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The Gift Of Elul I wrote this sermon during August – along with three of my High Holy Day ones. I’ve never done that before – written sermons in the context of real space and time. Although I always work on Thursday evening, I start first thing on Friday morning and between four and six hours later it’s done. I simply don’t have the option to do it any other way. It’s a good discipline, of course – which also helps to ensure that my sermons are all more or less the same length. When I thought about writing sermons during my month off, I imagined I would go about it very differently because I wouldn’t be fitting them in to a very busy work schedule. My main aim was to ensure that I wouldn’t be overwhelmed with work come September 1st, when I knew I was coming back to a packed week, including an overflowing in-tray, emails, phone-calls, visits, appointments, a Council meeting, a new teacher’s induction, Shabbat services, and a stone-setting – all in five days! I also expected that the space and time would mean that I would write differently, in a more leisurely way.
I couldn’t have been more wrong! Of course, I had much more space and time to think about what I wanted to say, to mull ideas over in my mind, but I actually found myself writing in exactly the same way: I could only start in the morning, and once I began, I was on a roll, and apart from pausing for breakfast and cups of tea, literally couldn’t stop until I had finished, four to six hours later – or rather, until all there was left to do was a bit of tweaking here and there.
Interestingly, writing during my time-off from my congregational responsibilities gave me a different sense of time and space than I usually experience when I take a holiday and stop work completely: In those circumstances, the complete lack of connection between the two means that however much I enjoy myself while I’m not working, after the holiday is over, it often feels unreal, as if I’d dreamt it: it’s almost as if I’d stepped into another universe for a while; as soon as I step back again, it feels as though I’d never been away. The experience of engaging creatively during my time-off, on the other hand, has enabled me to feel the benefits of the space and time, and helped me to feel more integrated as I return to the usual rhythm of my life.
I’m sure all this is related to the timing of my break: August is a strange month – the time when most people take their holidays, the pace of life really does seem to slow down. But that makes the contrast once September begins, all the more startling: not only does the new month signal a return to work for so many, for all the young people, it means a whole new beginning. What a shock to the system! From the age of five onwards, September always heralds challenge and change, as each young person is faced with the daunting prospect of venturing into the unknown: a new school, a new class, a new form teacher, college, university – for those who stay in the system, it’s all change year after year for sixteen or seventeen long years!
The gulf between August and September is vast. Perhaps that’s why the shops are so full of ‘back to school’ clothing and materials during the summer, and there are so many adverts directed at students – to help make the transition much easier. And of course, it’s impossible not to forget that all the big exam results are declared during August – so for sixteen and eighteen year olds in particular, the great holiday month is actually a very anxious time.
As we all know, Jewish life follows a very similar pattern to that of the Academic Year, with the New Year commencing in the autumn. But there is a very crucial difference: The summer month of Av doesn’t run into the intensive festival month of Tishri – there’s a whole month between the two, the month of Elul – a month set aside by the sages as a period of preparation for the New Year. Unfortunately, because our lives are so dominated by the secular calendar, Elul tends to pass most of us by. How many Jews are conscious of this important transitional month? This year, it started on Tuesday evening of August 17th – while August was still in full swing. How many of us were aware that Av drew to a close at sunset that day, and the month of Elul began?
It isn’t easy for any of us to get into a Jewish rhythm at this time of the year, but if we do manage it, it can make all the difference. Imagine becoming Bar or Bat Mitzvah without any prior preparation! Imagine just turning up on your wedding day, without thinking about it beforehand! On the surface, it looks like there’s an obvious difference: a Bar or Bat Mitzvah or a wedding is personal, it’s about me, while Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about all of us – the whole of the Jewish people. But the biggest mistake we make about the Yamim Nora’im – the Days of Awe – is thinking that they are simply communal events: The penitential season is intensely personal, because it’s about who we are as individuals, and what we are doing with our lives, about how each one of us has lived during the past year, and has related to others. That’s why the month of Elul is so important: Each one of us needs time to reflect and to engage in cheshbon hanefesh – to do an ‘accounting of the self’ – a kind of spiritual counterpart to preparing our tax return to send off by September 30th. That doesn’t mean that it’s a solitary experience. On the contrary: the fact that each member of the entire community of Israel is called to account at this time places the individual journey of repentance each one of us is challenged to embark on in a larger context of meaning: We are all fellow-travellers going through this together.
