Pathways of Teshuvah: Repentance, Return, and Reconciliation Across Time and Place

Abstract: In the millennia since exile and the destruction of their holy temples, those tracing their heritage from the ancient Israelites have had a contentious relationship to land. All too often, our landlessness and our cosmopolitan adherence to scripture and law has left us alienated from the natural world. Yet, recent movements within the Jewish world have prioritized an ancestrally rooted relatedness to the Earth and a recommitment to theologies of stewardship. The horizon they point to invites our attention toward new possibilities for embodied ritual. This liberatory and ecopsychological Jewish autoethnography traces the impacts of exile on the (Jewish) psyche and explores modes of healing through connection to land. The Jewish Earth-based organization Wilderness Torah and the Palestinian farm Tent of Nations serve as fieldwork sites through which to approximate a practice of teshuvah, a Hebrew word most accurately translated as “repentance”, “return”, or “reconciliation”.

Presenter bio: Dr. Pesach Chananiah is a Jewish ecopsychologist, educator, and community organizer working in interfaith and environmental spaces. He writes about the psychological impact of disconnection from land, through a Jewish lens, and explores modes of healing through embodied spiritual practice in the natural world.