ELUL: Are You Prepared?
How long does it take you to get ready for a trip? I mean, if you are like me, you sort of delay until maybe a day or two before the actual departure, make a bunch of lists and then try to put it all together, knowing full well that there is a pretty good chance that something has been forgotten. Not so with us as we get ready for the High Holidays! We need an entire month. That month, Elul, begins as August wanes this year, as the 1st of Elul is August 25. An entire month! Why?
The why is answered in the seriousness of the month. As many of you know, there are a few things that tradition asks of us this pre-Holyday time. We are asked to seriously begin the process of examining our souls, our life and our relationships as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. One of the more famous traditions is that we look at the letters that make up the word Elul and those letters can combine to form the phrase from Song of Songs: ani l’dodi. V’dodi li (aleph, lamed, vov, lamed) I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine! Maybe the text is asking us to consider this idea of love, not necessarily romantic love, but as the new year dawns, maybe we can consider what we love, what, in this mixed up and challenging world, gives us joy and meaning and decide to focus more on these relationships, moments and possibilities.
We are called upon to include prayers that speak of aspects of forgiveness, and most congregations will, the end of Shabbat on the Saturday prior to Rosh Hashanah, have s’lichot services that bring home the themes of forgiveness. Likewise, often we are called upon to create study sessions, as many congregations now do, that re-introduce themes associated with prayer, forgiveness and the relationships we have with God and others. We are reminded of that saying that Yom Kippur will atone for sins between us and God, BUT, Yom Kippur will not atone for the sins between individuals. That work must be done by each of us, and it is interesting to see so many people posting on social media asking for forgiveness if they have wronged anyone in the past year. Often, to carry the study theme along, many will study Psalm 27 that also speaks to our relationship with the sacred. Among the other traditions is the sounding of the Shofar daily, except for Shabbat, whose calls, as we know, are symbolic of the call of the season to awaken our souls and life to the themes of the Holidays.
This Elul so many of us will be focused on how we can make any sense of this world and, for many, the events in the Middle East. Will the call of the Shofar awaken a call for statesmanship and peace? How many of us will be re-evaluating what our personal relationship with Israel can be? In the context of so much social and political change in Israel and here with our own North American Jewish communities, how and where do we now fit in? What do we now hold as truth when truth seems so elusive? Where is our spiritual foundation? All this, and more, will come rushing over us as Elul begins its’ gradual march to the New Year. How can we prepare? Are we in any way prepared, and willing to think and act on these questions? And how can we place these issues within the context of the changes in our own personal life, for as we age, we contemplate more the search for our own sense of meaning and purpose.
Shalom
Rabbi Richard F. Address