Month: September 2025

What Is Teshuva?

Rabbi Ben Herman , , , ,

What is Teshuva? The most common translation is repentance. However, repentance invokes a “gloomy and depressive mood of guilt and sorrow” whereas Teshuvah “implies of a positive sense of prospective growth and accomplishment.” Rabbi Zvi Yehuda uses three different definitions for Teshuva:

“Returning: turning from the wrong way and returning to the right way. It is self-improvement. By improving oneself, by becoming better, one returns to one’s true self-to God. Restoring: self-renewal, spiritual recovery and healing; rejecting the depressive mood of shame and guilt and adapting new, reconstructive ways of moral rehabilitation and self-esteem; by positive changes in one’s attitude and conduct. Responding-responsibility and responsiveness. By the experience of Teshuva, one returns to one’s innermost yearnings for a constructive and meaningful life, to the highest call of duty-to the will of God.”[1]

Rav Kook goes a step beyond this, stating that teshuva is “returning to one’s original status, to the source of love and higher being…in their highest spiritual character, as illuminated by the simple, radiant, divine light.”[2]

Teshuva is an important centerpiece of our religion. The Midrash teaches that “one who does teshuva, it is considered as if he went to Jerusalem, rebuilt the Temple, erected the altar, and offered upon it all the sacrifices of Torah.”[3] This is a metaphor for our taking what is broken in our lives and restoring it to wholeness. Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish takes it one step further, stating “repentance is so great that premeditated sins are accounted for as it they were merits.”[4]

Why is this so great? In his classic work Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl asserts “every human being has the freedom to change at every minute…a human being is a self-transcending being.”[5] In so doing, we also note, as Art Green writes, that “Our return to Y-H-W-H is in no way separate from our return to ourselves, to the point of inward truth out of which our humanity shines forth. ‘Return to Me and I shall return to you.”[6]

Of course, here we are talking about genuine repentance. Not these blanket apologies “I am sorry if I offended anyone.” The specificity that comes from true heshbon hanefesh, soul searching, is what is being called for here. It is also a constant process. The cynic may ask: “What good does Yom Kippur really accomplish. One goes through the ritual of atonement. One fasts and prays to be forgiven and goes out again in the world and commits the sins afresh!” This very question was once put to a rabbi by his disciple. His master replied, “Go, my son, to the creek to the outskirts of the town and stay there for a full week. Watch what takes place there, and you will then understand the value of repentance.” The disciple carried out the instructions of the master. He finally returned, still troubled by his old question, and baffled even more by the strange procedure that the master had suggested to him. “All I saw were women doing their laundry by the creek,” he reported. “They come with dirty garments, scrub them clean, and at the end of the week they return with more dirty garments and scrub them clean all over again.” “My son,” said the master, “there lies the meaning and value of repentance. Our souls are like those garments scrubbed by the women. In our encounter with the world, our souls become soiled, and they must be scrubbed repeatedly. Teshuva is a kind of scrubbing, to remove the filth which is on our souls. And cleansing must be continuous, because the accumulation of filth is perpetual.”[7]

Rabbi Harold Schulweis reminds us that it is not too late, that we have these remaining days of repentance to make amends.

The last word has not been spoken,

The last sentence has not been written,

The final verdict is not in.

It is never too late

To change my mind,

My direction,

To say no to the past

And yes to the future,

To offer remorse,

To ask and give forgiveness.

It is never too late to alter my world,

Not by magic incantations

Or manipulations of the cards

Or deciphering the stars.

But by opening myself

To curative forces buried within,

To hidden energies,

The powers in my interior self.

In sickness and in dying, it is never too late.

Living, I teach.

Dying, I teach.

How I face pain and fear,

Others observe me, children, adults,

Students of life and death,

Learn from my bearing, my posture,

My philosophy.[8]

[1] Rabbi Zvi Yehuda, Thought of the Week, Cleveland Jewish News, 9-28-90.

[2] Rabbi Chai Levy in We Rise: An Anthology of High Holiday Sermons delivered the year after October 7th, page 249.

[3] Midrash Rabbah Leviticus 7:2

[4] Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86b

[5] Page 127

[6] Rabbi Art Green Say My Face, Speak My Name: A Contemporary Jewish Theology (Northvale, NJ: Aaronson, 1992) pg. 161.

