Thoughts & Teachings
So it begins. With a plaintive melody and a nostalgic blast Elul enters once again. It has been a year since we last heard the mournful melodies of the High Holidays and the piercing blast of the shofar. On Wednesday August 11 the new month of Elul begins and with it our intensive preparation for the High Holidays. The Maharal of Prague (Rabbi Judah Loew 1520 – 1609) used to say, "All the month of Elul, before eating and sleeping, a person should look into his soul and search his deeds, that he may make confession."
In the 40 days before Yom Kippur, the same 40 days that our tradition tells us that Moses spent on the mountaintop with God preparing to receive the Torah, we make an earnest attempt to ready our hearts and souls for the powerful experience of the Day of Atonement.
The question is: How to do that? Here are a few suggestions for your own 40 days:
* identify one behavior to work on improving
* read a new book about the High Holidays
* write and reflect on your year
* come to minyan one morning to hear the shofar blown
