The tenth day of Elul

Posted on by
Reply

“What day is it?” asked Pooh
It’s today,” squeaked Piglet.
My favourite day,” said Pooh.” ― A.A. Milne

The Jewish festival calendar ensures that we create rituals and safeguard days which take us out of ordinary time, out of our routines and regular activities. These are days which we create for ourselves in order to make a perspective on our lives that we are rarely able to see. Shabbat is the most regular such day, a day where the business and busyness of ordinary life is put aside for 25 hours. But we also have an extended period of time to dig deeper, reflect longer, consider not just the immediate week gone by and the week to come, but the life gone by and the life to come – the period of the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe. And these extend from the beginning of the month of Elul, right up until Hoshanah Rabbah.


Most of the time we live our lives carelessly, always looking forward or else living in the past, hoping or rehearsing or editing our lives. We rarely notice the present moment, and this tendency not to be fully present in the moment is made easier, as we view important events in our lives through the lens of our camera phones, or remain connected to our technology instead of paying full attention to our surroundings or to the people we are physically with. And we are able to distract ourselves with the activities of others, rather than take the time to give ourselves our full attention.

And then comes Elul, and Rosh Hashanah, leading into Yom Kippur and even through to Succot, nudging us to reflect, to notice – reminding ourselves to stop, to look and listen, to pay attention to the needs of ourselves and our world.


Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav the 18th Century Hasidic master whose short life (he died aged 39) was filled with spiritual teaching and thinking, reminds us of how important it is to do this, writing: “All we have in the world is the day, and the hour where we are, for the morrow is an entirely different world”.

The ninth day of Elul

Posted on by
Reply

“And God lifted me out of the pit of destruction, etc.” Did David really descend into a pit? Rather, David said, “I was already on my way down to the pit, and God did not let me fall.” And so it says (Psalm 16:11), “You make known to me the path of life.” Therefore it is said, “God lifted me out of the pit of destruction,” and not only that, but God lifted me up to a high place, as it says (Psalm 18:34), “God made my feet like the feet of deer and set me secure on the heights.” Why did God do this for me? Because of my hope in God. God did not desire sacrifices or offerings, but rather hope. (Midrash Tehillim 40:2)

The Midrash on psalm 40 reminds us that we are not alone, that the universe is neither random nor intentionally cruel. That if we continue to strive for hope, even in the face of what may feel a lot like despair or destruction, then God will not be far away.

Nachman of Bratslav- a famous depressive – is reported as having said it is forbidden to despair:

At the time he spoke the torah on Va’etchanan, which was published in Likutei [Moharan], Part II, section 78, and he’s speaking there about it being always forbidden to bring oneself to despair, however things are, heaven forfend. And he said it this way: “Men tor zich nisht m’ya’esh zayn. Gevalt! Zayy aych nisht m’ya’esh!” [It is forbidden to despair! Oy! [or: Bloody murder!] Don’t despair!” And he really drew out the word “gevalt” as one who does who cautions and cries out from the heart’s depths. (Chayei Moharn 49)

The main thing is to encourage oneself in every way possible {for there is no such thing as despair! (What he said was: Kein yiush iz gor nit fahr-handin !) He drew out these words Kein yiush…, and said them emphatically and with very amazing and awesome depth, in order to instruct and hint to each and every person throughout the generations not to despair under any circumstances, no matter what happens to him.} And be what may, even if one has fallen to where he has fallen, God spare us, since he encourages himself with something, he still has hope of repenting and returning to God.(Likutei Moharan, Part II 78:7:1-3)

It is indeed important not to despair – but maybe it would be easier to remind ourselves to continue to have hope. That, as the midrash says – God does not want our sacrifices or our offerings – God wants us to have hope.

Eighth day of Elul

Posted on by
Reply

In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.

The previous three questions can be found in the previous three posts

The last question the soul is to be asked is this “Tzipita l’yeshua?” do you anticipate redemption, are you living in a state of hope?

Hope:

The theologian and philosopher Emil Fackenheim wrote “to be a Jew is to hope,”

And Rabbi Jonathan Sacks added “to be a Jew is to be an agent of hope”

Future Tense – How The Jews Invented Hope by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
“Judaism is a religion of details, but we miss the point if we do not sometimes step back and see the larger picture. To be a Jew is to be an agent of hope in a world serially threatened by despair. Every ritual, every mitzvah, every syllable of the Jewish story, every element of Jewish law, is a protest against escapism, resignation or the blind acceptance of fate. Judaism is a sustained struggle, the greatest ever known, against the world that is, in the name of the world that could be, should be, but is not yet. There is no more challenging vocation. Throughout history, when human beings have sought hope they have found it in the Jewish story. Judaism is the religion, and Israel the home, of hope.”

