Across the Sea
There are distances between people that can feel impossible to cross.
A careless word. A betrayal. An argument that went too far. Something we should have said and didn’t. Something we did say and desperately wish we could take back.
Sometimes the distance appears all at once. Sometimes it grows quietly over months or years. But eventually we can look across the space between ourselves and another person and wonder how we could possibly get from here to there.
It can feel like an ocean.
This week, as we stand on the threshold of the High Holy Days, we read Nitzavim-Vayeilech (Deuteronomy 29:9–31:30). Moses is nearing the end of his life. Israel is preparing to cross into the land without him, and Moses knows that the story ahead will not be simple.
In fact, the Torah is remarkably unsentimental about what comes next.
The people will fail.
They will turn away. They will experience the consequences of their choices. Earlier in Nitzavim, Moses even imagines exile and a devastated land. By Vayeilech, God tells Moses plainly that after his death the people will stray.
This is not a Torah portion about human perfection. It is a Torah portion about what happens after we discover that we are not perfect.
And right in the middle of that story, Moses speaks about return.
The Hebrew root ש־ו־ב — shuv appears again and again in Deuteronomy 30: you will return; God will return; you will turn back and listen (Deuteronomy 30:1–10). It is the same root from which we get the word תשובה — teshuvah.
We often translate teshuvah as “repentance,” but the word itself means something more elemental:
Return. Turn around. Come back.
And then Moses says something extraordinary about the commandment before them:
“It is not in heaven…”
And:
“It is not beyond the sea…” (Deuteronomy 30:12-13)
You do not need someone to ascend into heaven to retrieve it. You do not need someone to cross the sea and bring it back.
כִּי־קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד
Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od.
“The thing is very close to you.”
Where?
“In your mouth and in your heart, to do it.” (Deuteronomy 30:14)
I keep coming back to that image of the sea. Because when something has broken between two people, we often experience the distance between us exactly that way. The other person seems to be standing on a distant shore.
And so we begin imagining what would have to happen over there before anything could change over here.
If only they understood what they did. If only they apologized. If only they forgave me. If only they would change. If only I could somehow make them understand.
And some of those things may genuinely need to happen before a relationship can be repaired. Teshuvah does not ask us to pretend that harm isn’t real. It doesn’t guarantee reconciliation. It doesn’t require us to restore every relationship to what it once was.
There really can be an ocean between us.
But perhaps Nitzavim asks us to reconsider where we have been looking for the beginning of the way back.
It is not across the sea. The beginning of teshuvah isn’t located on somebody else’s shore.
It is karov eilecha me’od. Very close to you. In your mouth. In your heart. To do it.
That last phrase matters. Because teshuvah is not simply feeling sorry. It is not wishing the past had happened differently. It is not waiting for someone else to make the first move.
Maimonides asks, “What is complete teshuvah?” His answer is demanding: when we encounter the same situation again, with the same ability to make the same wrong choice, we choose differently.א
The proof of teshuvah is not simply how badly we feel about yesterday. It is what we do when tomorrow gives us another choice.
That means the distance between two people may remain enormous even after teshuvah has begun.
Recently, I’ve been creating a little community of cartoon characters on Instagram to help explore Jewish ideas. If you’ve been following along this week, you may have already met Susan and Shoshanah.ב Their story can help us imagine this.
Susan said something she couldn’t take back. Shoshanah was hurt, and instead of staying in the discomfort of what she had done, Susan walked away. The longer she walked, the greater the distance between them seemed to become.
The most important moment isn’t necessarily when they finally stand together again.
It is the moment one of them stops walking away.
She looks back. She turns. She takes one step in the other direction.
The distance hasn’t changed much at all. But something fundamental has.
Distance is measured in miles. Return is measured in direction.
You can be very far from someone and facing toward them. You can be standing beside someone and facing completely away.
Our own history knows something about distance. The Jewish people have carried Torah across lands and seas Moses could never have imagined, even here, eventually, to Mississippi. Geography can place us very far from where we began. But teshuvah asks a different question—not how far away we are, but which direction we are facing.
The beginning of the way back is already on the shore where we stand.
We do not have to cross an ocean before we can turn. We do not have to wait for someone on the other shore to move first. We do not have to ascend into heaven to discover what God expects of us.
Ki karov eilecha hadavar me’od.
It is very close to us.
In our mouths.
In our hearts.
And then Torah adds the words that prevent all of this from remaining merely beautiful:
לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ
La’asoto. (Deuteronomy 30:14)
To do it.
Perhaps that is where teshuvah begins.
Not when the distance disappears. Not when everything has been forgiven. Not when we finally arrive home.
But in that quiet moment when, however far away we may have wandered, we stop.
We turn.
And we take the first step back.
,שבת שלום
Student Rabbi Ben
References
א. Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 2:1.
ב. Ben Russell, “Susan and Shoshanah,” Instagram, 2026. https://www.instagram.com/p/DcxEu6mDTIq/.