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‘Summer
time and the living is easy...” Of course, it isn’t “easy” —
especially when the weather is grey and wet. It wasn’t easy for “Bess”,
the singer of the famous summer idyll either - but perhaps she sang her song on
a good day. I am writing this on a rainy July morning in the hope that tomorrow
will be a good day... Rosh
Hashanah is very early this year (Erev 6th September) — on the very edge of
summer. This means that the month of preparation for the Days of Awe, Elul.
starts bang in the middle of the summer holiday period (on August 9th).
Tradition has it that just as Moses spent forty days and nights communing with
God on Mount Sinai before emerging with the Ten Commandments, so we should spend
forty days, from the first of Elul, preparing to begin again on the day after
Yom Kippur. The
month of Elul is an opportunity to engage in a process of self-scrutiny and
reflection, which becomes intense and urgent on Rosh Hashanah, when the shofar
summons us to turn ourselves around. The chances are that very few of us will be
ready to begin to engage in this process on the first of Elul. But perhaps there
are ways of getting ourselves started. After all, we all do need to take stock
of our lives at least once a year. So here’s one suggestion: How about adding
some challenging Jewish novels to your holiday reading? For ‘classics’ I
would recommend anything by Primo Levi, Amos Oz, Chaim Potok or Elie Wiesel, and
also: Return to Soldiers by Marge
Fiercy, War and Remembrance by
Herman Wouk, and The Fixer
by Bernard Malamud. Two of the best Jewish novels I’ve read during holiday
breaks in the past year have been Anita Diamant’s The
Red Tent, and When I Lived in Modern Times
by Linda Grant - an excellent British Jewish writer, with a new book out
now. Perhaps
it will still be raining in August... However the summer turns out, whatever
transpires in Israel and in the world around us, within our congregation and the
wider community, or in our personal lives, summer is a time for winding down.
The pace of our lives is often slower, and even nature, in its green abundant
fullness, seems to stand still for a while. But then the leaves begin to turn
from green to gold, and we also begin to turn towards the New Year. This year
the season of repentance and renewal begins in earnest on the last day of
summer, on the night of 31st August, with Selichot. May we all enjoy a restful,
fruitful summer and find the time we need to prepare for that moment.
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