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The Hebrew month of Elul is the last month of the Jewish year. As such, it is considered a month of spiritual preparation for the High Holy Days. Special meditations are added to the daily service for some, known as S’lichot, or penitential prayers. (*The Saturday before Rosh Hashanah is also known as S’lichot, and it is used as a night of contemplation and study.) For several years, a group of Reform clergy and educators has collaborated on a series of Elul Thoughts. These are shared with our congregations in a daily email throughout the month. 

It is with great honor that we once again bring Elul Thoughts to our congregations across the United States and Canada this year. We have been sending Elul Thoughts to our congregations since 2008 when Rabbi David Young worked with Rabbi Alan Litwak at Temple Sinai in North Miami Beach, FL. This project was his brainchild then, and it has taken on a renewed life again and again as we connect with colleagues and friends who want to contribute. Every year we invite cantors, rabbis, and educators. Some years we invite congregants or teachers from other areas of expertise. This year our participants were asked to write on the theme of “Healing.” We hope that you find healing and strength from these messages, and we wish you a blessed Elul full of renewal and growth.

1 Elul, 5782 | August 28, 2022
Rabbi Brad Levenberg
In the end, what separates a wish from a prayer is the point to which it is directed. After all, wishes are magic and mystery, and the petitioner makes a wish and the granter is often one who is quite unlike us, possessing some ability that we do not understand. Meanwhile, prayer is inward looking. The Hebrew word “to pray” is L’hitpalel and is reflexive. Thus, asking God to do something for us is more like wishing; asking to discover something ourselves is praying. It is not about God providing healing; it is about finding the strength inside myself to provide healing to others.
 
As Harold Kushner writes:
We can’t pray that You make our lives free of problems; this won’t happen and it's probably just as well. We can’t ask You to make us and those we love immune to disease, because You can’t do that. We can’t ask You to weave magic spell around us so that bad things will only happen to other people, and never to us...But people who pray for courage, for strength to bear the unbearable, for the grace to remember what they have left instead what they have lost, very often find their prayers answered. They discover that they have more strength, more courage than they ever knew themselves to have.

2 Elul, 5782 | August 29, 2022
Rabbi Michael Weinstein
As a partner with the Divine, we have limited power to choose our fate. The power to respond to that fate is ours. We can allow adversity to crush our spirits, fill us with fear, and harden our hearts. Or, we can learn from our pain, we can uncover our strength, we can refuse to be defeated.
God, heal our wounds, but leave our scars. They remind us that - come what may - we retain the power to turn curses into blessings, shame into pride, sadness into strength, and pain into compassion.
Chazak, chazak v’nitchazeik... From strength to strength, we are strengthened.

לִבָרְכָה וְלֹא לִקְלָלָה
לְשׂוֹבָה וְלֹא לְרָזוֹן
לְחַיִּים וְלֹא לְמָוֶת

Let us live with blessings and not with sorrow.
Let us know plenty and escape famine.
Let there be life and not destruction.

3 Elul, 5782 | August 30, 2022
Rabbi Erin Boxt
Have you ever sat down and just emptied your brain of all of the tensions and stresses that are affecting you? This may sound crazy. Go ahead, try. Sit down, take a deep breath, and just relax. Let your worries fade away…find yourself in a safe, comfortable place. The month of Elul gives us this opportunity to reflect and look deep within ourselves for hidden comfort and possibility. This possibility allows us to focus on what we need. Our health – mental, physical, and spiritual – is of utmost importance. Every year, during Elul, we have time to think about what we are most thankful for or what we crave the most. Or, we may just have a few moments of quiet solitude in which our minds are able to unwind and just be. Maybe someone upset you today or you are worried that you upset someone else. Let it go…breathe, relax. Part of Teshuvah – repentance – is just letting go. Rather than dwell on what may or may not have upset you in the past, allow yourself to live in the present, to be holy and let the holiness of others shine through. Teshuvah is not just about repentance – it is also about returning. Let us all return to a place of healing and wholeness.

4 Elul, 5782/August 31, 2022
Rabbi Neal Katz
Rabbi Harold Schulweis, of blessed memory, once shared a profound insight on how to engage Jewish living. And while he was addressing rabbis, his teaching can be applied to everyone. 
 
