Musings from Students of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem
Posted on September 12, 2013 by Deborah Renert
A person has 5 senses (seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching) and 3 additional faculties–the mental, the emotional, and spiritual.
Hence, it seems that a person can experience both pleasure and engage in “averot” connected with each of these senses and other faculties.
So it seems that perhaps the best way to do teshuva would be to utilize for good that same faculty that I used to do an averah.
So if I transgressed through something I listened to, maybe my teshuva ought to involve listening to words of Torah. If I transgressed through something I was looking at, then, perhaps I can do teshuva through seeing someone needy in a compassionate way that leads to tzedukah. If I erred using my mind deviously I can use my mind to try and ameliorate a situation where someone is suffering.
Similarly, if I said something to someone that hurt him, i could devote more verbal energy to offering emotional support to someone who needs it.
Maybe it this way I can transform the energy used for my averah into a mitzva and in this way tip the scales back into the side of good and chesed for the new year to come. Gmar tov for us all….
