Mediations and Reflection on Elul

29 Elul 5784 October 2nd Rabbi Aaron Alexander 
Choosing Doubt

Our Sages of antiquity deployed many rhetorical techniques to draw out essential values amidst contradiction, or to navigate competing priorities when evident. A striking example of this occurs in the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Rosh Hashanah, 34b. What happens, the rabbis ask, if I fall upon a circumstance such that I will only be able to be present for one of the two critical obligations of Rosh Hashanah, but not both? Particularly, what if I have to choose between hearing the sound of the shofar, or participating in the communal musaf (additional) service? 

This may sound far-fetched, but in a time when skilled shofar blowers weren’t ubiquitous, and long before the printing press was invented, one could theoretically imagine a situation in which a small community couldn’t guarantee both of these elements. And some communities may have had one, just not the other. 

So if I had to choose between them, which mitzvah is more important on Rosh Hashanah? 

The Rabbis answer: the Shofar! Obviously. It’s a Torah commandment. The Musaf service, while important, is only of rabbinic decree. When one has to choose between something from the Torah itself, and something of rabbinic authority, choose the Torah. 

They take it one step further. Even if one can’t be sure they will hear the Shofar in one town, and in the other town they will definitely experience a communal musaf service–still go towards the chance of Shofar. Later authorities give this decision a name: When there is doubt over a Torah commandment, and certainty over a rabbinic directive, and the two are in conflict–the Torah wins. Take the risk. Safek D’Oraita Chamura Mi’Vadai De-Rabbanan. 

Well that’s a little bit unexpected. But it is also instructive, now more than ever before. There is so much doubt around the High Holy Days this year. We know we need them, but we don’t quite know if we’ll receive what we think we each individually need. Some of us may be so skeptical that they’ll deliver, we may want to opt out. 

Van Gogh once said: “If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.”

My last message to the Jewish world on this Eve of Rosh Hashanah 5785 is to step towards that doubt. It’s worth the risk. Come. Stay. Be surprised. Be disappointed. Be shaken. Be still. Be open. Be curious. Be guarded, if necessary. 

It’s true that there are all kinds of things that can go wrong, or underperform expectations. But it’s worth picking up the paintbrush. It’s just as possible that a masterpiece emerges, or something worthy of our time between the two.

Shanah Tovah u’Metukah. May it truly be so.

27 Elul 5784 September 30th
Whole 30 - Rabbi Sarah Krinsky 

As I write this, my husband Daniel is on day 26 of “Whole 30.” He will be the first and quickest to tell you that Whole 30 - a 30 day program in which one radically alters their food intake - is a “lifestyle,” not a diet, despite the fact that one spends the month eliminating sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, soy, dairy, and processed foods. 

While I may mock him for insisting on this difference (“ashamnu”), I think the semantic distinction is a meaningful one. On its surface, the 30 days appear to be about what one is not eating - what one is cutting out, and refraining from. But even its name suggests an emphasis on the complement - what one is emphasizing, making room for, and adding in. And this isn’t just gastronomic. Whole 30 in our household is filled with, yes,  more meat and more potatoes and more fruit. But it is also filled with more creativity, more trips to the Farmers’ Market, more time cooking together in the kitchen.

I am challenging myself, this year, to think of Elul as a spiritual Whole 30 (okay, 29).  

Often, this month - and the days that follow - focus on what we need to cut down or cut out. Habits that are unproductive, behaviors that are unkind, traits that are unwelcome as we strive to be our best and fullest selves. This is all important and essential whittling down on our discernment and development of our purest essence. 

But what if we flipped the script? What if we looked not just on what to eliminate, but also on what to enhance? Not just what to abstain from, but also what to partake of more? How do we use this month to actively fill our souls and hearts with that which truly nourishes us, which allows us to then be that kindest, most loving, most present, most understanding selves? 

We are, in fact, already whole. We have it all within us. May this month be a chance for us to discover the beauty that is already there, and give ourselves the opportunity to let it out.

