Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
This week on Tuesday evening Yom Kippur will arrive. *Rabbi Yoni Lavi* suggests that we ask the following questions in preparation for this momentous day:
"If I am seeking to change with the start of the new year, instead of asking: 'Am I doing the right things?' I need to ask: 'How do I do what I am already doing in a better way?'
If I am a parent, fine, but then I need to ask, as a father or mother, how do I fulfill my responsibility more completely? Am I parenting in a proper and meaningful way?
If I pray every morning, fine, but how do I pray? Prayer can be a mechanical recitation from a prayer book or a profound encounter with the Master of the universe, something that will touch me and bring about internal change.
If we will examine the commitments that give value to our lives -- Shabbat, marriage, Torah study, honoring our parents -- in terms of 'how' we can better fulfill each one of them, we will open ourselves to new worlds of possibility. Otherwise, we may remain stuck just where we are and fail to realize our potential.
It's much easier to ask little of ourselves. To be robots that merely check all the appropriate boxes. But this is like driving in first gear when we hold the steering wheel of a race car in our hands. Change is not only a matter of doing new things, but rather of improving and upgrading what we already do, of shifting into a different, more powerful gear.