[7] Rabbi Robert Gordis, Reconstructionist High Holiday Supplement 5739, Temple University

[8] Rabbi Harold Schulweis in God’s Mirror: Reflections and Essays (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1990, p. 296-97)

The Use of Power

Rabbi Ben Herman , , , , , ,

I’m going to speak about Israel in part of a larger context. If it makes you uncomfortable, I’m going to ask you to please stay in the room. I am going to devote this coming Shabbat morning after services to an opportunity to listen to those who want to respond to my remarks-though there is on Kiddush lunch on that date.

The High Holy Days are the time more than any other when we think about why we are here and what is the value of our life. The words of our daily liturgy, מה אנחנו מה חיינו, “Who are we? What is our life?” take on greater relevance during this time of the year. It is also a time when we reflect on the power and agency that we do have. What do we have control over and what should we let go of?

How we use the power that we do have is a key lesson, both for us as individuals and for us as a people. Throughout so much of our history, Jews have been powerless. Our people were in exile, at the mercy of every despotic ruler that we encountered. Now, thanks to Israel and to its relationship with the United States, Jews have power to an extent that our ancestors couldn’t dream of. As the psalmist says, – את שיבת ציון היינו  כחולמים the redemption of Zion was as if we were dreaming.”[1]

This past spring, we saw the power that Israel has. The leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, may his memory be obliterated, tried to evade Israel by going low-tech with pagers. Little did he know that the pagers he bought from the Taiwanese company Gold Apollo were manufactured by the Israeli shell company in Hungary BAC Consulting and were laced with the explosive PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate). As we saw, Israel sent a page causing Hezbollah leadership to hold up their pagers which detonated after a few seconds. A few days later, at the funeral of 4 Hezbollah members, Israel detonated Hezbollah’s walkie-talkies. With Hezbollah’s top leadership indisposed, Israel was able to invade Lebanon and launch more attacks, eventually killing Nasrallah.

Let us also not forget Israel bombing Iranian nuclear sites on June 12 in Operation Rising Lion. Israel quickly rendered inoperable many of Iran’s missile launchers and its missiles. Around the same time, there was Operation Red Wedding, which took out Iranian senior commanders. Without commanders, Iran was impotent and did not fire any missiles at Israel for 18 hours.[2] The icing on the cake was when the United States joined 9 days later, dropping MOP (massive ordinance penetrator) bunker busting bombs in Operation Midnight Hammer. How did this happen? Israeli agents in Iran had visited every workshop and factory that were later attacked, enabling Israel to target every aspect of the industry that supported the manufacturing the missiles.[3] The success of such a plan was far from an accident; rather it was the culmination of years of work by the Mossad to target Iran’s nuclear program.[4]

Could our ancestors in exile imagine a Jewish country with this type of power?! Could they even conceive that a Jewish country would be a regional superpower, stealthily using its incredible intelligence to make a plan over years which did not leak?! I doubt Yehudah Halevi, who lived during the Golden Age of Spain under both Muslim and Christian rule; Don Isaac Abravanel, who was a courtier to Ferdinand and Isabella and eventually exiled from Spain and Portugal; or even a Maimonides, who before becoming physician to the Egyptian sultan most certainly had to flee Spain from the Almohads, could have fathomed this.  Yet you do not need me to preach about Israel’s power. What we need to consider is what does Israel do with the power that it has and concurrently what do we do with the power that we have.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol famously referred to Israel as “Shimshon der nebecher,” Samson the weakling. Israel is so strong like Samson, the superpower of the Middle East. Yet Israel also can feel like a nebecher, completely powerless to the task at hand. Israel has endured trauma, especially in the aftermath of October 7th. One merely needs to look at footage from October 7th or the video of a gaunt Evyatar David digging his own grave. While Israel has had much success assassinating Hamas’ top leadership and destroying much of the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, there remain feelings of ineptitude, failure and lack of moral clarity, with hostages not returned and so much destruction. My question, which only Israelis can answer, is what should Israel do with the power it has?

Israel can use its power as it did in March through May to not allow any food into Gaza and to attempt to take control of the food distribution away from Hamas, who steals food from the aid trucks. Many of us believed when Israel refused food into Gaza that this might be worth it if it led to the end of the war and the return of hostages. Looking back, some of us continue to hold those opinions of the Israeli government. Others are re-thinking after seeing hunger among Gazans and hearing of people walking miles to the food distribution sites, some of whom were shot upon approaching. Every hungry child, no matter where he or she lives, is a human tragedy. As Proverbs teaches us, “If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if she is thirsty, give her water to drink.”[5] This is not to dismiss the PR war going on. We saw the New York Times fell into Hamas’ trap by featuring a starving child who was actually dying from cystic fibrosis. Yet there remain weekly protests in Israel to get a deal to return the hostages and end the war.

