Skip to main content

Resolving on Resolutions

Today, September 4th, is the first day of the Hebrew month Elul. Elul is the month that leads us to the Hebrew month of Tishrei. During Tishrei we celebrate the Jewish New Year, the Day of Atonement, and the Harvest Festival of Succot. It's a big month; lots of thought, contemplation, introspection, revelation - at the personal level. So appropriately the month before is taken as a run-up to this most important of months.

I woke up this morning and thought about the idea of New Year's resolutions - so popular in the US. Not quite such a thing here in Israel, or in the Jewish community in general. I suspect part of it is that the celebration of the Jewish New Year is not a single day, wait for the ball to drop, kind of moment. Rather we take two days to celebrate the arrival of the New Year with customs and traditions in the home and larger community. And then we follow that up with the Day of Atonement 10 days later, with those ten days being viewed as solemn days of contemplation and hope for redemption for the year to come. It's not a time to take anything lightly; the focus of those days is to personally ask those you have hurt intentionally or accidentally to forgive you for your transgressions. That's no small feat.

Judaism is asking us to look out to others around us, to ask them to forgive us and help keep us as part of the larger community for the year to come. It is not a time of the year to announce our individualistic plans to better ourselves for the year to come. Yet, at the same time, this act of turning to our family, our friends, our neighbors, to ask for forgiveness and to give it ourselves, does force us to look inward and contemplate who we are. It is a time that asks us to question and evaluate who we have been and really look critically at our past actions to see if perhaps we'd rather not continue down that path.

Judaism sees that none of us are perfect and that we're not really in control of who lives and who dies each year. But we can be cognizant of that in our efforts to constantly do better. So by taking a whole month as our run-up to the New Year, places a weighty emphasis on the importance of refreshing ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities as we approach the New Year.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Macher or Schmoozer?

I'm working my way slowly through the book Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam . In a nutshell, which has to be pretty big because it's a hefty book, it's about social behaviors and the decline of them in the US - things like voting and participating in the political process at all levels, and engaging with volunteer and community efforts. Chapter six looks at Informal Social Connections. At paragraph two of the chapter he mentions the Yiddish words macher and schmoozer . That stopped me in my tracks for a moment. He continued to explain that fundamentally a macher is a doer, someone who makes things happen in the community. Whereas a schmoozer is a talker, a person with an active social life, someone who focuses on informal connections to others. And while it is certainly nice to sit and talk with someone, at the end of the day that's all a schmoozer does. Alternatively, the macher will sit and visit with you and then either your roped into helping or the macher...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cooperation isn't a dirty word

I started this slowly evolving blog after hearing Senator Diane Feinstein's inspiring words in the documentary Miss Representation . I find myself, now, even more so, propelled forward by that thought. We are indeed only here on this earth, here engaged with our communities for an instant in what is really an eternity. So our contribute while critical and vital is fleeting. It has been nearly 4 years since I started this blog, and as you can see, I haven't given it a great deal of attention. There is so much to do, so much need in the world, so much good to be done, so much inequality to be called out. How can I even find time to stop for a few minutes, string together a few well chosen words, and even take another minute to review those chosen words? Certainly not when all three kids need me NOW! (Of course they don't really but don't tell them that!) Times have certainly been tough these past three months since the world was rocked by the US election...
Post a Comment
Read more

Taking the time

Last night I went to a talk given by Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg last night. She spoke about guilt, atonement, and intimacy. My takeaway from this evening, even as I am still unraveling what she laid out for us is as follows. Elul has been described as like a bird hovering over a nest - waiting, ready to arrive, not yet there, but at the same time present. From this point she moved to the relationship between G-d and Moshe. After all of Moshe's hard work to build, carefully, diligently, the Tent of Meeting (אוהל מועד), Moshe remains outside, as if hovering over the nest, waiting to enter, unable to enter. Calling to others - as G-d calls to Moshe - is our way of calling attention to the other with whom we want to speak. Saying a person's name indicates that we have a desire to speak to her and elevates the communication, adding impact and intimacy of the conversation. Interestingly when Israelis talk to each other there is always a great amount of time asking each other...
Post a Comment
Read more