Ezra HaSofer arranged the Torah reading so that Parashat Nitsavim is always read on the Shabbat before Rosh Hashana. This is no coincidence, but profound divine wisdom.

It is a message of hope: despite 40 years of errors in the desert, you are still here. You survived everything, you will survive the future. It is never too late for Teshuvah, and the timing is perfect, right before the judgment of Rosh Hashana.

Mr. Yehuda H'imi reveals a secret: three women "shine" in the Rosh Hashana prayers, and their common point teaches us the power of Teshuvah. Their initials form ש.ח.ר - Sarah, Hannah, Rachel.

"And the Lord remembered Sarah as He had said" - read from the Torah on the first day of Rosh Hashana.

"A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children" - Haftarah of the second day.

"And Hannah prayed and said: My heart rejoices in the Lord" - Haftarah of the first day.

Before each blast of the Shofar, we recite seven times the psalm למנצח לבני קרח מזמור - "For the choirmaster, by the sons of Korah, a psalm." Yet Korah and his whole congregation were swallowed alive into the earth. What became of his sons?

"And the sons of Korah did not die."

In free fall toward the depths, an instant regret erupts: "We were wrong." A platform then appears in the abyss, and they become the singers of the Temple, authors of ten psalms.

A legal mystery runs through the Parashah: how can someone who is not present be bound to the covenant?

"It is not with you alone that I make this covenant... but with the one who is here with us today, and with the one who is not here with us today."

Mr. Yehuda H'imi reveals a secret in the initials of the three women, ש.ח.ר. That same word, שחר, means the darkness of night, as in "שחר אבקשך" - "in the darkness I seek You," the moment when all seems lost.

But reversing the letters ש.ח.ר yields ר.ח.ש: רחש, the murmur, the inner prayer. "רחש ליבי דבר טוב" - "My heart murmurs a beautiful word." From darkness the purest prayer is born.