Session 1
Elul is the month that precedes the High Holidays, it is a time for preparing for the High Holidays.
The process of preparation heightens and deepens the impact of the High Holiday services.
Elul is a time for:
- Introspection: look inside yourself
- Reflection: what have I done or not done over the past year, through my life?
- Self-evaluation: what do I need to change, do more of, do less of, or keep doing?
Is introspection, reflection, and self-evaluation something that you do regularly in your life?
Are you comfortable or uncomfortable with it?
Is it a practice for you?
How do you do it?
Rabbi Alan Lew’s, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, is a beautifully written book on preparing for the High Holidays. Rabbi Lew was raised in an non-observant Jewish family. As a young man he became interested in Eastern spirituality, and followed a Zen Buddhist path. On the verge of being ordained as a Buddhist priest, he realized that his fundamental identity was with Judaism. He then began his journey back to Judaism, becoming a Conservative Rabbi, through the Jewish Theological Seminary. As a Rabbi with Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, he organized the first synagogue-based meditation center. Rabbi Lew past away in 2009 at age 65, while teaching at a Conservative rabbis’ retreat.
Rabbi Lew’s themes are:
- We are not isolated egos but part of something bigger. (Traditionally, in Rosh Hashanah this idea is called God’s Sovereignty or Malchut.)
- We to find and return to our home. Home is what is essential to us. It is what we draw our strength from. (That’s returning to home is Teshuvah.)
- Life includes pain and suffering, including losing people we love. We need to heal. Healing happens through time and awareness — remembering. (Zakhor).
- Awareness takes effort. Much of our life is lived unconsciously. We need to recognize the unconscious parts of our life. Because we are part of a greater whole, that unconsciousness includes aspects of our community. We need to wake up. The shofar is a call to wake up.
- There are patterns in our experiences. It’s critical to become aware of those patterns. How might we be complicit in patterns that are hurtful to us or others? What patterns are joyful?
- Our choices in life have consequences, some of which we can anticipate, some of which we cannot. Realizing that is an awesome experience — in the original meaning of the word — it is real and we are unprepared. Knowledge of that may be a rebuke (Tochahah)
- Traditionally, a vehicle for articulating our awareness is the Vidui (Confession) part of the holiday services.
- As we come aware of ourselves, our choices, and our community, there may be aspects which we need to discard or transform. As we let go of those aspects of ourselves, we need to remind ourselves of what is essential and what needs to be forgiven.
- As we’ve gone through this process we reemerge, both renewed and realigned with who we really are.
Thoughts? Does Rabbi’s Lew’s reframing of these ideas help you understand better or differently? How so?
For most of us, the being able to engage in this process requires effort and practice. Rabbi Lew recommends the following practices:
- Jewish prayer as meditation.
- Meditation.
- Chesbon ha-Nefesh. “Accounting for the Soul.” Which is a Jewish spiritual practice of journaling.
- Focus and be mindful of one aspect of your routine day-to-day life.
What makes something a practice?
Keviot / set time for study
Hasmada / diligence
Mahalach / process
Chazara / repetition
Jewish prayer as meditation.
When we pray during a service, we usually find our mind wandering and have to turn back to the prayers. Take that as an opportunity to notice what thoughts distracted you. Note them mentally. Those distracting thoughts is your unconscious revealing itself. What do you see, what are the patterns?
Meditation
A regular, twenty-minute a day meditation practice — following the breath, body scan, noticing external sounds, or a mantra (a silently spoken repeated brief meaningful word). As with prayer, note the distracting thoughts. The act of noting the distractions and returning to concentration is where the spiritual benefit of meditation comes from.
Mindfulness about one routine activity
Pick an activity you do every day like eating. Notice thoughts, feelings, sensations and behaviors that happen.
Journaling (Chesbon ha-Nefesh)
- The aim is to write about the key themes of the High Holidays, but significant events during the day should be considered. Inevitably they are related to important patterns or issues in your life.
