During the Jewish month of Elul, the month before Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are encouraged to engage in self reflection as to what changes they would like to make in the coming new year.
I confess, I did not do the spiritual work this year that I should have leading up to these High Holy Days.
It wasn’t that I didn’t have many reminders. My inbox was full of invitations to read and study with various groups and individuals for over a month. However, I managed to ignore them all and go on about my life.
All our services during these holidays are filled with prayers for teshuvah, returning and repentance, and s’lichah, forgiveness.
However, it seems I find myself pledging to make the same changes and asking for forgiveness for the same actions every year. We all make resolutions every secular new year, only to fall back on old habits, so it appears we never learn. It’s a testament to hope that we continue to start over again each year.
Along with wishing to make changes in one’s own life, we must remember that the world is also in desperate need of change. There is so much to be done. With the increasingly powerful and frequent environmental catastrophes we are witnessing, the willingness of our fellow citizens to strip all manner of rights from us, and the frightening acceptance of the use of violence to force one’s views on others, we can feel that it is hopeless to try and make any meaningful change.
We might wonder what one person can possibly do.
We’d like to just look away and ignore the problems. After all, we have our own issues to deal with. We want to turn away because it’s easier and more comfortable, like waking in the morning only to snuggle down and sink into the comfort of more sleep. But that is exactly what we must not do.
Jews use the blast of the shofar, the ram’s horn, as our alarm, shaking us awake to action.
Rosh Ha Shanah celebrates God’s creation of the world, but Judaism has always seen that creation as incomplete and us as co-creators.
The Kabbalists teach that, because we are created b’ztelem elohim, in the image of God, we must do all in our power to bring about tikun olam, the repairing of the world. We are not allowed to sit back and expect that someone else will do all the work.
As Rabbi Tarfon teaches, “It is not your responsibility to finish the work of perfecting the world, but you are not free to desist from it either.”
And when we dedicate ourselves to that task, an amazing thing will happen.
We find ourselves returning to our holy selves, and our own lives will begin to change after all.
Heal the world and we find healing for ourselves. Reach out to others and we are reaching out to God. In return, God’s love and forgiveness will envelop us, giving us the strength and resolve to continue.
There are two major assumptions at the heart of Kabbalah: the world is in need of repair and the human soul is eternal. These concepts are intertwined — the work of the human soul is to use the body to repair the world, and in so doing, the soul journeys toward its own healing.
So let us embrace hope in confronting difficult times as we enter this new Jewish year.
Rabbi Karyn Kedar says, “Hope is the bridge to the next stage of your life. Go forward with hope in your heart, you will not fail.”
Know that with hope, all is not lost and we can affect change in our world and thus in our lives. We must remember that by being created in the divine image, we have been given a gift.
Let us use this gift for good, and hold on to the hope that we can become God’s agents in making this world truly a holy place.
Kein yehi ratzon … may it be God’s will.
L’shanah tovah tikatevu.
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Issues of Faith is a rotating column by five religious leaders on the North Olympic Peninsula. Suzanne DeBey is a lay leader of the Port Angeles Jewish community. Her email is debeyfam@ olympus.net.
