Shabbat Shuva: The Sabbath of Return

The name: Shuva or Teshuvah?

The day is usually called Shabbat Shuva, after Hosea 14:2. Many also call it Shabbat Teshuvah, “the Sabbath of Repentance,” because it falls during the Ten Days. Teshuvah (תשובה) comes from the same root as shuva: shuv, “to turn, to return.” In biblical Hebrew, repentance is a change of direction: turning back toward God.

The haftarah: Hosea, Joel and Micah

Hosea 14: “Take with you words”

The haftarah opens with the last chapter of Hosea (Hosea 14:2–10 in Hebrew Bibles; 14:1–9 in most English Bibles):

O Israel, return unto Hashem your God; for you have fallen by your iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to Hashem: say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.

Hosea spent his ministry describing Israel as an unfaithful wife and Hashem as a betrayed husband who still loves her. Here, at the end, he gives Israel the words to say. “Take with you words” means that no sacrifice is required to come back; an honest confession is enough. “The calves of our lips” (parim sefateinu) means that prayer takes the place of bulls on the altar. The rabbis drew on this verse when Israel had no Temple: prayer and confession are accepted in place of the offerings.¹

Hashem’s answer follows:

I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away from him. I will be as the dew unto Israel: he shall grow as the lily, and cast forth his roots as Lebanon.

The Talmud draws on the opening verse, “Return, O Israel, unto [ad] Hashem your God.” Rabbi Levi taught: “Great is repentance, for it reaches up to the Throne of Glory.” The word ad means “all the way to”: teshuvah does not stop partway.²

Why add Joel or Micah?

Hosea’s chapter ends on a warning: “for the ways of Hashem are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein” (Hosea 14:9). It is a custom not to end a prophetic reading on a harsh note, so communities add a passage from the next books in the collection of the Twelve Prophets. Customs differ:³

• Ashkenazim add Joel 2:15–27: “Blow the trumpet in Zion, sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly.” It moves from the fast to Hashem’s promise of restoration: “I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten” (Joel 2:25), and “My people shall never be ashamed” (Joel 2:26–27).
• Sephardim add Micah 7:18–20: “Who is a God like unto You, that pardons iniquity… You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea,” the same verses recited at Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah.
• Many Ashkenazi congregations today read all three: Hosea, Joel and Micah.

The Torah portion that week is Vayelech or Ha’azinu, from Moshe’s last days.

The Ten Days of Repentance

“Seek Hashem while He may be found”

Why should these ten days be especially suited to returning? The Talmud reads a verse in Isaiah:

Seek you Hashem while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near.

Isn’t Hashem always near? Rabbah bar Avuha answered that the verse refers to the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur,⁴ when, in the language of the three books, most people’s verdict is still open.

The liturgy marks the season. In every Amidah “the holy God” becomes “the holy King,” and short prayers are added asking to be remembered and written “in the book of life.” Selichot are said each morning, and Avinu Malkeinu after the Amidah on weekdays. Rambam records that during these days “all Israel” is accustomed to give more charity, do more good deeds and rise at night to pray.⁵

Repentance before creation

The Talmud lists seven things created before the world: the Torah, repentance, the Garden of Eden, Gehinnom, the Throne of Glory, the Temple, and the name of the Messiah.⁶ Hashem did not add teshuvah as a repair after the world went wrong; return was built into the plan before the first sin.

It is striking that the name of the Messiah is on the same list. Before creation, Hashem had prepared both the way back and the one who would lead it.

What teshuvah is: Rambam’s map

The most influential account of repentance in Jewish law is Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah (“Laws of Repentance”) in his Mishneh Torah. Chapters 2 and 3 apply most directly to this season.

Chapter 2: the steps of return

• Complete repentance (2:1). The highest repentance is when a person meets the same opportunity to sin, with the same strength and desire, and refrains because of repentance and not out of fear or weakness.
• What repentance is (2:2). The sinner abandons the sin, removes it from his thoughts, and resolves in his heart never to do it again. He also regrets what he did. And he must reach the point where “He who knows hidden things will testify about him” that he will not return to it. Then he confesses aloud.
• Confession without resolve (2:3). One who confesses in words but has not decided in his heart to abandon the sin is like someone who immerses in a ritual bath while holding a dead reptile. The immersion does not help until he lets go.
• The ways of the penitent (2:4). These include crying out to God in prayer, giving charity, keeping far from the sin, changing one’s name (as if to say, “I am a different person”), changing one’s deeds for the better, and even going into exile.
• The special time (2:6). Repentance and prayer are always good, but during the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur they are “even more beautiful and are accepted immediately,” as Isaiah 55:6 says.
• Sins against others (2:9–10). Yom Kippur does not atone for wrongs between people until the wrongdoer repays what he owes and seeks the other person’s forgiveness. The one wronged should not be cruel but should forgive readily, because forgiving is the way of the seed of Israel.⁷

Chapter 3: the scales

• The scales (3:1–3). Every person has merits and sins, weighed not by number but by weight, which only God can measure. Those in between are given from Rosh Hashanah until Yom Kippur; if they repent, they are sealed for life.
• Every act counts (3:4). Each person should see himself, and the whole world, as exactly balanced between merit and guilt. One more mitzvah may tip his own scales, and the world’s, toward merit. In the same passage Rambam gives his famous reading of the shofar: “Awake, you sleepers, from your sleep.”⁸

Rambam’s picture is demanding, yet hopeful: no one is beyond return, and one good act may matter for the whole world.

