The Process of Becoming Greater - Rabbi Ori Strum

The holy Alexander Rebbe says that just like there is a concept of a healthy body and an unhealthy body, there's also a concept of a healthy soul and an unhealthy soul. It goes without saying the best spiritual diet for a person's soul is the performance of mitzvahs and the studying of Torah. But [music] we are humans and we falter, we sin, we make mistakes, and so the refuah, the healing, the cure for feeling unwell due to sin is teshuvah. The Rebbe then says something amazing. He says the the order of the shofar blast, tekiah, shevarim, teruah, tekiah, actually corresponds to our very journey through this world. We start off as tekiah, the one fully intact, pure, whole, but then eventually things start to break down a little bit and then a lot of it, and we sin and we falter, we mishap, and that's the shevarim and the teruah. But we don't stop there. We go back to the tekiah. We go back to that state of wholeness, to that intactness, to that purity and innocence of the tekiah. In fact, this process is actually much more amazing than perhaps we think. We don't simply revert back to what was. We don't just go back to that wholeness and impurity that was the tekiah of old. No, no, no. We blow something called the tekiah gedolah, which is a new long blast. [music] Or literally, tekiah gedolah, the greater tekiah. Hashem has given us an amazing opportunity that through the process of teshuvah, we don't just revert back to what was, the state of wholeness that we were once at. Rather, [music] through teshuvah, we have the potential to get to a tekiah gedolah, to become actually greater than we ever were in our entire lives. The makom she baalei teshuvah ogdim tzaddikim gemurim einam yekholim la'amod. The place where the baal teshuvah stands is a place where no one else can stand [music] because he's in the most incredible place in the world. He's not just back in the state of tekiah, he's [music] actually in a new place. It's called tekiah gedolah. Yes, you started off as a tekiah, and then you had a shevarim and teruah. You made mistakes along the way. But let's not go back to the tekiah of old, but instead let's embrace the tekiah gedolah. Let's embrace this new-found relationship, this relationship that's more intact and more [music] full and more whole and more holy than ever before.