Teshuva can mean to make amends: to do better, put right.
This is one of our personal tasks at this season. Especially now during the 10 days of Teshuva.
There are relationships that broke for a reason. Leave them alone. Even if feelings were hurt. Making teshuva does not mean bending to the will of another or making everyone happy or ensuring everyone likes you but rather strengthening what is already vital in your life.
Relations with people that are rocky, edgy, on and off but you VALUE? Here you take a chance to make it better through teshuva. Grab your courage, take a deep breath and let them know you value the relationship. And you want it to grow stronger in the year ahead. And you are willing to clean up your side of the street.
And for those relationship that sustain you day by day? Think about how you might have janked the people you value most in the year that has passed and how you can refine your behavior. Tell your person that you want to do better. And let them know you love them and value the relationship. Give them a big teshuva HUG.
The gates of teshuva are closing but you have the key in your pocket all year long. The key that unlocks us from, as the poet Yehudah Amichai writes, "from the place where we are right." There is a better place.
Teshuva sounds like such a big deal but really it is day by day in our lives. It is how we get along. At this season we give ourselves the gift of deeper introspection of our lives and also celebrating life in general.
I hope you find the space for teshuva this year. At this season and everyday.
At a core level teshuva is about peace, harmony, equanimity and finding our way to make heaven here on earth.
May you be inscribed in the book of life for blessings: ONLY!
And May you have an easy fast...of whatever variety you choose.
Many many blessings,
Rabbi Kinberg