Dvar Torah

We’ve all felt homesick at some point in our lives. The anxiety of being far from the people and places we know best. But why does the Torah make a link between fixing our behaviour and returning home? Why does Moshe this week use the language of ‘lashuv’ for both purposes?

Because admitting mistakes is more than putting things right. It’s returning home. People think ‘chet’ means sin. It actually means to ‘miss a target’. People think ‘Aveirah’ means transgression. It actually means to cross a boundary, to enter forbidden territory, to be in a place one should not be. 

Deep down, we know that sometimes our actions do distance us, leaving us exiled in a place far from the people we want to be. And we do feel homesick, wishing we could get back to our authentic and best selves. Honest self-reflection steers us towards home, locating the internal moral compass that was there all along and returning us to our core values. 

Wishing everyone a Shabbat shalom and meaningful new year of returning to ourselves!