Finding Our Spiritual “App”

By Pam Schlosberg, WLCJ Financial Secretary

Finding Our Spiritual “App”

Have you been paying attention to the Artificial Intelligence (AI) revolution with its ever-increasing circle of applications? Depending on how they’re used, these tools are hailed either as transformative innovations or disruptive forces.

If AI came with a user manual, we’d discover algorithms applied in countless ways: organizing healthcare records, editing videos, creating marketing strategies, or summarizing meetings. Other applications allow us to input key words and generate cover letters, recipes, or creative content. AI promises to shape our lives in unimaginable ways. It’s an enabler for our culture of faster, quicker, better.

But if we pause, we recognize where AI is not the answer. Each application is a sort of compromise missing something essential, the human fingerprint.

As remarkable as AI may be, it cannot provide answers to the ultimate questions that bind us together, especially during this High Holiday season when we reflect on our spiritual journey and how we approach the new year. AI is not our lifeline, but our Jewish tradition is!

Elul, with its focus on personal reflection, is our spiritual lifeline. It gently unfolds a pathway for how we can improve our days in the year ahead. The daily sound of the shofar invites us to quietly listen as it guides us forward. Elul is a beautiful gift of quiet, reflective moments.

Through this accounting of the soul, Cheshbon Hanefesh, we’re encouraged to revisit how we navigated life’s challenges, those twists and turns in our personal adventures: health issues, disappointments, loneliness, misunderstandings, and difficult choices. We ask: What could we have done differently? What roads might we have taken? Not an easy task, and perhaps that’s why we’re given a month to engage in it.

Looking back, we see how circumstances shaped us, how we authored our lives, and we ask anew: Where do we go from here? This is our aha moment. Within the kaleidoscope of would’ve, should’ve, could’ve lies the opportunity to discover what we can be. Our tradition is our spiritual “app.” We only need to unplug, look inward, soul search, and spiritually reboot.

It’s not easy, but with tradition as our guide, during Elul we can begin to put the pieces together, the complexities, nuances, and struggles of our lives, into a meaningful tapestry. We can think about what we might add to ennoble it. And in this process, we evolve.

As we now create the structure of the year ahead, defining our roles in Women’s League and our Sisterhood Affiliates, Elul empowers us to act with a renewed perspective of who we are. If we allow it, Elul gifts us with fresh awareness of our value and strength, individually and within the dynamic community we share.

As the new year approaches, may our lives be filled with possibilities for personal growth, fulfillment, and the laughter and joy that comes from shared goals and working together.

May the work of our hands and vibrant spirit continue to be a unique blessing to others in 5786.

Leshanah Tovah U’metukah — have a good and sweet year.

Pam Schlosberg
WLCJ Financial Secretary
pschlosberg@wlcj.org