Elul 17: Transforming Curses into Blessings

Have you ever paused to consider the blessings and curses in your life? Read this sentence, and then close your eyes for 30 seconds to do so. Go ahead, try it!

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We all have things that we appreciate, and circumstances that we could do without. Parashat Ki Tavo, which we are reading this week in the Torah, delineates in alternatively abundant delight and horrific despair the good things that will happen to us if we follow God's mitzvot / commandments, and the terrible things that will ensue if we do not. It is in fact notable that there is no middle ground - it seems to be all or none.

The reality, however, is that we all have a share of blessings and curses in our lives, often (but not always) independent of our behavior. The Torah's theological stance does not necessarily align with contemporary ways of understanding God and our lives.

Nonetheless, we are now in the latter half of the month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashanah. This is the month of heshbon ha-nefesh, self-reflection with an eye toward spiritual inventory. Perhaps the essential question of Elul is, how can I transform myself such that some of the curses in my life become blessings?

Shabbat Shalom and Shanah Tovah!

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This post is one in a series of thoughts for Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah; I am trying to post one every day of the month, except for Shabbat Here are links to the previous posts:

Elul 16: Things to Remember in Elul

Elul 15: New Year of the Soul

Elul 14: Translating the Self

Elul 12: What's Ten Years?

Elul 10: Teshuvah Three-Step

Elul 9: Vidui and the "Jewish Science"

Elul 8: The Two Types of Forgiveness

Elul 7: The Sounds of Elul

Elul 6: If you had only one request from God

Elul 5: High Stakes Accounting

Elul 3: Teshuvah Inventory Questions

Elul 2: The Spaces In-Between

Elul 1: Resonances of the Shofar

Rosh Hodesh Elul: What's more important than electricity?


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Elul 15: New Year of the Soul

While the secular New Year falls in the middle of winter (well, in the Northern Hemisphere anyway), when the earth resets itself, the Jewish New Year comes in the fall, just before the traditional harvest time. People come home from summer vacations, school starts up again, and wham! We're hit with the Ten Days of Repentance. Perfect timing, I think.

Now is the time, as we are preparing for what most of us think of as "the year," that we need introspective moments. Vacation is over, and it's back to the grindstone; what better time to take stock, to engage in heshbon ha-nefesh (accounting of the soul), to examine our relationships. The next big vacation is ten months from now, and from this point to that will be a blur of activity. Better to enter it with some deep, probing consideration.

January 1 may be a new year of the Earth, but Rosh Hashanah is more a New Year of the soul.

Elul 5: High-Stakes Accounting

The month of Elul is a period of heshbon ha-nefesh, literally, accounting of the soul.

One rabbinic tradition says that the forty days from the beginning of the month of Elul until Yom Kippur mark the period that Moses was on Mt. Sinai a second time, receiving the second set of tablets. The first forty-day period ended disastrously when Moses came down from the mountain to find the Israelites dancing around a molten calf*, and destroyed the first tablets in anger.

The stakes were even higher for this second round, since God had only agreed not to destroy the Israelites after Moses interceded on their behalf. You can imagine them waiting at the bottom of the mountain the second time, feeling relieved, guilty, and more than a little nervous.

As such, this is a time that we should be all the more aware of what we do and how we prepare for the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance that are bracketed by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Now is the time. The stakes are higher now, as we account our souls in preparation to plead for life once again.

(For a list of questions to ask yourself in the month of Elul, click here.)



* Often referred to as the "golden" calf, the Hebrew "egel masekhah" literally means "molten calf," since it was produced by melting down the Israelites' gold and re-casting it.