Rabbi Widzer's Library

I like to read signs.  Historical markers, public maps, informational signs, I like to read all of them.  Having lived in Boston, northern New Jersey, and northern Virginia, home to many episodes in our nation’s history, I have been known to pull off to the side of a road to read some sign about what happened right there.  And museums – if I had my way, I would spend hours in any museum, reading every word of every sign accompanying the exhibits (much to my children’s occasional chagrin).  Signs convey information and give you an historical account of what has been, so you can better understand it in the context of what is now, and what will be in the future.

This summer, I saw some of the best examples of how signs do this when Karen and I traveled to Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas, for the camp’s 50^th birthday.  Greene is one of the Reform movement’s Jewish summer camps – like Camp Harlam in our region, but for kids in Texas and Oklahoma.  Karen spent many summers at Greene as a camper and songleader, and I worked at Greene for three summers as a unit head.  Hundreds of people from across the decades attended the birthday celebration.  And the camp did something so clever with signs.  Over 50 years, some physical parts of camp had stayed the same, but much had changed as the camp grew, repurposed old buildings and spaces, and built new facilities.  To orient the returning alumni, signs were planted in various places all around camp with two lines of text.  The top line said:  “What is here now:” and named the current building or use of the space.  The bottom line on the sign said: “What used to be here:” and told what once had stood there or how the space had once been used.  The old kitchen in the back of the Dining Hall?  The sign said it now was the Beit Omanut Art Room.  The location of the double-wide trailers that had been staff housing?  Now just a grassy field.  And the sign by the new big, impressive Sports Complex that was only a grove of trees when I was last at camp, proclaimed “What used to be here: Nothing!”  The signs acknowledged the past, while pointing towards the future.  There was an explanation or understanding of the history, and a story of how it moved forward.

Contrast that with the recent efforts of the current administration in Washington to exert more control over what is displayed on signs in national parks, national monuments, or even in the Smithsonian museums.  Signs in Acadia National Park have been edited to remove content about Native American history.¹ The website for Stonewall National Monument in New York City no longer mentions transgender people, but refers only to the “LGB” movement.² Signs at Harper’s Ferry, where John Brown rebelled against slavery, have erased language referring to white Americans’ hostility to formerly enslaved people.³ The famous photo of an enslaved person’s back, covered in welts and scars from whippings, has been removed from a Civil War battlefield monument.⁴ And the Smithsonian museums have been subjugated to an order to “implement ‘content corrections’ where necessary, including replacing ‘divisive’ language.” President Trump has said he feels there is too much focus on “how bad Slavery was”⁵ in the museums.

On a small scale, as someone who loves signs, I am offended by this abuse of signage.  But, more importantly, I am aghast at these efforts to rewrite history, to deny what actually happened, to erase or discredit or ignore the facts of racism, bigotry, and hatred.  Those aren’t attractive parts of American history, but they are real.  And no amount of sign editing or removal of language changes the facts of what happened.  Here, in distinction from the signs at Greene Family Camp, the past is distorted or covered over.  These signs imagine a history that never was, so they cannot accurately point towards what the future ought to be. 

I will confess that I spend much of the summer in anticipation of the High Holy Days, so I couldn’t help but see a metaphor for teshuvah in this story of two types of signs:  the ones that acknowledge the past and move forward from it, and the ones that ignore or distort the past.

Teshuvah is usually translated as “repentance,” but the Hebrew also carries the valence of “turning” or “returning.”  Teshuvah is our goal for these High Holy Days.  It is turning away from what we have done wrong over the past year.  It is returning back to our better selves, the way we want to act and to be in the world, the way God wants us to act and to be in the world.  Teshuvah means ceasing to move forward on the path we are on and turning around or going in a different direction.  It is a spiritual change in course, one that we use these High Holy Days to do.

