Elul 8/August 21

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 Simone Schicker 

As we work through the month of Elul, as we take an accounting of our souls, actions and goals, I am sitting on the teachings of Barbara Brown Taylor, an ordained Episcopal priest. She writes in her book Holy Envy: Finding God in the Faith of Others about the idea of “holy envy” as envisioned by Krister Stendahl, a Swedish theologian who was Dean of Harvard University's Divinity School. “Holy envy” is the idea that we can be devoted to our faith, to our tradition, and at the same time can recognize the beauty of another's traditions and teachings. We can have “holy envy.”

I find this teaching particularly relevant at this time of year, when we find ourselves taking an accounting of our actions, our behaviors, our mistakes and our successes over the past year. When we look at ourselves and at our own tradition, we often miss the beauty that another might see. We look for the flaws, we look for what we are lacking, and miss the forest for the trees. It is my hope, and my prayer, that this year we look inward and see all the good we did. That we see the positive impact that we made. That we acknowledge our shortcomings with compassion for ourselves and others, instead of solely seeing where we failed or fell short.

Let us use the idea of holy envy to be more gracious to ourselves and others in our accounting throughout the month, and in our behavior in the new year. 

Elul 9/August 22

Rabbi Glenn Ettman

Teshuvah Is Not a U-Turn

Teshuvah is not a return to. It's a bold reimagining of.

We've been taught teshuvah means "return" as if a better version of us is standing somewhere behind us, waiting to be rediscovered. But cheshbon hanefesh doesn't have a rewind button. You cannot un-live a year. You cannot turn in place and land where you started, because the person who started is gone. Every joy changed you. Every disappointment shaped you. Every mistake left a mark that doesn't come out in the wash.

Here's the danger in insisting on return anyway: it misdiagnoses the problem. We treat this year's failures as detours from a fixed self, like a wrong turn we just need to correct. But what if the self we're trying to get back to was never the cure? What if it was already carrying the same blind spots, the same avoidance, the same fault lines that got us here in the first place? Return doesn't fix that. It just reinstalls it.

So teshuvah, honestly done, is not a return to. It's a reimagining of. Not who I was but who I might become, having failed and learned and poised to start again from wherever I am. Not restoration. Revision.

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov taught that anyone who wants real compassion for him/herself should begin each day anew, as if just born, and say: today is what counts (Likutey Halakhot, K'riat HaTorah 6:17). 

This year, don't just return.

Reimagine.