Readings for Elul : Preparing for the High Holidays
Tuesday, August 10 Ninety-Four
Rosh Chodesh Elul Fighting the languor of sultry days, We begin the turning, back to You; Moving against the heat of our hearts, Against the anger inside, we turn. Call us to begin the examination, Healing God; Call for us to remove the garment of our deceit, The fears that bind us away from You, Chaffing at our tender miseries. In the month of Peeling piece by piece the accumulated detritus, Shaking it free, holding it to the hot light To scrutinize as the year begins its ending. In the month of Examining them with a truthful heart, Counting the pulse beats of our life, The selfish pressures we apply and resist. Call us to the consultation of our souls, For You are a God of healing and mercy; Call us to begin without delay, That
(2nd day) Elul, we begin the unlayering, Elul, we uncover our secrets, Elul might draw us near to You.
Debbie Perlman, Forty-Eight You are the Guardian Who protects me From my self-doubt; You are the Opening Before my stubbornness. You will wait for me; You will await my turning to You. You are the Coverlet Who warms The coldness of my heart, Wrapping up my distancing With the radiance of Your care. You will call to me; You will call me to You. For You stand ready to take my hand; It is I who will not give it forth. You wait for my smallest motion, And, reaching toward me, pull me along. You wait and wait for me, And I fend off this healing, Covering my lost chances with excuses, Uncovering still open wounds. O let my heart open to the Eternal God! Let me relax this stiff-necked vigilance To turn and be healed. Let me turn and be made whole. Debbie Perlman, Rabbi Judah haNassi said: What is the right path for a person to follow? One that honors both self and other. Be attentive in all you do; do not judge one deed small and another great, for you cannot always know their significance. Be virtuous, even if virtue is costly. Avoid sin, even if sin is profitable. Remember three things and you will not err: If your deeds shouldn‟t be known, perhaps they shouldn‟t be done. If your words shouldn‟t be shared, perhaps they shouldn‟t be spoken Act with attention, for all your deeds have consequence. II:1 Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro, Rabbi Eliezar haKappar used to say: Those who are born are destined to die. Those who die are destined to return. Those who live are destined to be judged. With Reality, there is no wrong, no forgetting, no bias, no bribe. All is as it must be; there is no escape. Despite your wishes, you were conceived. Despite your wishes, you were born. Despite your wishes, you live. Despite your wishes, you die. Despite your wishes, you are destined to deal with the consequences of your actions. So get on with it. IV:29 Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro, Memory Loaded with everything I have done, Burdened with suffering I have caused and the suffering I have endured, I take breath and plunge into the dark cold sea. Deeply, swiftly the burden pulls me down past the ghostly fish and the waving reeds to a murky depth where I glimpse a gleaming jewel half hidden in the mud. I grasp it, let go my burden, and begin to rise; Rapidly I rise, feeling You draw me upward until I breach the surface and fill my bursting lungs. Light fills the sky and shines on the moving waters. The world You made lies before me like a great Torah, mystery and love rolled up within it. Your light sets the jewel in my hand afire, sparkling with my purest dreams. Filled with the breath of life, dazzled with light, overflowing with love – Your love reaching toward me, my love reaching toward You, the love of all for one another – Lord God, at this moment I have returned to You, and You have returned me to life. Ruth F. Brin, The Shofar Calls The shofar calls: Tekiah Arise! Awake! come from your beds, your homes to the blast that calls you, the siren that warns you: seek shelter for your spirit, enter now the opening gates. The rams horn cries: Shevarim Worship in truth, pray together in confidence and in trust, determined that promises shall be kept, oaths fulfilled, words spoken thoughtfully in honor and in truth. The shrill notes tremble: Teruah Listen to the cries of the ancient martyrs, Sense the unbearable silence of the dead, Contemplate in reverence and awe all those who died "L‟kiddush ha-Shem." The shofar blasts: Tekiah gadolah Remember! Recall the ages of our people, Dwell on your own life in the year that has passed, Call up from the darkness the mistakes, the errors, the evil deeds that you must deal with now. Three times three the great horn blows: Tekiah, shevarim, teruah Return! Return to God Who made you, Arise to prayer, awake to memory, achieve repentance. Return to God Who loves you, Now while the days of awe are passing, before the closing of the gates. Ruth F. Brin, Elul: Making Ready Rosh Hashanah does not burst in upon us. From