Elul Day 25
Dear Elul Writers,
The beginning of this week’s Torah portion, parashat Nitzavim, imagines all of the people standing together– young and old, leaders and ordinary folks, people of all genders, fellow travelers, laborers of different varieties (from wood-cutters to water-drawers). So, this feels like an appropriate time to consider who is with us on our own little trek through Elul.
This year, we are nearly 3,500 in number. There are librarians and endocrinologists, herbalists and social workers, consultants and educators (and more than a few educational consultants). We have people between jobs, people shifting careers, people who are retired or anxiously eyeing retirement. Counted amongst us are folks in Albuquerque and Atlanta, Zurich and Zichron Yaakov. We have with us teenagers and octogenarians, people experiencing quarter-life crises and mid-life crises and some just experiencing non-age-specific crises. There are rabbis from across the United States and Canada, from Europe and South America; hazzans and cantors, cantorial soloists and musical directors. There are students; undergrads and law students, nursing students and seminarians. There are parents and grandparents, loving aunts and uncles, beloved friends and community builders. There are Jews of all flavors–modern Orthodox and modern unorthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, Conservative and Renewal, Humanists and Charedim (can’t confirm, but I hope so), culinary Jews, cultural Jews, crunchy Jews, devout atheists and lapsed atheists. We also have our own fellow travelers: Buddhists and Muslims, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, Hindus and Quakers. There are people who are deep in the midst of their grief and others who have just begun to imagine life on the other side of loss. There are people here who are dealing with illness in all its forms (physical, chronic, mental). Some of us are holding anger and frustration. Others are experiencing an overwhelming sense of gratitude. We have with us those who, despite it all, are cultivating deep joy and hope. There are some people who feel full of dread and some just feeling painfully numb. Many, I would venture to guess, are pinballing between these emotions. All of us are seeking to make ourselves and our world more whole in the year to come. Kein yehi ratzon.
On the subject of the wood-chopper and the water drawer who are alluded to at the start of the parasha, I encountered a beautiful dvar Torah written by R’ Dena Weiss. She writes, “Both of these laborers do the work of leveling, of bringing everything to the surface of the earth. The tops of the trees kiss heaven until the lumberjack lowers his axe and the branches fall to the ground. The water is beneath the surface, deep beneath the ground, and it is the water-drawer who raises it up to be level with where the humans and our crops live. To be a wood-chopper and to be a water-drawer is to seek and achieve equanimity.”
Prompt
It is fair to say that we all desire equilibrium and level-headedness in the work of teshuvah. We don’t want to be too haughty or hold ourselves in high regard, nor do we wish to be self-effacing and overly contrite. Rather, it is an even-keeled, clear eyed vision that we are after. The key, according to Weiss, is to find inspiration in the work of both the wood-cutter and the water-drawer: “One is the process of cutting ourselves down to size and the other is the process of repairing ourselves and nurturing ourselves after the blow. And we must do both in order to successfully improve—the felling of trees needs to be accompanied by the drawing of water.” How can we cull and cut back that which has become overgrown, and, at the same time, remember to water and nourish that which deserves our attention. How exactly do you distinguish between the two? What would equanimity in this work feel like?
Take care,
Jordan