Pearls of Elul 5786 - Day Twenty-Three
- Rabbi Amy Hertz
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
September 4 | 22 Elul
The Questions We Will One Day be Asked
Elul is a month of preparation. We hear the shofar, begin to turn inward, revisit relationships, consider the year that has passed, and anticipate the Days of Awe that are coming. The High Holy Days ask us to do something unusual: to step outside the momentum of our lives and take an honest look at the people we have become.
The Talmud imagines that one day, when our earthly lives are over, we will stand before a heavenly court and be asked a series of questions about how we lived. But perhaps we don't need to wait until then. Perhaps the gift of Elul is that we can hear those questions now, while there is still time to change our answers. This week we will explore the questions proposed by the Rabbis of old and consider them for ourselves today.
The question for Elul is:
What questions would I want to be able to answer honestly when I look back on this year?
Rabbi Amy discusses the questions we ask ourselves going into the High Holy Days.
View the video and its transcript below.
Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova.
We're just one week out from the Jewish New Year next Friday night at Temple Emanuel and throughout the world we'll celebrate the start of the year 5787.
It's a beautiful time, this last week of this past year, and it really gives us an opportunity to explore inward and what are the questions we're asking ourselves as we sit at this liminal moment and so for this week, for our Pearls of Elul, I've organized a number of questions that come from rabbinic literature, from the Talmud, and they really are deep deep meaningfully Jewish questions those that we're going to be asked they say when we die and this season is so fraught with so many emotions and feelings - the joy of the new year, perhaps the overwhelm of Yom Kippur also that really deep insightful, meaningful look that we do at ourselves, Cheshbon HaNafesh, and these questions are designed just for that.
This Yom Kippur, this New Year, this is a time to reflect on who we hope to be and the life that we hope to live and so each of these questions throughout this week, I hope that they will point you in some meaningful new direction.
I've tried to give them a modern retelling, a modern way of saying them, and in hopes that they can speak to us in this moment, that they are not questions that seem far afield but rather they are questions that hit at the very need of this particular moment in time.
It's been a joy to celebrate this month of Elul and study and sing and learn and pray together and I'll look forward to being with you and Rabbi Andy and our whole Temple Emanuel community as we celebrate the new year beginning next Friday night September 11th.
Again, Shabbat Shalom, Happy New Year, and we look forward to seeing you soon.
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