Ki tavo. Return as Renewal

We are in the heart of the month of Ellul.

In the Jewish tradition, Ellul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashana, is the month of teshuvah — of “return.”

The most widespread understanding of teshuvah is repentance: in this precious month, we are invited to examine our ways, to reconsider our lives, to repair and transform, as we prepare to stand before the Source of Life on Rosh Hashana.

Indeed, according to Jewish tradition, between this solemn day and the final shofar blast at the end of Yom Kippur, each of our souls will be examined to decide whether we will be inscribed, for one more year, in the Book of Life.

Thus, change lies at the heart of the ethical understanding of teshuvah:

How do I live?

How can I be better — for others, for myself, for the planet?

Teshuvah, the return to my true nature, offers me a chance to live according to who I truly am — and not according to the patterns, conditioning, and habits that have sometimes veiled the radiance of my being and hidden this intuitive, natural connection that has always bound me to the Source of Life since birth.

That is why I was so moved by what the Sfat Emet emphasized in his commentary on Parashat Ki Tavo this week.

He does not focus on change, nor on return — but on renewal.

He starts from a solemn verse in the parasha:

“Today, you have become a people for the Eternal, your God”(Devarim 27:9).

הַיּ֤וֹם הַזֶּה֙ נִֽהְיֵ֣יתָ לְעָ֔ם לַֽיהֹוָ֖ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

In Hebrew, it literally says haYom haZeh — "this today."

There is something strangely redundant here.

Rashi, the medieval French commentator, noticed it, and — together with the Talmud — interprets it in a deeply moving way:

“Each day, regard it as if it were on this very day that you entered the covenant.”

בְּכָל יוֹם יִהְיוּ בְעֵינֶיךָ כְּאִלּוּ הַיּוֹם בָּאתָ עִמּו בַּבְּרִית (Berakhot 63)

Just as on Pessa’h we are invited to see ourselves as if we ourselves had come out of Egypt, so too with our covenant with the Source of Life:i

t is not meant to be a distant memory of our ancestors, but an intimate and living experience.

We are invited to feel it as a living covenant, sealed today.

Each day.

Imagine this:

What if we looked at each of our covenants in life — with our partner, our friends, our work, our ideals, our life choices — not as something still living off the energy of an ancient pact, but as something we had just sealed, right now…

How would we feel connected to them then?

Remember the beginning of each covenant you have taken in your life.

How magical, how precious it felt. How full of care and wonder you were.

This, the Sfat Emet reminds us, is what it means to be fully alive:to remember our capacity to renew, to see everything as new.

And this strength, he says, does not even have to come from us.

It comes from the fact that “there is an aspect of renewal in every thing.”

יֵשׁ בְּחִינַת הִתְחַדְּשׁוּת בְּכָל דָּבָר

In other words, we can renew our connection to ourselves, to others, to life — because we ourselves are already being renewed, constantly, by the Source of Life.

And for the Sfat Emet, this is not only every day, but at every instant

—בְּכָל רֶגַע

Yes, we are renewed at every instant.Our body knows this.Take a moment.Feel your breath.

It is the Source of Life breathing new life into you, breath after breath.

And what if connecting to teshuvah were as simple as this:feeling the renewal already at work within us, connecting to it, recognizing it?

Spiritual practice might be just that —acknowledging what is already given.

And what if we learned from our very breath to sense the renewal that is already here, in us, at every moment?

And what if we lived this month — and our lives — in this way:fully connected to our capacity to live in presence with the constant renewal that is already here?

Perhaps teshuvah is nothing more than opening our eyes to the miracle of renewal already unfolding in us, and then mirroring it in our actions.

Yes, we can change.

Yes, we can be renewed.

And it can be as simple as coming home — to our true nature.

Shabbat shalom