09 Sep KI SAVO: KABALAH TOVAH

A poor couple received
a letter from the king.
The letter informed
them that the king
would visit their home
in thirty days.
The couple was very
excited and honored and
had to prepare. The baal
habayis told his wife,
“The walls of our home
haven’t been painted
in years, and all of our
windows are broken.
The legs of the chairs
are of different height,
and when someone sits down, he falls off. We
know how to balance ourselves on the chairs
because we are used to them, but we can’t have
the king sit on one of our chairs lest he fall off.
Tomorrow, I will call handymen to fix up our
entire house.”
The wife replied, “For the past thirty years, I
have been telling you that we have to fix up the
house, but you kept saying that we can’t afford
it. If you go ahead now, it will involve taking
out a loan and then paying it back over the next
thirty years. The king knows we are poor. He
isn’t expecting to arrive at a mansion. He will
accept whatever we can do.”
Her husband answered, “The king told us
weeks in advance that he’s coming to us. He
didn’t tell us at the last minute. That means the

king wants us to prepare for his visit.”
The wife replied, “There are less expensive
ways to prepare for the king’s visit. Instead of
painting the walls, we can hang white sheets on
them. For the broken windows, we will place
towels in them to keep the cold out.”
The husband said, “I agree with your plan, but
there is one thing we have to fix: the chairs.
There is no way we can have the king sit on one
of our broken chairs.”
The baalei mussar give this mashal to explain
the essence of Elul. Hashem will visit us on
Rosh Hashanah, and we must prepare ourselves.
We won’t be able to fix everything, but we must
do what we can. Therefore, we should take on a
kabbalah tovah, which will be one step toward
improving ourselves.
Two people did a great favor for the king.
The king awarded them by granting them the

privilege of going into his treasury for a half-
hour and taking out whatever they wanted.

The date arrived, and when the designated hour
neared, they arrived in front of the treasury,
each holding a sack. The treasury minister met
them and said, “When I give the signal, you can
go inside. You have a half-hour. Whatever you
take out is yours!”
When the minister gave the signal, they rushed
towards the treasury entrance. They had never
been there before, and they didn’t know about
the narrow hallway which they had to pass
to get to the treasury. As they rushed through
this narrow path, their sacks tore on the walls.

“What should we do now?” they wondered.
They only had a half-hour; time was ticking,
and they didn’t have sacks to carry the material.
One of them sat in the hallway and began
sewing up his sack. He deeded a usable sack
before he went inside.
The other person ran into the treasury and
immediately began filling his torn bag with
the precious gems and items he found in the
treasury. “There is no time to fix the bag,” he
said.
The other man came in with only five minutes
left and quickly threw precious items into his
mended sack.
Five minutes later, the treasurer came in
and said, “Time is up. You have to leave the
treasury.”
The one with the mended bag had some
treasures in it. But the other one, the person
who didn’t wait to mend his bag, didn’t fare as
well. When he lifted his bag (which was now
heavy from all the items he had collected), the
bag tore even more, and all the precious items
fell to the ground. He was left without anything
at all.
The nimshal of this tale comes to teach the
importance of making kabalos tovos. The holy,
special days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur,
Succos, and Simchas Torah are approaching.
These are like Hashem’s treasury; we can take
out treasures from these days for the rest of
the year. But we accomplish this with kabalos
tovos. The kabbalah tovah is like sewing up the

bag and tying things up so we don’t lose what
we gain. Some say, “There is too much to do
during these days, many mitzvos to perform.
A small kabbalah doesn’t mean much to me. I
don’t have time for it.” But at the end of the
yomim tovim period, they discover they have
nothing tangible. In contrast, those who make
a kabbalah tovah have something they can take
with them.
People think they can’t change and feel this way
because they have the “everything or nothing”
approach. They don’t appreciate the value of a
small step of improvement and how much we
can gain from a kabbalah tovah.
It can be compared to the one step that gets a
person into an elevator. It’s a small step, but it’s
what will raise him to great heights. Without
that one small step, he will remain below.
Tzaddikim advised taking on a kabbalah tovah
before the new year arrives. They called it
a new garment for the new year. One good
deed leads to the next one. It is a step towards
improvement. Try it and become amazed at
how much growth a person can attain with a
small kabbalah tovah.