As we enter the gates of Elul, the gates of teshuva, the Torah tells us in week in Parshat Shoftim שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך — judges and police you should place by the gates of the city.
We know that every person has their own personal gates, and every person has seven gates in their skull. The two eyes, the ears, the mouth and nostrils. Every person has to refine his senses.
He has to purify himself, whether it’s what he looks at, what he listens to, what he speaks, what he inhales and has to place judges and police to guard and protect those senses.
However Shlomo Carlebach would teach to teach שופטים ושוטרים תתן לך בכל שעריך
There’s also a different type of gatekeeper. There are gatekeepers who are there to block out all the negative influences, but there are gatekeepers there to expand the gate, to have an expansive influence, to open up the gates wider, and to bring in other people who want to come close to Hashem.
In Elul our teshuva is not just for ourselves, but our teshuva is also to pursue justice for others and to help others enter inside those gates of God’s oneness and the gates of the Torah, and the beauty of being Jewish.
The gates, this Shabbat, have to not just be guarded, they also have to be reopened and in an expanded way our conception and the way we love each other, the way we look at our husband and wife, the way parents and children, the way teachers and students relate to one another.
And therefore we have to have different types of gatekeepers that are welcoming, that are opening up and widening the gates so that others can enter.
Be’ezrat Hashem we should find that new sefer this year, that new connection to Hashem and a new path of teshuva that never existed the year before. In the Jewish nation, we should open up the gates of geula, the gates of redemption, for all of Israel.
Amen and Amen.
Shabbat Shalom.
