Yom Kippur: Confronting Life, Death, and the Journey for Salvation

The time has come, the holiest day of the year, yom Kippur, and there's a lot on the line Rosh Hashanah, yikasavunov, yemtseim Kippur, yeh HaSemun. And when you think about it, the words of the Chazan, the penetrating words Mi ichayu, mi yamos. Who will live, who won't? It's very real. How many people do you know, close Family Friends, mi bakkito, mi lay bakkito, at the right time, at the wrong time, how much mi does hadin and judgment have we witnessed over the past year? Mi vamaim, mi voesh Seems all too relatable. How much anxiety, mi anua, chemi anua. How many people have lost their fortunes, how much suffering. But now's the time to storm the heavens and try to save ourselves. We meet the king and a mentality to keep in mind, as heard from the great Magid of a wax, minna mushel, from the dubna Magid, from a mindset for Yom Kippur. Now imagine we're all living in a city and now there's an army marching towards us. They want to conquer our city, but the big, mighty army sees that we have some fortified walls. May not be so easy, but why not just lay a siege and force the people inside to starve to death until they eventually have to open up and go out and get some food and water Easy way. So they lay the siege and everyone inside starving. It's getting worse and worse. People need food, they need water. People are dropping like flies and then a meeting is held in which the townspeople decide that it's time to surrender. Quite frankly, everyone is too weak to surrender. They have no more energy to even walk out and tell the general, the opposing army, that we surrender. No energy to wave the white flag. Just too weak skin and bones. And right then is when they hear the sounds of the battering ram of the enemy now bursting through the gates and they see the general and they have their swords out ready to start slaying people. And with your last breath, you look up and you say we don't want to fight, we surrender. We just have no energy to even come out and surrender. We pray, we want to do Chuvah, we want to repent, we want to keep our Kabbalahs. We're so weak, it's so hard. The Yatahara is so strong. It is so hard, especially in 2023. There's so much distractions and hindering things that just keep us from doing real Chuvah Hashem. We're weak, but please don't throw us away and don't take the spiritual soul from us. Give us the Ruach Ha'ka'i desh Kenechtas. We want to repent. We want to love Tyre. We want to die, but we want to stay tailed. We want to do Khesad, but it's hard. We surrender. We just have no energy to surrender. That's the mentality, hashem. Don't throw us away because we want to surrender, we just have no energy. Surrender, hashem. We want to do Chuvah. Please help us out and spark our efforts so we'll be Hashiveynu, hashem, yilechvah and Hashuvah. We should return to Hashem. It'll be like the good old days.