OPINION | Reflections for a New Year

by Danielle Marie Holland

As Jews enter the first of the high holidays of Judaism, Rosh Hashanah, many prepare for the 10 Days of Repentance, or, Asseret Yemei HaTeshuvah. During these 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews reflect, atone, and practice teshuvah.

"The Hebrew term teshuva is a derivation of the Hebrew root for returning," writes Samuel J. Levine, "highlighting the purpose and dynamics of a process through which humans are able to renounce and repair the improper actions that have led them astray, thereby returning to God and to their own true selves."

Teshuvah is a comprehensive practice, not a general or vague quest for forgiveness from another. While I have certainly received a phone call in my past consisting of, "Hey, if I happened to harm you this past year, sorry about it!", teshuvah is actually a full process of accountability. It calls for responsibility and commitment to change. To me, it is the work of transformative justice.

In We Will Not Cancel Us, writer and activist adrienne maree brown, asks key questions essential to the hard and intimate work of world-building accountable communities. Questions essential to how we exist in relation to conflict and trauma, how we exist in relation to one another without those conflicts and traumas as our center. Engaging in transformative justice begins with getting really curious. brown asks,

• Can we hold each other, as the systems that weaken and distort our humanity crumble?
• Can we release our binary ways of thinking of good and bad in order to collectively grow from mistakes?
• Can we be abolitionist with each other?
• Can we be principled and discerning in movement conflict?

These are not just questions that apply to those in movement or organizational spaces. These are questions that are certainly as, if not more, important in our family structures and the many various communities we regularly move through.

Jewish humor is no stranger to irony, so of course when I sat down to write this piece I received a call from my son's school. He had behaved and acted in a manner that led to the physical harm of a classmate. Fresh into middle school and right before the start of Rosh Hashanah! The many feelings and sensations that coursed through my body as I headed to his school to pick him up early.

It took time for me to process my own narratives and learned responses that I felt in those moments. The anger I felt that my son would do something so thoughtless. The pressure I felt, the pressure that many a single parent has felt, that your child's mistake is your complete failure as a parent. To end cycles of bouncing between binary ways of thinking requires ongoing deep work in shifting your very way of being.

In my childhood household, mistakes or bad behavior were most often met with the types of punishment that produced an environment of fear. Through my earliest years, I learned a defensiveness that I wasn't even cognizant of until a friend in college compassionately made me aware. That space growing up didn't lend itself to accountability, honesty, or connection — all things I wish to foster and nurture in my own household as a parent.

I try my best to create spaces not only to make mistakes but to grow from them. Not just for my child, but for myself as well. As my son and I returned home, together we sat in reflection. The first stage of teshuvah is to review. For one to be able to say clearly, "This is what I did", without caveats or defensiveness, without excuses or rationalizations. This is the first step to being accountable in community, and it is a bold step in a world full of boilerplate or nonexistent apologies.

The second stage is regret. I can't stomach the idea of some YOLO life of no regrets. I want to live a life that is reflective and ever-evolving, and I wish that for my child as well. There are many things I have said and done or haven't said and haven't done over my years that come with deep regret. This is how we learn. Discomfort and distress have guided my change and growth. Regret helps inform how we nurture a practice of care, a practice of deep consideration and compassion for others.

The third step is renouncing, which is quite a grand word to occupy my rather secular day-to-day. What a proclamation! And yet — what an important question to ask — what will you renounce? Will you renounce harming a peer? Renounce looking away when someone is in need? Renounce one's complicitness in oppressive systems? To renounce is a lifelong, ever-moving practice. It requires resolve and radical attention.

The fourth step is reconciliation. I could easily conjure up a list of those who I feel I am owed accountability and an apology from. While I may never get any of those things, they do inform how I view reconciliation. How I understand a true apology. Specificity. To authentically address the harm you caused — specifically. To listen to the person or people or community you have harmed, and from that listening, to then identify how you plan to move forward.

This moving forward brings us to repair. In Judaism, the concept of tikkun olam means to repair the world. In my youth, I understood this to be volunteering, charitable giving, or planting trees. Now I think of repairing as some of our most difficult work. Of repairing our most intimate and immediate spaces. The work within. Being principled and discerning of how you will hold space with others, of what it means to be in good relations. Repair requires your commitment to changing a way of being — and a plan to do so.

Which brings us to resolve. A commitment requires showing up daily to practice it. It requires a complete resolve. Restorative or transformational justice is not the status quo in our society. Resolving to imagine a new way of being, resolving to being in a new way of being — this is a muscle we must learn to use and strengthen. It requires willing participants. It requires accepting when that is not the time, or not the case for another, but resolving to do the action and the work anyhow.

My son and I were able to sit down with the family of the student he had harmed, and by all blessings, they held the space with us for accountability. For repair, resolve, and friendship. What a learning opportunity in preparation for this holiday. What a learning opportunity for this lifetime.

To all — shana tova.

The South Seattle Emerald is committed to holding space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing perspectives do not negate mutual respect amongst community members.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints of the Emerald or official policies of the Emerald.

Danielle Marie Holland is an essayist, transformative writer, and podcaster. Danielle is a regular contributing writer at Parents Magazine, and her work has been published in DAME, Insider, Rewire News Group, and beyond. Her book The Body Still Remembers is forthcoming via Hinton Publishing.

📸 Featured Image: Photo via Iakovleva Daria/Shutterstock.com