The mistake is made — intentional unintentional — it doesn’t matter now. The soup is too salty.

Now salt does have its good side and its not-so-good side.

The good side is it adds flavor. Preserves. Even sometimes disinfects.

The not-so-good-side is it makes you thirsty.

This is what happened.

The Bais Yaakov of Mrs. Leiner’s daughter doesn’t allow class parties for bas mitzvahs.

Like every thing this has its good side and its not-so-good side.

The good side is all that wasteful competition and effort put into a one-night deal is deleted. So is jealousy and despair.

The other side is that there are some families inIsraelthat don’t have extended family.

So Mrs. Leiner’s bas mitzvah girl was left to celebrate with her mother her father and her one brother.

The mother made all kinds of efforts to cheer her bas mitzvah girl up. To spice up the event a little to turn a bland ordinary day into a more eventful one.

First Mrs. Leiner went shopping to make up for all the presents her daughter wouldn’t get from family.

She bought this and that and this bouncing around in the great waves of the shopping sea gathering all she thought would fill her daughter’s emptiness.

Some were pink and fluffy. The red beanbag chair she carried home was huge and hid a necklace with her daughter’s name engraved on it.

This would certainly do it she thought. This would bring joy.

The night of the party came. The four of them sat down to a gourmet dinner. The bas mitzvah girl was so happy with all her gifts. She opened them one by one. Thanking appreciating. It was really very nice.

For the moment.

The next day all the presents sitting neatly on the couch a few bows still stuck onto the bags highlighted her realization that she’d celebrated her bas mitzvah alone.

A thirst or more accurately dehydration set in.

She didn’t wake up to go to school the next day.

The mother felt like a fool. Maybe she’d made the situation worse by adding too much.

During that shopping excursion Mrs. Leiner had run into an old friend. The packages hanging from her one hand the big red beanbag in the other. Mrs. Leiner was totally embarrassed knowing her old friend’s new financial situation. She wanted to hide the packages but instead was left with only the explanation about her daughter’s upcoming bas mitzvah.

The friend had a small piece of advice. She said “I’m not a challah baker myself but I know of someone who made challah with her daughter for her bas mitzvah and they did the mitzvah of separating challah together because this is something new that she’s now able to do. This is really the point.”

At the time Mrs. Leiner thought this was a nice idea but not exactly the thing that would fill that void quench her daughter’s thirst for the exciting bas mitzvah party. But the thought stayed with her.

The next morning when she saw all the presents on the couch she really felt it. She’d taken the wrong direction. These presents weren’t the answer maybe a spice but not the point. Mrs. Leiner had added salt to the water she’d offered her thirsty daughter. She needed to change direction. Go back to the basis G-d. She made a dough to take challah and bought her daughter a new siddur.

She thought about her friend’s “famous” salty soup saying. How a person can get totally caught up in the cycle of over-salting then adding more water — which only makes it worse — because now all the flavor is gone and adding more vegetables or meat — but they’re not cooked enough —  so everything else gets overcooked then you add more salt to fix the taste…. And it just gets worse and worse and worse.

Until … the surrender. The conclusion that a new start is needed a whole new base a clean pot.

Yom Kippur. Our chance to get rid of salty soup.