Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are approaching. What is expected from us?
There are the three books of the Tzaddikim, Resha'im and Beinonim - those in the middle. Where do we come in?
Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler explains that in reality each and every one of us is made up of all three.
Two Countries side by side at war. Each want to overthrow the other army completely until they surrender completely.
But until then, during the war, as one army gets an upper hand they move their own border into the territory of the enemy. As the enemy pulls itself together it pushes the border back in the opposite direction.
During the war there are three areas. One area which belongs to one country, another area which belongs to the other country and the battlefield area which moves back and forth.
We all have certain red lines that we will never violate. We don't even dream about doing those things. By every person that red line is somewhere else.
Sadly, we all have our weak points where we nearly always fall in, there isn't even a battle. That area belongs to our enemy, the Yetzer Hara.
And then there is the gray area. For each and every one of us where we have our spiritual challenges. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose. That's the battlefield.
Now let's take a look where our borders and challenges are. Are they the same as last year, have we become stronger and moved our red line further forward and we are already fighting in areas where last year were a lost battle? Or have we sadly given in and moved our borders a little inward. Are we having challenges in areas where last year were out of reach, areas which we never dreamed about even considering to give in?
As long as we haven't surrendered and we are still at war, we have hope.
But we must have a goal at this war. And there are actually two goals we should be aiming for.
Firstly, there are certain areas that we are battling and we need to try and win. Bit by bit, slowly but surely to break into enemy territory and conquer it, pushing our border further into the enemy’s territory.
But there is another goal.
There are areas that were enemy territory. We didn’t even bother to fight our Yetzer Hara. Our goal is to at least change them in to battlefield, into a war zone.
Hashem doesn’t expect us to win every time, but at least He wants to see that we tried. If we have a weak spot, each person knows for themselves. Until now we never even tried to be fight our Yetzer Hara. But if we try to control ourselves even one time a day, we have changed that area from enemy territory to war zone. That is an amazing acievment. Now that it has become a battlefield, we can try to push it up to twice and so forth. But even until then, we have achieved that we haven’t given in completely to our Yetzer Hara.
If we didn't do well this year, it’s not too late. Let's make a goal for next year and take it seriously.
This way, we have with what to start our preparations for Rosh Hashana.
