This might be my last newsletter before all the holidays are over, as we have nearly a month of them coming up. I hope I’ll be able to squeeze in one newsletter in between, but if not, the next newsletter will likely be sometime in the second week of October.

Another traditional term for Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaDin, which means Day of Judgment. In the days leading up to Yom HaDin, we are called upon to do teshuva, to repent of our sins before we stand before God in judgment.

But how do you repent? What steps can you take to ensure that this year you will be a better person than you were last year?

For years, the answer to this question eluded me, until one day I heard an online lecture by a rabbi named Dovid Orlofsky. It was about two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, and the topic of his lecture addressed this very question: how to do teshuva. Orlofsky gave steps, and that’s perfect for me. I’m good at following step-by-step directions.

In the first step, he said to write down your eulogy. That might sound morbid, but that gives you your life’s goals. Suddenly, you’re thinking about life in a whole different way: What do I want people to think of me when I die? What will be my legacy?

So I did it, folks. I wrote down my eulogy. And I left it on the dresser in my room … and my kids found it. So now they know what to say about me at my funeral. Yikes!

One of the things I wrote that made my kids roll around on the floor........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)