We start our spiritual checkup in the month of Elul and hope that incremental self-improvement adds up year after year

Rabbi Avi Finegold
Founder, The Jewish Learning Library, Montreal

Rabbi Philip Scheim
Beth David B'nai Israel Beth Am, Toronto

Rabbi Scheim: Several years ago, I had the opportunity to observe Tisha b’Av in Jerusalem and was present at the Kotel for Minchah services. During the Torah reading, two men began to fight over aliyot, each arguing he was the more worthy to be called to the Torah. A third man, observing the scene, commented on the irony that the Destruction of the Second Temple, at the place we were standing, over which we were fasting and praying that very day, was due to sinat chinam, baseless hatred, to our inability as Jews to get along with each other. The question that enters my mind as we enter another tshuvah/repentance season is whether or not the confessionals we recite on the High Holidays have the power to reshape our behaviour, or are we destined to be like those men at the Western Wall, missing the entire point of the liturgical experience around us? 

Rabbi Finegold: Your story begins on Tisha b’Av, and there is great profundity to that fact. In his book on the High Holidays, This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew views the beginning of the process of tshuvah as being on Tisha b’Av. His point is that we must feel the brokenness of our people and ourselves if we want to make real change in the coming year. 

Perhaps the way in which we can begin the transformative repentance that we all need is to spend the time between now and Rosh Hashanah doing a cheshbon hanefesh, a spiritual accounting, where we ask ourselves what have I done to contribute to the brokenness of the world and to the imperfection of my own soul. By the time we recite the Al Chets on Yom Kippur, we no longer have the time to dwell on our imperfections and our prayer becomes rote.

Rabbi Scheim: You have touched upon the reason why people choose to approach their rabbis during this pre-High Holiday season, including some who confess to having little or no Jewish spiritual connection. Elul, traditionally the month devoted to tshuvah, seems to be the time when our perceived or actual inadequacies come to the fore, and lead us to seek support when confronted with family, personal and emotional burdens. Maybe it is the hope that the coming year can be better that leads many to seek intervention in the weeks prior to Rosh Hashanah. 

Sometimes the first stage of tshuvah, of personal and spiritual repair, comes from being heard, from articulating personal anguish. Once the seeker of healing realizes that his/her pain has been heard, a process of repair can begin. Even though tshuvah is imperfect, and we so often find ourselves in exactly the same spot one year later, the very possibility of improvement, of healing, allows for hope. We may or may not do better in the year ahead, but we ought not give up trying.

Rabbi Finegold: I think the cyclical nature of moving toward and away from a time of tshuvah has great value. Just as in tfillah the two aspects of prayer, keva and kavanah, complement each other, so does the feeling of wanting to improve, wax and wane. Keva, the rote recitation of prayer at fixed intervals daily is sometimes seen as the enemy of kavanah, the intense focus on the meaning of prayer and creating a deep bond with the entity to whom one is praying.

I think Elul serves the religious consciousness in much the same way. It is interesting to note that the Mussar Yeshivot of eastern Europe, where self-improvement was the main topic of study, were a novelty, and anomalous in Jewish history. It does not seem to be a natural way of life to constantly undergo self-scrutiny at the granular level that Mussar masters were fans of. 

But the cyclical nature of our collective memory allows us natural periods of time where, if we are attuned to them on a regular basis, we can have a spiritual checkup and hopefully create positive change in our lives. However incremental that change may be on a yearly basis, it certainly adds up over time.