I want to take this lesson and apply it not only to Israel but to our lives here in the United States. Many of us are traumatized, having seen pictures and videos of dead Israelis and gaunt hostages or having relatives going up for the 5th time to serve in the IDF, some of whom are not sure why they’re going. Many of us are scared by the rise of antisemitism on college campuses, as the film October 8 demonstrated, which I will speak about on Shemini Atzeret. There is much to be afraid of. What we need to remember is that we are vulnerable, we are human but we are not powerless. We have agency over our actions. As Victor Frankl z”l taught, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies the freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.”[6]

 In terms of how Judaism teaches us how to use our power, we don’t need to look far in our tradition. The Ethics of the Fathers, in Hebrew Pirkei Avot, teaches איזהו גבור הכובש את יצרו “Who is mighty? One who conquers his or her inclination.”[7] In his commentary on Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Dr. Joshua Kulp writes, “This one statement may sum up 2000 years of Jewish experience. The Jewish ideal of strength and might is not the same as the Greek ideal, which is that of the mighty warrior and champion athlete. A person of great physical strength who performs amazing deeds is not necessarily mighty. The most difficult thing to conquer is not others or even great armies, but our own inclination to do wrong things. One who has control over this inclination is truly mighty. This is why for thousands of years Jews did not look to soldiers as their heroes, but to rabbis and other thinkers. Strength in Judaism is one of character and not one of might. After all the strongest person in the world is no stronger than a weak gorilla or bear. It is only through our ability to curb our appetites and control our instincts that human beings can differ themselves from animals.”[8]

A story: when Adam was encountering and naming the animals on the first day of creation he was trying to figure out which was the strongest. The lion said, “I’m the strongest. I’m the king of the jungle!” The tiger said, “I’m the strongest. I’m the king of the forest!” The whale said, “I’m the strongest. I’m the king of the ocean!” The chimpanzee said, “I’m the strongest.” All of the other animals paused and looked at the chimp. Then they started laughing. The chimp said again, “I’m the strongest.” Finally a worm asked the chimp, “What makes you so strong?” The chimp replied, “All of you act on your instincts. I think before I act.” Suddenly all the animals agreed that the chimpanzee was the strongest. So it is with us all the more so.

As we enter the week of repentance between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I’d like each of us to think about what we have power over in our lives and how we intend to use that power. How are we going to channel and control it? Similarly, how are we going to let go of those things over which we have no power? As stated eloquently in a video by Rabbi Judith Plaskow:

Rosh Hashanah asks us to negotiate an enormous and productive tension between our smallness and our power, surrender and agency; between what we can control and what we can’t. During the whole High Holiday period, we’re called on to examine our lives and think about who we have been and who we want to be, to do teshuvah, to turn toward our best selves. And, at the same time, the images of God the King and Judge are telling us that ultimately, we’re not in charge. We can’t decide who shall live and who shall die. All we can do—and it’s not nothing—is to alter the evilness of the decree…

Rosh Hashanah asks us to accept what we can’t change and have the courage to change what we can.[9] The Great Aleinu (in Musaf) is for me the supreme moment of one side of this tension. It is the moment when I try to give up my white upper middle-class illusion of control and align myself with, and surrender to, what is….[10]

In 5786, may each of us utilize our power to the best of our ability to effect meaningful changes yet may we recognize the limits of our power and not try to do too much. The same thing is true with Israel. Many things are in Israel’s control, others are not. The power to continue to attack Hamas remains; the power to rescue the hostages without a deal appears to remain beyond Israel’s reach. May Israel, like us, succeed in using its power wisely, and may the hostages be speedily returned home.

[1] Psalms 126:1

[2] https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-was-facing-destruction-at-the-hands-of-iran-this-is-how-close-it-came-and-how-it-saved-itself.

[3] https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjckad6eeg

[4] How extensive are Israel’s intelligence operations inside Iran?