The rabbi’s great sermon

In many communities, especially Ashkenazi ones, the rabbi traditionally gave only two major sermons a year: one on Shabbat HaGadol before Pesach, and one on Shabbat Shuva. The Shabbat Shuva derashah wove together law, the week’s portion and the haftarah into a call to return, and many congregations keep the custom.⁹ Teshuvah was understood as a matter for the whole community, which needed to be taught as well as moved.

Yeshua’s call: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand”

Yochanan and Yeshua

Long before Rambam, the call of Shabbat Shuva echoed by the Jordan River. Yochanan the Immerser (John the Baptist) preached: “Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 3:2). Asked what to do, he gave practical answers: share your coat, do not overcharge, do not extort (Luke 3:10–14), what Rambam would call “changing one’s deeds.”

Yeshua began his own preaching with the same words:

From that time Yeshua began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

“Repent” in the Greek Gospels is metanoeite, “change your mind.” But Yeshua and Yochanan spoke as Jewish prophets in the tradition of Hosea, and the idea behind their call is the Hebrew shuv: turn around and come home. “The kingdom of heaven” is the rabbinic phrase for God’s reign (malchut shamayim), the same kingdom that Israel accepts on Rosh Hashanah. Repentance and the kingdom belong together. On Rosh Hashanah Israel crowns the King, and on Shabbat Shuva it is urged to live as His subjects.

The prodigal son as a teshuvah story

The best-known story of repentance in the Gospels is the parable of the lost son (Luke 15:11–32). A younger son demands his inheritance, wastes it in a far country and ends up feeding pigs. Then “he came to himself” and decided:

I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before you, and am no more worthy to be called your son.

The son prepares words, as Hosea told Israel to “take with you words,” and then gets up and goes. The father’s response exceeds his hopes:

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.

A rabbinic parable on Hosea 14 makes the same point. A king’s son had wandered a hundred days’ journey from his father. Friends urged him to return, and he said he could not; it was too far. His father sent word: “Return as far as you are able, and I will come to you the rest of the way.” So Hashem says to Israel, “Return unto Me, and I will return unto you” (Malachi 3:7).¹⁰ In Luke too, the father runs out to meet his son.

The parable’s older brother, who will not join the celebration (Luke 15:25–32), reminds us that those who stayed home need teshuvah too. The sages taught that “in the place where penitents stand, even the completely righteous cannot stand.”¹¹ The older brother had not yet learned that.

Teshuvah was not new in Yeshua’s teaching. He called Israel back along the road the prophets had laid out.

The prophetic horizon: Israel’s final return

Moshe’s promise

In Nitzavim, read just before Rosh Hashanah, Moshe promises that a day of return will come:

And shall return unto Hashem your God, and shall obey His voice… then Hashem your God will turn your captivity, and have compassion upon you, and will return and gather you from all the nations… And Hashem your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your seed, to love Hashem your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live.

In this passage shuv appears again and again: Israel returns to Hashem, and Hashem returns Israel’s captivity and returns to gather them. Repentance and redemption are tied together. In the end, Hashem Himself circumcises the heart, doing for Israel what Israel could not do alone. Jeremiah and Ezekiel describe the same thing as a new covenant and a new heart (Jeremiah 31:31–34; Ezekiel 36:24–28).

Hosea had foretold that “afterward shall the children of Israel return, and seek Hashem their God, and David their king; and shall fear Hashem and His goodness in the latter days” (Hosea 3:5).

Repentance and redemption in the sages

The sages held that repentance brings redemption closer. Rabbi Yonatan taught: “Great is repentance, for it brings the redemption near,” citing Isaiah 59:20, “And the Redeemer shall come to Zion, and unto them that turn from transgression in Yaakov.”¹² In the Talmud’s discussion of the end of days, Rabbi Eliezer says: “If Israel repents, they are redeemed.”¹³ The same passage warns against calculating the date of the end. Teshuvah is Israel’s part in preparing for redemption; the timing belongs to Hashem.

Peter’s call in Jerusalem

The disciples of Yeshua preached the same message. Standing in the Temple courts, Peter (Kefa) told the people of Jerusalem:

Repent therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and He shall send Yeshua the Messiah, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.

“Be converted” means “turn back,” the same idea as shuv. Peter follows the pattern of Deuteronomy 30 and of the rabbis: return, refreshing, restoration. Paul expresses the same hope: “And so all Israel shall be saved: as it is written, There shall come out of Zion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Yaakov” (Romans 11:26, citing Isaiah 59:20). He adds that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance” (Romans 11:29): Hashem does not change His mind about Israel.

Shabbat Shuva therefore looks beyond one person’s repentance to the day when all Israel returns, Mashiach ben David comes to Zion, and the nations join themselves to Hashem.

Keeping Shabbat Shuva

See our calendar for this year’s date. Some general suggestions:

• Keep Shabbat as Shabbat. It is not a fast day. Its joy is itself a sign of trust that the King is also a Father.
• Read the haftarah of Hosea 14 with Joel 2:15–27 and Micah 7:18–20, and read them aloud with your household.
• Take words with you. Write down specific things you need to turn from, and specific people you need to make peace with before Yom Kippur. Saying them plainly is the first step.
• Study and listen. Read Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah chapters 2–3 or Luke 15, and hear the sermon if your community gives one.
• Seek forgiveness and forgive. Use the days before Yom Kippur to go to people you have wronged, and to release those who have wronged you.
• Pray for Israel’s return and for the coming of the Redeemer to Zion.

Shabbat Shuva, near Tzom Gedaliah and before Yom Kippur, is a quiet Sabbath with a clear message: the way home is open, and the Father is watching the road.