September 20, 2026|ט' תשרי ה' אלפים תשפ"ז UBU? The Jewish Meaning of Authenticity
Print ArticleGrowing up in Canada back in the day, if you wanted to wear a name-brand sweatshirt but didn’t have a lot of money, you had two options: Beaver Canoe or Reebok.
I remember having a Reebok sweatshirt that I loved. Across the front, in giant block letters, it said:
“LET UBU.”
It was Reebok’s play on the words:
“Let you be you.”
I’ll never forget walking into the Beit Midrash at Shaalvim, wearing that sweatshirt for the first time.
Rav Meir Shlesinger zt”l, the founding Rosh Yeshiva, looked up, saw the letters across my chest, smiled, and said:
“Nu, Canada… UBU!”
Everyone laughed.
But I’ve thought about those three letters for years.
Because “be yourself” has become one of the defining messages of modern culture.
And there is something deeply compelling about it.
We don’t want to live fake lives. We don’t want to pretend to be someone we’re not. We want our actions to reflect who we really are and our lives to feel genuinely ours.
Psychological research associates authenticity with greater well-being and healthier relationships.
No wonder the message is so powerful:
Don’t pretend. Don’t perform. Be yourself.
But today I want to ask a question that sounds simple but is actually quite unsettling:
Is authenticity a Jewish value?
And even more importantly:
What happens when the person I naturally am is not the person that the Torah wants me to be?
If my instincts pull me one way and the Torah pulls me another,
which one is the real me?
At first, the Jewish answer seems obvious.
The modern message says:
“Be true to yourself.”
Judaism says:
Follow the Torah.
If I don’t feel like davening, I still daven.
If I don’t feel generous, I still give.
If I want to say something hurtful, I still hold my tongue.
If my instincts pull me in one direction and the Torah pulls me in another:
The Torah wins.
But what if the conflict isn’t between my behavior and the Torah?
What if the conflict is inside my mind?
What if I have questions about God?
What if I struggle with my faith?
What if I don’t feel spiritually connected?
Does Judaism expect me to pretend?
Am I supposed to act like I believe when I don’t?
This is where Rabbi Norman Lamm’s distinction between cognitive faith and functional faith becomes so important.
I can have genuine intellectual doubts and remain uncertain about what I believe.
But uncertainty does not suspend obligation.
In an essay entitled “Faith and Doubt,” Rabbi Lamm writes:
“One can suspend intellectual judgment; one cannot suspend action.”
I may not have resolved every question in my mind.
But I still have to act.
I can struggle with God and still daven.
I can have spiritual uncertainty and still observe Shabbat.
Judaism doesn’t tell me, “Wait until you feel like a believer, and then behave like one.”
It tells me:
Act, even while you are still struggling to believe.
And this gives us our first answer to authenticity:
My feelings are real, but they don’t determine my obligations.
But just when we think we have solved the problem, Judaism introduces another ideal:
Tocho k’varo.
Ultimately, my inside should match my outside.
And there is a good reason that the Torah would want that. Judaism doesn’t want our relationship with God to be merely external. The Torah commands us to serve God “with all your heart,” and the Rambam describes the ideal relationship with God in terms of such profound love that a person becomes almost “lovesick” for Him.
The same is true of our relationships with other people. According to the Ramban, v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha asks for more than simply behaving properly toward another person; it calls us to genuinely care.
Because real relationships require more than behavior.
They require the heart.
And tocho k’varo is also an expression of emet: a life of truth is one in which there is no fundamental contradiction between who I am inside and who I present myself to be.
So now we have a tension.
If the Torah tells me to act according to an external standard, but it also tells me that eventually my inside should match my outside,
Then what happens when my inside isn’t very good?
If I am angry, should I express my anger?
If I am selfish, should I say:
“That’s just who I am”?
If I don’t feel spiritual, should I stop acting spiritually?
Does authenticity mean allowing my behavior to reflect whatever happens to be inside me?
That can’t be the Torah’s answer.