The 12^th century sage, Maimonides, outlined the basic steps of teshuvah.  You need to recognize what you have done wrong.  You need to take responsibility for your action, acknowledging the responsibility to yourself and to others.  You need to take steps to repair the situation. You need to take steps to grow and learn from the situation.  And when you find yourself in the same situation once again, you must make a different choice.⁶ 

This process of teshuvah is impossible to do if you deny what you did wrong in the first place, if you refuse to acknowledge the misdeed or distort it into something it is not.  You cannot truly repent for something if you deny that it ever happened.  You cannot correct your mistakes if you erase them and pretend that they do not exist.  The starting point of your teshuvah must be accurate.  Otherwise, you cannot do your spiritual turn-around.  Teshuvah starts with recognizing the truth of our past actions, what we did, how they hurt someone or caused other harm.  Only then can we move forward, pointed to a better future.  We cannot change our past.  We cannot undo what we have done.  But we can own up to it and, in doing so, move forward through the process of teshuvah.  This doesn’t change who we were when we did the wrong and what we did.  But it can change who we become and what we do going forward.  And it all begins with confronting our past as a necessary step of teshuvah, something each one of us must do. 

In contradistinction to how America has dealt haphazardly with its history of slavery, Germany, over the past 80 years, has done much to reckon with its societal sin of the atrocities of the Holocaust. Much has been written about their many acts of repentance.  One example of a particularly personal nature is a project of the German artist, Gunter Demnig.  Starting in the city of Cologne in 1992, Demnig has designed and installed small brass plates in cobblestone sidewalks to commemorate victims of the Holocaust.  In most cases, each plate is located at the last known address of the victim.  Engraved into the plate are the words, “Here lived …” and the name of the victim, their birthdate, and what happened to them, most often their date of deportation and date of death.  These markers are known in German as Stolpersteine, which literally translates as “stumbling stones.”  The miniature memorials (they are about 10 centimeters square) are inlaid in the sidewalks and intended to make pedestrians stop and confront the fate of the former residents.  It is a small but powerful way of acknowledging the past and, hopefully, influencing the future.  In the 33 years since the project began, it has expanded beyond Germany and includes other victims of the Nazis besides Jews.  To date, according to Demnig’s website, some 116,000 Stolpersteine have been installed in over 1,860 communities in 31 European countries, with the majority in Germany itself.⁷  Far from glossing over or editing out the uncomfortable parts of their history, the Stolpersteine compel the residents of the municipalities to reckon with the real lives of the real people commemorated.  This is not a complete fulfilment of the obligation of teshuvah in German society, but it is a necessary step: confronting the past to be able to move forward.

A memorial of a different kind was dedicated earlier this year in Rock Springs, Wyoming.  The town was founded in the 1860s as the railroads came through the area and opened coal mines.  As was common, an influx of immigrants of varying backgrounds provided the labor for the mines and the railroads.  On September 2, 1885, labor tensions between white and Chinese workers erupted and the white workers rallied a mob to destroy the Chinatown section of the city.  They murdered 28 Chinese workers, injured another 14, looted their homes, and burnt Chinatown to the ground.  Army troops were required to quell the riot.  The United States government ultimately compensated families of the victims to avoid an international incident, but a local grand jury refused to indict anyone for the attacks.  The massacre was among the earliest and most deadly anti-Chinese race riots of the time.  For more than a century, this history was hardly mentioned in town, not taught in its high school, and there was only a small marker installed at the site.  But that is changing.  This past summer, an archeological team from Grinnell College conducted a dig at the site of the massacre, unearthing a “burn layer” of artifacts that have helped historians understand the life of 19^th century Chinese migrants.  The attack is now included in the curriculum in the local schools.  And on Labor Day this year, marking the 140^th anniversary of the massacre, the town dedicated a 7-foot-tall bronze statute titled “Requiem,” depicting a Chinese immigrant standing defiantly in the ruins of Chinatown, holding a destroyed ceremonial dragon flag.  As the town’s website explains, “Striking a balance between solemn grief and the determination to forge ahead, the man cradles a ruined piece of the past while looking out towards the future.”  Descendants of the Chinese workers, those who still live in town and those from beyond, were invited to participate in the archeological dig and attend the memorial dedication.  The town website acknowledges that the “Rock Springs Chinese Massacre forever changed the story of our town and has continued to cast a long shadow on our history.”  But the town is committed to promoting “both understanding and healing.”  Acknowledging the truth of what happened is a necessary step in the town’s quest for teshuvah.⁸

