Shoftim/Rosh Chodesh Elul
Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9
Isaiah 51:12-52:12
My touchstone experience of the month of Elul was in my college dorm. On those fortuitous years when Rosh Hashanah fell a full month into the school year, my college friends and I did Elul together. In conversations late into the night and spanning long Shabbat afternoons, we talked about the concept of tshuvah/turning, about the people we felt we had hurt during the year gone by, and about how to make amends in the most genuine and effective way. We supported each other in this hard work of cheshbon hanefesh/soul-accounting, cheering one another on for our honesty and courage. It felt like our whole community was engaged in this work at the same time, and this gave us strength.
Living in less close-knit communities as adults, it may be more difficult to find this profound level of support for the soul-work of the month of Elul (which begins at sundown tonight). Still, this week we may remind ourselves that Jews in our own community and around the world are entering into this annual repentance process in earnest, in preparation for the High Holy Days. We can remember that the rabbis taught that the month of Elul is a “time of favor,” a time of particular openness and receptivity, a time when the gates of prayer and repentance are wide open.
The Sefat Emet asks how this could be, when “time itself does not apply to God!” Is the Holy One more open, more interested in prayer, as it were, more filled with compassion for us one month out of the year than the others? No, says the rebbe: “The truth is that these are times of favor for humans, moments in which we are more able to draw near and attach ourselves to God with the inward desire of our hearts” (“The Language of Truth,” edited by Arthur Green, p. 310). It is we who are different in this season, we who are more open, more receptive, more in touch with our own longing to live righteous lives, connected to others and to the One.
Rebbe Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev finds in this week’s parashah a hint of how this human longing for holiness can influence our fate for the year to come:
“When we, down here in our world, behave with lovingkindness and see the best in everyone, the same lovingkindness is evoked in the world above, and God responds to us with lovingkindness. The person, through acts performed here on earth, opens the upper gate, opening the gates of mercy, showering blessing on everyone. This is found in the verse: ‘You shall appoint judges and officials in all your gates’ (Deut. 17:18). That is to say, ‘You yourself can establish justice in the upper worlds by what you do in your own personal gates, where you evoke your own actions.’ And this is the meaning of the end of the verse: ‘They shall judge the people with justice.’ That is to say that everyone should train oneself to judge others justly, to regard each person positively and justly. By doing so, one opens the gates of heaven, and the heavenly court rules all of us innocent” (Kedushat Levi).
The rebbe asks us to imagine the great power that righteous living may exert over our fate, over the universe itself. If we conduct our lives in lovingkindness, he says, seeking out the best in ourselves and in everyone, that very quality of lovingkindness is mirrored in the upper worlds, bringing blessings for all.
What a liberating and empowering view of the tshuvah process. This teaching does not emphasize harsh self-examination, breast-beating or finding fault with our own tendencies toward sin. Rather, we are asked to imagine that our own acts of kindness, our sincere wishes for the well-being of others, and the effort we put into finding and evoking the best in others, can actually affect our fate, both individually and collectively.
One is reminded of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer. After enumerating all the terrible things to which we may be vulnerable in the year to come, the prayer concludes, “Prayer, repentance, and righteousness affect the severity of the decree.”
Rebbe Levi Yitzhak’s teaching takes this promise a step farther: Not only our actions, but our moment-by-moment attitude toward others and ourselves may actually be transformative. Our own heartfelt intention to bring more kindness into our world may have cosmic significance.
May it be so in the year to come.