[5] Proverbs 25:21

[6] Attributed to Victor Frankl

[7] Pirkei Avot 5:1

[8] Joshua Kulp Pirkei Avot 4:1 with English Explanation of Mishnah

[9] The Serenity Prayer

[10] Judith Plaskow, “Submitting to The Great Aleinu,” https://youtu.be/6jw228chClE?si=1TkAgkrvDYvDlREO

Created Anew

Rabbi Ben Herman , , , , ,

I’ve been reflecting on a mindfulness retreat I went on a number of years ago. One of the participants said to the facilitator “Why are we here? The world is on fire, and we are here meditating at a retreat?! What difference are we making?” I don’t remember Rabbi Margolius’ response, but what I do remember is that we need to center ourselves before we can work on world problems. Rosh Hashanah gives us that opportunity, to ground ourselves so that afterwards we can go out and fight for the causes for which we believe. Today I will be speaking about ways we can create ourselves anew at any moment; tomorrow I will speak about how we use our power, with Israel as an example; on Yom Kippur I will speak about the eternality of the essence of who we are.

Maker of all the living

Every passing moment You create Your world anew:

Withdraw Your gracious love an instant,

And all You’ve made would cease to be…

Instead, every passing moment finds You pouring out Your endless blessing,

And morning stars appear to sing their song of love to You,

The blazing sun comes forth to sing its song of light to You,

And angels voice their sacred chant to You,

And soul intone their psalms of thirst for You.

Once more the grasses carol their longing for You,

And birds chirp their joy in Your presence,

Trees shawled in leaves now sigh their prayer to You,

And springs softly bubble in adoration.

And still the oppressed bare their hearts to You, a Tallit their armor,

As their soul’s pleading splits the heavens.

One ray only of Your light and we are bathed in Your light!

One word only of Your words, and we rise to life renewed.

One hint only of Your eternal presence, and we are drenched in the dew of youth.

O God, You make all things new, ever and ever:

Take us, Your children, and make us new.

Breathe Your living spirit into us,

That we may start life afresh

With childhood’s unbounded promise.[1]

Every day in our liturgy we read המחדש בטובו בכל-יום תמיד מעשה בראשית-God is the one who creates out of God’s goodness the acts of creation every day. We are grateful for opportunities to feel creation wonderous at every moment. 

When we are young, we have wonder and curiosity. Somewhere along the way, we lose it in the doldrums of daily living. Occasionally we get it back-perhaps the excitement of a new job; a wedding or a new child; or after a significant period of time away. Yet more often than not, we struggle to remember that we need to hold onto this childlike sense of wonder. 

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, an 18th Century Hasidic leader, teaches about the importance of daily creation in his work Kedushat Levi:

We must always try to bring to our consciousness that from moment to moment, the Blessed Creator, in great love and mercy, instills in us new vital force; from moment to moment, the Blessed Creator renews our very being. This is what the rabbis meant when they said: “for each and every breath praise Ya”H”.[2] That is, at each moment the breath seeks to leave us, and the blessed Holy One, in great mercy, watches over us from moment to moment and has compassion for us, and does not let the breath depart.[3] In this manner, when we raise this thought to awareness, from moment to moment we actually are created anew as a new creature. This generates enthusiasm to serve the Blessed Creator, since everything that is new or renewed sparks enthusiasm. And, since we are created anew from moment to moment, we can burn with that same great enthusiasm to serve the blessed Creator.

But, there are those who do not raise up their thoughts to this truth, who actually think (heaven forbid) that the blessed Holy One does not renew them in each and every moment. They think that once the blessed Holy One created them, God no longer makes them new again in each moment. Thus, they do not experience any enthusiasm in serving the blessed Creator, for whatever is unchanging is also uninteresting and lacking in delight. For this reason, they sometimes fall from whatever spiritual degree they may have attained. But, afterward, when they start out again to serve the Creator, they actually do experience a great enthusiasm.

          We always have opportunities to get closer to The Holy One. The 20th century Slonimer Rebbe in his book Netivot Shalom, the paths of peace, teaches us   וכל המאורעות העוברים על איש יהודי, כולם הם קריאה מאת ה׳ יתברך שיתקרב אליו. “Everything that happens to us is a calling from God that we should get closer to God.”[4] In other words, there are no coincidences or things which are happenstance. God is calling out to us to hear God’s voice and bring a spirit of godliness into the world.

