An interesting person in Jewish history was King Menashe — interesting, that is, in a negative sense. He was the son of King Chizkiahu, and one of his early acts was to kill his grandfather, the prophet Yeshayahu. This set the tone for his future actions, which included desecrating the Temple by extinguishing a flame which had been lit there by King Solomon. He also became involved in various pagan cults, and built a monstrous idol which he brought into the Temple.
In his old age, according to a Midrash, he started feeling aches and pains, which he tried to cure by means of various forms of worship. Finally, he remembered a passage from the Nitzavim that his father had read to him as a child: “When all these things befall you — the blessing and the curse that I have set before you — and you take them to heart amidst the various nations to which Hashem your God has banished you, and you return to Hashem your God … then Hashem your God will … take you back in love” (Devarim 30:1-3).
“Well,” he thought, “the Jewish faith is worth a shot. I’ll see if it helps my pains, and, if not, I’ll know it’s no better than all these pagan cults I’ve been dabbling in.”
So thinking, he engaged in prayer to Hashem. The angels in Heaven were furious at this attempt at Teshuvah by such a wicked man, and closed all the windows to Heaven, so that Menashe’s prayer could not enter.
God pleaded with the angels, but they refused to open the windows, and so Hashem (allowing the angels to have their way) hewed out an tunnel beneath the Heavenly Throne, so that Menashe’s prayer could enter Heaven (Talmud Yerushalmi; see also Sanhedrin 102b).
We might have thought, like the angels, that such Teshuvah is not worth much. Leaving aside Menashe’s wickedness, the provisional nature of this teshuva does not impress: if it cured his headache, fine, he’d stay with it, otherwise he’d go back to his idol worship. This is hardly what we would call wholehearted penitence! Yet, it was enough for Hashem to carve out a channel to receive Menashe’s prayer!
The best kind of Teshuvah is, certainly, the wholehearted kind. But that that is not the only kind.
There is a lesson here for us all. Many of us are afraid to make a commitment to a permanent change in lifestyle. “Permanent” is a very big word. Perhaps we would do better to make a less permanent commitment, yet a very real one.
The point is that the further one goes in Torah observance, the greater one’s yetzer hora (evil inclination) becomes, so as to maintain a balance. A year’s worth of commitment brings with it a year’s worth of yetzer hora, while one day’s worth of commitment at a time will bring with it just one day’s worth of yetzer hora. So we should decide: “Today I’ll do (or won’t do) such-and-such. Tomorrow is tomorrow.”
There is a lesson for us in Menashe’s teshuva. Don’t worry about the weeks and months to come, and whether you’ll be able to stick to your high ideals in the year ahead. The Siddur knows we cannot! Three minutes after the end of the Yom Kippur service, we are once again davening the Shmoneh Esrei of Maariv, including a prayer for forgiveness, even before we’ve had any significant chance to sin!!
This year, on Yom Kippur, let us all stand tall as people and as Jews, and decide at least to make the attempt at teshuva, one step at a time, one day at a time.
