(Friday, August 6, 2021)
It’s evening and the sky seems to be clearing. But this morning was, for me, the first smoky morning of the year. On top of Sonoma Mountain the sun rose orange and the sky was a dusty tan. My understanding is that in the valley the smoke was less perceptible. But I felt my gut begin to tighten with my first sniff of what was supposed to be morning air.
It’s a messy complex of emotions that arose for me. There’s fear. There’s dread. I felt once again the kind of other-worldly stillness that a blanket of smoke sometimes imposes. I don’t think the smoke actually deadens sound or stills the wind. But there is a kind of suspense, of bracing, of waiting, of time slowing like a spring drawn back before being released. And there’s the sad and guilty knowing that I am breathing someone else’s troubles.
Exactly like last year, the smoke is arriving in the very last days of the month of Av, changing the tenor with which we enter the month of Elul.
Elul is our penitential month, the month of selichot, of asking for pardon with prayer and poetry. It is the month of doing teshuvah, our work of atonement, so that when we hit Rosh Hashanah, if we’re really on it, much of our reckoning and righting of wrongs is done. Elul is a month in which, in our mystical tradition, the Divine is felt to be closer, more accessible and casually present than at other times of the year. So that we can pour our hearts out easily, impromptu, at any moment of the day, and feel heard and held.
A few of you were present at Yiddish Tish this week (or view it here), where we worked through a prayer to bless the month of Elul from a women’s Yiddish prayerbook, or techineh-bukh. In this beautiful and intimate prayer, the woman who is offering the blessing begins with her sense of fear and dread – describing with direness her knowledge of her own deeds and her expectation of Divine judgment – an awe and dread that Jews are expected to feel in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the Day of Judgment. And like the awe and dread I felt this morning with my first whiff of smoke.
Oy li v’oy l’nafshi! she says in the prayer: “Alas for me, and alas for my soul.” [Quoting a line from a Yom Kippur poem.] Oy li v’oy l’nafshi, she says, and wraps her own sense of regret right into the month she is entering, pointing out that if you take the first letters of that phrase – אוי לי ואוי לנפשי – it spells out Elul, the name of this month. In other words, in the very name of this month lies hidden our sense of regret and our deep humility. Elul is the month of alas...
But she doesn’t stop there. She doesn’t let her regret remain unanswered and untransformed. She goes on to say, ven ikh vel mir tzum hartzn nemen un vel charoteh hobn b’emes, oyf mayne zind, azoy vestu liber Got zikh kerin tzu der barimen zikh oyf mir, un der nomen fun dem Choydesh Elul vet vayzn, ani l’doydi v’doydi li. That is, when I take heart and feel true remorse ov er my misdeeds, then you, dear God, turn to me with compassion, and the name of the month of Elul now reveals itself anew as an acronym for ani l’dodi v’dodi li – אני לדודי ודודי לי – “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” [Song of Songs 6:3]
And with those words, both God and the month are transformed. The Divine is now no longer judge but lover – our partner and dearest friend. And the month of Elul becomes the house the holds this love – this mutual love between equals. I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine, held here in the house of Elul.
And then, our invisible Jewish woman holding the Yiddish book takes one more step. She goes on to petition. Having moved from fear to love, from dread to partnership, she can now freely speak her heart’s desires. She asks God to treat us compassionately. She asks that God’s heart might be turned toward us, and that our own hearts might be awakened to do good, so that the month might be transformed one more time into the acronym for ashrei lakh v’ashrei l’nafshakh – אשרי לך ואשרי לנפשך – “contented are you, contented is your spirit.” And it is not clear if it is she or God who will be fulfilled through the awakening of our hearts and the good deeds of our hands. Maybe both. Ashrei lakh v’ashrei l’nafshakh. Elul, transformed yet again.
I loved reading this prayer this week. I always love the Yiddish of it, of course. But I love the combination of heartfelt petition and sly wordplay. Because in Jewish tradition, letters are atoms and words are the molecules that shape our reality. The month of Elul begins as oy li v’oy l’nafshi – dread and woe, like I felt this morning. But through our examination of our own part in creating the dreadful, we transform; we become partners with the Divine, and the month reshapes itself into – ani l’dodi v’dodi li. Love. There is now love and understanding now between us and the Creator. And then, as our hearts are awakened to do good, the month transforms one more time: ashrei lakh v’ashrei l’nafshakh – fulfillment that lies ahead for the awakened heart. And the Yiddish-speaking Jewish woman of old, offering this blessing, effectuates these transformations, from dread to love to fulfillment, with her very words, transforming the heart, the world, the month, and the God-field.
So as we close out this month of Av and turn our sights toward the Days of Awe, let us feel the power of time to transform, and the power of us to transform time, the power to move from dread to reckoning to love to awakening to fulfillment. This is the path that seems to be laid out in the very letters of the name of the month of Elul.
And may this fire season be a similar journey – from dread to love to good acts to the satisfaction and fulfillment of a difficult time well-handled. May we find partnership with the Divine, repent of our environmental misdeeds, and turn our reckoning into action and accomplishment.
I look forward to walking that path with you.