Tocho k’varo does not mean lowering the outside to whatever happens to be inside.
It means allowing the inner self to rise toward the life we are creating externally.
Sometimes:
“That’s just who I am”
isn’t authenticity.
It’s an excuse.
I don’t need to make my behavior conform to my weaknesses.
I need to raise my inner self toward the person I am trying to become.
And that leads to a fascinating possibility:
Maybe the outside can change the inside.
I keep acting patiently, and eventually I become more patient.
I keep giving, and eventually I become more generous.
I keep davening, and eventually I may actually want to daven.
That is the idea behind:
Mitoch she’lo lishmah ba lishmah.
I don’t have to begin with perfect motives.
I can begin because my parents expect it, because my community expects it, or even because I don’t fully understand why I am doing it.
And that’s okay.
Sometimes you have to do the right thing before you genuinely want to do the right thing.
There is a fascinating story in the Gemara that illustrates this tension.
After the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash, Rabban Gamliel was the head of the academy in Yavneh. The Gemara tells us that he would not allow just anyone into the study hall. He wanted students whose tocho k’varo, whose inner character matched their external presentation.
But when Rabban Gamliel was removed from his position and Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah became the head of the academy,
the doors were opened.
What changed?
Rabban Gamliel emphasized a higher standard:
If you’re going to enter the world of Torah, your inside should already correspond to your outside.
Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah emphasized something else:
You don’t have to be there yet to begin.
You can begin with shelo lishmah, and through the process arrive at lishmah.
So perhaps religious growth begins with a strange kind of inauthenticity:
You act like the person you want to become before you actually are that person.
But now we face an even deeper problem.
If I become better through practice, am I discovering my authentic self?
Or am I becoming someone I trained myself to be?
This is where the Rambam’s definition of teshuva becomes startling.
The Rambam writes in Hilchot Teshuva:
Meshaneh shmo k’lomar ani acher v’ainei oto ha’ish she’asah otan ha’ma’asim
One of the ways of teshuva is to change one’s name, meaning:
“I am a different person. I am not the same person who committed those actions.”
Teshuva isn’t merely:
“I did something wrong, and I’ll try harder next time.”
It is:
“I am not that person anymore.”
I have changed.
And suddenly our original question becomes even more complicated.
We started with:
Be yourself.
The Rambam seems to say:
Become someone different.
Maybe the Torah supersedes the self. And maybe that’s the answer to our question.
Judaism simply rejects authenticity. Authenticity is not a Torah value.
However, maybe we need to redefine what we mean by authenticity.
One definition is what we might call expressive authenticity.
This is the modern idea:
Be true to your feelings. Express who you are. Do what feels natural to you.
If I am angry, I will express my anger.
If I don’t feel like davening, I won’t daven.
If something feels right to me, it must be right for me.
This is the authenticity of “Let you be you.”
And in this sense, Judaism rejects authenticity.
My feelings are real, but they don’t become the standard of right and wrong.
But perhaps there are deeper forms of authenticity that Judaism not only accepts, but actually demands.
The first is essential authenticity:
Not simply being true to the self that I happen to currently experience, but returning to the deeper self that lies beneath the distractions, distortions, and noise of my life.
And this is where Rav Kook gives us a radically different possibility.
Rav Kook writes (Orot Hateshuva 12:8):
Ha-teshuva b’yesodah he tenuah lashuv el hamekoriyut.
“Teshuva, in its foundation, is a movement to return to the source.”
Notice the word:
Lashuv.
To return.
Not to manufacture.
Not necessarily to become someone foreign to myself.
To return.
Rav Kook writes elsewhere (Orot Hateshuva 6:2):
Hateshuvah he tamid sheruya balev, afila ba’et ha’chet atzmo hateshuvah genuzah he ba’neshamah.
“Teshuva is always present in the heart. Even at the very moment of sin, teshuva is hidden within the soul.”
Even when I am doing something wrong, something inside me can say:
This isn’t where I belong.
And that voice isn’t foreign to me.
