I wrote this piece for the Dreaming the World to Come planner. As we find ourselves in the month of Elul I want to share with you the piece I wrote about Elul for the planner and invite you into the daily practice of blowing or engaging with shofar.
Elul is the final month of the Jewish calendar year, a month that prepares us for the work of the high holidays around the corner. With no holidays this month, it is a month dedicated to preparation for the holidays, a month to look forwards and backwards, taking stock of the year past and setting intentions for the year to come. In this month we make teshuvah/repair with intention. As we make teshuvah, we reckon with our human capacity for harm paired with our ability to make repair.
In this month we dust off our shofars. It is customary to blow the shofar each day of this month — announcing the pending arrival of the new year, waking us up with its piercing and alarming sound, and inviting us into repair. I need the call, the vibrations, and the pitch of the shofar. I need the daily practice of blowing shofar to awaken myself because I have become numb. I have scrolled past death and injury tolls on social media accepting them as the new normal thus allowing people to become numbers. I have swiped away quickly when I saw an image that felt too gruesome to witness, avoiding the pain and discomfort I might have felt had I turned towards the image, the news, the horror. I have accepted the unfathomable as that, and not sought to wrap my mind around it. My activism has ebbed and flowed while my siblings in Gaza have not paused from surviving, resisting, and hoping. Amidst the constant barrage of genocide and fascism, how have you become numb to horrors at home and abroad?
Sarah Aziza, a Palestinian American, in her essay “The Work of the Witness” writes: “Rather, we—those outside of Palestine, watching events through a screen—ought to think of ourselves in relation to the legacy of the shaheed. Our work as witnesses is to be marked; we should not leave it unscathed. We must make an effort to stay with what we see, allowing ourselves to be cut. This wound is essential. Into this wound, imagination may pour—not to invade the other’s subjectivity, but to awaken awe at the depth, privacy, and singularity of each life. There, we might glimpse, if sidelong, how much of Gaza’s we will never know.”
This year, my invitation is to use the daily ritual of shofar to turn us towards witness, towards feeling, towards allowing ourselves to be impacted so that we may act and engage deeply in the act of teshuva, repair. In the ways that we have become numb, may we allow ourselves to be marked, scathed, cut, wounded, broken by the horror that surrounds us and that we are complicit in. May we allow ourselves to feel deeply, and from that place…
There is no blessing for the blowing of shofar as it is a custom more so than a commandment. I offer 3 intentions for your blowing of the shofar this year. If you do not have a shofar to blow, I invite you to scream the blasts of the shofar.
May you feel deeply as we move into and through this portal of the Days of Awe together,
Rabbi May
Elul is the final month of the Jewish calendar year, a month that prepares us for the work of the high holidays around the corner. With no holidays this month, it is a month dedicated to preparation for the holidays, a month to look forwards and backwards, taking stock of the year past and setting intentions for the year to come. In this month we make teshuvah/repair with intention. As we make teshuvah, we reckon with our human capacity for harm paired with our ability to make repair.
In this month we dust off our shofars. It is customary to blow the shofar each day of this month — announcing the pending arrival of the new year, waking us up with its piercing and alarming sound, and inviting us into repair. I need the call, the vibrations, and the pitch of the shofar. I need the daily practice of blowing shofar to awaken myself because I have become numb. I have scrolled past death and injury tolls on social media accepting them as the new normal thus allowing people to become numbers. I have swiped away quickly when I saw an image that felt too gruesome to witness, avoiding the pain and discomfort I might have felt had I turned towards the image, the news, the horror. I have accepted the unfathomable as that, and not sought to wrap my mind around it. My activism has ebbed and flowed while my siblings in Gaza have not paused from surviving, resisting, and hoping. Amidst the constant barrage of genocide and fascism, how have you become numb to horrors at home and abroad?
Sarah Aziza, a Palestinian American, in her essay “The Work of the Witness” writes: “Rather, we—those outside of Palestine, watching events through a screen—ought to think of ourselves in relation to the legacy of the shaheed. Our work as witnesses is to be marked; we should not leave it unscathed. We must make an effort to stay with what we see, allowing ourselves to be cut. This wound is essential. Into this wound, imagination may pour—not to invade the other’s subjectivity, but to awaken awe at the depth, privacy, and singularity of each life. There, we might glimpse, if sidelong, how much of Gaza’s we will never know.”
This year, my invitation is to use the daily ritual of shofar to turn us towards witness, towards feeling, towards allowing ourselves to be impacted so that we may act and engage deeply in the act of teshuva, repair. In the ways that we have become numb, may we allow ourselves to be marked, scathed, cut, wounded, broken by the horror that surrounds us and that we are complicit in. May we allow ourselves to feel deeply, and from that place…
There is no blessing for the blowing of shofar as it is a custom more so than a commandment. I offer 3 intentions for your blowing of the shofar this year. If you do not have a shofar to blow, I invite you to scream the blasts of the shofar.
- Before blowing or screaming: I will allow the shocking call of the shofar to awaken me so that I may turn towards that which has caused me to numb, so that I may soften to it, allow myself to be impacted by it, shattered, and broken by it.
- During blowing or screaming: May I feel somatically, in my body, the vibrations of my breath, that remind me of the life within me, my capacity to feel and to release.
- After blowing or screaming: With my attention turned towards the horror, my senses alive, my commitment to witness, may this act help me to stay present to that which is challenging, disturbing, and upsetting, so that I may make the teshuva that is needed, in myself and in my community.
May you feel deeply as we move into and through this portal of the Days of Awe together,
Rabbi May
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