It isn’t only countries or towns that reckon with their pasts as a way of moving forward. It’s important for individuals to do that, too.  In October 2021, late one night, a freshman on the University of Nebraska baseball team named Core Jackson drew a swastika on the dorm door of a Jewish student.  In speaking later of the incident, Jackson said he was “blackout drunk” when he did it and has no recollection of his actions.  When told what had happened, he says, “I felt like the worst person in the world.  I don’t want there to be any excuses for my actions.”  He paid a fine, did an online sensitivity training, and performed several hours of community service.  He later transferred out of Nebraska and finished his college years at the University of Utah.  In 2024, in his first interview with a scout from a professional baseball team, he voluntarily disclosed the incident.  His agent, who had not known about the swastika, insisted that Jackson call all 30 major league teams and inform them.  The agent also connected Jackson with a graduate student in the Holocaust education program at Yeshiva University, who designed a study course for the young ballplayer to understand the significance of the symbol and the history it evokes.  Jackson called all the teams and completed all the coursework.  “It wasn’t easy,” he said, “But it was part of growing up and understanding to take ownership of my actions.”   In August 2025, after many discussions with Jackson and within the organization, the New York Yankees drafted him and assigned him to one of its farm clubs.  Jackson doesn’t deny his past or cover it over.  Jackson acknowledges, “I think it’s important that it is part of my story. … I’m not the same person I was when that happened.”  He might not use the word teshuvah to describe what he has done, and there are additional steps he needs to take, but Jackson didn’t hide his actions.  He began with a stark acknowledgement of his past and then moved forward.⁹

Another individual example.  From the age of 14, Marc Borovitz was a thief, a con man, a gangster, and a drunk.  He kited checks, committed insurance fraud and armed robbery, stole from mobsters, and scammed his way from Cleveland to Los Angeles.  His addictions included gambling and drinking – he says as much as a gallon of whisky a day.  For twenty-plus years he lived this life, unreformed and unrepentant, including spending six years in and out of prison.  In his final year in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s prison in Chino, Marc began studying Torah with a local rabbi.  He was also visited in prison by Harriet Rossetto, a social worker devoted to helping Jewish criminals and recovering addicts.  When he got out of prison in 1988, unable to find work, he reconnected with Harriet and the small organization she had founded for Jewish addicts.  Marc joined the staff and the two together grew the organization into a 140-bed rehabilitation, recovery, and treatment center for Jewish users of drugs and alcohol, and other addictions.  Marc continued his Jewish studies, teaching at the center and leading Shabbat services.  As time passed, Marc and Harriet fell in love and got married.  And Marc ultimately enrolled in rabbinical school and was ordained a rabbi by the University of Judaism in 2000.  Marc wrote an autobiography of his journey called The Holy Thief.  And there is a documentary about Marc and Harriet’s work called “The Jewish Jail Lady and the Holy Thief.”  Far from denying or erasing his past, Marc leaned into it as a guide for his life’s work.  His knowledge of the path of crime and addiction helped him help others make the same turn off that path that he made.  And the name of the organization, the Jewish rehabilitation and recovery center where he recently retired as Rabbi Emeritus?  Beit T’shuvah, the House of Return.¹⁰

Our purpose on these High Holy Days is to do the hard work of teshuvah, to turn back from the erroneous paths we have taken, to return to our truest selves.  As Maimonides taught, there are many steps to that process.  And none of the examples I’ve mentioned have necessarily completed all of those steps.  From what I have been able to ascertain, Cole Jackson has not actually spoken to the person whose door he defaced.  I don’t think Rabbi Marc has spoken with and apologized to all of the victims of his years as a con man.  The town of Rock Springs is still searching for descendants of the massacre to be part of a restorative process.  And Germany’s teshuvah for the atrocities of the Holocaust faces generational backsliding.

