Return: Daily Inspiration for the Days of Awe

What we confess on Yom Kippur, says R. Kook, is not our lack of worth, but precisely the opposite: we take responsibility for the fact that we insist on living as if we were worthless, and as if the hour did not need

Therefore we should see ourselves throughout the year as if our deeds and those of the world are evenly poised between good and bad, so that our next act may change both the balance of our lives and that of the world.

The real work we have to do at this time of year, I think, is to find compassion no matter what. But we have to find it for ourselves before we can be of much use to others. The real work is to look at who we really are, and to contemplate Who made us that way.

We seek teshuva because in the Jewish tradition the aim of life is to grow in soul. That is why an old rabbinic saying asserts that a repentant sinner stands upon a height that not even the greatest tzaddik (righteous person) can reach. The growth that is required to acknowledge one’s sin, to seek to repair it, and to change one’s ways is enormous