Today is Rosh Chodesh Elul, the beginning of the season of repentance, as it’s known in our tradition. But that English translation gives this time a bad reputation, alluding us to think we should engage in extreme self-flagellation. In truth, the word ‘teshuvah,’ that buzz-word of the season, is less about repentance in the “where have I gone wrong” sense, and much more about a sense of returning to our core values and how we’d like to live. The season lasts forty days, from today until Yom Kippur, and this number is fitting for a time when we are meant to engage in the process of reflection and introspection, imagining what changes may come.
The number forty comes up several times in our tradition. For forty days, rains poured down on earth as Noah and his family found shelter on his ark. The world was a completely different place when they emerged onto dry land, as God decided to give humanity another chance. For forty days, Moshe stood with God on Mount Sinai receiving holy words. These were words, carved on stone, that would forever change the people below waiting at the foot of the mountain. These were words that were meant to transform what it meant to be a people, a community. In the book of Jonah that we will read towards the end of Yom Kippur, we hear that the people of Nineveh, the wicked city, will have forty days until they are overturned, forty days to change.
Our tradition offers a certain amount of time that allows for the opportunity to change, to transform. Too much time would allow us to drag our feet, not feeling much of an impetus to do the work. Too little time wouldn’t give us the expansiveness to think deeply and reflect on who we want to be. So here we are, arriving, today, at the beginning of forty days, a sweet spot for trying to engage with teshuvah, with return, with transformation. Like Noah, these are days for us to imagine what a new world, our own internal world, can look like when we emerge. Like Moshe, these forty days ask us to imagine how we can transform as individuals and as a community. And like Jonah and the people of Nineveh, these days push us to ask what’s at stake.
These are the types of questions for us to begin asking this time of year, as we enter these forty days. What do I want my world to look like, and what can I do to get there? What are the ways that I want to be transformed, and how do I change? What is worth risking, and what can’t I lose?