And yet, as imperfect and incomplete as these examples of teshuvah may be, they can still be instructive for us on this Kol Nidrei night in how they began.  A couple of years ago, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg authored a book about teshuvah, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World.  She writes, “there is no repentance process without the naming of harm, without owning it.”  And she notes, “Starting the process with a confession of harm goes against many of our cultural and often individual instincts – to shift blame, to minimize the problem, to focus on our excellent and pure intentions, to put off an uncomfortable conversation to another day.”¹¹

As hard as it may be, acknowledging our past misdeeds is where our teshuvah must begin.  If the events of our lives are a series of museum exhibits with accompanying signage explaining what happened, we do no good by editing the text to gloss over what we have done wrong.  We cannot simply re-write our past and hope that that fixes our mistakes, repairs what we have broken, or restores those whom we have hurt. Teshuvah requires acknowledging what happened, what came before.  Only then can we go forward to the next steps in the process and make the spiritual turn-around we seek.  We should not and cannot change the past.  We must see it clearly and honestly if we want to change our future.

O God,

May the signs of our teshuvah always point us in the right direction.

May our turning help us find the way forward
by turning back to our truest selves,
back to those with whom we must make amends,
and back, ultimately to You.

May the sincerity of our teshuvah help us to be signed and sealed for a good new year.

And let us say, Amen.

¹ https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2025-09-25/acadia-national-park-removes-educational-signs-about-climate-change-indigenous-history
² https://www.npr.org/2025/02/14/g-s1-48923/stonewall-monument-transgender-park-service
³ https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/environment/national-park-service-signs-removed/?scope=anon.
⁴ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/09/15/national-parks-slavery-information-removal/
⁵ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-smithsonian-how-bad-slavery-was-review-museums-rcna225964
⁶ See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah.
⁷ See https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/; https://www.stolpersteine.eu/en/information/facts-and-figures; https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/germany_insideout/rhineland3.shtml; https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/feb/18/stumbling-stones-a-different-vision-of-holocaust-remembrance; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein.
⁸ See: https://www.rswy.net/departments/museum/help_support_the_requiem_sculpture.php; https://www.npr.org/2025/09/28/nx-s1-5519752/wyoming-town-erects-new-monument-to-violent-anti-immigrant-history;  https://891khol.org/a-wyoming-town-massacred-its-chinese-immigrant-workers-140-years-ago-this-summer-descendants-return-to-dig-for-the-chinatown-brn-layer/; https://www.intermountainhistories.org/items/show/276?_ga=2.69712086.757061339.1759075681-1128789433.1759075681; https://buriedchinatowns.sites.grinnell.edu/history/five-chinese-residents-of-rock-springs-wy-1880s-1990s-arcgis-storymaps/.
⁹ See https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6563252/2025/08/20/yankees-prospect-swastika-core-jackson-2025-mlb-draft/;  https://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/breaking-news/article/yankees-defend-drafting-player-who-drew-swastika-on-jewish-students-door-as-a-college-freshman-191213307.html; https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mlb/yankees-drafted-player-who-admitted-drawing-swastika-on-jewish-student-s-door/ar-AA1KThDg.
¹⁰See The Holy Thief by Marc Borovitz; https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Thief-Journey-Darkness-Light/dp/0060563796; https://www.rabbimark.com/; https://www.timesofisrael.com/film-tracks-the-match-made-in-prison-that-turned-a-convict-into-a-rabbi-on-a-mission/; and https://beittshuvah.org.
¹¹ Danya Ruttenberg, On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (Beacon Press, 2022), p. 26.