared*, Rabbi Alan Lew writes:

We can regard the ninth of Av and the weeks surrounding it as a cursed time (indeed, there is something of this idea in the prohibition of weddings during this period), or we can regard the ninth of Av as a time when we are reminded that catastrophes will keep recurring in our lives until we get things right, until we learn what we need to learn from them. Tisha B’Av comes exactly seven weeks before Rosh Hashanah, beginning the process that culminates on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Tisha B’Av is the moment of turning, the moment when we turn away from denial and begin to face exile and alienation as they manifest themselves in our own lives—in our alienation and estrangement from God, in our alienation from ourselves and from others. Teshuvah—turning, repentance—is the essential gesture of the High Holiday season. It is the gesture by which we seek to heal this alienation and to find at-one-ment: to connect with God, to reconcile with others, and to anchor ourselves in the ground of our actual circumstances, so that it is this reality that shapes our actions and not just the habitual, unconscious momentum of our lives.

Rabbi Lew says that Tisha B'av is, "a time when we are reminded that catastrophes will keep recurring in our lives until we get things right, until we learn what we need to learn from them." I am not sure I agree; unfortunately, as we have learned, there are many catastrophes that are out of our hands, and yet, we are in control of how we understand them in the context of our lives. If we can take a moment to gauge how we've grown through these catastrophic moments, perhaps we can understand how these tragedies made us stronger. 

Writing Prompt:

If you could go back in time to avoid a big mistake you made, what moment would you go to? Jump into the proverbial time machine and relive the moment by writing about it in as much detail as you can. What would you change about that moment? Looking back, knowing you cannot change the past, write about ways you grew positively through that experience. 

In tomorrow's post, we will talk more about the idea of Teshuvah, returning. 

*Lew, Alan. This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (pp. 41-42). Little, Brown and Company. 

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