In the Torah, Moses sets out a choice for us this past week. Blessings and curses. It is a deceptively easy binary choice. Given good stuff or bad stuff as alternatives, it seems like a no-brainer. I opt for the good stuff!
But it’s really not so simple. For what does that mean for us to choose the Blessings, especially to us in the modern world? That seems to be the fundamental question to consider in the month of Elul, leading up to the Yamim Noraim, these special High Holidays. Perhaps we, like our ancestors, are metaphorically also on the verge of entering into our own Promised Land. It is more complicated than: Choose Blessings and you go in; Choose Curses and you stay out. Because it is about more than entering The Land; it is about living fully while there, possessing it and becoming one with it.
During Elul, as we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we ponder the choices we make in our lives. As we reflect on the year past as a Cheshbon HaNefesh, we see successes and failures. And as we look ahead, we use this understanding to chart our course. Are we on the path we want to be on, the one we should be on, the one we need to be on? And presuming we have been blown off course by the winds and currents of life, how do we right our ship and get back on our path?
Elul is our time to consider these questions. Before we can ask for forgiveness we need to know where we went astray and maybe understand why. Before we can ask to be written in the book of life, we need to know what it means to choose a life of blessings so that this coming year brings us meaning and connection, a Legacy worthy of living and remembering. Then we are able to approach the Divine to make things right and set a course forward for a year where we deliberately choose blessings, knowing what they are and how we might pursue them.
L’Shanah Tova!