22 Elul 5784 - September 25th, 2024 
“The Notebook” by Rabbi Elianna Yolkut

I have taught nearly 150 shiurim (adult learning classes) since last Rosh Hashanah. It is a treasure that sits at the center of my career. I owe a lot of gratitude to many for this capacity - from my earliest teachers (my parents) and their ability to cultivate a love of Torah learning in me, to my first teachers in rabbinical school who grew my passion for opening up text study and meaningful ways and to my current professional commitments which allows so much of this work.

In preparing for these classes I use a special notebook - yes, yes I know I am not only in the digital world I firmly still sit in the world of pen and paper. Each year at Rosh Hashanah I pick a new notebook in a sort of formal ritual. I switch the old one out with the new and always in the same way.  I choose a new design and never ever anything with a spiral binding because #lefty. I have a few more classes to go yet but yesterday I realized I had not quite finished the old notepad. It felt apropos of the ultimate Rosh Hashanah lessons especially this year. 

The empty pages. The words unspoken, unwritten, the dream unrealized. And we know this year, perhaps, more than most, nothing feels complete or neatly tied up. The world burns, our hearts are shattered and there is so much work to do and words unsaid or perhaps too many words uttered with no sense of the consequences of how corrosive the words have really become. 

The creating, the learning, the loving and growing that happens through experiences in the notebook of life was shattered and broken for so many last October 7th that we have many many pages filled with sadness and rage, even despair. 

And this loss feels very real heading into the New Year. It is deep and profound and it stings. And if you need permission to mourn all the pages left unfilled or ripped out altogether - funerals you watched, news you could not quite comprehend, war and its consequences, innocents ripped from their homes, burned, taken, harmd and everything else - we should be mourning, weeping and spinning. It hardly warrants writing in a notebook.  And of course for the thousands of people whose New Year will not be or whose family will mourn their empty seat. 

BUT don’t forget the promise of  Ha’Yom Harat Olam -the paragraph we will recite each time we blow the shofar. A challenge to translate but let me offer this version:

“Today is the day the conception of eternality is born”!  

Rosh Hashanah is the moving from that place of remembering to the place of conceiving a new world, a new life. Our liturgy and its embodied shofar blasts ask us to see ourselves as the source of potentiality usually, letting go of what was and focusing on what it is. But this year, this time it is different. The pain, the loss, the broken world they are too heavy to fully let go - there is still there in 5784, of 5784 work to do but we will only be capable of that work - addressing global wars and famine, confronting an tenuous and contentious election and in the realm of the personal fixing relationships, repairing our broken families and so much more is if we believe in our own power to do something different spiritually, emotionally and in our lives - carry both@ We have to write the next pages alongside the memories and present of this reality. When we begin AGAIN we promise ourselves and those we are connected to the force of creativity, the source of strength and hope, of goodness and peace. And that we will rise up and we will write a new story, be willing to lean into the struggle and recognize our responsibility in all of it. So let’s close the book of 5784 a little differently, leaving it slightly ajar. Thus we might let the letters and the words, the pain and the loss, the suffering and the brokenness emerge with us into the New Year honoring its cataclysmic nature. The stuff left unfinished and those yet missing, captives, innocents in the cross hairs of war, be in our hearts and minds. This way, different than before we will mourn alongside our renewal knowing we have the space for both -carrying with us what is yet undone, yet possible and what is lost and broken. And then let’s together cross over into the newness, conceiving of how we can be agents of change and newness, of hope and possibility in making our lives, our relationships, ourselves and our world filled with repair, peace, wholeness and hope. 

