Teshuvah: Created Before the World
Rabbeinu Yonah opens Shaarei Teshuvah by stating that among the greatest acts of kindness G-d bestowed upon His creatures was the preparation of a path for them to rise up from their sins. This path—teshuvah—was created before man, before creation itself. As the Talmud teaches, teshuvah is one of seven things created prior to the world. It is not an afterthought, nor a reaction to sin, but a metaphysical necessity without which the universe could not stand.
The Structure and Depth of Teshuvah
Teshuvah operates in levels. It is not an all-or-nothing process. Each sincere step a person takes has real spiritual impact. Rabbeinu Yonah compares teshuvah to laundering a garment: even light washing removes some impurity, while deeper cleaning restores full purity. Similarly, the soul is cleansed in proportion to the depth of return.
According to the Talmud (Yoma 86a), one who repents out of fear transforms deliberate sins into unintentional ones. One who repents out of love transforms them into merits. This radical transformation is only possible because teshuvah is not part of the natural order—it precedes it.
Teshuvah Transcends Nature and Time
Nature operates through laws, including the unidirectional flow of time. One cannot change the past. Teshuvah, however, allows a person to retroactively transform past actions. This is possible only because teshuvah belongs to a dimension beyond time, beyond creation.
That is why no angel governs teshuvah. It is not entrusted to any celestial being, but remains under the exclusive authority of G-d, the One who created it. As the Maharal explains, teshuvah reaches the Kisei HaKavod—the Throne of Glory—because that is the origin of the soul itself.
Renewal Through Water and Spirit
Immersion in water, particularly before Yom Kippur, symbolizes returning to the state of potential that existed before creation. Sefer HaChinuch explains that immersion is a reenactment of the world’s original state—entirely covered in water—before man existed. Just as a convert emerges from the mikveh as a new being, so too one who returns with sincerity is spiritually re-created.
Rabbi Ben Porat emphasizes that this is not a metaphor. According to the Maharil and halachic tradition, the ba’al teshuvah becomes like a newborn—ketinok shenolad. The comparison to a convert is not poetic; it reflects a new existential status.
The Soul’s Return to Its Source
The essence of teshuvah is returning the soul to its original place beneath the Throne of Glory. As the Ramban writes, man is distinct from all other beings because G-d Himself breathed the soul into him—Vayipach be’apav nishmat chayim. To return in teshuvah is to realign oneself with that divine breath, to re-establish the bond with one’s Creator.
The Maharal states that the greatness of teshuvah lies in its capacity to bring a person back to the point of origin—to the place from which his soul was carved. This is the true meaning of “return”: to come back not to moral behavior alone, but to one’s very source in the Divine.