Starting Over, Again-Preparing for the Yomim Noraim

Rabbi Silber's pre-Rosh Hashana shiur draws on the Dubna Maggid's parable of a tenant behind on rent to frame the week of Slichos: proactively engaging Hashem now beats waiting anxiously for the landlord to come knocking. Weaving together the dispute over the Yud Gimmel Middos and the Rambam's laws of teshuva, he argues that real change requires more than fixing a single behavior — it means breaking the habitual rhythms of daily life that keep leading back to the same mistakes. Even the future "death" of the yetzer hara, he notes, will not erase ingrained habits of how we look, react, and walk through the world; only rebuilding the rhythm itself does that. It is a practical, honest call to stop waiting for Rosh Hashana to force change and start reorienting now.

• Don't wait for the wake-up call on Rosh Hashana — proactively reach out to Hashem now, while there is still time.
• Real teshuva means changing the habitual rhythms around a behavior, not just stopping the behavior itself.
• A habit can outlive the desire that created it, so uprooting the rhythm matters even after the urge is gone.
• Say the Yud Gimmel Middos while striving to emulate God's traits, not as a magic formula for automatic forgiveness.