The Season of Love: Elul 5784

Weary and wounded, yearning for hope, desperate for something better, we come to the end of the year. Tonight is the last Shabbat of the month of Av. Next week, we enter into Elul, the final month that will carry us into the new year, 5785. Each morning of Elul, it is customary to hear the blast of the shofar. Its piercing cry awakens us to the work of teshuvah, summoning us to pay attention to what is broken in ourselves, our communities, and the world. So much feels broken these days; so much damage has been done; so much worry and fear engulf us as we contemplate the future. But the ancient sound of the shofar calls us to begin the work of healing and repair in the new year.

Our Sages pointed out that the letters which spell out Elul match the initial letters of a verse from the Song of Songs, Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li, “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine” (6:3). So our Sages saw Elul as a season of love, a time when God draws closer to us, calling us to draw nearer, to cherish and be cherished in beloved relationship. Our sages imagine God saying to us: “Make for me an opening of teshuvah as small as the eye of a needle, and I will make the opening of forgiveness so wide that coaches and wagons could enter.” With love and mercy, God is ready to embrace us as we begin the journey back to our best selves and set a new course for the coming year.

This year, the call of love seems especially urgent. Consider these words, written by James Baldwin, of blessed memory:

For nothing is fixed,
forever and forever and forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

(adapted from “Nothing Personal,” by James Baldwin and Richard Avedon; in Baldwin: Collected Essays, Library of America, 1964)

Baldwin writes that in a time when “nothing is fixed,” a time of ceaseless change and tumult, what stands firm is a sacred imperative: we must hold each other; we must not break faith with one another, lest the rising sea engulf us and the light go out.

We might understand his words in another way. When “nothing is fixed,” when no acts of moral and spiritual repair take place, the world remains broken; our communities shattered, our hearts mired in despair. Elul, the season of love, calls us to turn towards God in love. But that is only the first step in the process of teshuvah. In his new book, Judaism Is About Love, Rabbi Shai Held teaches that God created each of as an act of unmerited love: “We don’t earn God’s love,” Held writes, but “we aspire to live up to it…Loved, we strive to be lovers ourselves. God’s love is both a gift and a challenge: a gift [in] that it is unearned and unconditional; a challenge, in that it comes with hopes and expectations for who and how we can be, and for what we can do in the world. To be(come) human is to grow in love, love for friends, family, and community.”

In the month of Elul we sense acutely this challenge to grow in love; to turn towards one another; to soften and open our hearts to the work of teshuvah; to make change by extending to others the same grace and compassion God offers each of us. Real teshuvah— repentance, atonement, and return—can only happen in relationship and in community.

During a fraught and divisive time in our country and in our Jewish community, Elul offers us a precious opportunity: to begin to bind up our wounds; to turn toward each other with love; to reaffirm the sacred threads that connect us across generations. This Elul, Central is partnering with the New York Peace Institute to facilitate weekly Elul reflection and discussion circles. Moderated by trained Central members, our Elul circles are spaces for our community members to speak and to listen with compassion and respect; to learn from one another; to discuss complex issues facing our community with nuance; to support each other through the days and months ahead. Our Elul circles offer a way to heal together, to open our minds and soften our hearts, to have challenging conversations in the loving spirit of this season.

I am honored to invite you to join me and Rabbi Buchdahl on September 11th for an evening with the New York Peace Institute to learn more about our Elul Circles and how you can participate— in person or virtually—throughout the month of Elul and into the fall. Please watch for more detailed information in the Weekly.

Teshuvah, writes Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, is “about taking care of each other…[T]aking seriously that I might have hurt you…is an act of love and care. It is an opportunity to open my heart wider than it has been.” As we come to the end of a painful year in which our country and Jewish communities feel more divided than ever, Elul calls on the best within us, summoning us to cherish one another; to hold onto each other as beloved, not because we agree on everything, but because we are a sacred community bound together by new and ancient threads of relationship.

If we fail to do this work, as James Baldwin reminds us, the light will go out. But the poet Marge Piercy reminds us that we carry the light within us, and the new year is full of promise. She writes:

The moon is dark tonight, a new
moon for a new year. It is
hollow and hungers to be full.
It is the black zero of beginning.

Now you must void yourself
of injuries, insults, incursions.
Go with empty hands to those
you have hurt and make amends.

It is not too late. It is early and about to grow. Now
is the time to do what you
know you must and have feared
to begin. Your face is dark
too as you turn inward to face
yourself, the hidden twin of
all you must grow to be.

Forgive the dead year. Forgive
yourself. What will be wants
to push through your fingers.
The light you seek hides
in your belly. The light you
crave longs to stream from
your eyes. You are the moon
that will wax in new goodness.

–”Head of the Year,” from The Art of Blessing the Day, p.148

In this season of change and possibility, may we grow in love for one another in the Central community. In the fog of our pain and hurt, let us not lose sight of one another, and the goodness that is within us. Just as God draws nearer to us, let us draw near to one another as we look with hope toward the new year.