20 Elul - September 23rd
May Your Heart Be Strong and Courageous - Cantor Arianne Brown
Click To Watch the Video From Cantor Brown

“Chazak V’ya’metz Libecha - may your heart be strong and courageous.” We focus inward during this season delving into our inner thoughts and our own hearts. We hope this focus will strengthen ourselves and give us hope and courage in times ahead when we need it….” Hear more in music and words from Cantor Brown in this reflection for Elul 20 “May Your Heart Be Strong and Courageous…”

15 Elul - September 18th 
Zichronot: Murky Memories - Rabbi Elianna Yolkut 

Yom Ha’Zikaron - The Day of Remembering, is one of Rosh Hashanah’s many names. It often gets me thinking about the intense focus on looking backward, toward our past during this season.Though, the truth is, it is not the season alone. The root of this word זכר appears 169 times in the Tanach. And in a certain sense memory was a distinct feature for the ancient Israelites, who unlike their neighbors saw God not in the natural world alone but also in history. And like us moderns saw memory as a religious obligation. Now leaving aside the challenges of the theology of memory I want for a moment to focus on the religious and spiritual challenges presented by the obsession we have with memory. 

One of the reasons, maybe the only one, that I haven’t yet let go of Facebook is because of a singular element: the memories part of the timeline. Rarely, do I go through a single day and not either get choked up at a joyful memory or mark the passing of time with tears of loss due to this “silly” part of social media. The simple recognition of what is gone can totally and completely impact my day. 

This week a memory came up that got me really thinking about the downside of all this remembering. 

It is a picture of our oldest children at 6 months old. It was the eve of our first Rosh Hashanah with them in the world and I was making note of the gift of that moment. It was a magical time to be sure. And also, when after the first moments of my tear eyed, “I can’t believe they were once that small and adorable”, I took some time to remember back to that time I felt a bit panicky. The picture shows all adorable, sweet and smiley babies. And wow were they cute. They were so sweet and we were (are) so incredibly grateful for their health and their general awesomeness. Yet there was another thing about that time when I focus on remembering back that come into focus. 

I spent many days that first year crying. I was managing and nursing two babies in a small NYC apartment while my partner trained in a rigorous surgical fellowship program. There was much joy and cute photo shoots, outfits and funny stories. But the first year of life, with twins, is not for the weak. It was the hardest thing I have ever done by far. What the picture does show was the darkness of those months. I was alone a lot and while S, my family and so many friends really came through much of their care fell on me- the nursing of course but also the naps, the playing, the endless laundry and clothes change and so much more. Hours and hours with them which was a gift and also incredibly overwhelming. I measured success in the ability to take a walk and a shower each day. I felt guilty that I didn’t love all of it more and we couldn’t crack the sleep code (still haven’t) so I was nearly always on edge.The picture doesn’t show any of this. 

Even my initial memory is eschewed because now they are big and they talk back and fight and I like everyone sometimes wish myself back to those chubby little humans. Of course, I had so much support and was lucky to have people then and now, who helped me survive and frame and reframe and take a break. And it need not be said that I adore being an Imma. 

However, this is the trick of memory. It seems clear initially when we look back. But the seams that we use to weave together our memories, bad and good, often cause the memories to be half truths. Stories, experiences are often murkier than we might initially remember and that can be a bit dangerous in our relationships and during our cheshbon ha’nefesh this month. 

Remember when he used to be this way or that, remember when she said that or did that, remember when our relationship was smoother? Judaism’s insistence on memory though is much richer, deeper and more challenging - the liturgy of Musaf on RH guides us…. “when the memory of every being formed comes before You? Remember each person’s works, her purpose, the path that she chooses and follows, the thoughts and plans of all people, and the impulses behind each person’s acts?” 

We can’t just remember what happened, how it went in our mind, we have to cloud the memory a bit - what was going on for the other person ? What was the impulse behind how she responded to the conflict? What about my own underneath the surface reasons and rationales? What was going on behind the family  photo not only what went on in front of the camera?

I think by doing so we might elevate the human understanding of memory not just to the quick snapshots in our minds but to the messy real life memories of relationships - where there is context, good and bad, around the dynamics with the people in our life. And in doing so we might create space for forgiveness, repair, hope and change and even for some gratitude for growth through challenging experiences, relationships and times. And this is perhaps what the lead up to Yom Ha-Zikaron with its focus on looking back can help us do  - cloud the memories, to internalize that we, you and I, are a complex bunch and in doing so layer our memories with all their nuance. God reminds us to live in the fullness of the memories of ourselves and others because that is the space where we will grow and change, the whole purpose of this season. 

