Author Archives: sylviarothschild

The thirteenth day of Elul

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This story is repeated in many management curricula, though it is unclear who first told it. The metaphor is powerful and important – how do we think about and set our priorities? A good task for Elul:

A professor in a business school walks into a lecture hall and places a gallon-size empty jar on the table in the front of the room. He proceeds to fill the jar with large stones, as many as he can. “Is the jar full?” he asks his students. “Yes,” they reply. The professor pulls a bucket of pebbles from underneath the table and pours the pebbles in between the large stones. “Is it full now?” he asks. “Yes,” they reply.
Next the professor pulls out a bucket of sand and pours it into the pickle jar, its grains neatly filling the crevices left between the stones and pebbles. “Is it full now?” he asks. A bit more wary, some students shake their heads no. The professor pulls out a pitcher of water and fills the jar to the brim.

“What is the purpose of this demonstration?” the professor asks. The students offer platitudes like “you can always fit a bit more into your schedule,” or “a busy person can always find time to accomplish an additional task.”

“No! That’s not it at all!” the professor says. “The point is that unless I add the large stones first, I can never get them into the jar at all. You have to arrange your life so that high priorities come first, or you won’t find time for them at all.”

What are your Jewish priorities for the coming year?

Rava said: After departing from this world, when a person is brought to judgement for the life he lived in this world, they say to him in the order of that verse: Did you conduct business faithfully? Did you designate times for Torah study? Did you engage in procreation? Did you await salvation? Did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom or understand one matter from another? And, nevertheless, beyond all these, if the fear of the Lord is his treasure, yes, he is worthy, and if not, no, none of these accomplishments have any value. There is a parable that illustrates this. A person who said to his emissary: Bring a kor of wheat up to the attic for me to store there. The messenger went and brought it up for him. He said to the emissary: Did you mix a kav of ḥomton, a preservative to keep away worms, into it for me? He said to him: No. He said to him: If so, it would have been preferable had you not brought it up. Of what use is worm-infested wheat? Likewise, Torah and mitzvot without the fear of God are of no value. (Shabbat 31a)

Look at the questions again. The first is about our ethics in our interactions with others – not about rituals or religious observance. The second about making time for our spiritual nourishment. The third about engagement with the continuation both of Judaism and of the world, reminding us that each of us is responsible for creating something lasting that will live on and nurture the world after us – as the sages ask of us- “were you engaged in planting seeds?” The fourth – did you continue to hope and not to despair? Did you find ways to nurture hope in yourself and others or did you join those who claim hope is pointless? The fifth question asks about our clinging to the primacy of moral discernment – of knowing what is right and what is wrong an holding to the principles of righteousness.

And finally – did you act in the world not mechanistically or without a sense of the value of our world, but with an awareness that we must do more than “just enough” because our world deserves more than that. Whether you see ethical actions as stemming from a belief in God or a belief in the value of humanity – to do them without any value system but only as a way to make material success or to evade the judgement of others is to minimise their importance.

Whatever priorities you choose in the coming year, take a look at these and the order they come in (From the rabbinic interpretation of Isaiah 33:6) – begin with ethical actions and find your way to God through nurturing your spiritual life, your relational life, your engagement with the world and your hope in the future – tradition offers a pathway that is worth exploring

The twelfth day of Elul

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I had a friend at university who had misunderstood the famous quote attributed to Socrates by Plato – “The unexamined life is not worth living”, and believed it to say – in the misery of end of year examinations – “The examined life is not worth living”

Socrates was arguing that for our lives to have meaning and value, it is critical that we reflect on how we are living them, develop an awareness of ourselves and our actions, thinking seriously about the choices we make. If we question our actions and our beliefs, if we drill down into what our motivations might be, and consider the consequences of what we do, then our lives will be lived with more purpose, we will learn to grow into our authentic selves.

But I think a Jewish lens adds an extra dimension. Judaism teaches of the value of every human life – each of us is made betzelem elohim, in the image of God. So I believe it could never frame the idea as Socrates had – that a life without certain conditions is not worth living. Judaism teaches that examining our selves and our lives with frequency and with regularity makes something even more than giving us clear purpose or authenticity – it allows us to create meaning, to go above and beyond understanding ourselves or creating change for our own lives, and instead invites us into the role of the Creator par excellence. By examining our lives and our behaviour we can aspire to more, we can become agents of change, co-creating the world as God expects of us.

This period of Elul and the Yamim Noraim is the most intense (though certainly not the only period in the Jewish year) that reminds us of the responsibility we have in the world, not only to make meaning for ourselves, but to make a world of meaning. Not only to make a tikkun – a repair – in our lives, but a tikkun in the world in which we live. What may begin with examination of the self should not end with understanding only the self, but is the first step towards understanding our responsibility to others, from those who came before us to those who will live long after us, and to those with whom we live today

The eleventh day of Elul

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Judaism doesn’t understand time as a line proceeding endlessly towards the horizon, but more as circular, or oval, or spiral… and yet still there is only ever the moment we are living in. Because in Hebrew thought time is a function of activity, it does not exist independently but is created by our living it. Our year is punctuated by holy times, Shabbat and the festivals create the weeks and the years. And as each Shabbat we relive both the Creation of the world and the exodus from Egypt, so with each festival does every generation experience for themselves the foundational and formative events of Judaism. There is always only the now, even if it echoes with the “nows” of the past.

The preacher Kohelet tells us that “there is a time for everything under the sun” (Ecc. 3:1-8). And in Hebrew thought we do in effect create that time as we live the “everything”, but what must be of critical importance to us is always the present moment. It is the only time that exists, the only thing we can influence. Our choices in each of the present moments we live create our lives, which can be understood as a vast number of such moments.


The preacher Kohelet may have suggested a time for everything, but another extraordinary Jewish thinker Albert Einstein clarified the focus of such time. In a curious echo of the words of Rabbi Eliezer in Pirkei Avot he wrote “Life is a preparation for the future, and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.” In other words the only way to properly address the future is to be as present as possible in the present. He continued “you cannot ‘presently’ change yesterday or tomorrow, so it is of supreme importance that you dedicate all of your efforts to ‘right now’. It is the only time that matters. It is the only time there is.”
We only have the present moment in which to live, and we only have the present moment in which to choose. But this does not limit us, rather it gives us the clarity and the focus to really make a difference in our lives. As the Mishnah tells us to live each day as if it may be our last, we have to think each day about our purpose and our actions.

The tenth day of Elul

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“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

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“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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.