It is a deeper part of me.
Rav Kook writes (Orot Hateshuvah 7:4):
Hirhurei teshuvah hem hem megalim et omek ha-ratzon.
“Thoughts of teshuva reveal the depth of one’s desire.”
When I suddenly think:
“I want to be better.”
“I want to be closer to God.”
“I want to be a better spouse.”
“I want to be a better parent.”
“I want to be more patient.”
That desire may not be a fantasy about becoming someone else.
It may reveal something that was already within me.
The person who wants to change is not necessarily rejecting his authentic self.
He may finally be discovering it.
This is essential authenticity.
The authentic self is not necessarily the self that I feel most strongly at this moment.
It may be the deeper self that is buried underneath my habits, my failures, my fears, and my mistakes.
And that brings us to one of the most remarkable stories I know.
The Yabloner Rebbe, Rabbi Yechezkel Taub, was a Chasidic rebbe in Poland. In the 1920s, he became convinced that his followers should leave Europe and establish a new Chasidic community in Eretz Yisrael. He brought dozens of families with him and helped establish what became Kfar Hasidim, near Haifa.
But the project struggled.
There were financial difficulties. Some of his followers became angry with him. Eventually, he left for America to raise money to save the community.
Then World War II broke out.
He was stranded in America.
And then came the news that devastated him.
The Nazis had destroyed the Jewish communities of Poland. Many of the people he had left behind, including former followers, had been murdered.
The Rebbe came to a terrible conclusion:
I failed them.
He lost his religious identity.
He shaved his beard and payot. He stopped keeping Shabbat and kosher. He changed his name.
Rabbi Yechezkel Taub became George Nagel.
For decades, he lived in Los Angeles as George Nagel, carrying an enormous sense of failure.
Then, decades later, people from Kfar Hasidim found him.
They persuaded him to return to Israel.
He expected rejection.
Instead, they welcomed him.
People who had been his followers came over to him and thanked him.
They told him:
“Rebbe, you saved our lives.”
They explained that although the settlement had struggled and many people had returned to Europe, those who remained in Eretz Yisrael – and their children and grandchildren – were alive.
They had survived because of him.
The very decision he had spent decades remembering as his greatest failure had actually become one of the greatest acts of leadership of his life.
And something inside him began to change.
He returned to religious observance.
He put the yarmulke back on.
He grew his beard back.
And eventually, he returned to Kfar Hasidim permanently, once again known as Rabbi Yechezkel Taub, the Yabloner Rebbe.
He remained there until he died in 1986.
For decades, he thought teshuva would require him to become someone else.
But his teshuva was not the creation of a new identity.
It was the recovery of an old one.
He came home.
And perhaps that is what Rav Kook means when he speaks about teshuva as return.
Sometimes teshuva means:
“I need to uncover the person I was all along.”
That is essential authenticity.
But what if authenticity isn’t only about discovering who I really am?
What if it is also about becoming who I have the potential to be?
This brings us to Rav Soloveitchik.
Rav Kook emphasizes returning to the deeper self that has been obscured.
Rav Soloveitchik emphasizes becoming the person I am capable of becoming.
In an essay entitled “Out of the Whirlwind,” he teaches that every person has a unique place in creation. God didn’t create me randomly. My existence means there is something I am uniquely capable of accomplishing in this world.
Why was I born in this generation?
Why am I here, in this particular place?
Why do I have these particular abilities, relationships, opportunities, and circumstances?
Because God needs me here.
There is something I can bring into this world that no one else can bring in exactly the same way.
God needs you here.
This is a different kind of authenticity.
We might call it existential authenticity.
Essential authenticity asks:
Who am I, beneath all the things that have covered me?
Existential authenticity asks:
Given the life I have been given, who am I called to become?
It isn’t simply about looking inward and asking, “Who am I?” or “What do I want?”
It is about confronting the reality of my existence – my time, my talents, my circumstances, my responsibilities – and responding to the unique mission that emerges from them.