Those days 11 years ago, I wouldn’t trade them for anything and the people who helped me along the way, family and friends were my salvation, murky memory and all. And those humans are more beautiful, joyful, interesting, challenging and more human than they were at 6 months and I am grateful for every exhausting moment of it and also for the ability to remember all of it - the joyful, the challenging and everything in between. 

8 Elul 5784 | September 11
A Set Place and Changing Seats -Rabbi Sarah Krinsky

I have always been a “makom kavua” - a “set place” person. Not in shul, necessarily - while I generally stick with the same section, I’m happy to rotate rows or individual seats. Not even in my room - we are a rare (I think) couple that can switch which sides of the bed we sleep on depending where we are. But at the kitchen table, I always have my designated place. Whether I am working alone or sitting at a meal with a dozen others crammed around, I am always on the end, closest to the kitchen, at the right most corner. 

Until I had a two year old. Now, dinner times are a constant game of “Mimi (that’s me), sit there!” “Daddy, sit there!” “No Mimi, now sit there!” Trying to keep the tenuous mealtime peace (and maybe even get some consumption in), we terrifyingly and obediently oblige. My dad recently described the scene as reminiscent of a tiny Napoleon dictating troop movements from his throne. 

In general, Judaism has great recognition of and respect for having a “makom kavua.” In Jewish law, there are halachot about the need to respect someone’s self-designated regular seat in the prayer space or study hall. And in our own practice, one just needs to look around the Gewirz or the Smith to acknowledge how pervasive this tendency this. There is even a row at the Adas cemetery of couples buried in the same order as how they sat for decades in the sanctuary. 

Except on the Yamim Noraim. 

One of the key images of the high holy day period is of God sitting on God’s “kisei hakavod,” God’s heavenly chairs. Two of them, actually - kisei ha’din, the throne of judgment, and kisei harachamim, the throne of compassion. Many of our tefillot are imagined as us coaxing God to move from the former seat to the latter, to approach us not from a place of assessment and punishment but rather from a place of mercy and love. 

While this is a plea that has always resonated with me, its meaning has deepened this year. Perhaps what we are asking God - and thus also challenging ourselves - to do is not simply to operate primarily from a place of understanding and forgiveness, but even just to switch seats. To move places. To see things - ourselves, and also one another - from a vantage point that we ordinarily do not inhabit, and then to see what we notice. 

How might I approach you, my colleague, if I understood the fullness of your situation? How might I understand you, my friend, if I knew the entirety of your past? How might I speak to myself if I saw myself from the outside, and could talk to my own aching and guilt-ridden heart with the gentleness I bring to my dearest relationships? 

This Elul, may we move chairs. Switch seats. Look at the world and those in it - farthest away and closest in - from a different vantage point. And then to dig into the well of rachamim, of compassion and mercy, that we pray so deeply for.

September 3rd Rosh Chodesh Elul Intro to the Elul Project- Rabbi Elianna Yolkut
Open Up for Us A Gate- Petach Lanu Sha’ar

A number of years ago, as we were trying to leave synagogue on Saturday morning I had a funny encounter. As is the case with 3 children, especially as a clergy person, trying to leave the building after kiddush lunch can be a bit hectic. We go from one space - where the food and schmoozing happen, to my office where we pick up scooters, bikes and God knows what else we brought with us. I am often too slow to keep up with the kids and as I was turning the corner I saw one of our security officers stopping our kids before they barreled out the door. As I approached. He said, “Rabbi, I am sorry I know you run a tight ship so I didn’t want to let them go so far ahead without you”. 