The seventh day of Elul

Posted on by
Reply

In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.

The third question

The third question we are to be asked is this:
Nasa’atta b’emunah? Did you act with honesty and integrity in your dealings with others?
Maybe one of the hardest questions to answer – we may at some level be aware of whether we are connecting to our people and engaging in living Judaism, We are probably aware – if only through feelings of guilt and inadequacy, of our record with family relationships, but our dealings with other people – so many of them – how can we really reflect on each one and ask ourselves this question?

The reality we should acknowledge is that what we say isn’t always what we mean; We need to admit to ourselves that even when we mean to do something and say we will do it, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we actually do it, and so we create a dissonance that we have to address. Once we recognise that we are not living up to our expressed and internal values we are able to take the next step to try to realign our reality to our principles, to behave differently, to try to be that wonderful thing, a mensch. The act of teshuvah is really the realigning of our saying with our doing, the ongoing process of matching our behaviour with our ideals. And here again is the same issue. Nasa’atta b’emunah? Are you going about your business like a mensch? Are you really acting as though you are b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God?

Nasa’atta b’emunah – were you a mensch? Did you stay true to your values? Did your behaviour make people respect you or did it make them fear you? Did you behave in a way you would like others behave towards you?

The previous two questions can be found in the previous two posts. Tomorrow will bring the fourth question

The sixth day of Elul

Posted on by
1

In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.

The second question God asks is this:
Asakta b’priya u’reviyah?
Did you devote yourself to family?
If engaging in Torah is a way of reaching both forwards and backwards in time and of pulling both into our worlds, how much more so is the family the touchstone of our immortality. We inherit so much from our parents and from their parents – not only physical looks and inherited tendencies, not only gestures and ways of being in the world. We inherit all sorts of other things – second and third generation groups will speak of the damage that can be passed through families. Dynasties of musicians or scientists demonstrate the intangibles that get passed on. Social workers can speak of the cycles of abuse or neglect; community rabbis can testify to the many non Jews who come to them to convert to Judaism – because they feel Jewish, because on further research a Jewish grand parent or great grandparent has been discovered, because they just know they have a Jewish soul.
Our liturgy speaks of a Book of Life in which all our actions are recorded. It is a powerful image, a metaphor for the truth that nothing we do – neither good nor bad – is ever really lost in this world, even if we forget. The book of Life exists in a number of ways, it exists within our own souls, but we also write it upon the souls of our family – our children, our parents, our partners, our family relations and the friends who act as our family in this modern more fractured world.
In particular, the book of our life is inscribed upon our children. They take on our pain and they internalise our experiences. They pay for many of our mistakes, and they struggle not to take on our lives and our expectations instead of their own.
The question we are asked after we die will not be did we love our family, or did we leave them well provided for. It is more subtle and complex than that. Rather like the first question it is about how we set our priorities in our life more than the actual acts we did or did not do. So, did we set aside time for Torah means did we engage in Jewish activity and covenant, but it also asks – did we control our time in such a way that we were able to make the choices we wanted to make? Did we fritter away our time or give away the control of our lives to someone else and abdicate from the responsibilities of our freedom? Asakta b’priyah uv’riyah? Means did we busy ourselves with our families, did we devote our energy and our thoughts to them, did we make their needs our preoccupation?
It is a truism that when we look back in our lives, what we regret tends not to be the things we did, but the things we didn’t do. All community rabbis will tell you that no-one regrets not spending more time in the office, but many people regret not spending more time with their families. So here is the question – asakta b’priyah uv’riyah? – did you engage with and invest in your family? Did you make time for them and be with them? Because when you look over your life, you will see that your family provide your structure, your history and your future. You will live on in them and with them; they are the ropes of life into which your soul is bound.

