Every morning during Elul, we hear the shofar in shul. One of the reasons for this custom is its similarity to a court giving a debtor thirty days to pay up his debts. So too, the shofar reminds us thirty days before the Day of Judgment to get our spiritual debts taken care of. The Rambam explains that the shofar serves as an alarm. “Uru yesheinim m’shinaschem – Wake up you sleepers from your slumber.”
Of course, we are not speaking about physical sleeping. We refer to spiritual sleeping – like the wicked Haman said in his famous slander against the Jews, “Yeshno ahm echad,” which the Gemara interprets to mean, “Yesheinim hein min hamitzvos – They are sleeping from the mitzvos.” What this means, of course, is that we do the actual commandments but we do them like one who is sleeping, without concentration, feeling or passion. Thus, the shofar serves as a wake-up call for us to do our daily mitzvos such as prayer, tefillin, mezuzah, and others more meaningfully.
The Ksav Sofer, zt”l, zy”a, says that shofar also means prettiness like in the expression “Shufra d’Rebbi Yochanan – The beauty of Rebbi Yochanan.” Therefore, one of the messages of the shofar is “Shapru maaseichem – Make prettier your deeds.”
All of us petition Hashem for another year of life, for ourselves and our loved ones. But we don’t simply ask for another year of life. We ask for a better year with better health, with better shalom bais, with better parnassa. Better, better, better. Answers Hashem, “It’s a pleasure to do so. Just one thing… How are you going to be better? It’s only fair that if you ask for a better year that you too should be better in the coming year.” This is why I always recommend that people have a “To Do Better” list in their Rosh Hashana machzor and to have on this list, as much as possible, a realistic list of goals. This is a simple quid pro quo arrangement with Hashem and of course, Hashem, the Merciful One rewards us greatly for our change for the better.
How do we go about making such a To Do Better list? The answer is that, sometime very soon, we must make a cheshbon hanefesh, a spiritual accounting, analyzing our day from our Modeh Ani when we open our eyes to the Krias Shema al hamita, when we go to sleep – and everything in between. We must place special emphasis on improving our vital relationships such as with our spouse, our children, our parents, our Rabbi, and our friends and neighbors, co-workers, employees, and employers. We should also pay extra attention to such essential mitzvos as Torah study, our prayers, charity, kashrus, Shabbos observance, and family purity.
After we pinpoint some specific areas upon which we would like to improve, we can then employ the wonderful advice of the Tzetl Katan, who recommends that if we want to change our nature in a specific area (for example, to start smiling daily at our spouse), we should make a commitment to do it for forty consecutive days. The “magic” of forty days is that if we succeed in doing so, we will have created for ourselves a new nature and will have successfully broken the old habit. This is derived from the fact that the fetus is created in a mother’s womb after forty days. And this is why to go from tumah to tahara, the mikvah has forty sah of water, and why a corrupt world needed a flood of forty days and forty nights in order to be repaired, and why Moshe Rabbeinu, in order to become the man of Torah, needed to go up to heaven for forty days and forty nights.
So, let’s start getting busy making our cheshbon hanefesh. Let’s start filling up our To Do Better list and in that merit may Hashem bless us all with a year of good health, happiness, and everything wonderful.
Transcribed and edited by Shelley Zeitlin.