Now leaving aside your laughter at his comment on my parenting I felt a deep sense of relief and gratitude. The simple but profound idea that these officers are really paying attention is no small gift; they are gatekeepers and openers to our sacred spaces - protected so we can pray, eat, gather, learn, grow and they quite literally keep our children safe. 

The process of cheshbon ha’nefesh - the accounting of the soul we are meant to do in the 30 days (or possibly seven weeks) leading up to Rosh Hashanah and into Yom Kippur might be improved,  made more successful if we could each have a sort of gate keeper and opener.  You know a person who notices when things have run amok in your life? Someone who could guide you through a narrow strait in a relationship helping you to see the space where you only saw closing pathways? A person who paid attention to small things - tiny gestures in your parenting or human-ing that were errors, or ways you missed the mark? A fellow traveler who watched out when you got too far ahead of yourself? They were kind and thoughtful, attentive to what you couldn’t see for yourself, they noticed the blind spots - they watched out for you and over you -  שומרים guards your spiritual life? These watchers  had you empty your pockets not looking for dangerous objects but for heavy baggage that was holding you back? Someone who cared enough to notice when things were just not on track to say something?

We need these folks in our lives - the one who keep our hearts, spirits and kids safe - literally and figuratively. They are our partners in this work of spiritual seeking - we will grow and change, turning toward that best version of ourselves with the help of our spiritual security. For the next 30 days we have the chance to be partners in this work so check out this tab www.adasisrael.org/elul or our Facebook page www.facebook.com/adasisrael to read and hear clergy reflections and meditations on preparing for the High Holiday season several days a week. 

And new this year each Friday we will come to you live from the clergy suite at 10 am on Facebook live for an hour of informal, irreverent and engaging conversation about the Torah of the season.  May the gates open for you and all of us. Shanah Tovah. 

Rosh Chodesh Elul 5784 

Living for Today -Cantor Arianne Brown 

“Did you know, Ima,  that we are always living in the past?  It takes about 100 milliseconds for the human brain to process something.  That means what we think of as the present is already in the past.  It vanishes by the time we can think.”

During times of uncertainty, of illness or recovery, we give the sage advice - yom yom.  Take it one day at a time.  One hour at a time, one minute at a time.  Take the moments as they come, and don’t look too far ahead.  The future is uncertain and out of our control.  It’s overwhelming.  And so we practice mindfulness by trying to keep ourselves in the here and now.  Today he is alive.  Today she is awake, aware, by my side.  Today, I will make a good decision.  

Our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur experiences urge us, even jolt us, into the presence of the present.   

In an experiential sense, we keep ourselves there through communal singing, through the piercing sound of the Shofar, and through the visceral feeling of a fast.

The content of our liturgy also includes moments of intense present, highlighting the word hayom - today.  

After each set of shofar calls - היום הרת עולם, היום יעמיד במשפט - Today the word stands at birth; today all creation is called to judgment. 

In the featured spot as the final piyyut in the Musaf service - the famous Hayom T’amtseinu.

Strengthen us - today. 

Bless us - today. 

Exalt us - today. 

Seek our well-being - today. 

Inscribe us for a good life - today. 

Lovingly accept our prayers - today. 

Hear our plea - today. 

Sustain us with the power of Your righteousness -today.  

Elul, the month that precedes Rosh Hashanah, is reminiscent of counting the Omer.  For Shavuot, we have to work our way up the metaphoric mountain to receive Torah, each and every year.  For the Yamim Noraim - Days of Awe - we have to prepare ourselves to experience that awe, to wade in the wonder, to make meaning of the traditions laid out before us.

As I learned from my wise child, what we think of as “now” is technically in the past.  Still, I urged him, we can’t let the limitations of our amazing brains take away from the meaning of our perceived present.

The way we spend our days of Elul informs our Rosh Hashanah.  Let’s remember to let Rosh Hashanah also inform our Elul.  We prepare for tomorrow with gratitude for today.  We dream of tomorrow while caring for ourselves and others today.  The days of Elul count.

היום תכתבנו לחיים טובים Inscribe us for a good life - today.  Amen!