Gmar Chatimah Tovah

In a recent post I showed the hole in my ceiling. The super said that the area had to dry for 10 days, and then he changed his mind and patched it up quickly. It is wet and the new plaster is gathering new mold. It's less disconcerting than a giant hole. And yet...

There are a lot of questions and answers surrounding the concept of teshuvah. Tradition has it that when G-d created the world He asked various forces what to do a man that sins. The consensus was that a man that sins should die. The analogy is offered of a kid who's entrusted with a hammer and does damage with it and the consequence is that it gets taken away. Done. Simple. And yet. We are given a soul and when we do damage through it, it is not taken away. G-d offers us the supra-rational process of teshuvah.

My students seem to take in the message of teshuvah as it is conveyed in the following story:

Once there was a boy who misbehaved a lot. His father came up with a system that every time he got in trouble a nail would be hammered into the ceiling over his bed. When there got to be so many nails that the ceiling was full it began to upset the child. They made a deal that every time he behaved well a nail would be taken out of the ceiling. He was so good that soon the ceiling was empty of nails. The boy was still sad when he looked up because he saw all the holes the nails left behind. His father said that the boy had been so good that the father would now plaster and repaint the ceiling so that it looked better than ever.

When we err and then mend our ways and make right in our relationship with G-d things can end up even better than they ever were before.

May we be so blessed this year.

Gmar Chatimah Tovah