There are four steps to the teshuva process, so we can devote each of the weeks until Rosh haShanah to one of those steps. The first step is hakkarat hahet, the recognition of sin. Although that might seem obvious, we will spend this sheet realizing that the process of recognizing sin is more complicated than it might at first seem. At the simplest level, recognizing sin means that we know and can identify the things that we do wrong. If we neglect to put on tefillin in the morning, if we insult God by chatting idly when we are supposedly addressing the Divine, if we keep Shabbat poorly, if we speak ill of others, recognizing sin involves candidly admitting to those flaws in our religious persona.

Human powers of self-justification, rationalization, and defensive thinking being what they are, it might easily be argued that this is in fact the hardest step of teshuva to accomplish. To give an example, try to list the sins you commit towards your family members (parents, spouses, siblings, children) on a regular basis. Remember that, for now, we are only making the list, not taking action in response to it. If you can make such a list, then you've already begun the road to teshuva for those sins; many of us, I suspect, could not really make such a list, because we convince ourselves that we do not sin towards those relatives our actions are really justified, for whatever reason, and therefore not sinful.

While family relationships provide a useful example, this same process of self-justification probably also affects other religious areas as well. Perhaps a God-focused example will help strengthen the point. Do you learn enough Torah? The vast majority of us should probably answer no. If we really considered the time constraints in our lives, we could almost definitely find more time for Torah study, and, perhaps more importantly, could devote greater mental energy to that study in the time we devote to it. In that sense, then, we are all guilty of some level of neglect of Torah. The insult dealt to Torah through out neglect, the Mishnah tells us, leads God to daily cry out in sorrow.

I could expand the list of sins we need to recognize many times over, both in our actions towards others and in the more clearly God-centered aspects of religion, but I think the basic point is clear--there are numerous actions we take on a regular basis that are actually sinful. True hakkarat hahet involves admitting their sinful character, beginning to allow ourselves to admit and to experience our fundamental sinfulness. Recognizing that state of our being becomes important preparation for the next steps of teshuva.

While admitting the sinfulness of actions that we would tend to rationalize is one kind of hakkarat hahet, realizing that there may be problems we never knew of is another. With all due respect to our day school educations, there are many areas of halakhah that were never covered; if we did not hear of those from a rabbi, teacher, parent, colleague, or from our own study, we would never realize that it was sinful. Ignorance would perhaps mean that all such sins are considered unintentional, but they still require teshuva. Rabbenu Yonah, in fact, suggests that teshuva for such sins is more difficult than purposeful transgressions, since we tend to excuse ourselves for sins that stemmed from a lack of full knowledge.

A last, perhaps particularly important, form of hakkarat hahet, was enunciated by mori ve-rabi R. Lichtenstein in discussing two kinds of teshuva. The usual kind, he noted, is what we described above, where we recognize that we failed to live up to our ideals. The process of religious growth always involves successes and failures, and the failures require hakkarat hahet as part of teshuva. In addition, R. Lichtenstein noted that we must also periodically consider the path we have chosen for ourselves in its broadest terms, and see whether that, too, involved sin that should be recognized and repented. As a rabbi, for example, I need to consider whether the way I have chosen to structure my time— to balance study, teaching, parenting, counseling, and so on— is the best way to fulfill God’s Will, or if I have in fact structured a life that, with some adjustments, could serve God’s purposes in the world even better. The same would apply to other professions, as well as to non-professional issues— our notion of the proper way to use liesure time, to spend money, the proper character traits to adopt and strive towards.

Hakkarat hahet, then, has three parts, recalling actions of sin that we might choose to rationalize, seeking more knowledge to insure that we understand our obligations as Jews in various situations, and (most broadly and perhaps most importantly) considering whether our life choices might embed some inappropriate behaviors in them. The extent to which we are able to do that fully and honestly governs the extent to which our teshuva fully rejuvenates our relationship with God.

Aside from properly setting the stage for the later parts of teshuva, hakkarat hahet also helps us foster proper humility. To the extent that we realize our own failures (and we all have them), we can free ourselves from the certainty of our self-importance. We can then approach our lives, our attempts to fulfill God’s Will, and our judgements and interactions with others, with an attitude of seeking what is right and good, rather than what is good for us.