25 Sep YOM KIPPUR: I WANT TO COME HOME, BUT I DON’T KNOW IF DAD WILL LET ME IN

I would like to share a
thought about Yom
Kippur. As Rav Dovid
Kronglass used to say,
this is the most
important week of the
year. We have a
tremendous task in front of us and that is the
work of repenting. We should always bear in
mind one very important fact: how desperately
the Ribono shel Olam wants us back.
Every day in Shmone Esrei, we recite a
blessing about Teshuva. The blessing begins
with the words “Bring us back, our Father, to
Your Torah, and bring us near, our King, to
Your service, and influence us to return in
perfect repentance before You.” The blessing
ends with the words “Blessed are
You, Hashem, WHO DESIRES
REPENTANCE (haRotzeh b’Tshuva).”
We recite these words so many times during
the year that perhaps they lose their impact.
However, haRotzeh b’Tshuva does not merely
mean that the Almighty will accept our
repentance. It means He WANTS our
repentance. His desire for us to come back is
so enormous that as long as we make even a
minimal effort, He will be waiting there to
take us back.
I once read a short story from a Gentile author.

The story is fictional but I believe it is very
powerful and has a beautiful message that is
directly related to the idea I just mentioned.
The story encapsulates what it means when we
say the Ribono shel Olam is a Rotzeh
b’Tshuva.
In the story, there was a boy who finished high
school and, as is quite typical of youth that
age, he told his parents he wanted to discover
and see the world. His father told him, “No, I
want you to start college.” The boy would not
accept his father’s advice: “I need to spread
my wings a little and see what the rest of the
world is like. I want to travel and see the rest
of America.”
The father told his son “If you leave, do not
bother ever coming back. You can start college
now or you can leave this house and keep on
going because you will never be welcome in
my house again.” The boy decided to leave
anyway.
He left his home in Maryland and began
hitchhiking across America. He picked grapes
in California and he did odd jobs here and odd
jobs there just to keep himself going. As is
often the case, after some time, the boy became
home sick. He missed his parents. He missed
home. He missed having a permanent roof
over his head. He missed knowing where his
next meal would come from. He started

hitchhiking back to the east coast, which was
his point of departure.
He got as far as Iowa, sat down on a curb
somewhere and wrote a letter home: Dear
Mom, I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m lonely. I want
to come home. But I don’t know if Dad will let
me home. Mom, you know the train track
crosses our farm and near the farm is an apple
tree. If Dad will let me in, I want you to tie a
white towel around a branch of that tree. I will
get on the train and I will look for the apple
tree and check to see if there is a white towel
wrapped around one of its branches. If dad still
feels the same way he did the day I left when
he told me not to ever come home again, I
understand that there will be no white towel
there and I will know that I can’t come home.
The boy made it back to the east coast, near
Maryland, boarded a passenger train, and
started heading towards home. As the train
approached the farm, he became terribly
nervous. Would there be a towel there or
would there not be a towel? As the train came
closer and closer, he turned to the fellow
sitting next to him on the train and said, “I
want you to do me a favor. We are going to
pass a farm with an apple tree right near the
tracks. I am going to close my eyes. Just tell
me if there is a white towel wrapped around a
branch on that tree. I am too nervous to look

myself.” He was so scared that the towel
would not be there, he was afraid to even look
directly at the tree!
He sat on the train with his eyes tightly shut
and the train passed the farm and passed the
tree. The boy said to the man sitting next to
him, “What happened?” He said, “Son, there
is a white towel around every branch on that
tree.” This said, in effect, that the father could
not wait for the son to come home.
This, l’havdil is a parable of what it means
“HE DESIRES REPENTANCE”. The Ribono
shel Olam wants us back, passionately. Just
like any father who may have had
disagreements with his son, at the end of the
day, “as a father has mercy on his children,”
how much more so in the case of the Mercy of
our Father in Heaven, which knows no bounds.
He certainly wants us back as much as any
flesh and blood father would ever want his son
back.
May we all merit to do a complete repentance
and be sealed for a long good life of shalom, a
year of redemption and salvation, and peace
upon Israel.