All of a sudden, Elul. Cramming for Rosh Hashana, doing a year's worth of teshuva in one month's time. If we knew how serious it was, and how good an opportunity it was, we wouldn't sleep. And most of us are so willing and ready to do teshuva, but we just don't know where to start. Toward what are we returning? Toward Hashem? How does one return to Hashem? We return to Hashem through returning to ourselves. How do we return to ourselves? Really we spend our entire lives returning to ourselves. Every movement, every conversation, every piece of music or art or literature that I find I am looking for myself. Maybe if I hang this on my wall it will remind me more of who I really am. Maybe if I dance to this music, I'll remember who I am. Of course, we could be way off, I could collect so many things that I think are me, but they're really just who I think people want me to be. Even then, always moving toward ourselves.
As I continue toward myself, to that higher place in me of which I am not really aware, I must start but asking myself who I think I am. My self-perception is perhaps the greatest impediment to my return to who I am. Who I think I am is not who I am. I am not my actions. I am not my opinions and thoughts. I am not my words. R' Shlomo tells us who we are is unconscious. I can do all the right things and be a wretch. I can do all the wrong things and be a saint. He tells us Elul is a time to do teshuva on all the things we do unconsciously. I am not just apologizing for my transgressions and shortcomings - I am looking at them, trying to know where they came from, why they happened. R' Natan of Breslov says teshuva is returning to the fork in the road and going the way I didn't go the first time. I go back, I see what I did, I see why I did it, I see that my intention was good, but something inside me drove me to do this and not that.
We should all be blessed with the patience and perseverence to return forward to Hashem through ourselves in joy.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |