Does teshuvah erase my past, or does it do something else?

Rabbi Landau teaches that teshuvah is not erasing the past. It is stepping into a new world.

He explains with the idea of a multiverse in simple words: every time you make a choice, reality splits. One world where you said yes and another where you said no, one where you fell and one where you held strong. Both exist, but you only live in one. Chazal say, he notes, הקב״ה בונה עולמות ומחריבן, Hashem builds worlds and erases them. “That’s not science fiction. That’s a creator running multiverse reality.”

That is why the Rambam teaches that when a person truly returns, he becomes a different person. “You’re not the same person anymore. You actually switch worlds.”

This world with its failures, he says, “is not the final draft.” Hashem has already built a clean world. “So you don’t erase the past, you’re just tapping into a world where you never ruined it.”

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Rabbi Landau teaches that teshuvah does not erase the past but moves a person into a new world.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

After a fall, a person feels the wrong is woven into reality and can never come out.

What may be behind it

Hashem builds worlds and erases them. Every choice opens a different reality, and a person who returns is no longer the same person.

Deepest human truth

This world with its failures is not the final draft. In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that returning to Hashem is a decision to stand in the place Hashem is creating, not the place He has left behind.

More questions from this teaching

• What does it mean that Hashem builds worlds and destroys them?