12 Elul 5776

It’s time to get ready for the High Holidays.

There’s a story of a young rabbi that is furiously preparing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He goes to see his boss, the senior rabbi, feeling accomplished and proud - he has assigned all of the honors and finished his sermons (a task this rabbi would be quite envious of!) But the senior rabbi scoffs at him: The service is the same as it was last year. When I told you to put the holidays in order,
I was not speaking about the mechanics of the service. I was speaking about you. What will you do to put yourself in order?

What will we do to put ourselves in order?

11 Elul 5776

In this new year, may your joy increase, your anger diminish, your faithfulness endure and the highest wishes of your heart be fulfilled.

10 Elul 5776

Rabbi Benjamin’s Buttons

My family and I subscribe to PJ Library, which is a wonderful resource for people who have kids and people who like to tell stories. Every month we get a children’s book from them, at no cost to us, thanks to the generosity of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation as well as private donors from around the world. (Check out pjlibrary.org for more info and to sign up!)

We recently received a book called, “Rabbi Benjamin’s Buttons.” As sad as I was to learn it was not about a rabbi who aged backwards, I was interested to note that the lesson in this children’s book was a very good one for rabbis. In a nutshell, “Rabbi Benjamin’s Buttons” tells the tale of a beloved rabbi whose congregants give him a beautiful holiday vest on Rosh Hashanah, and at each holiday they feed him and feed him and feed him. After his buttons pop off of his vest, he decides that instead of only eating to celebrate holidays, he would find physical activities to celebrate with his congregants. Because he does this, his vest starts to sag and he needs a new one for his new, slender body by next Rosh Hashanah.

On the High Holy Days we are often focused on cheshbon hanefesh, “self-improvement”: usually in the form of making spiritual and behavioral improvements. It is a Jewish value (shmirat haguf) to take care of our bodies, too. How can we work on improving ourselves physically this year as well as spiritually? By making healthful food choices, going to the gym, walking instead of driving when possible, taking the stairs, drinking lots of water and many other positive choices can help us make our bodies and our souls fit for the New Year.

9 Elul 5776

Weaving Something Beautiful out of Your Life

When I was a kid at camp, we learned how to make yarn.  We washed the raw wool.  We combed and straightened the wool fibers.  We then learned how to handle the spindle, bringing the fibers together.  The end results were not always pretty, but sure enough, it was yarn.  

There is a lot to be learned from the experience of creating yarn.  So much of our life is like raw wool.  It is dirty and tangled and matted.  It picks up shmutz along the way.  We need to take the time to wash ourselves.  And yet, while we might be clean, we are still a tangled mess.  We need to take the time to straighten ourselves; get everything we do to go in the same direction.  Finally, it is not just the bringing together of the elements of our life (the wool fibers) to create something (yarn), but then combining that yarn with other yarn to create something beautiful, or practical, or elegant.   Our lives are stronger, richer and more textured when they are combined with other lives.  Ecclesiastes (4:12) teaches “a three-ply cord is not easily broken.”

This year, how have you come together with others to create something beautiful?

8 Elul 5776

Elul follows the difficult month of Av. On the 9th of Av, Jews fast and mourn, commemorating the destruction of The Temple in Jerusalem. The reading of Lamentations suggests that God is angry at the Jewish people for losing faith and for not living according to the Torah. But, there is always hope. The end of Lamentations reminds us that we can always return to God. Elul reminds us that after destruction and pain, there is hope and renewal. Similarly, in our personal lives, there is always an opportunity for growth, healing and holiness. 

6/7 Elul 5776

In respect for Shabbat and the many of us who choose to give our email a rest as well as ourselves, we are offering two Elul Thoughts--one for today and one for Shabbat.

Shabbat Shalom!

6 Elul/September 9

This is the season of healing:

Of healing our hearts and minds, of healing the moments we share with each other and the moments we share with ourselves. 

This is the season of memory:

Of remembering our parents and grandparents, the love of generations, the holiness of our ancestors. 

This is the season of stillness, the season of silence and quiet:

Of deep breaths, Of open eyes, Of compassion and consolation.

This is the season of healing:

The season of grief turning to wonder, of loss turning toward hope, the season that binds this year to the next, the season that frees this year from the next, the season that heralds the redemption of spirit and our return to God’s Holy Word.

(Alden Solovy)

7 Elul/September 10

When I was young and my friends and I would walk fearlessly around our neighborhood… and the world felt safe and kind. I believe almost all people, despite their mixed emotions and passions, want to live in such a world and with time, patience and faith, can achieve it.

We need not know the people to our right and to our left to know that we are walking the same path in the same direction. 

5 Elul, 5776

It’s Not You, God, It’s Me

I listened to my first podcast recently.

It happens to be the creation of one of our Elul Thoughts contributors, Rabbi Eric Linder, and his colleague Reverend Craig Topple, and it is called God in the Grit. In it, they discuss theology and life from the point of view of two spiritual leaders of different faiths. Toward the end of their first episode, Reverend Craig says, “When someone tells you what they think about God, it tells you less about God than it tells you about them.”

This struck a chord for me. As someone who speaks often about God, I will often remind people that in a room of 25 people, there are at least 25 different views on who or what God is. We cannot expect someone else to have all of our same tastes, so why should we believe they would share our theology? How we connect to God is deeply personal, and

As we prepare for the High Holy Days, may we learn to accept others when our opinions differ, as we would want our own opinions to be accepted.