There is a midrash – a rabbinic interpretation – that provides a Jewish narrative framework of meaning, not only for making sense of the month of Elul, but for the whole period from Shavuot to Yom Kippur. This midrash reminds us, as we look ahead to the new year, that the festivals are not ad hoc events, that pop up from time to time, they are all part of a great cycle, repeated year after year – a cycle that finds its source, not only in the Creation of the world, celebrated at Rosh Hashanah, but in the creation of the people Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. We read (Eliyahu Zuta 4): When the children of Israel received the Ten Commandments on Shavuot, Moses ascended Mount Sinai and remained there for forty days to receive the tablets of the Law. On the seventeenth day of Tammuz he descended and, seeing the people worshipping the golden calf, broke the tablets. Then, for forty days Moses placed his tent beyond the camp, and the people mourned. On the first day of Elul, Moses again ascended the mountain to receive the second tablets. During this period the Israelites fasted daily from sunrise to sunset. However on the fortieth day they fasted from sunset to sunset. This day was the tenth of Tishri. When Moses returned in the morning, the Israelites went forth to meet him. He saw that they were weeping and he too wept as he became aware of their repentance. Then God said: "Your repentance is acceptable to me, and this day will remain the Day of Atonement throughout all generations."
The number forty is very important within a Jewish world-view. According to the Torah, our ancestors wandered for forty years, and here, in this midrash, time is measured in periods of forty days: Forty days from Shavuot on the sixth of Sivan, to the 17th Tammuz, the date, when in 586 BCE, the Babylonians breached the walls of the first Temple – destroying Jerusalem, finally, three weeks later on the 9th of Av. Jewish tradition always associates the 17th Tammuz with the day when Moses descended the mountain to see the people cavorting around the molten calf and broke the tablets. Forty days from the 17th Tammuz to the 1st day of Elul: the month of Av, in the heart of the summer, forever indelibly marked by the destruction of both the first and the second, Temples. Forty days from the 1st Elul to the 10th day of Tishri – Yom Kippur: the period of repentance is modelled on Moses’ second forty-day sojourn on Mount Sinai, the time he spent in solemn preparation for a new beginning.
We haven’t worshipped a molten calf or shattered the tablets in fury, but nevertheless, our tradition summons us to journey for forty days, like our ancestors before us, to acknowledge our misdeeds and take the steps we need to take towards renewal. By going back to the wilderness narrative, the midrash places the experience of every generation of Jews into an eternal Jewish context of meaning, and enables each individual Jew to connect her or his individual life, and the challenges each one of us faces, with the great story of our people. We are not alone: we not only have one another; we are part of an ancient people that have trod the way before us.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. This week’s parashah, Ki Tavo, beginning at Deuteronomy chapter 26 is famous for its litany of blessings and curses – the latter spelt out in gruesome detail in the last twelve verses of chapter 27 and the last fifty-four verses of chapter 28. Here we find the small-print of the covenant between God and the people Israel, understood in terms of the antiquated language of reward and punishment. So, when we read the story of our ancestors, any superficial identification we might feel, is forced to confront the reality that every time our forbears went astray they were severely punished. Not so with us – God isn’t going to strike us down if we disobey, which means we aren’t compelled, as they were, to repent.
We may not feel compelled – but don’t
we feel impelled to go on this journey? Don’t our inner selves crave
renewal? In a week’s time, the period of preparation for the Days of Awe will
intensify: Next Saturday night, after a study session on the theme of ‘Listening
to the Voice of the Shofar’, we will hold the special annual Selichot
service that focuses on appeals for ‘forgiveness’, and closes with the
sounding of the shofar. For those who haven’t found the time yet to
begin preparing for the New Year, Selichot will be the perfect
opportunity. On the other hand, there’s no time like the present. Today
is only the 18th day of Elul. The word Elul is
made up of a very interesting set of consonants: Beginning with the silent Aleph,
it includes two Lamed letters separated by a Vav. As I’ve
mentioned before, the Aleph is a mysterious consonant – not only
silent, but ever present, it can never drop out of a word even if there is no
vowel attached to it. And I’ve also pointed out on another occasion that the Lamed
is the only Hebrew consonant that travels upwards above the line. Based
on the root Lamed Mem Dalet, meaning to learn, the two spiralling Lamed
letters in the word Elul teach us that the month of Elul is
clothed in transcendence – that this period of preparation before the
Days of Awe holds within it the possibility that we are able to look at
ourselves and our lives in the context of Eternity. May the powerful silent
presence of the Aleph give each one of us the courage we need for our
journey. And let us say: Amen. |
