We are nearing Rosh HaShanah when the decree for each person will be written: Who shall live and who shall die … who shall suffer and who shall live in tranquility.... Everyone is looking for ways to merit a good decree. 

It’s true that when the shofar is sounded on Rosh HaShanah the Holy One blessed is He goes from His Throne of Strict Justice to His Throne of Mercy but we need to be worthy to merit His mercy. (L’Avdecha B’Emes — Rav Dov Yaffe)

People are going about wishing each other a good new year and the advertisements are featuring apples and honey. Everything’s so busy and festive that we don’t notice the whole world has gone silent stricken with a tremendous fear — a fear that’s in the very air. In our preoccupation with the festivities we forget that the date of the Great Trial the trial for our life is nearing.

I don’t forget. I’m thinking of my oldest of all the difficulties she had this year and all that I hope will work out in the coming year. Then I think of my second — she also needs so much help from Heaven.

And my boys? I think of the struggles they’re having. I ask that they feel satisfaction in their learning and that they have true fear of Heaven. That they manage to understand what their teachers want and that their teachers understand them.

I imagine all of us sitting on one pan of a gigantic scale — waiting for the fateful verdict.

I don’t forget. I beg. I want to scream and implore for a good sweet year in which every day will be happy and filled with nachas and that pain and distress won’t come knocking on our door not even for a minute. Oh Hashem please let it be so!

But I’m a simple woman who knows a little about cooking a little about baking and even less about how to daven. Am I indeed worthy to pray that I be acquitted in this trial? That my sins will be forgiven? Do I truly know how to do teshuvah?

In Sefer Chassidim there’s an entire chapter on easy segulos and refuos that are effective for the forgiveness of sins. It starts by describing a certain official who was bitten by a fox during a hunt and was close to death. The best doctors did what they could using the most expensive medicines but nothing helped. Finally one of his servants gathered some medicinal grasses that he knew to be beneficial and ground them into a paste. He put it on his master’s foot for several days and his master recovered.

The Sefer Chareidim writes that just as physical illnesses have simple cures spiritual illnesses — which are caused by sins — can be cured simply as well. (ibid.)

Sometimes there are shortcuts. And I whose steps are so small yet whose yearnings are so vast — shouldn’t I take the shortest way even if it’s difficult and painful?

The fourth segulah is to be forgiving and to let go to be ready to suffer humiliation. That way one enters the category of those about whom Chazal say “Those who are humiliated and don’t humiliate who hear themselves shamed and don’t answer who act out of love and rejoice in suffering of them the verse says ‘And those who love Him are like the sun emerging at its full strength.’”

My next-door neighbor would not approve of the addition we planned to build. They claimed that their children sometimes play in that area. In all the years we’ve lived here I’ve never seen any children playing in that corner of the property!

My boss too. I worked so hard to make her a fancy mishloach manos and she barely thanked me as if I’d given her a package of wafers and a can of tuna in a shoe box.

My mother husband mother-in-law sister — all love me and care about me and my family but each of them hurts me on occasion. 

It’s not necessary to think way back in the past. There’s enough in the past few days that annoyed angered or insulted me.

And when things do annoy me the words are on the tip of my tongue to retort and retaliate but I catch myself as I remember. “Ribono shel Olam” I say instead “just as I forgive this person forgive me for all my sins now and all year-round.”

There’s a great advantage in meriting that one’s sins be forgiven by forgiving others since forgiving others is a just reason measure for measure … that his sins should be forgiven … ” (ibid.)

It’s not imagination or mystery but a true path toward gaining atonement. A path that’s difficult at its start and fulfilling at its conclusion. A path that my Creator has created especially for me.

The yearly hourglass is emptying before my eyes. I hurry to purify my heart once again exerting myself to restrain my tongue trying to be a little more forgiving to be silent instead of spiteful. 

And with this one step I acquire for myself the world’s best Lawyer for the Defense!

A good sweet year.