Elul 1

Torah Portion: Shof'tim; Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9

I love coffee. 

I love the smell, the taste, the jolt of caffeine that hits me with that first cup.  I am a real coffee addict, too.  I drink three or four or five cups of coffee every morning, and on days when I know I’ll be working late, I swing by Starbucks and order a grande non-fat no-whip white mocha.  See - I even know the lingo!  My morning coffee experience is now a ritual that I am loathe to give up.  Yet, every year, in the month before the High Holy Days—the month of Elul—I begin withdrawing from caffeine.  For me, as you can imagine, this is a big deal.  I have a very clear system of withdrawal – I start by going ½ caffeinated and ½ decaffeinated.  Then after a week, I go to 2/3 decaf, 1/3 caf.  Then ¾ decaf, then that final step to all decaf.  It’s a slow process, and some days I have horrible caffeine-withdrawal headaches.  I am not a happy camper.  And yet, every single year, I give up this favorite thing, this almost sacred ritual, because something looms in the future – the most holy day of our Jewish year, Yom Kippur.  Yom Kippur is not, by any stretch of the imagination, an easy holiday.  As Jews, we fast, we refrain from drinking, we do not wear leather or perfume or makeup, we don’t shower, and we stay in services all day.  This, my friends, is a recipe for hardship.  By the end of the day, most of us are shaky, starving, weak, and exhausted.  I have a hard time reading the prayerbook and have to point with my finger just to follow along!  As difficult as Yom Kippur is, I know that if I do not give up my caffeine before hand, a difficult day becomes that much harder with horrible withdrawal headaches and cravings for just one cup.  Just one sip, even!  I learned very quickly that if I was to have a meaningful High Holy Day season, I had to do some work before hand.

            Of course, while I take my caffeine withdrawal seriously, it is nothing compared to the spiritual work we are all called upon to do before the High Holy Days begin.  During the entire month of Elul, in fact—a month that began today—we are supposed to conduct a heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of our souls.  This is a special time of year.  Our sages teach that Elul is a month of is the month of divine grace and compassion, when God is poised to receive our prayers and forgive us for our sins.  During this time, God’s attribute of compassion is said to “radiate to each one of us.  Elul brings to the surface the intense love between God and [God’s] people.  For this reason, this month—and the entire 40-day period concluding with Yom Kippur—is dedicated to special prayers, soul searching, and teshuvah” (60 Days, Rabbi Simon Jacobson).  This is a time for serious introspection, self-evaluation, and commitment to change.  People believe that Yom Kippur is the day that atones for our sins, but that atonement means nothing if we haven’t done the spiritual work that real atonement requires—work that simply cannot be done on just one day.  A heshbon hanefesh, an accounting of the soul, begins by reviewing the year that has past, facing the sins that we committed, trying to make up for them, and working to never repeat those sins again.

When I think seriously about what happened during the past year, a number of sins—what I think of as “easy sins” come to mind: I don’t pray enough.  I don’t give as much to tzedakah as I should.  I call these kinds of sins easy sins because they are the little things that immediately spring to mind when we think about the ways we should improve ourselves.  Take a minute right now, and just think of these “easy sins”, the little, every-day sins that you’d like to change.  ......  Okay.  Now, during the month of Elul, we begin the process of addressing these sins and making the necessary changes.  Maybe I do an automatic withdrawal from my checking account to various charities I care about, like MAZON, Habitat for Humanity, American Jewish World Service, and so on.  An easy sin, and an easy fix.  Maybe I prop my prayerbook in front of my computer every morning, so that instead of reading e-mail first thing, I read a prayer.  Okay – I can do that.  But after we think of these types of sins, and after we start addressing them, we realize that there is another list of sin.  This harder list of sins, the list that requires a real soul-accounting, a heshbon hanefesh, requires time and insight.  This list might include something like taking my amazing husband for granted.  This is something I know I do on a daily basis.  In fact, when I am stressed or upset, he always bears the brunt of my frustrations.  God bless him!  But God knows it’s not something I want to do—it’s not something I want to continue in the year to come.  Yet, this kind of sin, this particular example, has some really scary questions attached—questions like, how do I recognize when I am even taking him for granted?  What—and how—do I do things differently?  How do I make atonement for this kind of sin?  And, the hardest question of all, WHY do I do it?  What is it inside of me that leads me to take my husband—a man I love deeply—for granted?  And if I do that with my husband, do I also do it with my children?  My community?  My God?  These questions, when I consider them seriously, make me shake and tremble.  They get to the heart of my soul, and require that I do some serious soul-work if I am going to change.  Take a minute, and just consider one of these kinds of sins, and think about the soul-work you need to do to address them.

The areas of our lives that upset us, and draw us away from the people we love and away from God, are difficult things to consider, but it is here where the real spiritual work of the High Holy Days begins.  And when we actually engage in this work, I know that our Holy Day experience is that much richer and meaningful.  Our prayers of sinning and repentance, prayers describing a longing for change and connection, become more than just words on the page before us; they become the words our souls long to speak.  They become an expression of our deepest core, of our Highest Self.  The prayers, the experience, the power of Yom Kippur become OURS.  This and so much more is possible, if we begin now.

Now, back to coffee.  As much as I mourn my daily caffeine fix, in the end I am grateful for my careful preparation work.  It allows me to have a more meaningful and less painful day of atonement.    I can give up something, when I know it has a big payoff.  And as difficult as a real heshbon hanefesh, accounting of the soul, is, we can also be grateful for that preparation work; it, too, elevates our Yom Kippur, and certainly has a powerful payoff.  Just as there is nothing like that first cup of caffeinated coffee the morning after Yom Kippur, there is nothing like walking out of Yom Kippur services knowing that your soul has been cleansed—helped in large part by your heshbon hanefesh, accounting of you soul—and that the year to come is full of possibility, full of promise, and full of peace.