In this meditation we interpret the mitzvah of returning lost items to their owners through the prism of internal work, understanding the lost items as lost parts of ourselves that were exiled in the course of our lives, picturing them as little lost sheep. The retrieval and ingathering of these parts — returning them home — is understood as part of this season’s teshuva process, a sacred process of return to our fullest selves. We also consider how these parts may have gotten exiled in childhood by looking at the adjacent mitzvah of the ben sorer umoreh, the “rebellious child.”
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