Rav Kook tells me:
Return to your deepest self.
Rav Soloveitchik tells me:
Become the person your existence calls you to be.
And perhaps these aren’t competing ideas.
The deepest self I return to and the person I am called to become may be two dimensions of the same journey.
But I want to take Rav Soloveitchik’s idea one step further.
Perhaps my mission isn’t only about what I accomplish.
Perhaps it is also about who I become for the people that God has placed in my life.
Because our relationships are not accidental.
God hasn’t just placed each one of us in this world at this time.
God has placed people in our lives who need something from us.
A spouse who needs my patience.
A child who needs my attention.
A parent who needs my care.
A friend who needs my loyalty.
A student who needs my encouragement.
A community that needs my generosity.
And each relationship calls something out of us.
If I am naturally impatient, I can’t simply say, “That’s who I am.”
Someone else has to live with my impatience.
If I am naturally blunt, “that’s just who I am” doesn’t erase the pain my words can cause.
But when I become more patient, more generous, more attentive, more courageous, those qualities become more than ways of improving myself.
They become gifts that I give to other people.
And this is where the Torah's command of v’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha becomes so powerful.
According to the Ramban, this mitzvah is not merely asking me to behave properly toward another person. It asks me to genuinely want what is good for them.
That means that becoming a better person is not only about becoming better for myself. Every quality I develop can become something I give to someone else. My patience can make someone else's day easier. My generosity can ease someone else's burden. My attentiveness can make someone feel seen.
My personal growth becomes an act of love.
So perhaps authenticity is not simply:
Who am I?
And not even:
Who am I becoming?
It is also:
Who am I becoming for the people that God has placed in my life?
There are, then, three ways we can understand authenticity.
Expressive authenticity says:
“Be true to how you feel.”
Judaism rejects this when it conflicts with the Torah.
The Torah wins.
Essential authenticity says:
“Return to the deeper self that lies beneath the distortions of your life.”
That is Rav Kook.
Teshuva is not always becoming someone else.
Sometimes it is coming home.
And existential authenticity says:
“Become the person your particular existence calls you to be.”
That is Rav Soloveitchik.
God placed me in this generation, with these abilities, these circumstances, and these relationships, because only I can do something.
And perhaps the culmination of all three is relational:
Become that person for someone else.
My authenticity is not only about my relationship with myself.
It is about the people whose lives are touched by the person I become.
That gives us a practical question for this Shabbat Shuva.
Don’t ask only:
“What did I do wrong this year?”
Ask:
“Who am I becoming?”
And:
“Who needs me to become that person?”
Maybe I need to become more patient.
Who needs my patience?
Maybe I need to become a better listener.
Who needs to be heard?
Maybe I need to become more present.
Who needs more of me?
Maybe I need to become more generous.
Who is waiting for me to notice them?
And then ask:
What is one thing I can do this week to move in that direction?
Don’t make twenty resolutions.
Choose one person, one relationship, or one quality.
And take one step.
One apology.
One act of patience.
One real conversation.
One moment when you put the phone away and truly listen.
Because teshuva doesn’t require perfection.
It requires movement.
And now I want to go back to where we began.
Back to that ridiculous sweatshirt.
UBU.
“Let you be you.”
And Rav Meir Shlesinger looking at me and saying:
“Nu, Canada… UBU!”
I had no idea then how much those three letters would stay with me.
Because there was something right about that message.
Judaism does want you to be you.
But it asks a deeper question:
Which “you”?
Not simply the you of your instincts, habits, fears, or past.
But the you who can return to your deepest self, become the person God created you to be, and bring that person into the lives of others.
Your spouse.
Your children.
Your parents.
Your friends.
Your students.
Your community.
So perhaps Jewish authenticity is not simply:
“Be true to who I am.”
It is:
“Become true to who I was created to be – and become that person for someone else.”
And maybe that is what Rav Meir Shlesinger was really saying:
“Nu, Canada… UBU!”
Be you.
Just make sure it is the you that God created you to become.