ancient tradition, the entire month of Elul, the month before Tishri, is a time of rethinking, study, and self-examination leading toward the Rosh Hashanah – Yom Kippur period. Elul became a special time in the ancient Jewish community of Babylonia after the destruction of the Second Temple, during the period of the writing of the Talmud (100-500 C.E.). The custom grew up that during Elul, ordinary Jews–not just the scholars and rabbis–would take time out from their work to join in study groups to read the Bible and rethink their lives. As an explanation for this custom, the Jewish communities looked back to the earliest of all the reconciliations between God and the Jewish people. Elul is thirty days long, and Yom Kippur is the tenth day of Tishri. So there are forty days from the first day of Elul to Yom Kippur. These forty days became identified with the forty days of repentance Moses spent on Mount Sinai. Moses had come down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments only to find the people worshipping the golden calf. He destroyed the calf and punished the people, and then returned to Sinai to fast and pray for forty days. These ended–presumably on Yom Kippur–with God‟s act of forgiveness and reconciliation in handing down the second set of tablets with the Ten Commandments. And so Israel‟s first collective sin was covered over by the first atonement. By identifying this period of Moses‟ forty days on the mountain with the period before Yom Kippur, the community encouraged itself to spend these forty days as Moses did–in prayerful study and in trying to hear God‟s word and turn their lives around, so that God could again extend a full forgiveness. How to mark these forty days? The Jews of Babylonia created two main customs. One was that the shofar would be blown every morning of Elul, except Shabbos and the last day of the month. This horn blast was a spiritual alarm in itself, reminding people to bestir their souls. It was also a way of pointing toward the shofar-blowing on Rosh Hashanah. The second custom was that at every service during Elul, Psalm 27 would be read. It is a plea to God for help when we are beset by enemies around us. But reading it before and after Rosh Hashanah, we may well understand it as a plea for helping in dealing with the enemies within us– enemies of our own true selves who seek to frighten or seduce us away from our own true paths: For David: The Lord is my light and my salvation; who shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be terrified? In my very guts came evil to gnaw and consume me, But these my troubles, my enemies, stumbled and fell. Though an army encamp against me, my heart will not fear; Though war rise up against me, even then I will keep faith. One thing only have I asked the Lord; one thing only will I seek– That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To see the Lord‟s pleasantness and to visit in His temple. For He hides me in His sukkah on the day of evil, He conceals me in the concealment of His tent. He lifts me up upon a rock. And now my head will be uplifted–above my enemies all around about me, And in His tent I will offer offerings with a shofar-blast; I will sing and chant praise to the lord. Hear my voice, O Lord, when I call! Give me grace and answer me! It was on Your behalf that my heart said, "Seek My face!" It is Your face, O Lord, that I will seek. Do not conceal Your face from me, Do not, in your anger set Your servant aside. You have been my help before; Do not now cast me off – do not desert me! – O God of my salvation. Even if my father and mother desert me, The Lord will gather me together. Teach me your path, O Lord; And lead me on a smooth and well-kept road – Because there are those who lie in ambush for me. Do not hand me over to the will of my adversaries, For lying witnesses have arisen against me – whose every breath does violence. If I had not kept trusting that I would see the Lord‟s goodness, While I was still in the land of the living! . . . Wait for the Lord: Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Wait for the Lord. Arthur Waskow, Taking Responsibility Taking responsibility means saying, "I can see that something is wrong. If it is my fault, I admit it and I am sorry. If it is not my fault, I will do what I can to help make things better." After Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the fruit of the tree, they were ashamed. Because they were afraid to take responsibility for what they had done, they hid themselves. Hiding is the opposite of taking responsibility. There are many ways of hiding. We can pretend that we don‟t see what is wrong: a mess to be cleaned up or the sadness of someone who needs extra loving. We say to ourselves, "I am too busy" or "I am too tired to help." It is as if we simply close our eyes and ears to what needs to be done. When we act like this, we are hiding from our responsibility. Other times, we see what