Elul 11/August 24

Rabbi Jeremy Schneider

During my recent trip to Rwanda, I spent an hour sitting with a family of mountain gorillas.

Like many travelers, I arrived focused on the destination. The trek. The photographs. The bucket-list experience. But once we found the gorillas, something unexpected happened. They did almost nothing.

A mother groomed her infant. A juvenile tumbled through the brush. Others rested quietly in the shade. There was no performance. No dramatic moment. No grand lesson being offered for my benefit.

And yet I couldn't look away.

For an hour, I watched creatures completely present to the moment they were living. They were not worried about yesterday. They were not planning tomorrow. They simply were.

Elul asks something similar of us.

Throughout the year, we become distracted by schedules, obligations, anxieties, and endless noise. We rush from one responsibility to the next, often missing the holiness of the moment we are actually living.

Before the High Holy Days arrive with their demands for reflection and repentance, Elul invites us to pause. To pay attention. To notice what has always been there: the people we love, the blessings we take for granted, the quiet voice of God that is so often drowned out by the busyness of our lives.

Sometimes spiritual awakening begins not with doing more, but with noticing more.

This Elul, before we ask how we need to change, let us first learn to truly see.