Elul Thoughts, Elul 29 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

Look to the Lord, be strong and of good courage, look to the Lord (Ps. 27:14)

Today is the last day of Elul, at sundown it will be Tishri 1 when we go to Synagogue and bring in the new year together.  “Look to Adonai, be strong and of good courage,” what does that mean?  For the last month, each and everyday at the blowing of the Shofar, we are asked to evaluate self, assess our behaviors, question our short comings, weed out our wrongs, be honest about our sins … you get the picture.  It is possible to become down on yourself  and wonder if it is all worth it, not everyone will act that way, but some might.  It takes courage to engage the season of Elul and the Holidays that are coming. Too often it seems like Jews go to synagogue during this time out of a sense of obligation for a variety of motivations, and while that is a good thing, there is also a reason for the season you can say.   Going back to Egypt our people have always been on the outside looking in, in fact each section of our Bible (Torah, Prophets and Writings) ends just that way, Israel outside of the land looking in.  For the last month we have been on the outside of the days of forgiveness looking in and now that time has come and we can enter them.  When the Book of life is open we stop, reflect, repent, and seek the higher ways of God as we enter a new year.  I am not sure if the of Book of Life being opened only from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kipper is enough motivation for people, but does it matter?  We know we are not perfect and we know we fall short, so we have been given this time by our tradition to cleanse and correct the traits we wish to fix and/or better ourselves.  Consider the words of the Prophet Isaiah; Seek the LORD while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near.

At the end of the Year, we find a new beginning

     

Elul Thoughts, Elul 28 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

Generations come and generations go, but the world stands (Ecc. 1:4)

There is nothing new under the sun, people come and go, but the world and its ways stay the same.  What also stays the same is that people need tikkun, or repair.  During the holidays, particularly on Yom Kippur, we will say many prayers that have to do with t’shuva, prayers that speak to the act and/or its potential. When we say the Al Chayt, we seek forgiveness for acts of slander, bribery, extortion, perverting justice, lies, baseless hatred, but also gossip and greed.  In fact gossip, along with idolatry and murder it is considered one of the worst sins in Judaism. The point is that like others, yesterday and tomorrow,  human error will continue to exist. This is not like a Christian understanding that all people are depraved, which is not the Jewish way, a way that says we are perfectly and wonderfully formed but also no one is above making errors. With all our human advancements human nature never really changes yet our tradition gives us the tools to fix it. 

Because the world is a different place each moment, I am alive, there is unlimited
potential for change

Elul Thoughts, Elul 27 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

If I had not believed to look upon the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living!

The Prophet Isaiah writes, “the dead cannot praise you; they cannot raise their voices in praise. Those who go down to the grave can no longer hope in your faithfulness. Only the living can praise you as I do today. Each generation tells of your faithfulness to the next. Think of it—the Lord is ready to heal me! I will sing his praises with instruments every day of my life in the Temple of the Lord.”  To put is succinctly, if you are dead you cannot enjoy what it means to be alive, but if you are alive you need to be healed.  As we have been saying all along, we are people in process, we need to grow and become, we need to heal and overcome to reach our best.  Torah helps that part of the human journey by acting as a fence, something we also we spoke about once before (Avot 1:1).  A fence serves two purposes; to protect and to separate.  The fence that sets boundaries for how we conduct ourselves also allows our inner spirit to corral the benefits gained.  How we behave has a great deal to do with how we heal.  How we heal begins by knowing that we need to heal in the first place.  We are a just a few days away from our celebration of Rosh Hashanah, have we found the tikkun (repair) we need?

Healing begins when acknowledge that we are broken

Elul Thoughts, Elul 26 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold the angels of God were ascending and descending on it (Gen. 28:12)

This dream of Jacob’s happened as he journeyed upon the road and had an encounter with God that helped to fulfill his own sense of purpose.  Elul is about an encounter upon the road leading up to Rosh Hashanah and the rest of the Holidays that follow.  The ladders that ascend and descend can also be a metaphor for people who encounter a sense of “other” on their own path and the wisdom that perhaps will come from that very same encounter.  We learn that physically the ladders are community, prayer, S’lichot and hearing the shofar daily.  We also learn, that for Jacob his dream was his dream, it came as he journeyed and sought direction along his path.   There were no bells and whistles, just his spirit engaging with God along the way.  Each one of us is in charge of our own paths and the ladders upon it.  The Torah is like a ladder, we seek higher ways through its teachings and we receive in return the benefit of its wisdom.  Perhaps we should pay more attention to our dreams, even our daydreaming when we are fully awake, because who knows what they may want to teach us.

