We are in the final half of the month of Elul, our final push to prepare for the High Holy Days we know as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. One of our oldest, holy mystical books, The Zohar, reminds us that when we get to Elul, we are "back to back" with others, with the world around us, even with G!d. What does this mean?
Turning our backs means we avert ourselves from another because we are angry, hurt, or perhaps feel deeply disappointed or abandoned by another. We turn away because we do not want to look at them. As the saying goes, we are so deeply angry or hurt that they are "dead to us." We want no part of them, so much so that we turn our backs to them to shut them out completely.
The Zohar goes on to say that by the end of Elul and the opening of the gates of the New Year, we are once again panim el panim, face to face. The process of preparing for Rosh Hoshanah and Yom Kippur has restored us and we have turned again to face whatever it was we were turning our backs toward, be it another person or even G!d.
Teshuvah is the Hebrew word for turning/returning. It is our primary work for Elul and increases in intensity for the ten days from the beginning of Rosh Hashanah culminating at Yom Kippur. What does it mean to turn/return?
Our key is in this notion from The Zohar. Some focus this teshuvah on turning away from our sins, our misdeeds, our dishonesty and less than integral ways, our vices and bad habits and poor decisions and ways we have been arrogant and selfish and hurtful to others. And these are certainly valid, for if we do not turn away from these things, we will never grow into better people.
How does any of this relate to Rip Van Winkle and Honi the Circle-Maker? I'm glad you asked.
Rip, as we discovered previously, had run away from, turned away from, his wife and his life and his responsibilities. He had slept through twenty critical years of his life, and it had slipped through his fingers like sand. And when he awoke, he had no one left in his life with whom he stood panim el panim. He had given up on finding and living his life's purpose. And in shirking his responsibilities and just going through the motions of getting through each day as numbly as possible, he lost 20 years and the richness and depth that love and friendship and family can bring.
But what of Honi the Circle-Maker? Wasn't he a very holy man who had challenged G!d and brought much-needed rain? Rabbi Hyim Shafner tells us that, "What each of us contributes to the universe is not just the sum of what we have to offer but a unique structure only we can bring to a certain time, place, and state of the world. We are not just the substance of our knowledge, emotion, and personality, but a specific form, woven into a certain historical time, generation, and zeitgeist. Seventy years later there was no place for this tzaddik (righteous person), not in his own family and not in the beit ha-midrash (house of study). Though he was the illuminator of his generation, only in his ordained time could he be who he was. Although he might have been able to convince them of his actual identity, he could only be Honi, he could only light the way for his own generation and not for any other."
Here is my own midrash of this Talmudic tale. Yes, Honi was bold before G!d, demanding rain and thereby saving his people in that day and time, that community. To do so, he drew a circle around himself. He did not choose to draw the circle around he and his family, nor he and his community, nor he and his city. He drew a small circle, fencing himself in, and not including anyone else. Was it so that he could gloat about the rain he alone had demanded G!d to bring forth with no one else assisting? So when he fell asleep and awoke seventy years later, he had the same community and friends he took with him into the circle, which is to say, none.
When we draw circles around ourselves and keep others out, when we seek to be spotlights, when we make others circle around us like satellites, expecting them to gravitate around us and our needs and wishes, when we act arrogantly even though it might be for the good of the community, when we do not include others, one day we will awaken to find ourselves without family and friends because we have drawn the circle of our spotlight very small.
During Elul, our challenge is to open up and expand, to erase the tight circle of me-me-me we have drawn around ourselves. Turning away from our sins will do us no good if we do not also turn towards the Holy and come panim el panim, face to face, with G!d and the others in our lives. We are here and now for a reason, because the world and G!d needs us here and now, not then and not later.
In our turning, we ask ourselves what circles we have drawn to keep ourselves in the spotlight and others out of our deeper lives. We poke ourselves to make certain we are not sleeping through life, or so consumed with activities and chores that make us look good and productive and busy so that we don't have time for anyone or anything that does not personally serve us. While we may not be, or think we are being, arrogant, we look to see if perhaps the ways we act or things we say or do might look like arrogance to others. And from those answers, we turn again to the Holy, finding that the Holy never turned away from us, and awaits only the slightest movement towards holiness.
As a Community Rabbi, I am available to the entire community--Jewish, not Jewish, and everyone in-between. My work is to connect people to one another, to support and encourage, and to explore the possibility of deeper spiritual meaning in daily life. This is my personal charge as an ordained Modern Rabbi. Please contact me if I can be of help to you.
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