Oz and Teshuvah: Return to Self and Spirit
The Wizard of Oz, one of the most beloved movies of all time, celebrates its 70th birthday this year. The movie contains essential spiritual lessons, that are often overlooked. The concept of teshuvah (repentance) leads to spiritual growth and understanding.
Great is repentance, for it brings healing to the world… .
Great is repentance, for it brings redemption to the world.
Yoma 86a
Everything teems with richness, everything aspires to ascend and be purified. Everything sings, celebrates, serves, develops, evolves, uplifts, aspires to be arranged in oneness.
haRav Avraham Yitzchok Kook, zal
In the popular children’s story, The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy, a young girl who is injured, has a powerful healing dream in which she is carried far away from her home in Kansas by a powerful tornado. Throughout the dream she longs to return home, but before she can find her way back, she must journey to the land of Oz. Dorothy‘s journey to Oz, accompanied by her three companions, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, becomes a legendary quest for wholeness and healing, in which the four travellers seek to acquire the character trait each of them most needs in order to be whole. The Tin Man seeks a heart, the Scarecrow, a brain, and the Cowardly Lion, courage. Though she is not conscious of it as she sets out on her journey, Dorothy needs to find her own inner source of power. Whether Frank Baum, the author of the Oz legends realized it or not, the Hebrew word oz implies “strength.“ Dorothy‘s journey to Oz is, indeed, an attempt to reclaim her power and inner strength. It is only when she faces her deepest fears and takes back the power she has been projecting onto powerful others, like the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch of the West, that Dorothy is able to reclaim her own inner strength and find her way home. And as Dorothy and her companions courageously overcome the many obstacles in their path, they discover that, in fact, they already have within them the very power or trait that they thought they lacked.
The spiritual quest for wholeness is a lot like the journey to Oz. When we first begin to awaken, we realize just how far From home, or our true selves, we really are. ‘We long to return, but we don‘t know the way back. We may begin our journey by following a spiritual path (the Yellow Brick Road) or seeking out a teacher/rebbe/spiritual guide (the Wizard). On the way we may meet up with fellow seekers. But eventually, like Dorothy and her companions, we come to realize that the strength we seek outside ourselves already exists within us. We only need to turn inward to discover our courage, heart, and wisdom. By focusing our kavannah, or spiritual intention, then, on our deep longing to return (“there‘s no place like home“), we find our way home.
In Jewish teachings, the pathway home to our true nature is called teshuvah. Though typically translated as repentance, teshuvah actually comes from the Hebrew root shav, to return. The implication is that we all have within us a reference point for wholeness to which we can return a spiritual essence encoded within our souls that enables us to remember who we really are. Teshuvah is not something one does once and for all; rather, it is a lifelong journey, a journey of spiritual homecoming.
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[...] who uses the power of storytelling to educate and bring insight. I discovered a story there about The Wizard of Oz that eloquently described the quest we all undertake, with each life transition and deep passage, [...]