Through Torah, God will help us to ourselves

Elul Thoughts, Elul 25 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

Deliver me not over until the will of my enemies, for false witnesses have risen up against me and this who breath violence (Ps. 27:12)

There are many ways we can go with the above in terms of enemies.  Sure, it can be a foe, but it can be a temptation, sickness or even self.   But it can also be society.  In other words, just because others may step over people to get ahead, or sue a neighbor who has a tree with its branches hanging over a fence so leaves fall into the yard, right or wrong, the behavior of "payback" is just not right.  Our tradition looks poorly upon the abuse of others who are weaker like widows and strangers, but also the more powerful over another in terms money and resources.   This is why Pirkei Avot asks, who is wise; who is rich, who is powerful and who is honorable? (Avot 4:1ff).  The one who is wise is humble and learns from all people; the one who whose rich is content with what they have; the one who is strong has self-control over how they act and the one is honorable gives others honor before or equal to self.  We need to define an enemy as one, or what, impacts the inward battle of growth and pursuits for out desired higher norms of behavior.  Fighting an enemy you can see is one thing, fighting the enemy you cannot, that is a very different kind of battle. 

How does the weapon of forgiveness operate in your own battles?

Elul Thoughts, Elul 24 (short read)

Below is teaching of Chaplain (Rabbi to be) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing for the High Holidays

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רפואה מן התורה

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself (Lev. 19:8)

Given the spoken words of our current day it seems difficult to do, but Jewish tradition is always interacting with the words of Torah and asks us rise above normal levels of existence for a better way. In Parasha Ki Teitzei we find what appears odd in Deuteronomy 22:6-7.  It says that if you are on a path and come upon a nest that has either young birds or eggs in it as well as the mother, you can only take them if you sent the mother away first.  In Targum Yonatan the reward of doing so is not only good in this world but has merit for the world to come, which is why for Rashi it is about the mitzvot.  But then Ramban (Nachmonides) takes that one step further and says that the act of removing the mothers eggs from beneath her is an act of cruelty.  By therefore sending the mother bird away first it was an act of kindness so the bird did not have to watch her eggs being taken from before her eyes.  We learn from this what it means to love another, maybe not in the same way as with the mother bird and her eggs, but about going out of the way to make sure any type of harm does not come to another. Surely we want that for ourselves but we must make that a foundation of how we conduct our own actions.  This is a “me” world particularly right now, yet how we love others needs to be a bigger part of the norm.

Love of others is only possible through love of self.

Elul Thoughts, Elul 23 (short read)

Below is the teaching of Chaplain (soon to be Rabbi) Adam Ruditsky in conjunction with the book Preparing yourself for the High Holidays.

רפואה מן התורה

Show me your path, O Lord, and lead me on a path because of my ever watchful foes (Ps. 27:11)

In Leviticus Rabbah 8:1 Rabbi Yose ben Halafta teaches “Making ladders for people to descend and ascend;” how might we understand that?  We can process that teaching to be about reaching beyond what a person may think they are capable of to embrace a better way.  We talked about the path in another Elul Thought as a choice, a choice that calls for us to consider right from wrong, a choice that a person must make in order to raise themselves above their base nature for a higher level of spirituality.  The above quote form Psalm 27 suggests that a foe, or an enemy, is what stops us from reaching our desired highs.  I think we need to understand an enemy as what constrains us; a person, a temptation, need for power, greed, a substance, selfishness, lies -  perhaps you can think of other enemies that you may have?  The path represents the ways of “over-coming,” which is the foundation of our victories.  We have a ladder to ascend to greater heights. One of my favorite modern day prophets, Bob Dylan, writes, “may you build a ladder to the stars and climb on every rug …,”  if we have been given a path to rise above I think we should take it.

Whenever we get lost in the desert, God helps us to find our way