N
o day on the Jewish calendar possesses the power of Yom Kippur to dramatically change our lives. As the Rambam describes in Hilchos Teshuvah yesterday we were cut off and alienated from Hashem and unworthy in His sight. Yet today after the spiritual cleansing of Yom Kippur we feel ourselves to be once again beloved in His eyes.
The power of the day is from our perspective nothing short of miraculous — something beyond human understanding in our four-dimensional world of time and space. Chazal tell us that the power of teshuvah is such that even our past sins can be transformed retroactively into mitzvos if they are used to propel us toward a closer relationship with Hashem.
Yet before the transformative power of the day can be fully realized we must believe in our capacity to change and grow. The biggest challenge that many of us experience while reciting our individual vidui is the knowledge that our confessions of past aveiros and our promises not to repeat them are rarely being uttered for the first time. And that causes us to doubt our ability to change.
HOPE OR OPTIMISM is a major subject of Angela Lee Duckworth’s Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Duckworth brings a great deal of scientific evidence for the proposition that sustained hard work hasmadah is often as important or more so than innate talent to success in any given endeavor. She identifies fours factors that encourage grit — the willingness to keep working at a task or toward a goal even when attainment is neither easy nor guaranteed.
