Give Everyone a Chance

Compiled and edited by Ziv Ritchie

Give Everyone a Chance

One of the most important aspects of Rosh Hashanah is not to say bad things about another person. As you want G-d to give you a chance, give everyone else a chance to also begin again.

 
So my dearest brothers and sisters, it’s only after Rosh Hashanah when our beginning is so strong, when we get a taste that our inside has never been blemished and we go to the Holy Cleaner, the Master of the World who takes out all the stains from our hearts, and the dust from our souls. And He is doing it while we are singing and dancing. On Yom Kippur we tell Him all our mistakes because we have so much inner strength already.

Please, please, give each other strength. Don’t ever stop giving compliments to each other and most of all, to your children, whose self-confidence depends on you! On Rosh Hashanah, every second counts like a thousand years.

Our holy master Reb Nachman says: The greatest gift we can give somebody is to give him back his self-confidence.

When we make a mistake, not only we do wrong, our soul is shriveling and we look down at ourselves. A whole year of mistakes – Gevalt! How do we look at ourselves? It doesn’t take much to give up on somebody else, but to give up on ourselves is always Federal Express.

To have the guts to really begin again, takes a lot of inner strength. So on Rosh Hashanah, the holiest day of beginnings, we don’t mention our mistakes, in order to have the strength to stand before G-d like newborn babies. Our holy rabbis teach us that the sound of the shofar is the sound of our innermost soul and heart but also the sound of a newborn baby. It is everything. It wakes us up, gives us strength, reminds us how holy we are and how holy we can be, and also how close we are and how easy it is to be the best and most exalted.
 

Crying With Being or Crying with Nothingness
It depends how you’re crying, you know. You can cry with being, or you can cry with nothingness. I’m not talking about crying in general. I’m talking about atzvut, this dead kind of sadness.
 
Listen, On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper we’re crying all the time. It’s the holiest tears.
 
Imagine if someone will come up to you and say, “You know, I love you so much, really I want to be the greatest friend to you”, crying while he’s saying it, you know, it will open your heart in a thousand ways. But if someone comes and cries and says, “You know, I was in the beauty parlor, sniff, sniff, and they treated me, boo hoo, and I overpaid five dollars extra, boo hoo hoo.” You know, what do you feel then? Oy vey. And even if this woman is your mother, right? And you really love your mother, but you just can’t stand it. You say, “Oy vey” and you pat her on the back.
 
There is a very big difference between crying before somebody and crying about something. If I’m crying before G-d, it’s the holiest thing. Maybe He’s crying with me. But if I’m crying about something and I’m telling it to G-d, it’s not so good. I got to cry before G-d. 

It is Just a Gift

Our religion is really a ‘non deserving’ religion. We are not coming to G-d and telling Him, “We deserve.” Lets say for example, the way we want to pray on Rosh Hashanah, and the way the old people davened [prayed] Rosh Hashanah… Some people say, ‘There are a few sins I did, but in the meantime I did this good, I did that good.’ They are not ready mamash to receive, just to receive without deserving.
 
You see, if you are on the level that you know that you are not deserving, then you are the most deserving. Because this is what it is; G-d’s wealth is for those who don’t deserve it. But the moment you really know that you are not deserving, this is when you deserve it.
 
 
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Excerpt from “Rebbe Nachman Says”, The Teachings of Rabbi Nachman of Breslev as Taught by Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”tl. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s books are available online at the Breslev Israel Store.