Well, the holy month of Ellul is more than half over. We await the great judgment day of Rosh Hashana with awe. We must do some real Tshuvah before RH or we are going to be in real trouble. But so many of us find Tshuvah as a puzzling issue. Many don’t know where to start.
Well first class Tshuvah goes like this:
You open a Shulchan Aruch starting at Siman 1. You start reading, and as you read you honestly rate yourself: How well did I do this?, and this?, and this?. Then you go on to Siman 2 and repeat the above again until you finish the entire Shulchan Aruch. You will be over your head in what to do Tshuvah about and it will all be clearly set out for you.
However many are not up to doing Tshuvah on such a level. But that’s no reason not to do anything. If you can’t fly first class you can still fly coach. It’s not as sweet, but it will get you somewhere, and every bit of Tshuvah is precious.
So here’s what you do: Take one small thing that you know you need to improve in. Investigate the possibility that you can promise Hashem that this one thing you will NEVER, EVER,EVER,EVER do again. Then regret you did it and say Vidui etc.
This system is absolutely imperative. We must find something, anything, no matter how minute, that we can surely say this is behind us forever. We will NEVER return to it.
Maybe not talking lashon harah about a certain authentic Jew, like your mother in law. So you could say, I will do my best not to talk any Lashon Harah about anybody, but about my mother in law, never, ever again. Maybe that’s too hard for some, (I happen to have a very good mother in law) but you can choose anything. Just remember it has to be a “NEVER AGAIN”.
A great merit is to accept upon yourself not to show any respect for impostors of Judaism. Teach your children and your students to hate those who promote non-authentic Jewish ideology. Teach them why we hate them. Because, Hashem has commanded us to do so. They are destroying Hashem’s creation with their pollution.
On a certain Yom Kippur night the Holy Chazon Ish called one of his students over to him between Kol Nidrei and Maariv. He said to him that he wanted to tell him how terrible a certain impostor Rabbi was. (This was one of Kook’s followers). The student asked, “Excuse me Rebbi, is this the time to talk about such matters?”. The holy Chazon Ish replied “Now is exactly the right time to talk about this!!”
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