Word Prompt – ELUL – Chaya Sima Koenigsberg

Elul means we are back at the beginning of the holiday cycle! It brings me back to my childhood and I can hear my father practicing blowing shofar in our basement, with the sound coming up through the floor and filling the house. Elul means rabbanim are busy preparing their Yamim Nora’im derashos and ba’alei tefillah are practicing nusach. Yeshiva is beginning again. For teachers, students, and new-found chavrusas, Elul is filled with the hopes, opportunities, and trepidations that come with new beginnings.

There is also something comforting about the familiar cycle of the year. Many Jewish thinkers describe the Jewish calendar not as a simple cycle where we return to the same starting point each year, but as an upward spiral. As we revisit the holidays each year, we are meant to encounter them on a higher plane. Their rituals remain the same, but we have changed through the previous year’s growth and experiences. The month of Elul through Yom Kippur were the days when Moshe Rabbeinu ascended Mt. Sinai to receive the second luchos. It is the month of homecoming, returning to Hashem and of second chances. While the first luchos were written by Hashem, granted from above to below, the second luchos were written by Moshe Rabbeinu.

Elul is the opportunity for each of us to write our story for the year ahead, to assess and set goals and move beyond last year’s missteps. Elul is the month to ascend the mountain of Hashem and reconnect with our Beloved. Ani le’dodi v’dodi li.