A friend of mine who is becoming more observant recently asked me about the flood of "mehilla" e-mails she had been receiving over the past week. I explained that mehilla meant forgiveness and why asking for forgiveness is an essential part of the teshuva process. But while her impression was that forgiveness was about sitting down with someone and apologize for wrongs committed, she was reading e-mails giving and asking for blanket exemptions with no real substance to them. If you think about it, most of the