          How exactly do we do this? Netivot Shalom continues:

וזה ענין קול השופר שהוא קול ה׳ הקורא בראש השנה לכל איש יהודי לחזור אל מקורו ושרשו. “the sound of the shofar is the voice of God on Rosh Hashanah to return to our source and our root.” God can appear far off or at a distance, but a cry like the sound of the shofar can wake us up to return to our intention. After all, today we say hayom harat olam, today is the birthday of the world or today is pregnant with eternity. What new ideas are you birthing today? What ideas are percolating, in process, or gestating through you, so that they can be further developed in the days ahead?

                 The High Holy Day season is an opportunity to, in the words of Shlomo Carlebach, “return to who you are, return to what you are.”[5] We come home, returning to our original intention of who we want to be in the world. Rabbi Art Green, who I’ve been learning Hasidut from every week, writes, “homecoming is our return to the source within this world, to the great womb out of whom we are ever being born, the one to whom we ever return. Homecoming is the rejoining of matter and spirit, an understanding that this most primal of all separations stands as the cause of our alienation from ourselves, from the deepest roots of our own tradition, and from the very earth that nurtures us.”[6]

         This new beginning comes once a year right now. Tikkuney Zohar 16 reads the word bereshit of “In the beginning God created” as ba tishrey, “Tishrey has come.” It continues, Elohim, the aspect of God’s judgment, creates. Because of all the fear of being judged, people return to God, awakening mercy, and that recreates the world.[7] Rather than fear, I like to think of us as returning to love, finding ways to strengthen our bonds to one another out of shared humanity and love of each other. Any opportunity we have to add to the amount of love in the world enables us to be partners with God in creation.

      Part of that recreation means to recognize how lucky we are to be in this particular moment. Some might feel overwhelmed by past misdeeds. To those who are, you’re in good company: so too were our ancestors, who felt unworthy of receiving the Torah. The upcoming holiday of Yom Kippur is a renegotiated marriage between God and the Jewish people, for the first tablets, made entirely by God and given entirely on Shavuot, were overwhelming for Israel. That is why Israel fled to the golden calf. To transform oneself radically from a slave people to a people under the one God proved too much. The second tablets, on the other hand, were a partnership between Moses, the writer, and God, the transmitter.[8]

       When we feel off-kilter, may we remember that we are in a long-term partnership with the Holy One. We can always make adjustments to create ourselves anew and become the people we want to be. There are ample opportunities to transform our behavior, as illustrated by the following anecdote:

Imagine there is a bank that credits your account every day with $86,400. Every day, even on Saturday and Sunday! However, the bank will not carry your balance over to the next day. Every evening the bank deletes whatever part of the account that you fail to use.

What would you do? You would draw out every dollar!

Each one of us has such a bank but it doesn’t give us money, it gives us TIME. There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Every morning, that is what is credited to your account and every evening, the bank writes off, as lost, whatever you have failed to use for a good purpose. There is no carryover, there are no overdrafts. Each day you are given a new account. Each night that account is closed. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against “tomorrow.” You must live in the present on today’s deposit. The message is: invest every second so that you can get the most from it in health, happiness and success. The clock is running.

To realize the value of ONE YEAR, ask a student who failed a class in school.

To realize the value of ONE MONTH, ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of ONE WEEK, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of ONE HOUR, ask lovers who are waiting to meet.

To realize the value of ONE MINUTE, ask the person who just missed the train.

To realize the value of ONE SECOND, ask the person who just avoided an accident.

To realize the value of ONE MILLISECOND, ask the person who won a Silver Medal in the Olympic games.

Yesterday is history; Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift, that’s why they call it the present.[9]

                God creates time but we humans give it meaning. You not only have meaning but you are also necessary in every moment. As based on a story by Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav, “There is no person who does not have his hour”-every human life has something unique and valuable about it, a contribution to be offered that can be fulfilled by no other. Each messenger brings back a unique portrait of the king (of God) one that only he or she can paint. To take seriously our faith that each person is God’s image is to treat every person with a spiritual dignity and caring that would transform all of our lives.[10]

In the daily Amidah, we offer 3 times a day: בָּרֵךְ עָלֵֽינוּ יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ אֶת־הַשָּׁנָה הַזֹּאת God bless for us this year. We recite this every single day, including the last day of the year. Every day is a different day. Life is constantly changing so that the prayer takes on greater meaning and nuance. Even at the end of the year, when we are really focused on the New Year ahead, we can still hope for the wringing out of blessing in that year’s waning moments. We cannot fully appreciate the year until it has concluded, in no small part because it is ever changing, and we add to the year’s meaning in our perspective. In addition, the preposition על means that the blessing is placed “over” us or “about” us. It is up to us each day to discover the blessing/s, find it, reach out for it, grasp it, and integrate it into our lives, so that life’s changes change us (לטובה) ולברכה, for goodness and for blessing.

