By Julia Loeb, WLCJ International President
Ah Fall! As the calendar flips to September, I keep thinking of the song “It’s the most wonderful time of the year”– Not the Andy Williams Christmas version, but the Staples commercial with parents excitedly pushing carts down the aisles to get school supplies for their children who are leaving the house after a long summer to go back to school. I don’t have children at home anymore, but I still love this season and I love the idea of purchasing new supplies to prepare for the academic year ahead. There is true excitement in new pens, highlighters and blank notebooks so filled with promise. Fall means other things too – apples and cider replace the summer fruit at the weekly farm market and Trader Joe’s and Starbucks turn to all things Pumpkin Spice. As Jews though, Fall most of all means the High Holidays.
The High Holidays require serious reflection and self-examination. There have been years, however, when we have been away at the beach at the end of the summer, and then were so focused on back-to-school preparations and activities with the kids, that when Rosh Hashanah started, I was totally unprepared spiritually and emotionally. Eventually, the familiar services and High Holiday melodies would get me in somewhat of a proper mindset, but somehow, in those years, because I hadn’t prepared for them, the holidays never felt very satisfying.
Other Jewish holidays have physical acts you take that help get you into the mindset. Before Passover we clean the chametz, change our dishes, and plan and prepare for the seder. For Sukkot, we build a sukkah. And leading up to Shavuot, we spend seven weeks counting up to the holiday. These acts get me in the mood for those holidays. But what about Rosh Hashanah?
With the arrival of the Hebrew month of Elul, we have an opportunity to start the spiritual and emotional preparations needed for the high holidays. We start adding an extra daily prayer, Psalm 27, which is focused on repentance, and in the morning prayers we add a shofar blast to remind us that the holiday is coming soon. On our Women’s League Makom B’Yachad Zoom meetings, we add this Psalm and blow the shofar. Gathering with my sisters on Makom, hearing this prayer and the shofar (blown by one of our talented sisters), truly helps me get in the proper mood for the holiday.
In a 2015 video message, Rabbi Judith Hauptman talks about wanting to have a mitzvah tracker, like her fitness tracker, on her wrist. You can watch her short video here: Jewish Women’s Archive, Judith Hauptman, “Exercise Trackers and Mitzvah Motivators,” 2015. (https://jwa.org/media/judith-hauptman-exercise-trackers-and-mitzvah-motivators-2015. What if, instead of a mitzvah tracker, we had a teshuvah tracker on our wrists to track our progress toward repentance during this season. We could use other technology on our phones that would connect to this tracker. Scroll through your contact list on your phone. Have we had miscommunications with friends or family that have festered? Relationships that need to be repaired? Take a look at your calendar. Are you spending your time in a way that aligns with your values? Do you make time for mitzvot? Consider your banking app on your phone or your checkbook. Are you giving tzedakah to causes you value? Hopefully those include Torah Fund and Women’s League. Your teshuvah tracker could give you reminders throughout the days and weeks and help you “close your rings” as the holiday approaches.
These types of questions about who we are, what kind of people we want to be and what we believe, are ones that we don’t often stop and think about. So let’s take the opportunity to do so now in this season of repentance and renewal.
Shabbat Shalom,
Julia Loeb
WLCJ International President
jloeb@wlcj.org
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