Elul 15/August 28

On Fridays, we email two Elul Thoughts, out of respect for those of us who choose not to look at email on Shabbat. We wish you a blessed and restful Shabbat and hope you continue finding inspiration in our Elul Thoughts. 

Rabbi Eric Linder

There is a Greek concept called arete. Loosely translated, it means virtue or excellence, but really it's about the constant pursuit of excellence. And that excellence is judged not by looking at others, but only at yourself.

I think Elul is our version of arete.

This month of Elul is the month before the High Holy Days. Tradition tells us to spend it doing cheshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul. Each morning, the shofar sounds, not yet in celebration, but rather as a wake-up call. Elul asks us to look at the gap between who we are and who we could be.

It's important to note that Elul does not ask whether you were kinder than your neighbor, more generous than your friend, more patient than the person beside you in traffic. It asks only whether you have moved closer to your own best self than you were a year ago. That is the arete of Elul.

Elul invites us, gently and seriously, to return, to become a little more fully who we already have it in us to be.

So as Elul unfolds, let the shofar reach you. Take your own honest accounting. And begin the slow, worthy work of teshuvah, the return toward your own arete- your own excellence, one day at a time.

Elul 16/August 29

Rabbi Batsheva Appel

Writer and activist Terry Tempest Williams relates that her mother’s dying bequest was her journals, which came with the request that they not be read “until after I'm gone.”

Afterwards, Williams describes finding the clothbound journals neatly filling three shelves exactly where her mother said they would be. Williams hesitated; it seemed to be an invasion of her mother’s privacy, despite her request. Eventually, she made herself a cup of tea and sat down to read, expecting her mother's thoughts about life. She opened the first journal to find out that it was completely blank. In fact, all the journals on those shelves contained only empty pages.

Williams describes that moment as wanting to hear her mother’s voice and only encountering silence.

I remember my sadness for Williams when I first heard this story and my compassion for her mother. Recording our thoughts requires reflection and vulnerability to face the blank pages of a clothbound journal.

“Days are scrolls; write on them what you want to be remembered.” – Bachya ibn Pakuda

At the High Holy Days, God reviews our unique Book of Remembrances, containing all our deeds from the past year, and signed by us. Those pages are never blank. The moments that we remember and the ones that slip by; our successes and our failures; our acts of cruelty and acts of kindness all are recorded. Ibn Pakuda prompts us to consider how we are filling our books as we live our lives, and what will be recorded there.