Our Elul challenge theme this week is teshuvah/repent, the act and idea that is at the heart of the High Holy Days season.
For all of our families at Wise School and Aaron Milken Center, welcome Back to School! I love this day; even in a pandemic (maybe especially?) there is such joyous energy and excitement about what is to come. I love hearing the sounds of students reconnecting with their friends and with their teachers, breaking into new school supplies and new possibilities. And we also know that mixed in with the excitement and the possibility, there is always some nervousness and trepidation, worries about academics and social life, concerns about how the year is going to go.
Those same emotions, the excitement and the worry, are meant to accompany us to the beginning of a New Year. The rabbis teach kol hahatchalot kashot—all beginnings are difficult. While the teaching appears in multiple places in our tradition, it appears in a discussion of the moment of revelation at Sinai—also a moment of excitement and possibility, and likely some trepidation.
Coupled with this teaching is a teaching from Rabbi Akiva, about the moment of Sinai—and the preparation for it. He teaches:
This is the time of the giving of Torah–when the people Israel went backwards by 12 miles, and then returned 12 miles–thus they travelled 24 miles for each commandment…
(Midrash Mechilta)
Two steps forward, one step back.
This past year, certainly, has taught us that progress is incremental. Life has taught us, many of us, that often moving forward is not linear, that we sometimes need to move backwards, double our steps, or take a different path than the one that we imagined. But, the moment at Sinai assures us that we will reach our destination.
As we prepare to greet 5782, let’s bring excitement for what’s ahead…and the knowledge that it might take a while to get there.
(And while you’re at it, make someone’s day a little sweeter today. Our #ElulWisely5781 challenge invites you to buy coffee for a stranger at the coffee shop.)
— Rabbi Sari Laufer