Elul Preparation Guide

Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaarei Teshuva says that when you accept rebuke from the wise, you can leap from darkness to great light in one moment. Yet on Pirkei Avos, the same Rabbeinu Yonah says that if I am not for myself, nothing happens. Which is the real teshuva, a voice from outside or a push from within? For Rosh Chodesh Elul, Rabbi Asaf Prisman brings the Mesilas Yesharim's picture of walking at night to explain why both are needed. A story of a woman in Yerushalayim, sick for twenty years, closes on a turn nobody expected.