is wrong around us but we say, "This has nothing to do with me; it is not my problem." This is just another way of hiding from our responsibility. Still another way is to blame someone else. When God came to Adam and Eve and asked them what had happened, Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the snake. They each said, "It‟s not my fault!" We, too, sometimes blame our brother and sisters, our parents, our enemies, and our friends. We even try to blame God. But God says, „It‟s your world. You are free to do with it as you choose. I cannot make you do what I want. If I did, then you would be nothing more than a puppet. Instead, I will tell you what is right and wrong. You are then free to choose for yourself how to act. If you make the world a beautiful garden, it will be a tribute to you. But if you spoil the world-garden, it will be your shame. Just remember that I will hold you responsible for what you do." If people choose to spend their money and time making terrible weapons instead of curing terrible diseases, it is their choice, not the will of God. They, like Adam and Eve, are only hiding from their responsibility to repair the world. In Genesis (3:9), God asks Adam and Eve what seems to be a strange question, "Where are you?" Why would God, who obviously knows where Adam and Eve are hiding, ask them where they were? The great Italian Bible teacher, Umbreto Cassuto, compares this passage to a father‟s coming to scold his child who has misbehaved. Seeing the disappointment on the father‟s face, the child hides behind the door. The father knows where his child is hiding but, nevertheless, calls out to his child, "Where are you?" He is really saying "Please, come out and face me!" When something goes wrong, a little child often pretends not to notice, blames someone else, or hides. Older children learn to take more responsibility when things go wrong. Ideally, adults try to take responsibility at all times, even when they would like to hide. A reasonable adult says, "God has given me these hands to do what needs to be done." Lawrence Kushner, Exile The true motivation for prayer is not, as it has been said, the sense of being at home in the universe, but rather the sense of not being at home in the universe. Is there a sensitive heart that could stand indifferent and feel at home in the sight of so much evil and suffering, in the face of countless failures to live up to the will of God? On the contrary, the experience of not being at home in the world is a motivation for prayer. That experience gains intensity in the amazing awareness that God himself is not at home in the universe. He is not at home in a universe where His will is defied and where His kingship is denied. God is in exile; the world is corrupt. The universe itself is not at home. To pray means to bring God back in the world, to establish His kingship for a second at least. To pray means to expand His presence. Abraham Joshua Heschel, Expectations Over and above personal problems, there is an objective challenge to overcome inequity, injustice, helplessness, suffering, carelessness, oppression. Over and above the din of desires there is a calling, a demanding, a waiting, an expectation. There is a question that follows me wherever I turn. What is expected of me? What is demanded of me? What we encounter is not only flowers and stars, mountains and walls. Over and above all things is a sublime expectation, a waiting for. With every child born a new expectation enters the world. This is the most important experience in the life of every human being: something is asked of me. Every human being has had a moment in which he sensed a mysterious waiting for him. Meaning is found in responding to the demand, meaning is found in sensing the demand. Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Map of Time Abraham Joshua Heschel, A Bad Apology Is Worse Than No Apology Randy Pausch, A New Season of the Spirit Summer is passing. The days grow shorter. The sound and colors of nature, the stirring of the wind, speak to us of changes in the world, in life and in man‟s course on earth. We are also about to enter upon a new season of the spirit, of the soul. It reminds us of our changing lives and fortunes, of the changes that take place within our homes, our communities, our world. It bids us look upon the changes that have taken place within ourselves . . . Awed and subdued, we stand before the threshold of a New Year. We recall those moments in the past year when we rejoiced in our victories and achievements, our decent impulses and our generous action. But now, in the presence of that Eternity to which a dying year compels our attention, we are mindful that our defeats were greater than our triumphs. We failed ourselves by failing to rise to our own level. We failed our fellow human beings by failing them in their need for our love and respect. We failed our God by worshipping ourselves. For all these, at this turning point in endless time, we would seek forgiveness, our God. We come to You to help us lift the burdens of our souls, for there is none of us so virtuous or so proud whose heart does not cry out, despite ourselves, for forgiveness. Rabbi David Polish, Thoughts for the New Year Rabbi Ben Zion Bokser, Some Old Truths for the New Year Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, Traveler’s Advisory Author unknown Choose Life, Choose Love Melekh chafetz ba-chaim! Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins Repairing the World The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, The Essence of Maturity We Must Pay the Price One of the fundamental building blocks of a religious view of life, along with a sense of gratitude and sense of man‟s limitations, is a sense of responsibility. In religious language, we assert that man is a morally free agent, and therefore to be held responsible for the choices he makes and for the moral quality of his life. In plain talk, that means: In the long run, you don‟t get away with anything in this life. Responsibility means that, sooner or later, the bill comes due for the choices we make, and we have to pay it in one currency or another. Some people learn this from the Rosh Hashanah prayer about the books being opened and our being judged by what we have written there. Maybe we can‟t take literally the idea of a heavenly ledger with our name on one page, but it would be a serious mistake for us to dismiss the idea because we can‟t see through the metaphor. We do write a record of every day of our lives, and to a large extent that record determines our future. Some who don‟t learn that lesson from the Rosh Hashanah service may learn it from the newspapers, from the tragedy of powerful men who did things on the assumption that they would never be called upon to account for them. They found out soon enough how foolhardy an assumption that is. The essence of maturity, the difference between the child and the adult, is this realization that we are responsible for what we do, that everything we reach for has its pricetag and that sooner or later we‟re called on to pay it. Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, Thoughts on Teshuvah As long as you live, keep learning how to live. The sins we commit, these are not the worst thing. After all, temptation is powerful and man is weak. The great crime of man is that he could turn at any time and he doesn‟t. Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This day is all that is good and fair. It is too dear, with its hopes and invitations, to waste a moment on the yesterdays. Repentance is not so great that premeditated sins are accounted for as tough they were merits. –Resh Lakish, Talmud Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational Readings for Rosh Hashanah More Thoughts on Teshuvah Every human being is endowed by his Maker with two eyes. With one he is expected to look at his neighbor, fastening his gaze on his virtues, his excellences, his desirable qualities. With the other eye, he is to turn inward to see his own shortcomings, in order to correct them. The unexamined life is not worth living. One man finds pleasure in improving his land, another his horses. My pleasure is seeing that I myself grow better day by day. Even if a person lived as a wicked man all his life and repented only toward the end, one must never again mention his wickedness, as it is written (Ezekiel 33:12), "And as for the wickedness of the wicked, it shall not be a source of stumbling to him on the day he turns from his wickedness." If you feel far from God, who moved? Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant . . . A human being is a self-transcending being. Moments of Transcendence: Inspirational Readings for Rosh Hashanah Do It Now Author unknown, If you have hard work to do, Do it now. Today the skies are clear and blue, Tomorrow clouds may come into view, Yesterday is not for you; Do it now. If you have a song to sing, Sing it now. Let the notes of gladness ring Clear as song of bird in Spring, Let every day some music bring; Sing it now. If you have kind words to say, Say them now. Tomorrow may not come your way. Do a kindness while you may, Loved ones will not always stay; Say them now. If you have a smile to show, Show it now. Make hearts happy, roses grow, Let the friends around you know The love you have before you go; Show it now. He who covers up his faults will not succeed, but he who confesses and gives them up will find mercy. Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof . . .Do not wrong one another, but revere your God. Dear People, I offer you a gift. I hope you will accept it. Linked with the gift is a burden. I hope you can handle it. My gift is freedom. It means that each of you can do just about anything – say anything, use, build, or destroy anything within you grasp. But wait – I‟m giving this gift to all of you, every woman, man, and child, every race and every nation. Ah, you see the difficulty: if all of you are to be free, each of you will have to put limits on your own actions – otherwise you‟ll wind up with misery, crime, chaos, and tyranny. Everything you make will be broken; every place you go will be dangerous. Only a few will be "free," and they‟ll really be enslaved to their greed and their fear of everyone else. That‟s the burden linked with the fit: self restraint. I‟m asking a lot of you. You have to make freedom work. If unbridled greed is accepted as success, it isn‟t working. If the earth is poisoned and its resources depleted, it isn‟t working. If people are treated as sex objects, it isn‟t working. If racial and ethnic hatreds are countenanced, it isn‟t working. If people turn to drugs and alcohol, it isn‟t working. If people cheat "because everyone cheats," it isn‟t working. And if it isn‟t working, the responsibility to fix it belongs to every one of you. Unless all of you use your freedom with restraint, everyone‟s liberty will weaken and die. No one can be free alone. This isn‟t going to be easy. But it will help if you remember that the world doesn‟t revolve around you. It will help if you remember who gave you this gift. With Love, God Of course this was neither written nor delivered by God. But if it were, would it change our world? Would it change your life? Leo Buscaglia, in You and your ideas about life. You make me sick. You say "choose life." Why the hell should I? Life chose Buscaglia then tells of a personal experience on Valentine‟s Day. In the Hallmark store, he saw a man searching for a card. "Damn it, why do I have to get a card for my wife?" Buscaglia asked him, "Then why do it?" She‟d kill me!" A few minutes later, a young lady came in and, the author said to her, "Happy Valentine‟s Day!" she replied, "You know what I‟m doing here? You won‟t believe it, but my boss sent me here to buy a Valentine for his wife. Boy, if my husband ever sent another woman to buy a card for me, I‟d Buscaglia wrote: "Here we are standing among hearts and love tokens, and we heard about two planned murders in just five minutes . And all of a sudden it occurred to me why I go around talking about „choose life‟ and „choose love.‟" Then he advises, "Pay attention, listen to how many times a day you say „I hate this,‟ „Oooo, take that away, I hate it. . .‟ „I hate those people, I hate those kinds of things.‟" Instead, learn to say "I love . . ." Then: "I love so intensely because there‟s so much to know and to see and to do and to taste and to chew – especially to chew! I‟ll show you how naive I really am. Has it ever occurred to you? Aren‟t you amazed that carrots taste like carrots and radishes taste like radishes? And that if we mix them together, and make some kind of goulash, we can get a third taste? I‟m astounded by things like that." The Talmud tells us: "Each person will some day be called to give account for all the permitted pleasures which our eyes beheld and of which we refused to partake." We find in the Talmud a very interesting story related by Rabbi Joshua Ben Chananiah. Once he was walking on the road, seeking his way to town. He met a young boy at the crossroads, and asked him the way to town. The boy, pointing his finger to the right, answered, "This road is near and far." He turned to the left, pointed his finger, and said, "This road is far and near." Rabbi Joshua took the road to the right, thinking it was the shorter, but found the way blocked by fruit gardens surrounded with fences. He returned and found the boy who had directed him. "Why did you mislead me?" he remonstrated. "You did not take heed of my directions," retorted the boy. "Did I not say that the road to the right is near and far? It is the nearer road, but because of the garden barriers, it is the farther. The other road, although it is the farther, is the nearer because it is clear and unobstructed." ( We are seeking too many shortcuts. We seek shortcuts in education, shortcuts in religion, shortcuts in human relations, shortcuts in every avenue of life. There are no shortcuts to honesty, decency, benevolence, thoughtfulness, fidelity, compassion, faith, and Jewish commitment. Others can live without us, but we cannot live without others. We cannot be happy unless we are useful. It is great to be loved. It is greater to love. When we improve ourselves, we make a most vital contribution to the improvement of humanity. In morals as in mathematics, a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. When we kill time, we commit an act of partial suicide. We also declare time to be an enemy. Time is our most faithful friend. If we purchase material comfort with the coin of conscience, we have cheated ourselves. It is no less important to cultivate the ability to forget than it is to develop the power to remember. The true measure of a man‟s size is his ability to make others feel big. The indispensable