The first question can be found in yesterday’s post

Fifth day of Elul

Posted on by
1

In the Talmud there is a discussion about what happens after we die. We go to Sheol – a Hebrew word deriving from the verb “to question” – and there we are interrogated. We will be asked four questions about the life we have lived. They are good questions and I want us to ask – and even to try to answer them for ourselves. They are questions that can stay with us as we prepare for the Yamim Noraim – and as we move into the coming years.
The first question is this
“Kav’ata Itim L’Torah? Did you set aside time for Torah?”
Did you set aside time for torah? Not, you’ll notice, ‘did you study Torah’. Nor ‘did you follow all the halachic requirements predicated on torah text?” But did you set aside time for Torah – the question isn’t academic.
Torah you see isn’t simply a book, it isn’t a text that we can learn or a narrative we teach our children. Torah has many more dimensions than that. It is a process, it is a history, it is the ongoing dialogue across generations between Jews and Jews, and Jews and God. So when we get ourselves involved in Torah, when we join the conversation and add the experiences and reflections of our lives to the living narrative of Torah, that is when we fit ourselves into our people and truly enter the Covenant. To set aside time for Torah is to be willing to identify in, to be prepared to challenge our ancestral understanding of God, to be ready to encounter God in modernity with open heart. To set aside time for Torah is to say “I will engage with life as a Jew – and in doing so I hope to enrich Judaism and deepen life. And I will add my link to the chain of tradition that remembers the past, supports the present and reaches out to a future I will not know”.

The next question will be posted tomorrow

Fourth Day of Elul

Posted on by
1

In the vidui, the confession to be recited so many times at this season, we find the phrase “Al cheit she’chatanu lefanecha b’tim’hon ley’vav – For the sin we have committed before you by giving in to despair.” It slips by almost unnoticed most of the time as we recite a catalogue of misbehaviours by rote. But is despair really a sin and can we repent of it and actively change our attitudes? R. Nachman of Bratslav is credited with crystallising the concept, saying “there is no such thing as despair” and even, on his death bed: “Assur l’hit’ya-esh – It is forbidden to despair – never give up hope” (Likutei Moharan ll.78).
In our machzor the phrase comes in a set which includes the sins of plotting against others, hard heartedness, arrogance, and giving in to our evil impulse and secrecy. It is a strange positioning – The giving in to despair is sandwiched between a sense of our own arrogance– literally eynaim ramot – raised eyes, and our own yetzer ha’ra – our selfishness and base inclination. This placing seems to suggest that when we choose not to engage with reality, either by refusing to see what is around us or by allowing our internally constructed world view to dominate us – that is when despair creeps in.
Nachman also wrote “Im atta m’amim she’y’cholin lekalkeil, ta’amin she’y’cholim le’taken: – If you believe that it is possible to break things, you must also believe that it is possible to repair things”. So whatever we have broken in the past year let’s not despair, but know that it is time to repair by really noticing what is happening around us rather than living in the bubble of our own self constructed realities.

Third Day of Elul

Posted on by
1


Martin Buber wrote in The Way of Man “To begin with oneself, but not to end with oneself; To start from oneself but not to aim at oneself. To comprehend oneself, but not to be preoccupied with oneself (Martin Buber 1878-1965)

His near contemporary Achad Ha’Am wrote “Judaism did not turn heavenward and create in heaven an eternal habitation of souls. It found ‘eternal life’ on earth, by strengthening the social feeling in the individual by making them regard themselves not as isolated beings with an existence bounded by birth and death, but as part of a larger whole. As a limb of the social body…I live for the sake of the member. I die to make room for new individuals who will mould the community afresh and not allow it to stagnate and remain forever in one position. When the individual thus values the community as their own life, and strives after its happiness as though it here their individual wellbeing, they find satisfaction and no longer feel so keenly the bitterness of their individual existence, because they see the end for which they live and suffer.” (Achad Ha’Am aka Asher Hirsch Ginsberg 1856-1927)

Both speak the same truth – we are intimately connected with others, we cannot become so focussed on our own needs or desires that we ever forget that our lives are one thread in a continually weaving fabric, that we need other people and other people need us – we cannot hide in an ascetic practise and leave the human world behind, for we are a fundamental and necessary part of that human world.


