With each request of the Amidah we become more assertive and feel more confident to stand before God. This gradual growth process is referred to as “building the Shechinah,” the Divine Presence that we experience within us. Before we begin the Amidah, we take three steps backwards as an expression of humble retreat, but that is only in preparation for taking three steps forward and approaching God with confidence. Similarly, each request of the Amidah represents another step toward coming closer to God. To pray effectively, we need more than belief in God—we also need to believe that we are worthy to stand before Him and make a request. In this fifth blessing—our second request—we address God as our Father and our King, a significant step up in our relationship. If God is our Father, then we are His children. And if God is our King, then we are His royal subjects, His kingdom. As we learned earlier, there is no such thing as a king without a kingdom. Therefore, we indeed enjoy significant stature in God’s presence. The fifth blessing reads: Bring us back, our Father, to Your Torah. Bring us close, our King, to Your work. And return us in complete repentance to You. Blessed are You, YHVH, He who desires teshuvah. Following the first request for daat, the ability to realize what we want and to truly want it, comes a request for teshuvah, the root and foundation of all requests that follow. Teshuvah is most often translated as “repentance,” but more correctly, teshuvah refers to our “return” to our original, authentic self. Teshuvah is not about being “born again.” Rather, it is about finding our true self after we’ve lost it. The word for “past” in Hebrew is kedem, and yet the word for “progress” is le’hitkadem. According to Torah, progress is not about going forward towards something new, but rather about coming back to the original—what once was but had been lost. According to the Kabbalah, the highest goal we aspire to achieve is referred to as Atik Yomim, the “Ancient of Days.” In other words, progress really means a forward motion but back to the past—a returning to the original essential self. Each of us is a soul, an expression of God. However, when we see, hear and do things that betray our godliness, we lose our true selves. We sometimes lose ourselves in our careers, our possessions and our money. Some of us lose ourselves in public approval. Teshuvah is the process of reclaiming our pure selves and returning to the essential godly beings we were created to be—capable of enjoying a loving and empowering relationship with God. Teshuvah is the theme of Jewish life. In fact, returning to what once was is the essence of our existence——the goal of everything we are trying to accomplish on earth. Each request that follows henceforth in the Amidah is a detail in the general theme of our desire to return—to do teshuvah. We first ask for help with our personal repentance, and then we express our desire for national repentance—the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. We continue with a concern for global teshuvah, which is expressed in our prayer for the coming of the Messiah, Mashiach Ben David. Finally, we utter an amazing prayer for God, expressing our hopes for “Your salvation” and calling for His return to Zion. As we will explain later, God also wants to “return.”