The Ebenezer Scrooge model: Can Yom Kippur really bring repentance and change?

After nearly 25 hours without food or drink, in the culmination of prayers that emphasize the fragility of life, the supremacy of God, and the risk of divine punishment, synagogue-goers on Yom Kippur are exhausted, humble, and perhaps filled with remorse and trepidation. The shofar blasts hundreds of sounds and leaves a deep, echoing resonance in the soul.

But a week later, have those worshipers changed their behavior for the better? Do people really transform themselves? Repentance isn’t simply regret; it is regret that produces transformation.

Ironically, a fictional story written by 19th-century English writer and journalist Charles Dickens, one of the leading novelists of the Victorian era, did an outstanding job illustrating consequential moral change.

His 1843 novella A Christmas Carol can provide a vivid, instantly recognizable human story about Ebenezer (which means “stone of help” in Hebrew) Scrooge, whose surname is regarded as a catchword for avarice and bitterness toward society and who constantly shouted “Bah! Humbug!” to express his disgust with many traditions.

Wealthy from running a warehouse, he pays his clerk, Bob Cratchit, a paltry wage while living cheaply in the quarters of his dead business partner, Jacob Marley. When two men ask him for charity on Christmas Eve, he gives them the cold shoulder.

But at night, Marley’s ghost visits Scrooge and warns him that three spirits will appear before him and demand that he change his character. If not, Scrooge will be bound in heavy chains.

After being shown scenes of his loveless childhood, the ruthless way he treats others in the present, his future lonely death, and his neglected gravestone, Scrooge repents and performs good deeds as a way of life.

Yom Kippur has no ghosts, of course, but it does something rather similar. It asks us to confront who we were, who we have become, and who we might yet become.

His transformation isn’t merely feeling sorry. He undergoes something: a psychological process of recognition, confrontation with himself, an emotional awakening, a decision to change, and then changed behavior.

What does it really take to change?

Prof. Mario Mikulincer, a well-known Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) psychologist and researcher who serves as the academic director of the university’s Israel Center for Addiction and Mental Health, described this same process.

The Argentina-born psychologist explained that there is a natural human inclination not to feel sorry about misdeeds or admit mistakes. The brain’s executive function is to admit mistakes and improve.

Stress, fatigue, and routine wear down the prefrontal cortex that controls executive function, allowing the basal ganglia that control body movements and process emotions to take over.

“Habits,” he said, “operate automatically. When intention conflicts with habit under stress, habit almost always wins. People who succeed don’t have superior willpower; they build superior environments and friction-free routines.”

Having no food or drink on Yom Kippur provides the time to think about oneself and the future.

“Hunger reduces the amount of glucose in the body, so it reduces executive function. This can make people more impulsive,” he noted. “But it also gives you time to have thoughts that overcome the physical, to think of life and death, one’s existence, and anxiety.

“It can also help you to identify with the poor, who are often hungry. The religiously observant believe that God is surveying what we do and can help lead us to better behavior. That can lead to the expression of remorse and determination to be a better person.”

Mikulincer added that it was “a brilliant move” that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, was accompanied by a long fast, as it promotes introspection. “When stress, exhaustion, or emotional triggers hit, executive function undergoes depletion, allowing habitual patterns to hijack behavior.”

Repentance is more than feeling sorry

RABBI MOSHE BEN MAIMON (Maimonides, or the Rambam) wrote in his book Hilchot Teshuvah (The Laws of Repentance) about the yetzer hara (the primal drive). He stated that genuine repentance is not just feeling remorse; with the same capability one has to sin, one must actively choose differently. The psychologist noted that “this is part of executive function.”

Psychologists also refer to the “False Hope Syndrome” in which people set unrealistically high expectations for self-transformation because deciding to change provides an immediate, cheap surge of dopamine and moral relief.

When the initial euphoria fades, the reality of effort sets in, leading to relapse, said Mikulincer. “A person can overcome physical temptations. I think everybody can change, but it’s hard to move immediately from black to white and meet all your goals. If the goals aren’t realistic, they’re better off working step by step.”

Guilt makes people think, “I did something bad,” and this motivates self-improvement. But shame makes them think, “I am bad,” which triggers defensiveness and behavioral paralysis.

“People should feel guilt so they can repair,” he commented. “Repentance is a powerful Jewish theme. A good measure of it improves behavior, but a pathological amount is harmful. If a person feels shame, he hides and has to lie, and then it’s very hard to improve. Self-loathing actually stops people from changing, and shame triggers denial, addiction, and anger.”

The repetitive, collective nature of the Yom Kippur confessional (viddui) uses plural language (“We have trespassed, we have betrayed, we have stolen, we have spoken slander ... We have turned away from Your commandments and from Your good laws, and it has yielded us no benefit,” recited aloud many times during the Yom Kippur service).

Psychologically, listing misdeeds out loud forces a person to bridge the gap between internal denial and objective reality – a necessary first step in any therapeutic recovery program.

“It’s brilliant, because it is said in the plural,” the psychologist continued. “One is part of a community, of something bigger, so you can shoulder the burden.”