He spoke of two phrases: Passage-less Rites and Rite-less Passages. I offer my understanding of Rabbi Shulweis’ lesson: 
 
Jewish life is filled with rituals: holidays, births, b’nai mitzvah, marriages, etc. When we encounter those moments of ritual without any context of learning or processing, we have missed the opportunity to appreciate those rituals as moments of Passage. I know that becoming a bar/bat mitzvah is a significant milestone in a child's life. However, if I focus solely on the specific ceremony and neglect to build a rapport with the child in preparation and follow-up afterward, I also miss the opportunity to celebrate that transition. This is a Passage-less Rite. 
 
And then there are Passages, transformative moments in all our lives. And often, there is no ritual to mark those transitions. Those are Rite-less Passages. Consider what it would be like if there was a Jewish ritual to commemorate receiving your driver's license or voting for the first time. Those are life-changing experiences that aren't accompanied by Jewish traditions. 
 
Rite-less Passages: noteworthy events in our lives that occur outside of a Jewish ritual. 
And Passage-less Rites: when Jewish ritualism misses the transformation taking place. 
 
During Elul, I reflect on this teaching as it prompts me to honor both the sacred rituals and the sacred moments in our lives. 

5 Elul, 5782 | September 1, 2022
Rabbi Simone Shickler
“All better!”
These are the words I remember my mom saying whenever she would address a bump or bruise or cut when I was a child. I think of them often and wonder to myself why I ever wanted to grow up. Healing is not so simple when you are an adult, when you can look back at what happened - physical or mental - and realize that simply saying “all better” does not make it so.

As we walk through the month of Elul we note that our tradition tells us this is a month of contemplation. A month in which we are supposed to look back over the past year and acknowledge our wrongdoing. What did we forget to do? Who did we hurt? When did we pay attention to the wrong thing? But we did not only stumble in the past year - we have also succeeded. Too often we overlook the good that we did. When we consider how we can heal ourselves, our families, communities, countries, planet - we must acknowledge what we did right.

In the past year:

• Did you visit/send a note/make a call to a sick relative or friend?
• Start/continue recycling? Or do something else for the planet?
• Did you start exercising? Or start drinking more water?

Healing comes in many forms and we each have the opportunity to make a different choice than we did the day before. A choice to start the path to healing.

6 Elul, 5782 | September 2, 2022
Rabbi Harry Rosenfeld
Rabbi Philip Horowitz told this story every year at YK Family services.
 
An incorrigible child constantly misbehaved. The parents would punish the child, but the behavior continued. At school the child was a terror, bullying, teasing, and even biting. After moving from school to school, the family moved to a new town.
 
In the new house, the child stared silently at a beautiful wood panel wall. The parents asked: “What are you staring at?” “The most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” The parents were awed that their child could be so positively moved. But soon, the child was behaving as before. 
 
The parents realized that the wall could be the solution. The family sat in front of the wall. One parent said: “We know how much you love this wall, but your behavior must change. From now on, when one of us misbehaves, they will have to hammer nail into the wall. Whenever one of us does something good, one of those nails will be removed. Soon the wall was filled with nails because of the child.
 
One night, the parents found their child bawling by the ruined wall. Afterward, the child’s behavior changed. Soon, all the nails were gone, but the wall was ruined. The child sobbed. The parents held their child and said: “For every further good deed, we will work to repair the wall.” With time, the wall shined with a different beauty. The holes were filled, the lacquer reapplied, but the scars from the nails were still visible. Its beauty was even enhanced, but the wall was forever changed.

7 Elul, 5782 | September 3, 2022
Rabbi Michael Birnholz
An episode of the podcast Harry Potter and Sacred Text on grace keeps coming to mind. So often, I feel the word “grace” is overlooked in Jewish circles. Yet, in how many texts do we declare that we want to generate: Chen, chesed and rachamim - grace, kindness and compassion? As I saw this episode title, I was curious to see how they would describe and handle this value.

For the hosts, grace was something that was received. The Divine grants grace to humans who should appreciate this gift and opportunity. As I listened I realized that it didn't sit well with me or feel like the whole dynamic. What if it's not God giving me grace as in a good outcome or special dispensation? God gives me grace, as in the ability to move gracefully, to handle situations with grace. 

It's a way of talking about grace that we all use: the way athletes move, poets offer words, even comedians tell jokes. Grace is an ease of movement, beauty of flow, drawing together, sliding apart so you get something more than sum of parts. It is a quality we can bring to words, action, and relationships; how we handle a situation or face a physical challenge. 

I might feel like a big klutz physically and socially but, chen, grace, is a value that I aspire to. It is the energy that I seek to cultivate and activate as I move through the journey of life, as I finish one year and prepare for the next.