What would your life look like if you finally let it go?
That question became one of the central questions of my new book, The Forgiveness Experiment.
I’ve come to realize that we often misunderstand what letting go actually means. We think letting go means saying it didn’t hurt. It did.
We think forgiveness means saying what happened was okay. It wasn’t.
We think moving forward somehow erases the past. It doesn’t.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean the past didn’t happen. It means you’ve decided it doesn’t get to define what happens next.
And perhaps there is no better time to make that decision than now.
Rosh Hashanah is tomorrow night. A new year. A new page. A new opportunity to decide what gets to come with us and what doesn’t.
There are hurts we have carried for months. Some for years. Conversations we keep replaying. People who still occupy far too much space in our heads. Anger that may once have protected us, but now simply exhausts us.
Grudges have a strange way of keeping us stuck in a moment that everyone else has already left.
Let it end. Let yourself feel what hurts. Give yourself permission to heal. And when you’re ready, even if you have to do it again tomorrow begin to let it go.
Forgiveness is rarely one dramatic moment. Sometimes we release resentment layer by layer, until one day we realize we can finally breathe again.
May G-d heal the places in us that still ache, help us repair what can be repaired, release what needs to be released, and bless us with the freedom to walk into the new year with open hearts.
May you and your family be written and sealed for a sweet, healthy, peaceful and truly liberating new year.
- Rabbi Yisroel Bernath
Author, The Forgiveness Experiment
Get yours here.
Paperback: https://t.co/Ljvex6l2Ax
Kindle: https://t.co/8fp7z6pnlJ
Audiobook on Spotify: https://t.co/oAJyCHdwQf
The Rebbe, of righteous memory, would issue pastoral letters each year to “The Sons and Daughters of Our People Israel, Everywhere,” in preparation for the New Year. Here is one such message, in free translation, for a year whose beginning was Shabbat, like this year, 5787 (2026). https://t.co/sY8BQqEtxl
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