- It is not necessary to read the journal, although that may be beneficial for you. It’s not a literary work, it’s not for anyone else, it doesn’t have to have good grammar or beautiful words. It’s value comes from introspection and reflection, and from changing your thoughts and feelings into words.
- Write anything. If your only thought is “I don’t know what to write,” write it. “This feels stupid and a waste,” write it. What else in your life feels stupid and a waste?
Pen and paper work great. An nice free app for journaling is Penzu.
When doing Chesbon ha-Nefesh, think of three dimensions:
- Your relationship to yourself.
- Your relationship to others.
- Your relationship to God, or to what is beyond you, or the threads that connect life, what gives you meaning or to the absence.
Exercise
Jot down your thoughts on the following statement:
The High Holidays make me feel _________
Would anyone like to share their thoughts?
Prompt Questions
Throughout my life, I’ve always found strength and reassurance from …
Doing ________ gives me joy …
I miss _______
When I think about by parents (grandparents, other relatives) ….
I wish I did more ….
I wish did less …
I get excited by …
I get scared by …
I get annoyed by …
I was happiest when ….
I was moved when …
I’d liked to let go of …
The hardest thing this year was …
The best thing this year was …
I regret not doing ..
Looking back, I’m glad I did …
Thoughts about other prompts?
Next week.
- We’ll share what we discovered.
- We go over the second half of Rabbi’s Lew’s book.
- We’ll read together a Hasidic story about journaling.
Session 2
Elul is a time for:
- Introspection: look inside yourself
- Reflection: what have I done or not done over the past year, through my life?
- Self-evaluation: what do I need to change, do more of, do less of, or keep doing?
Is introspection, reflection, and self-evaluation something that you do regularly in your life?
Are you comfortable or uncomfortable with it?
Is it a practice for you?
How do you do it?
Rabbi Alan Lew’s, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, is a beautifully written book on preparing for the High Holidays. Rabbi Lew was raised in an non-observant Jewish family. As a young man he became interested in Eastern spirituality, and followed a Zen Buddhist path. On the verge of being ordained as a Buddhist priest, he realized that his fundamental identity was with Judaism. He then began his journey back to Judaism, becoming a Conservative Rabbi, through the Jewish Theological Seminary. As a Rabbi with Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco, he organized the first synagogue-based meditation center. Rabbi Lew past away in 2009 at age 65, while teaching at a Conservative rabbis’ retreat.
- Jewish prayer as meditation.
- Meditation.
- Chesbon ha-Nefesh. “Accounting for the Soul.” Which is a Jewish spiritual practice of journaling.
- Focus and be mindful of one aspect of your routine day-to-day life.
Themes of the second half of This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared
- The High Holidays are our life in miniature. Rosh Hashanah represents birth, while Yom Kippur is death. The Ten Days are the narrow bridge of our life. During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we are embraced by God, for the Ten Days we make choices about how we want to live.
- We awaken during Rosh Hashanah. For Yom Kippur, we confess, we come to an assessment of our lives.
- For the Ten Days we can shape how we perceive our lives. We can sweeten the decree of Rosh Hashanah by changing our awareness, seeking to return to what is essential, and by forgiving.
- The High Holidays is a time to rediscover our heart. Our heart is our emotional undercurrent.
- Compassion towards ourselves is the foundation to having compassion towards others. That includes having compassion towards emotions we find difficult.
- We need to search for the sparks of goodness inside of ourselves, and often they will be found hidden among the emotions we reject. It’s not simple but we can only get started with compassion.
- We must speak or write about we find. It’s how we make it real.
Sharing what we learned.
The Paper Chicken – A Hasidic Tale about Journaling
photo credits
A Temani (Yemeni Jewish) style shofar made from a horn of the greater kudu.
taken by Olve Utne https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jemenittisk_sjofar_av_kuduhorn.jpg