I donât usually watch scary movies. I was an English major, I know about the willful suspension of disbelief. Even knowing Audrey Hepburn still stands at the end of Wait Until Dark wonât get me to watch the film again. Even knowing it isnât real and she isnât in danger — and even for the second time — itâs hard to prepare for the terrifying change at the end of the film.
Suspecting that change is coming, how do you prepare for it? Tighten your muscles, squeeze your eyes shut, hold your breath? Welcome it with a pulse of excitement? Laugh with pleasure at the unexpected twist of a punchline?
We are in the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year. I know that the daily weekday morning prayers end every day with the call of the shofar, the ramâs horn, more commonly recognized from its cameo appearance in services on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Yearâs Day. And yet each morning the sound of the shofar is a jarring reminder of the passage of time, that another year is about to end, and a new one, with all its possibilities, about to begin.
It is an uncomfortable, and sometimes scary and even terrifying, sound.
The change we donât control can be scary. Yeats described a world of changes as âThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.â I remember 60’s chanting for change — now. Out with the old and in with the new. Even if we couldnât control the change. Even if the new was . . . worse. Then I heard, but only partially understood, the rejoinder âif what you want is change just wait until tomorrow.â
At the very beginning of the Jewish people God instructs Moses to tell Pharaoh that a new reality was coming â My name is I will be what I will be. The old way — the Egyptian reality nothing is new under Ra, the Sun God, is out. The new reality — deliberate mindful change — is exemplified by reckoning time as constantly changing, under the moon.
The message of Elul — whose letters hint at the Hebrew acronym âI am for my belovedâ â is to learn the lesson of change from the moon. Although this phrase, from the Song of Songs, is heard at weddings as an emblem of romantic love, it also represents our yearning to be god like â for my beloved â in our lives. True change cannot be what we cannot control: âI will be what I will be,â not I will be what the world forces on me. The change need not be immediate and overwhelming; the phases of the moon change incrementally, ever so slowly.
The message of the shofar in Elul is that change is coming — and we can change ourselves if we make it so. In the last pre-Elul Torah portion this year, Reâeh (Dâvarim Chapter 14), there is a suggestion of one place to start. âYou are a holy people . . . you are what you eat.â We canât control the moon and sun, or all the people around us; we can try to make a change in ourselves. Be it vegetarianism, or kashrut, or simply a recognition of holiness — for my beloved — in the act of eating, we have the opportunity to bring about a change in ourselves and prepare for a new â and better â year. Shanah Tovah!
This weeks blog was written by Stephen Kapnik and Dr. Anne Goldberg. They are both first year Kabbalah Experience instructors.
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