requirement for mastering life is mastering ourselves. We learn to live when we learn to give. We meet God wherever we serve His creatures. The finger on the clock of time turns inexorably. We are sometime saddened when we realize that time moves on, that the years are slipping out of our hands, yet these thoughts need not really depress us. The wisdom of living consists in making the most of what we are given. We cannot weave without threads, but it is our skill with the threads which determines whether we shall fashion a beautiful tapestry or labor without producing anything for use or beauty. God does not fashion life for us. He does not determine the shape of our dreams, or our accomplishments, but He gives us the threads . . . He has endowed our hands with energy, our minds with power to reason, our hearts with the power to feel, and He placed us upon the scene of nature abounding in the raw materials with which we can build to our hearts‟ desires. An artist who has spent his days fashioning a thing of beauty rejoices in his labor when it is done. He does not fret that the days which have passed have made him older. Only empty days, futile days, wasted days, are a tragedy. Only the passing of days such as these are depressing. How are we using the threads which the Lord has given us? At the New Year we ask his question. It is a disturbing question, because on its answer depends to sum of the meaning of our lives. Wasted threads, badly used threads, show up in the final design, but when we weave with skill and fashion life into a pattern of harmony and goodness, then our existence becomes permeated with serenity and peace. We can laugh though the days pass and the years go, for then we have given only time in exchange for achievement. During this season of the year, we often recall that Psalmist‟s prayer: "O teach us to count our days that we may get us a heart of Wisdom." No, it does not really mean to count days. Anyone can do that. It is rather a prayer to make the days count. That is indeed the supreme wisdom of living. Apologies are not pass/fail. I always told my students: When giving an apology, any performance lower than an A really doesn‟t cut it. Halfhearted or insincere apologies are often worse than not apologizing at all because recipients find them insulting. If you‟ve done something wrong in your dealings with another person, it‟s as if there‟s an infection in your relationship. A good apology is like an antibiotic; a bad apology is like rubbing salt in the wound. Working in groups was crucial in my classes, and friction between students was unavoidable. Some students wouldn‟t pull their load. Others were so full of themselves that they‟d belittle their partners. By mid-semester, apologies were I‟d start by describing the two classic bad apologies: 1) "I‟m sorry you feel hurt by what I‟ve done." (This is an attempt at an emotional salve, but it‟s obvious you don‟t want to put any medicine in the wound.) 2) "I apologize for what I did, but you also need to apologize to me for what you‟ve done." (That‟s not giving an apology. That‟s asking for one.) Proper apologies have three parts: 1) What I did was wrong. 2) I feel badly that I hurt you. 3) How do I make this better? Yes, some people may take advantage of you when answering question three. But most people will be genuinely appreciative of your make-good efforts. They may tell you how to make it better in some small, easy way. And often, they‟ll work harder to help make things better themselves. Students would say to me: "What if I apologize and the other person doesn‟t apologize back?" I‟d tell them: "That‟s not something you can control, so don‟t let it eat at you." If other people owe you an apology, and your words of apology to them are proper and heartfelt, you still may not hear from them for a while. After all, what are the odds that they get to the right emotional place to apologize at the exact moment you do? So just be patient. Many times in my career, I saw students apologize, and then several days later, their teammates came around. Your patience will be both appreciated and rewarded. There are no words in the world more knowing, more disclosing, and more indispensable, words both stern and graceful, heart-rending and healing. A truth so universal: God is One. A thought so consoling: He is with us in distress. A responsibility so overwhelming: his name can be desecrated. A map of time: from creation to redemption. Guideposts along the way: the Seventh Day. An offering: contrition of the heart. A utopia: would that all people were prophets. The insight: man lives by his faithfulness; his home is in time and his substance in deeds. A standard so bold: ye shall be holy. A commandment so daring: love thy neighbor as thyself. A fact so sublime: human and divine pathos can be in accord. And a gift so undeserved: the ability to repent. A Song of Teshuvah
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