good and stubborn

Last year during Elul, my wife and I were trying, hopelessly, to get to the Kotel for selichoth one night by car. The old city was so backlogged, we sat for two hours before we fled through the Zion gate.

While in the car we joked about everyone honking their horns for Moshiah.

This past motzaei Shabbath, remembering back to last year, my wife suggested that perhaps we were supposed to beg and plead and adamantly demand Moshiah's arrival. In this way we would take our stiff-necked nature and bring it to some positive use.

We know that a ba'al teshuvah who returns with all of his or her heart is not only accquitted of his (or her) sins, but HaShem actually counts those sins as merits in the ba'al teshuvah's interest.

Perhaps the final teshuvah of Klal Yisrael is to redeem our stubborness as a midah tovah, a beneficial attribute.

In this way perhaps all of the nation's communal sins would be transformed to universal merits.

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