• Reflections on Holidays

    Yom Kippur, Repenting, and Atonement

    Being Good The other day, I visited with a patient who has spent his life being good. With great force of will, he has been humble of heart and mind, respectful to all he meets, kind, and soft-hearted. Occasionally, he lashed out in anger, but the guilt he immediately felt was so enormous, he would hunch his shoulders and hide himself away. Yet no matter how hard he tried to do things right and thus make people notice and praise him, life knocked him down over and over again. He ended up swept away, sick, homeless, and in despair. Though anger seethed somewhere inside him, he could barely noticed it,…