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Waking up to beach views in Mexico, shopping at The Shuk in Jerusalem, the clean mountain air of Northern Italy… Some of my vacations, I’ll remember forever.

“You shall count for yourselves – from the morrow of the rest day (Pesach), from the day when you bring the omer (a measure of volume) of the waving – seven weeks, they shall be complete. Until the morrow of the seventh week you shall count, fifty days…” (Leviticus 23:15-16)

“But as much as they would afflict it, so it would increase and so it would burst forth; and they were disgusted because of the Children of Israel.”

 – Sh’mos 1:12

There was once a chasid of the Rebbe, R’ Shlomo of Karlin, zt”l, who lived in a small town near Karlin, in a small broken-down house. This chasid did not have much of anything, but nonetheless he was happy with his lot. Every year, when the festival of Sukkos arrived, the chasid would wait until everyone else had built their sukkos, and he would then go around and ask for whatever they had left over. People would offer him a rotted board or a rusted nail, and it was from these leftovers that he would build his sukkah. For seven days, the chasid would sit in his sukkah and sing with great joy.

And Hashem said to Avram, “Go for yourself from your land, from your birth place, and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you.”

– B’reishis 12:1

Although the mitzvah of teshuvah can be done at any time of the year, the practice is most associated with Aseres Yemei Teshuvah—the Ten Days of Repentance. The Rambam writes in Mishneh Torah that Aseres Yemei Teshuvah is an auspicious time for repentance: “Although repentance and prayer are always effective, they are even more effective during Aseres Yemei Teshuvah when they are accepted immediately.”