In the hotly contested NY elections, would you consider voting for Wiener or Spitzer? Are their indiscretions irreparable?!
Great Rabbis have played always played chess. Legend has it that King Solomon invented the game! But one rabbi, Rabbi Yechiel of Gostinin (1816 - 1888), refused to even learn how to play. When he discovered the law of 'touch move', that once a move is made it can never be reversed, he flatly rejected anything to do with the game. 'In life', he said, 'nothing is irreversible'!
I too, recently switched from an Iphone to an Android. The straw that broke the camels back? Apple gives you just one button- it only allows you to move forward. But my Android phone has a back button.
As we prepare for the Rosh Hashana next week, you'll be hearing a lot aboutteshuva- repentance. But here's a little secret you won't often hear from a rabbi: I'm not quite sure what that word repentance actually means.
I do know, that repentance is really a mistranslation from the hebrew teshuva: which really means return.
You see, our relationship with G-d is not something we need to create, it's something we need to just revert back to. Our souls are a piece of G-d; our factory default is connected to G-d. It's only our complex lives and sophisticated guise that creates a veil over that intrinsic connection with G-d.
Rosh Hashana is the time to reset. Time to return to roots and our natural relationship with G-d.
This year, as you sit in Shul on Yontif, remember that the place you'll find G-d is exactly where you lost Him!