Elul Day 5

Dear Elul Writers,

Here we are approaching the first Shabbat of Elul, and we haven’t so much as uttered the word teshuvah. It’s like those old billboards in Louisiana that used to chide me every December, “Have you forgotten the reason for the season?!” If I was asked, in one word, to say what’s the reason for this High Holy Day season, that word would undoubtedly be teshuvah. It is a word that encompasses the turning and returning, the reorienting and repenting that we seek to do as we head toward the new year. It is a process that, each year, I seek to understand better.

Sometimes people talk about teshuvah like they talk about cake. “Have you made teshuvah yet?” “Did you make a Red Velvet Bundt?” In this version of the world (a reality that feels quite distant from the world that I live in) you just follow a recipe and voila you’ve made teshuvah. Others talk about teshuvah like making brunch plans. “We should find a time to get together and make teshuvah. You look at your schedule and I’ll look at mine, and I am sure that we will find a date to make it happen.” These idealized versions of teshuvah suggest that given the right ingredients or given a little planning and logistics, the rest will just fall into place. Lost in these conceptions is all of the instability, the tangledness and the doubt that arise when we imagine returning. Who hasn’t felt a sense of skepticism when looking at a particularly challenging situation, thinking ‘is return even possible?’

As always, when I am unsatisfied with my own understanding of a Jewish value concept, I turn to my teacher, R’ Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, for wisdom and guidance. She recently wrote about teshuvah:

Teshuva entails a different kind of return—arduous, uncertain, unpredictable, and alive. It is a return not to what was, but to what is and what might be. It is a return not to who we were, but to who we long to be. It is a return not to an irretrievable past, but to each other and to God. 

Prompt

On this fifth day of Elul, I invite you to contemplate the teshuvah that is ‘arduous, uncertain, unpredictable and alive’ for you. How can we let go of a desire to return to an imagined past and embrace a turning to each other and the Kadosh Baruch Hu right now? Consider a small step that you could take towards making your turn. What would returning to yourself, not in the past tense, but in the present feel like? 

This is a little reminder that I don’t send a prompt tomorrow night, but I look forward to returning on Saturday night. In the meantime, wishing you all a sweet Shabbos ahead.

Shabbat shalom,

Jordan