In the words of Buber, Judaism does not make personal salvation our highest aim but “Judaism regards each [person’s] soul as a serving member of God’s creation, which, by the work of human beings is to become the Kingdom of God; …True, each [soul] is to know itself, purify itself, perfect itself, but not for its own sake – neither for the sake of its temporal happiness nor for that of its eternal bliss, but for the sake of the work which it is destined to perform upon the world” (p37 The Way of Man)

The Second Day of Elul

Posted on by
1

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ:
I give thanks to You living and everlasting Sovereign, for You have restored my soul with mercy. Great is Your faithfulness. (Weekday shacharit service, prayers of preparation)
Every morning our liturgy gives us these words of gratitude. Jewish tradition views sleep as being like one sixtieth of death (Berachot 57b) and the Gemara goes on to suggest prayers before sleeping “One who enters to sleep on his bed recites in his bed from Shema Yisrael.. Then he recites: Blessed…Who makes the bands of sleep fall upon my eyes and slumber upon my eyelids, and illuminates the pupil of the eye. May it be Your will, Eternal my God, that You make me lie down in peace …. Let neither bad dreams nor troubling thoughts disturb me…. Enlighten my eyes in the morning lest I sleep the sleep of death, never to awaken. Blessed are You, God, Who gives light to the whole world in Your glory. (Berachot 60b)
Many religions see sleep as being related to death, and describe this observable loss of consciousness as the soul leaving the body; dreams become the experiences the soul encounters, portents from another place. And Judaism is no exception – we thank God for restoring our souls to our bodies upon awakening. But this prayer goes further than gratitude for another day of life. The two words “rabbah emunatecha” – your faith/faithfulness is great” add an extra layer of meaning for us. Most prayers elaborate on our faith in God, or at least our aspiration to have such faith. But here we describe the entity with faith not as the human being grateful to God, but God themself – who has faith in us.
The phrase comes into the liturgy from the book of Lamentations (3:22) and reminds us that however hard we are finding life, however low we might feel, or dislocated from and abandoned by God, God continues to have mercy on us, God continues to have faith in us. All we have to do is to turn and find our way back to God, and God will be ready to greet us. A repeated message in the liturgy of the season of the Yamim Noraim, that God is waiting for our teshuvah. But also a daily message – this may be the season for teshuvah, but the gates of repentance are never closed.
“To recall my distress and my misery/ Was wormwood and poison;
Whenever I thought of them, I was bowed low.
But this do I call to mind, Therefore I have hope:
The kindness of GOD has not ended / And God’s mercies are not spent.
They are renewed every morning— Ample is Your grace!
“GOD is my portion,” I say with full heart; This is the One in whom I have hope.
(Lam. 3 :19-24)

First Day of Elul

Posted on by
2

Elul is traditionally a month of introspection and preparation for the coming Yamim Noraim – Days of Awe.
Like many months of the Hebrew calendar its name is Babylonian in origin and probably has its roots in the Akkadian word for a harvest, though it has resonances also of the verb “to protrude” אלל (‘alal), and of the noun “a futile thing” אלול (‘elul)
In Aramaic, the verb אלל (‘alal), means “to encircle” or “to search out”, which corresponds to the Hebrew verb עלל (‘alal), to glean.
We might drash on this that Elul is month that demands our attention, a month we might use to search our lives and the way we are living, both in order to gather together and celebrate our best characteristics and allow them to nourish the way we live our lives, and at the same time to sift out the empty and futile aspects of ourselves and our lives.
There are many rabbinic explanations for the name of this month, two of which are:
That it is an acronymic reference to the first letters of the phrase in the Song of Songs אני לדודי ודודי לי “I am by Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine” – the “Beloved” in this reading being God rather than a more temporal partner. And
That it is a reference to a verse in the Book of Esther אִישׁ לְרֵעֵהוּ, וּמַתָּנוֹת לָאֶבְיֹנִים “Each person to their neighbour, and gifts to the poor”
Wildly different books and contexts – but what brings them together?
The four words in each reading not only have the letters of “Elul” represented, but each word asks a similar question for us while we glean and search ourselves, separating the futile from the worthwhile as we turn ourselves towards God once more.
The first word Ani/Ish represents our human selves. Who am I? What is my “selfhood”? What is my humanity about?
The second word – LeDodi/l’Rei’eihu bespeaks relationship with others or the “Other”.
The third word “V’dodi”/Matanot asks “What does God want from me?” “What can/do I contribute to the world?”
The fourth word Li/le’evyonim nudges us into asking “How do I get to my best self?” How do I bring about change?
The verse from Esther is set in the context of change – turning mourning to joy. It reminds us that such a journey can be made, change can happen – even in the most unlikely circumstances
The journey of Elul begins with the self and ends with the self, but the self at the end of the process is not the same as the one who began it.