We find ourselves in the month of Elul- A month in Jewish
history marked by reflection and repentance. Our focus should be on more than
just crossing misdeeds off our lists from the past year, but to really change
our natures to better ourselves for the year to come. It’s a long and difficult
process that is no doubt riddled by frustration (no pun intended). At some
point in this process we may, like many others, come to a point where we
believe that the areas in which we need improving are so deeply ingrained
within us or have become such a comfortable habit that changing is impossible.
It’s times like these that we need a role model. Someone who was worse off,
from an earlier age, and then repented in a complete and indefinite manner. I’m
talking, of course, about Severus Snape.
Old Snivilus had bigotry deeply seeded within him for as
long as we know him. As just a young boy, before he arrived at Hogwarts, before
he could have been influenced by those around him (he grew up in a muggle
community, and his mother married a muggle. He had no pure-blood supremacists
to influence him) he already felt that wizards were better than muggles. And by
extension, muggle-borns were inferior. When Lily asks him whether or not it
makes a difference that she was from a muggle family, he hesitates and says no
only because of how fond he is of her. We see on the Hogwarts Express his
affinity for Slytherin, and by his fifth year he knows that he wants to become
a Death-Eater upon leaving school. Sirius tells Harry about Snapes affinity for
curses, and when we see him fight James in the fifth, James’ spells were embarrassing
but harmless. Snape struck blood on his first chance.
Then Snape hit rock bottom. He realized that the cruelty of
his ways may cause him to lose the single most important thing in his life. He
runs to Dumbledore and is subsequently put through what should be, to us, a
familiar three step process. On Dumbledore’s instructions Snape admits all that
he had done wrong. He admits to working for Voldemort and that he informed his
master of the prophecy he overheard. Snape then admits guilt. Dumbledore asks him if he is remorseful, and
he responds that he’d rather be dead. Lastly, Dumbledore makes him renounce his
ways, and he agrees.
Coincidentally, we see the same exact three step process in
Rambam’s Hilchot Tshuva (laws of repentance). In Elul we should feel that we
have hit rock bottom, and that our ways are causing us to lose the most
important thing in our lives, our closeness to god. We must run to Hashem and
go through a three step process. Rambam
says the first step is admission. To start the process of returning we need to
acknowledge all that we have done wrong. The second step is regret. After
saying what we’ve done we still must express remorse over our actions. The
final step is to renounce our past ways for the future. As if Dumbledore were
reading the next chapter of the Rambam, he immediately gave Snape a mission. He
has Snape come before Voldemort, as he had done before, but this time he’d be
working for Dumbledore and correcting what he did wrong. Rambam describes that
the ultimate form of repentance is being in the same situation in which you had
made your mistake and acting correctly.
Of all the things we can take from Snape, I think the most
important one is one that he did not chose to do rather was forced upon him. Even
after Snape crosses over to Dumbledore’s side, he still has the dark mark. It’s
a constant reminder of who he used to be that he holds with him as he grows.
Even though we repent one year, and even though we were supposed to feel as if
we were completely forgiven we still need to do more repentance for the ways we
renounced the previous year. Like Snape we’re supposed to carry our mistakes
with us as we move forward to gain a better understanding of why what we did
was wrong to enhance our growth process and connection to Hashem.
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