Akiva Society

The retrospective glance reveals that my undignified past and willful transgressions are not only consistent with, but they have actually propelled me toward, a future which I had not imagined. Actions I thought had most distanced me from G-d now bring me close to Him. Refined by the image of my ideal self, my past misdeeds, reclaimed as my own, shape my present so that they now have the power to help me realize an ideal future. I am no longer stuck with either obsessing about my past or abandoning it – both are choices of the nonintegrated self. Moving toward the future, the past recast in its light, my present is transformed. Through the power of teshuva transgressions become good deeds: they are the source of a new and altered life, and only through them, in the words of the prophet, do we live.