There is a prayer in the Gates of Prayer prayer book that begins “It is hard to sing of oneness when our world is not complete”. I was reminded of that line this past weekend as we watched the news of the latest hostage deaths and the continuing unraveling of sanity. Then, I also was reminded that this week we enter the month of Elul, a time when we are called on to prepare our souls for the majesty of the High Holidays. We are called upon to begin that process of introspection and contemplation that flows to S’lichot and then to the Shofar’s call to gather for the new year. Sadly, the 10 Days Of Awe will see the one-year anniversary of October 7. No doubt every congregation will pause to consider this event and seek to find some sense of meaning, as if there is one!
We will also play out this month against the election campaign here in the USA. We will study words of forgiveness and reconciliation, kindness and love, while listening to words of disrespect, anger, and bias in the media. Politics aside, it seems we may be in danger of losing some of our humanity. There is so much change, transition, anxiety and tension as this month and this sacred season approaches, that it really is hard to sing of a sense of oneness.
Yet, we do have an opportunity to focus on each of us. This is a highly personal time in the Jewish year. The liturgy of these weeks does invite us to hold that symbolic spiritual mirror up to our souls to see who we are and can be. Can the month give us a hint as to a way forward? An interpretation of Elul can be helpful, and I present it to us here for all of us to contemplate. The Hebrew of the month is aleph, lamed, vov, aleph. Philip Birnbaum suggests that if we take these letters that form the Hebrew of Elul, we can see the famous passage from Song of Songs “I am my beloved and my beloved is mine” (ani l’dodi v’dodi li”) So the Hebrew letters of Elul can reflect the idea of love and relationships. (*)
Think about that for a moment. A message of this month can be that we are given the opportunity to empower and enhance the relationships that we have with love and kindness, respect and civility. These are values that seem to be lacking in much of our world. Will this solve the issues that confront us? Hardly. But, as a reminder of the foundation for our actions and life in the year ahead, they may go quite a way to changing and enhancing the world in which we live every day. We know this phrase from weddings. But think of it as a call to infuse our daily life with that sense of mutual respect and kindness. If we are al, as our tradition teaches, created in a sacred image, then we need to strive to define each encounter and relationship with a sense of respect and kindness, even with those with whom we may disagree.
Take this month of preparation to consider this idea of focusing on kindness. Who knows what may happen.
Shalom,
Rabbi Richard F Address
* Encyclopedia of Jewish Concepts. Philip Birnbaum, p.36
Rabbi Richard F. Address, D.Min, is the Founder and Director of www.jewishsacredaging.com. Rabbi Address served for over three decades on staff of the Union for Reform Judaism; first as a Regional Director and then, beginning in 1997, as Founder and Director of the URJ’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns and served as a specialist and consultant for the North American Reform Movement in the areas of family related programming. Rabbi Address was ordained from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1972 and began his rabbinic career in Los Angeles congregations. He also served as a part time rabbi for Beth Hillel in Carmel, NJ while regional director and, after his URJ tenure, served as senior rabbi of Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, NJ from 2011-2014.
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