During the Ten Days of Repentance, the corridor between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the temptation toward a certain spiritual defeatism runs high. We sit in reflection, compare our grand resolutions from twelve months ago against the messy reality of the past year, and jump straight to the easiest verdict available: I am fundamentally flawed. The project failed. I am broken.

There is an old story about a driver completely lost on the back roads of rural New England. Frustrated and disoriented, he spots an old farmer leaning against a fence. He slams on the brakes, rolls down the window, and pleads, “Mister, I am hopelessly lost. Can you tell me how to get to Portland?” The farmer chews slowly on a stalk of grass, surveys the road, spits, and says: “Well, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

That is precisely how many of us approach the High Holidays. We look at our spiritual shortcomings, our frayed relationships, our depleted patience, and our neglected obligations, and we think: To get to where I need to be, I shouldn’t be starting from who I am right now. We treat repentance as an act of total demolition. We assume our character is ruined, the engine is dead, and our only hope is to throw the whole enterprise into the scrap yard.

Even our humility can be performative. We might recall the classic tale of the rabbi and the cantor during Ne’ilah, crying out before the Ark, “Master of the Universe, forgive me, for in Your sight I am........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)