“But teshuva (repentance), tefillah (prayer), and tzedakah (charity) avert the evil of the decree.” (Unesaneh Tokef, Rosh Hashanah Machzor)

Just this week I had a plumbing problem. I tried to fix it myself, but the more I worked at it, the worse it became. When one finds oneself stuck like that, there are a variety of possible approaches. One is to call a real plumber. Another is to step away and return with fresh eyes and renewed energy. And sometimes, by getting involved in another project altogether, you sharpen your skills so that when you come back to the first project, you will be more successful. These are different strategies which share one underlying goal: Bringing new life into an existing situation.

There is a story told about Reb Yerucham (Rabbi Yerucham Halevi Levovitz 1789-1936), the mashgiach of the Mir Yeshiva. One of his closest talmidim became gravely ill, to the point that his life was in danger. Reb Yerucham davened for him every single day. As the boy’s condition worsened, his mother came to the Mir to care for her son. Immediately upon arrival, she went straight to the mashgiach’s home and begged him to daven for her son. Reb Yerucham told her, “I am already davening for your son.” She responded, “Then you’re obviously not doing the best you can. Try harder!” Reb Yerucham did some soul-searching and realized that perhaps he could push himself a little more. In his next tefillah, he was able to muster up a little more kavana, and slowly the talmid began to recover, until he was fully healed.

During Elul, the sifrei halacha and musar discuss the importance of teshuva and urge us again and again: Do teshuva, do more teshuva, and then do even more. Most of us try our best, but some of us reach Rosh Hashanah, already feeling “spent,” as if they have exhausted their ability to do any more teshuva. This is unfortunate, because the main days of teshuva are the ten days of teshuva, and not the month of Elul. Elul is only the “warm-up” for the Yomim Noraim.

The mitzvah of hearing the shofar, which the Rambam tells us is to wake us up from our spiritual slumber, is exactly like the parable of the plumbing. Sometimes we need something external to jump-start us, to help us reach a new level of teshuva.

This year, when we hear the shofar, we should think about the Rambam’s words: “Wake up!” That is the message of shofar. If we heed the call of the shofar and gird ourselves to daven musaf with that much more kavana, then our teshuva can become more genuine than the teshuva that we’ve done until now. We hope and pray that we all merit to be sealed on Rosh Hashana into the book of the completely righteous. And if not that, at least written in the book of the “beinonim.” And by the time Yom Kippur arrives, may we all merit a chasima tova and the geula shelayma.