The Secret Power of the Ten Days of Repentance - Rabbi Moshe Borger

You have Rashana, you got two days, 48 hours technically called one long day. Then you got Yam Kipur. In between you have exactly seven days. And rabbis tell us that those seven days are extremely significant both to the past and to the future. Why is that? Because each of those seven days is one of the days in the week. So according to Rabion and Iets each one of those days fixes up the correspondent day in the previous year during each week that means let's say you were not a Monday person manic Mondays not your best day comes to the Monday of a Seruva you've got an opportunity to literally fix up every single Monday of the previous here. But a friend of mine Bennett the Rashel here in shared with me another amazing day idea which is as follows. Actually each day in the week of that special week according to Raisha Galenti in the name of Rauria is actually fixing up not the past not what we did in the past it's actually fixing up the future meaning that every single day if we do a good Sunday a good Tuesday of the cases muva yeah which starts actually this year with the Thursday. You're actually technically fixing up every single Thursday of the coming year. But it goes further to say actually you're fixing up in some way. It's talking about the future. You're technically having an influence on every future Thursday of your life. You do a good Thursday. You do a good Shabbat, Shabbat. This coming week, you've fixed up. You've had an influence on every single future Shabbat of your entire life. That is the power of these days and they go backwards and they go forwards. I heard I believe from Bowitz that actually these 10 days technically don't necessarily entirely belong to the coming year 5786 and they don't exclusively connect to the 5785. They actually connect to both, which is actually an amazing idea because in a lunar year, there's actually 355 days. Which means if you add on the extra 10 first days of the year, it's actually corresponding now to an entire solar year of 365 days. But at the same time, it's also managing to rectify whatever happened in the previous year as well. So it works both ways. This is the power of these 10 days of penitence. these 10 days of tremendous opportunity, a gift, an opportunity from God to rectify and to build at the same time for the future. Incredible, incredible idea. And actually Rav Galenti goes as far as says there's a custom I don't think many of us are going to be keeping this custom but there is an idea to actually to fast every single one of the seven days of penitence. Now of course this is not a simple thing to do when you've got Shabbat. You're not supposed to fast on Shabbat. You're also not supposed to fast on Shabbat on Fridays. But apart from that he says that actually whatever you can fast whatever you can do is actually fixing up all of the future as we mentioned and he connects it actually to fasting fasting which we're all you know awaiting with great glee on yum kipur I don't know how much we were awaiting it with great glee but that fasting is tremendous tremendous power to it in fact actually the fasting itself is even more important than the significant ificance of the day. So much so that our rabbis tell us if a first if a person is not feeling well and yum kipur rather than breaking the fast and continuing to have meaning and to pray it's actually better for them to go to bed. So much so is the fasting a a healing. Is the fasting a rectification for what was done previously in the previous year that it will achieve repentance just simply by afflicting oneself by not eating or by drinking. An amazing amazing uh concept. So we have a gift because the day after rashash shana those two days of rashash shana on Thursday his son Gdalia the fast of gdalia when gdalia the puppet ruler set in place by the Romans in order to go and keep things under their control but at the same time managed by a Jewish leader. He was horrifically brutally murdered by another Jew by Ishmael Ben Alicia who killed him on the day after Rashashana. Some people say actually he murdered him on Rashashana itself. We're not going to get into the fast of Gdalia right now. But just to think about just to think about the fact that we're fasting we're rectifying the fact that on the holiest day of the year arguably ourashana that long day that there was a Jew who was thinking about harming another Jew. That's what we're really fasting about. So that's something that we can bring into all of the days of that week as we come up to Yamipur. Doing everything that we can in order to make sure that we don't harm a single other person, single other Jew. I had a very beautiful idea. They went they came to Rabbi Avida Miller. A blessed memory. All right. Vda Miller was a powerhouse. He was somebody that was that was just the first person actually was the first person ever to record classes, Torah classes. The first person ever. Everybody followed in his lead. He lived it was he was he was in his late 90s and yet he barely had a white hair in his beard or on his head because why? because he had such such faith in God, he didn't allow the things to to to stress to make him anxious which usually causes gray hairs and white hairs to come along. So somebody came to Rabbi Vik and said to him, "Rabbi, what's a good thing that we should do in order to ensure that we will have a good judgment for this coming year? And his response was one word, smile. Smile. Somebody said, "Sorry, Rabbi, maybe you didn't hear me. What are we supposed to do to ensure life for this coming year life? Smile." And again, he asked a question. He said, "Smile. Don't think that I'm an old man and I don't understand what you're asking and I'm maybe I've become a bit scenile and I'm not answering you correctly. No, the answer to a good year is just to smile. Smile at yourself when you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning. Smile at your wife. Smile at your children. Smile at everybody that you meet. Smile at your boss. Imagine that. Smile at everybody and anybody. You will be amazed at the incredible energy that there is from a smile. You change lives. You change yourself. You change your day. You change your mood just simply from a smile. That's the best thing that we can do. And think you're transforming other people. You're transforming other people's days. There's been stories where somebody was in was depressed. They were about to do something terrible and somebody smothered them and changed their life. It changed their day and they decided they're not going to do something terrible. They're going to live another day, another week, another year. Saved their lives. The power of a smile. Which is why the Torah tells us Better to have the white of the teeth than milk. More than milk gives you nourishment and nutrition. Even to a baby, more than a child, a baby is nourished from milk, a smile goes and affects another person. So that's the very very simple but yet incredibly powerful message of Rabbi Victor Miller. Just smile. The very powerful idea of the Arizal Mosha Galenta. You can fix up your entire year. You can fix up every day of the week. Just simply focus on today. Make today a great day. Make today a happy day. Make today an accomplished day. And you've automatically fixed up all of your future. May God help us to be able to maximize our potential in these coming days and please God in these coming years for all of our futures.