Our Elul challenge theme this week is teshuvah/repent, the act and idea that is at the heart of the High Holy Day season. 

On Saturday night, we will gather in-person and online for Selichot, honoring the Ashkenazi tradition of holding a service of penitential prayers and High Holy Day melodies on a Saturday before Rosh HaShanah. (In Sephardi/Mizrachi tradition, these prayers and melodies are recited throughout the month of Elul, usually late at night). Through these prayers and these melodies, our tradition imagines, the Gates of Repentance—a recurring image of the High Holy Days—begin to open.

Nine years ago, the month of Ramadan coincided with the month of Elul, and I came across something written by Dalia Mogahed, the Director of Research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding. She wrote: The path to God is through your weaknesses not your strengths. Go to God with your brokenness. 

There is an innate vulnerability to the High Holy Days. As the gates open, so does the Book of Life. The Unetaneh Tokef teaches that all is written in our own hand, but what will we write? These days are meant to push us, to challenge us, to bring us to the brink….and then, we pray, safely back. These days challenge us to open up to ourselves and our loved ones and our God, to acknowledge our flaws and our brokenness. Only in that openness can we begin the work of teshuvah, of repair, renewal, and return.

Join us on Saturday night to begin the work with song and study.

— Rabbi Sari Laufer