Handing back the Polish Torah through the back door.

Can we correct past behaviors in gentle, heart opening ways? Do our hearts really have to be broken?

The Polish family who yesterday handed their Torah beck to the jews provides an interesting illustration of how hard it is to get out of a long established pattern, and how we can help each other do that.

Recently found polish torah:
Two University of Warsaw students, Joanna Kopacka and Bartek Krzyżewski are coordinators of the Matzeva Project. As part of the team’s tactics, they go door-to-door asking residents if they have or know where there are gravestones in small Polish towns such as this northern village called Filipów.
There, an elderly couple in its late 70s was approached. The husband, Kazimierz Wróblewski, a retired shepherd, denied knowledge. But his wife suggested he show the students the Jewish item they did have.
Wróblewski lifted cushions from a couch and revealed a brown-paper wrapped Torah scroll that had been hidden there since 1939 when the Jewish population of approximately 280 was deported and murdered.
The next door neighbors of the Wróblewski family were religious Jews who before deportation had asked his father to keep the Torah scroll safe, for them until they returned home – but that if they did not, to transfer it to another Jew. The couple did not come across many Jews in post-war Poland, and it was only now, in 2014, that they found the right party to transfer the scroll to - Mi'amakim Director Johnny Daniels, who brought the scroll to Israel this week
Wróblewski was ashamed of keeping the scroll and only allowed Daniels’ organization to enter and remove it under wraps, through the back door. His wife, upon learning it would be taken to Israel, said she strongly supports the country and asked the organization to send her earth from the Holy Land.
The scroll’s condition is dire: Half of the Torah was used by the family over the past 70 years as rags, including as insoles for shoes. The Wroblewski family denied knowing that it was a sacred book. (Adapted from the Times of Israel)

I have a hard time believing they really didn’t know it was a sacred book. Why were they ashamed of keeping the scroll, asked organization to take it out through the back door? Why didn’t they find somewhere to donate the scroll after the war, write a letter? If they had this scroll in their couch for 70 years, did it never occur to them to contact someone?

My guess is: They were probably ashamed that they had not done anything with it, and the longer they kept it, the stronger their shame, and the harder it was to overcome that shame and do anything about it.

We become sunk in our patterns, and the deeper we become sunk, the harder to extricate ourselves.

Rambam writes about Pharoah (Hilchot Teshuvah 6:3) that:
“it is possible for someone to commit so heinous a sin or so many sins of his own volition and free will that the True Judge would rule that the only fitting punishment would be to withhold teshuvah from him, and not to grant him permission to do teshuvah”

The way I understand this is that our patterns can get so ingrained, it becomes impossible to get out of them, like a gutterball in a bowling alley: when you roll a bowling ball, it can wobble from side to side, but once the bowling ball is in the gutter, it just can’t get out.

There’s another story from the Ba’al Shem Tov, also about doing escaping a deeply engrained habit.

“The storytelling yid” (shlomo’s stories 3-11)
When Baal Shem tov died, assigned jobs to students
Reb Yankele: go around world telling stories about BeSht.
How long do I need to leave home?
You will know when your job is done

Sienna Italy: heard of rich man who paid 50 lira for every story about BeSht!
Yankele: great! I know thousands! This is it, now I’ll be able to retire
Goes to the yid, yid pleased, invites him for shabbes
Every meal: yankele can’t remember any stories
Havdalah: yankele apologizes, yid gives him a few hundred liras & says goodbye

Sunday morning, on his way out, yankele remembers a story, writes it down
Goes to yid, tells him the story
Story: besht travelled to city with terribly despotic bishop who had a plan to incite everyone to kill the jews
Before bishop’s speech, besht summons bishop[ to an audience
Bishop spends a few hours with besht, buishop leaves in tears, doesn’t give the speech

Yid: do you recognize me?
I was the bishop,
I was a poor jew, converted to Christianity to improve my lot
had to prove myself as a Christian by being as murderous as possible
I asked teshuvah to davven for me in heaven
Besht told me: teshuvah accepted when someone comes & tells you today’s story
Shabbes: you forgot stories—I realized my teshuvah hadn’t been accepted!
All last night I cried, totally broken hearted
Now I know my teshuvah has been accepted


How do we do teshuvah for such profoundly ingrained sin?

Baal Shem tov: regret must be as deep as the pain we caused
“there is one key that opens all locks: a hammer. A broken heart opens all the gates of heaven.”
Rambam HT 1:5: publically declare your teshuvah: “Anybody who is too proud and doesn’t publicize his sin but covers up their sin has not completely repented”
This is why pharaoh couldn’t do teshuvah—never really regretted

But the polish torah situation offers a different model of teshuvah
Teshuvah by sweeping things under the rug, or ushering them out the back door
They were too embarrassed to come out & do the right thing with the torah
Not so bad to open the door to teshuvah, letting them come right by taking it out through the back door,

I think this isn’t such a bad model: do we have to have our past rubbed in our faces? Can’t that hurt rather than help? It seems to me that we don’t respond well to having our past rubbed in our faces; it can be more effective as a gentle process. It also seems to me that perhaps the need to have a broken heart becomes an impediment to teshuvah.

Can we make teshuvah easier on ourselves?
Can we correct patterns that are so ingrained, we don’t see a way out?
Can we correct patterns of hurting others, that if we admitted it would be so overwhelmingly embarrassing, we can’t admit it to ourselves.
Can we put aside our pride and admit where we have hurt others.

Can we make teshuvah easier on each other?
When somebody hurts us, do we demand a broken heart, or can we let them make it better, can we help them make it better?