 Take a moment to close your eyes and take a deep breath. Reflect on the joy of the here and now. Each moment is a new one with new opportunities to bring God’s presence into the world. Hold onto the words of the psalmist: זה היום עשה ה נגילה ונשמחה בו-this is the day God made, rejoice in it.[11] The dawn of a new year is a special moment. Take the time you need over this holiday season to reconnect with aspects of yourself that have become dormant-perhaps taking up a long-lost hobby or a passion you’ve always wanted to try. Call those you have not spoken to and catch up. Look at the habits and parts of your life no longer serving you and work to make the necessary changes. May doing each of us help us feel the precious present-ness of each moment in each day.

John O’Donahue

To Come Home to Yourself

May all that is unforgiven in you be released.

May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities.

May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

[1] Central Conference of American Rabbis, On the Doorposts of Your House: Prayers and Ceremonies for the Jewish Home (NY: CCAR Press, 1994) Poem 21, pg. 286.

[2] Psalms 150:6

[3] From Genesis Rabbah 14:10

[4] נתיבות שלום ב׳, קכ״ה

[5] Shlomo Carlebach “Return Again”

[6] Rabbi Art Green Say My Face, Speak My Name: A Contemporary Jewish Theology (Northvale, NJ: Aaronson, 1992) pgs. 159-60.

[7] Meor Eynaim Likkutim

[8] Rabbi Art Green, Say My Face, pgs. 172-73.

[9] Marc Levy, If Only It Were True

[10] Rabbi Art Green, Say My Face, Speak My Name, pg. 81.

[11] Psalms 118:24

Hitting the Mark

Rabbi Ben Herman , , ,

 I am accustomed to beginning the new year with a story and will do so with two short stories for this year 5786. This is a story by perhaps the most famous storyteller in all of Judaism, the Dubno Maggid. Rabbi Yaakov Kranz lived in Dubno (Western Ukraine) in the late 18th century. He is famous for conveying complex ideas in a simple way.            

Once upon a time, I was walking in the forest and I saw all these trees in a row with a target drawn on them, and an arrow right in the center. At the end of the row I saw a little boy with a bow in his hand I had to ask him, “Are you the one who shot all those arrows?!” “Of course!” he replied. “How did you hit all the targets right in the center?” I asked. “Simple”, said the boy, “first I shoot the arrow, and then I draw the target.”

Often on the High Holy Days we think of committing sins. The most common word use, on which we beat our breasts, is חאט, missing the mark. If one adopts the approach of the Dubno Maggid, however, they never miss the mark. I bring this not to suggest that we’re perfect but rather that perhaps we should think this year about those things where we feel we erred, especially the missed opportunities. Perhaps instead of missing the mark they were directing us towards a different target than we anticipated. Where we often think we should be is not where we need to be. As was made clear by The Rolling Stones, “you can’t always get what you want but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”

Another story by the Dubno Maggid teaches us to check our worries, our “what ifs” and our “should haves” at the door as we enter High Holy Days 5786.

A pauper once trudged along a country road, carrying a bundle of his worldly belongings on his back. As the beggar began to tire, a speck of dust appeared in the distance. To his delight, he was soon overtaken by a rich carriage that belonged to a local squire.

“Hop on board,” called the nobleman generously, “and rest your feet until we get to town.”

A few minutes later, the nobleman turned around and saw the beggar sitting with his bundle balanced precariously on his sagging shoulders.

“My dear man,” he asked with a hint of concern, “why don’t you put down your sack and rest up? There is plenty of space . . .”

“Oh kind sir,” came the reply, “it is generous enough of you to give me a ride. I would not trouble your horses, who are surely overtaxed, to carry my poor belongings as well.”

“Silly man,” said the magnate, “don’t you realize that even if you put the pack on your shoulders, it is still being carried by my carriage?”

At times we are like the pauper, foolishly carrying our worries and cares on our own shoulders.

If we take a moment to recognize that G‑d constantly “carries” the entire world, including our cares and concerns, we can relax our shoulders, confident and secure in our faith.

Let us take a deep breath and relax into the moment of New Year 5786, recognizing all the times that we have hit the mark in the previous year and looking forward to those in which we will do so in the year ahead.