Another well-known prayer is Unetanneh Tokef, which balances the terrifying fragility of human life with an impressive openness to change. It emphasizes that human nature is inherently flawed, but the door to transformation never closes.

Deeply ingrained behaviors are automated pathways in the brain. Asking someone to “just stop” a bad habit without replacing the underlying trigger and reward is neurobiologically unrealistic.

“The brain is plastic and can grow,” said Mikulincer. “With practice, prayer, medication, or deep breathing, you can produce brain change, but one must stick to it and have self-discipline.”

The final prayer, Ne’ilah (closing), said as the sun sets, gives those present in the synagogue the feeling that time is running out and directly confronts human self-deception and helplessness, causing worshippers to ask for divine assistance when willpower alone fails.

Some people emerge stronger after hardship while others don’t.

Mikulincer suggested that “suffering can destroy people, but if they overcome it, they can become stronger. Personality traits can really change; kindness and even optimism can be learned – at any age. Decades ago, it was thought that the brain is set like plaster by age 30. The brain has been proven to have neuroplasticity, the ability to change and create new synapses.”

Mikulincer spends all his professional time doing research, not treating patients. In 2021, he researched the phenomenon of people who abandoned a religious way of life and, this year, those who have become observant due to exposure to war and terror.

Asked if he has studied prisoners and whether they can be helped to change their behavior significantly, he said he hasn’t, “but maybe will do it. It’s an interesting subject to explore.”

Asked what would be the single most effective first step to take if one wants to become a better person in the new year, he concluded: “Forgive yourself more, be less critical, feel healthy guilt, admit mistakes, and give a chance for something to happen.”

Can a crisis really change us?

LIKE MIKULINCER (who is not religiously observant), Dr. Aaron Cherniak is also a licensed psychologist at the Israel Center for Addiction and Mental Health. He is the director of research at the Shaare Nefesh Resilience Center (affiliated with the Shaare Zedek Medical Center) and a modern Orthodox rabbi ordained at New York’s Yeshiva University.

He asserted that personality can change after adulthood, but it’s more gradual than dramatic. Traits like conscientiousness and emotional stability do shift over the lifespan, especially around major life transitions. But lasting change tends to come from sustained new behavior, not a single moment of insight.”

Making promises on Yom Kippur “gives us the instant gratification of feeling like ‘better’ people instantaneously, even though nothing about us has changed. The habits we have formed and our pattern of seeking immediate gratification do not change just because we have made a sincere commitment. 

“Real growth happens with consistent choices to maintain that commitment over time, notwithstanding the challenge of doing so. None of this is to diminish the power of profound moments of insight that remind us that we desire change and can change.”

“Crises,” Cherniak continued, “are one of the more reliable catalysts for real personality and behavioral change, precisely because they disrupt routine and force a kind of reckoning that everyday life rarely demands.

“But permanence isn’t guaranteed by the crisis itself; it depends on whether the person has the support, meaning-making, and follow-through to consolidate that shift into something lasting, rather than reverting once the acute period passes.”

Prolonged stress keeps the nervous system oriented toward threat and survival, which narrows attention and depletes the cognitive resources – planning, impulse control, flexible thinking – that deliberate change relies on.

It also drains the kind of bandwidth needed to build new habits, since chronic stress tends to push people back toward familiar, well-worn coping behaviors rather than newer, less automatic ones, simply because the familiar option requires less effort under strain.

Timing matters. Attempting significant change during a period of acute, ongoing stress is much harder than during a period of relative stability, and it’s often more realistic to focus on stabilizing first before expecting deep behavioral change to take hold.”

Change doesn’t require motivation to come first; behavior, he said. “What we call motivation is driven largely by a sense of progress, not just by wanting something in the abstract – taking a step, even a small one, generates momentum that fuels the next step, so motivation is as much a byproduct of action as a precondition for it.”

Asked why intelligent people repeatedly make the same mistakes, Cherniak suggested that “intelligence and self-control run on different systems. Knowing better doesn’t mean acting better. Under stress or temptation, fast emotional and reward circuits tend to override slow, deliberate reasoning, no matter how sharp that reasoning is.”

He disagrees with the claim that some people cannot change for the better. “There are real obstacles to change – environmental instability, or a total lack of support and stability – not some fixed incapacity in the person. And often underneath those, the deeper barrier is a person’s own belief that they can’t change.

“There’s a teaching from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on this: he wrote that when Elisha ben Abuyah – the sage who became known as the ‘Other’ – believed a heavenly voice had permanently barred him from repentance, it wasn’t really God who closed that door. It was his own conviction that he was irredeemable.

“The moment he believed that, he stopped trying, and the belief became self-fulfilling. That’s the trap: ‘Can’t change’ is rarely the truth about a person. It’s usually the story they’ve come to believe about themselves – and that story does more damage than any real limitation ever could.”

The more you practice small acts of kindness, the more natural it becomes, because it starts to shape how you see yourself, and it usually feels good and makes people respond well to you, which makes you want to do it again. That’s what happened to Scrooge. 

“It’s also something people pick up from example – kids who grow up watching kindness modeled, or communities that build regular opportunities to help others into everyday life, tend to produce more of it,” Cherniak concluded.