What the Rav said:
Every Jew wakes up in the morning and says, Elokai, neshama she natta bi, tehorah he.
(My G-d, the soul which you gave me, is pure).
Whatever happens to him during the course of the day, descents, falls, confusions and even G-d forbid sins, it’s all just confusion. It’s all just the influence of the street, the influence of the non-Jews, the influence of the nations of the world, the influence of the government (may its name be wiped out) which deliberately tries to make people sin in order to be able to control them and to enslave them.
But, the soul of every Jew is clean and pure. Therefore, when Yom Kippur comes around, all their sins are forgiven.
This is like a chicken that rolls in the dust and become black from the dust, the dirt and the soot. All she needs to do is shake herself a bit, and it all disappears, she becomes white as snow.
So too with a Jew, all the soot which he collects throughout the year, in a second it disappears. He just needs to shake his feathers and already, everything’s disappeared.
My thoughts:
Rabbenu tells us that really a Jew is not connected to sin at all. They don’t go together.
A Jew is really just a holy neshama, a part of Hashem. Sinning is not something which is ‘shyach’ (applicable) to a Jew at all.
However, we see differently. We see that we do sin. Some more, some less, But, mostly, we all sin.
The secret here though is to know that these sins are not ‘part of me’. They are not ‘the real me’. The real me is holy and pure. The real me is my internal goodness. These sins are just ‘the dirt’ that I sometimes find myself wallowing in.
On Yom Kippur, or any time a Jew makes teshuva, we can shake off all that dirt, and return to our natural pure, white, shining selves.
Just shake it off!